Charlie Chan Fan

Lonnie Cruse

I’m currently reading CHARLIE CHAN CARRIES ON by Earl Derr Biggers. I adore reading very old, out of print mysteries. I found this particular set of books via an Internet search.

Anybody remember watching the old Charlie Chan movies with Werner Oland and Sidney Tolar? I was the lucky recipient of two (count ‘em) Charlie Chan DVD collections for Christmas. Ten Charlie Chan movies total. Life is good.

I adore those old black and white movies, set in the forties. Partly because I can see what the world looked like around the time I was born, what the fashion of the day was when my parents were still alive, what the vehicles looked like, and boy wouldn’t I just love to own one of those babies? And the hats both the men and women wore, that alone is worth the price of the movies. I mean, when is the last time you saw a guy in a Fedora?

But I enjoy the stories as well, hokie though they may be. Elevators with a trap door in the floor, fake séances with props used by con artists hidden in the basement, good stuff like that. What’s not to love? And the movies deal a lot with how the war affected everyday life, whether totally accurate or not, who knows?

I’m hoping to add to my Charlie Chan collection and find the rest of the series. Watching these old movies is like stepping into a time machine for an hour or so and visiting the past. And I might even learn something interesting about secret wind tunnels, spooky amusement park fun houses, rooms with hidden doors, and how cigarettes could become lethal weapons when mixed with certain heretofore unheard of poisonous gasses, necessary information like that.

What’s your favorite old book and/or movie? What do you love about it? Oh, um, fortune cookie, anyone?