Charlie Chan at the Race Track *** (1936, Warner Oland, Keye Luke, Helen Wood) – Classic Movie Review 8688

‘Oh gee, Pop, when are we going to arrest somebody?’ asks Charlie Chan (Warner Oland)’s jumping-jack Number One Son, Lee Chan (Keye Luke). Has a prize horse kicked to death its rich owner just before a vital race? The cops may be fooled, but the not so easily baffled Chan thinks not.

However, frequent Charlie Chan director H Bruce Humberstone’s 1936 black and white Chan comedy crime mystery adventure Charlie Chan at the Race Track moves so fast that there is hardly time to spot whodunit amid the racetrack chicanery, amusing aphorisms and cameo appearances by a marmoset called Lollipop.

Also in the cast are Helen Wood, Thomas Beck, Alan Dinehart, Gavin Muir, Gloria Roy, Jonathan Hale, Junior Coghlan, Frankie Darro, George Irving and G P Huntley Jr.

Humberstone is infamous for coming up with the idea of keeping Warner Oland drunk during filming so that he could deliver his lines in a style that was supposedly appropriate to the Chan character. He was one of the founders of the Directors Guild of America.

Charlie Chan at the Race Track is directed by H Bruce Humberstone, runs 70 minutes, is made and released by 20th Century Fox, is written by Robert Ellis, Helen Logan, Edward T Lowe Jr, from a story by Lou Breslow and Saul Elkins, based on the character Charlie Chan created by Earl Derr Biggers, shot in black and white by Harry Jackson, produced by John Stone and scored  by Samuel Kaylin.

Keye Luke (1904–1991) is remembered as Lee Chan in Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936) and Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937), Detective James Lee ‘Jimmy’ Wong in Phantom of Chinatown (1940) and Grandfather (Mr Wing) in Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), and as oriental herbalist Dr Yang in Woody Allen’s Alice (1990).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8688

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