I am positive that certain groups operating today would have the Boris Karloff Mr. Wong series banned from the eyes of humankind. But, during the time of vintage Hollywood (and even later) many "oriental" characters were played by white actors. Warner Oland (Swedish-American) as Charlie Chan immediately comes to mind. Paul Muni (an Austro-Humgarian Jew) and Luise Rainer (a German Jew) in THE GOOD EARTH are two others. Asian actors such as Keye Luke, were generally relegated to subordinate roles.
Mr. Wong was the creation of Hugh Wiley, who wrote his adventures as short stories for COLLIER'S. Many of them were collected in the book, MURDER BY THE DOZEN in 1951. Along the way, Karloff was contracted by Monogram Pictures to star in a series about the Chinese-American sleuth. In the sixth film, Keye Luke was handed the lead roll and it would be the first time in an American sound film that an Asian would play an Asian Detective. Luke signed on for four more Mr. Wong movies, but after Karloff had left, the bloom was off the rose, and Luke's contract was cancelled signalling the end of the Wong series.
Following are two pages from FILM BULLETIN (March 25, 1939) depicting Karloff in THE MYSTERY OF MR. WONG, the second in his five films as the detective.
In 1939, MR. WONG, DETECTIVE and THE MYSTERY OF MR. WONG were adapted in six parts (one issue was a preview of the second story) in the Dell comic book, POPULAR COMICS. The series ran in issues #40 through #46. It was written by an unknown scripter, but the artist is credited as Jim Gary.
POPULAR COMICS #40
POPULAR COMICS #41
POPULAR COMICS #42
POPULAR COMICS #43
POPULAR COMICS #44
POPULAR COMICS #45
POPULAR COMICS #46
Those who seek to erase the past are no better than those who burned books in Germany, or those in the Soviet Union who deleted images and names of those who fell out of the party's favor.
ReplyDeleteWe must face the past, not erase the past, in order to build a better future.
Well said. The word "fascist" gets thrown around too easily these days, I suspect mostly be those who have appropriated the term out of ignorance of history -- but then, who cares about that when your trying to destroy it?
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