Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu are fictional characters who appeared in print literature, comic books, and films starting in the 1910s and 1920s. Both figures reached the height of their popularity during the early twentieth century and marked the entry of Chinese characters into popular culture. These characters challenged some cultural stereotypes while reinforcing others in line with prevailing views about immigration, race, and U.S.-China relations. Their popularity with European and American audiences reflected differing perceptions of people of East Asian descent in Western culture. Charlie Chan in particular was one of the earliest Asian protagonists in American cinema, whereby he became a household name. Conversely in contemporary culture, Fu Manchu represents the excesses of “yellow peril” stereotyping and Chan raises equal criticism for the use of “yellow face” (white actors portraying Asians on screen).
The character of Fu Manchu was created by British author Sax Rohmer (1883–1959) and first appeared in a serialized printing between 1912 and 1913 entitled The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (printed in the United States as The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu). The success of the first novel prompted the publication of two sequels, The Devil Doctor (U.S. title: The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu) in 1916 and The Si-Fan Mysteries (The Hand of Fu Manchu) in 1917. The immense popularity of the first three novels, combined with their film adaptations, prompted Rohmer to revive Fu Manchu for later installments beginning in 1931. He completed eleven more Fu Manchu novels before his death in 1959, with a number of authors creating authorized and unauthorized continuations into the twenty-first century.
The author provides very little biographical information about Fu Manchu, an honorific name that some have speculated signifies “Warlike Manchu.” Rohmer notes that he is a very aged and learned man, being roughly seventy years old in the first novel and a recipient of doctorates from four universities, including Edinburgh, Heidelberg, and the Sorbonne. He is universally portrayed as a thin, older Chinese man dressed in elaborate silk clothing and hat, bearing an accentuated, long mustache that now bears his name in popular culture. The earliest novels establish that he is a criminal mastermind, possibly from the bureaucratic class of Mandarins or even the Chinese imperial family. He operates as a leader in the Si Fan secret society, which orders and manipulates the underworld of Chinese immigrants to profit from drug trafficking, white slavery, and acts of political violence. Fu Manchu scorns firearms, preferring the use of martial arts, knives, poisons, and animals to achieve his ends.
Fu Manchu is foiled in each of his criminal attempts by the investigative team of Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie. Smith is a British colonial police commissioner whose determination and sense of action, dutifully narrated to the reader through the scientific mind of Petrie, is reminiscent in style of the detective novels of Arthur Conan Doyle. In Rohmer’s later novels, Fu Manchu is also confounded by his equally scheming and intelligent daughter, Fah Lo Suee, who aspires to leadership in the Si-Fan society in her own right. Throughout his life, Rohmer contended that Fu Manchu was modeled after real-life Chinese crime lords, though the character is widely upheld as one of the great examples of the “yellow peril” stereotype with its hallmark of the inscrutable, immoral Chinese person. Furthermore, his portrayal of the Chinese immigrant community at Limehouse as a seedbed for criminal activity has been scrutinized.
Alongside the novels, Fu Manchu has appeared in a number of comic book, radio, television, and film adaptations. In all his film appearances, Fu Manchu is played by a white actor in makeup and clothing intended to look Chinese. This was done, as was the case for Charlie Chan, because studios felt that an Asian actor could not properly carry the part. The first movie appeared in 1923 as a British silent serial entitled The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu. In the first three Fu Manchu films of the sound era, he was first portrayed by Warner Oland, who went on to also portray Charlie Chan. The most famous film version dates from 1932. The Mask of Fu Manchu starred Boris Karloff in the title role and has achieved a somewhat cult status for its costuming and camp acting. After some serials of the late 1930s and early 1940s, the subject was retired partially out of respect for Chinese-U.S. foreign relations during the Second World War. The series was revived in Great Britain with five films during the 1960s, employing veteran, non-Asian horror actor Christopher Lee as the Devil Doctor. An attempt at a satirical portrayal by British comedian Peter Sellers in the 1980s in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu received negative criticism for its tired humor and outdated racial stereotypes. To date it remains the last English-language feature film about Fu Manchu.
Charlie Chan was created by American novelist Earl Derr Biggers (1884–1933) for his story The House Without a Key in 1925. The idea for the story came to him much earlier, when Biggers was inspired by the real-life story of Honolulu detectives Chang Apana (1871–1933) and Lee Fook while on a trip to Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1919. Chan, a fatherly, overweight man in a characteristic white suit and hat, featured in six more novels before Biggers’s death in 1933. The author intended the intelligent, amiable, and law-abiding Chan to be a foil to “yellow peril” stereotypes that portrayed Chinese people as conniving, lawless criminals, while still emphasizing the so-called Chinese virtues of stoicism and gentility. In addition, Chan is portrayed as a dedicated family man, typically solving cases with the assistance of one of his many children. Some literary scholars assert that Charlie Chan represented the gentle, subservient, “nonthreatening” stereotype that compartmentalized Chinese Americans just as severely as the “yellow peril” narratives Biggers sought to combat.
The print and film legacy of Charlie Chan follows a similar trajectory to that of Fu Manchu. They both gained popularity during the 1920s and 1930s, both were portrayed by white actors, and both franchises fell out of favor with audiences by the 1980s. Unlike Fu Manchu, Charlie Chan was initially portrayed by Japanese actors. The first was George Kuwa (1885–1931) in the 1926 Pathé silent serial film The House Without a Key, followed by Kamiyama Sojin (1884–1954) in The Chinese Parrot in 1927. Chan’s role in both films was greatly diminished; however, the majority of reviewers received the serials negatively because of the use of Asian actors in the role. The lack of success of both of these films was connected in part to the prevailing belief among audiences that an Asian actor could not carry the role—meaning he could not show intelligence and compassion in a believable way.
Only in 1931, with the use of white actors made to look Asian, did the Charlie Chan franchise have its first film success with Charlie Chan Carries On, starring Swedish American actor Warner Oland (1879 1938). Oland went on to star in sixteen Charlie Chan films before his death in 1938. Chinese American actor Keye Luke (1904–1991) played Chan’s “number one son” for the majority of these films. On Oland’s death, American actor Sidney Toler (1874–1947) portrayed Chan in eleven further films until 1942. He was paired with Jimmy Chan, his “number two son,” portrayed by Chinese American actor Victor Sen Yung (1915–1980). Relatively inexpensive to make, the Charlie Chan films were very successful and helped to bolster movie attendance during the difficult Depression years of the 1930s. The franchise was later transferred from Fox to Monogram Pictures, which added comic relief through an African American chauffeur named Birmingham Brown. Played by Mantan Moreland (1902–1973), Brown provided most of the visual humor of the later films, and now elicits similar criticisms of racial stereotyping in the franchise. On the death of Toler in 1947, Roland Winters (1904–1989) took on the role of Charlie Chan for six films, concluding in 1948. Changing attitudes to the character, informed in part by the changing nature of Chinese-U.S. relations during the latter half of the 1940s, ended the successful run of Charlie Chan films.
The revival of the Charlie Chan franchise with non-Chinese, British actor Peter Ustinov in the 1981 Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen illuminated the contemporary conflict over his role in popular culture. The film, albeit crafted as a farce-comedy, was universally panned by critics and protested by the Asian American community. Many reacted negatively to the revival of a character that seemed to portray the Chinese as subservient, nonthreatening, and deferential; a stereotype they argued was inimical to modern multicultural societies. Further, the use of non-Chinese actors in what has been dubbed “yellow face” added to the controversy. On the other end of the spectrum, some have contended that Chan should be viewed as a product of his time and in light of the benevolent intentions of the author. From this perspective, Chan was one of the first Asians to be portrayed positively in popular culture in distinction to the overtly negative stereotypes usually placed before the public, such as Fu Manchu.
Sean P. Phillips
See also Fa Mu Lan, or Mulan
Further Reading
Huang, Yunte. 2010. Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History. New York: W. W. Norton.
Ma, Sheng-mei. 2000. The Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Mitchell, Charles P. 1999. A Guide to Charlie Chan Films. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Zia, Helen. 2001. Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.