Warner Oland

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Warner Oland born Johan Verner Ölund October 3 1879 August 6 1938 was a SwedishAmerican actor most remembered for playing several Chinese and ChineseAmerican characters the Honolulu Police detective Lieutenant Charlie Chan Dr Fu Manchu and Henry Chang in Shanghai Express His family emigrated to the United States when he was 13 He pursued a film career that would include time on Broadway and dozens of film appearances including 16 Charlie Chan films After several years in theater including appearances on Broadway as Warner Oland in 1912 he made his silent film debut in Pilgrims Progress a film based on the John Bunyan novel As a result of his training as a Shakespearean actor and his easy adoption of a sinister look he was much in demand as a villain and in ethnic roles Over the next 15 years he appeared in more than 30 films including a major role in The Jazz Singer 1927 one of the first talkies produced Olands normal appearance fit the Hollywood expectation of caricatured Asianness of the time despite his having no definitively proven Asian cultural background Oland portrayed a variety of Asian characters in several movies before being offered the leading role in the 1929 film The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu It was the first onscreen portrayal of the Fu Manchu character in film Oland continued to appear onscreen as an Asian probably more often than any other white actor in the history of cinema In Old San Francisco Oland played an Asian unsuccessfully impersonating a white man Oland was the first actor to play a werewolf in a major Hollywood film biting the protagonist played by Henry Hull in Werewolf of London 1935 Once again Olands character was Asian A box office success The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu made Oland a star and during the next two years he portrayed the evil Dr Fu Manchu in three more films although the second one was purely a cameo appearance Firmly locked into such roles he was cast as Charlie Chan in the international detective mystery film Charlie Chan Carries On 1931 and then in director Josef von Sternbergs 1932 classic film Shanghai Express opposite Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong The enormous worldwide box office success of his Charlie Chan film led to more with Oland starring in 16 Chan films in total The series Jill Lepore later wrote kept Fox afloat during the 1930s while earning Oland 40000 per movie Oland took his role seriously studying the Chinese language and calligraphy