Charlie Chan at the Circus is our next Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charliechan.info (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], we start our tapes/DVD'S at 8:30)

They were allowed to shoot at the Al G. Barnes Circus' winter quarters.

According to http://www.ncweb.com/~sapirar/al_g_barnes.html:

The Al G. Barnes Circus Train was one of the largest independent shows. Having only 17 cars in 1911, combined with Sells-Floto Circus in 1935, becoming one of the premier trains in the west. Winter quartered in California, it exhibited along the west coast, and through the mountain states and the Great Plains. As with many circuses during the Great Depression, Al. G. Barnes folded in 1938.

(I've heard of putting your money where

your mouth is but this is ridiculous!!)

It is noted for being one of the few circuses having hippos on display.

. . . [T]he 1937 Al G. Barnes show consist[ed] of 8 coaches, r stock cars, 4 elephants, 1 advertising car, 18 flat cars loaded with 67 wagons and 3 Mack Trucks.

Note the raised roof on the elephant car. The roof had to be modified to accommodate the rather large elephants carried on this show.

Charlie Chan at the Circus is our Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charliechan.info, 8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. (EDT) and we start our tapes/DVD's at 8:30!

(This still of Olive Brasno as Lady Tiny

is courtesy of www.charliechan.net)

We have an interesting cast this week from George and Olive Brasno, a brother-and-sister act, to Francis Ford, brother of director John Ford:

Warner Oland: Charlie Chan

Keye Luke: Lee Chan

George Brasno: Tim

Olive Brasno: Tiny

Francis Ford: John Gaines

Maxine Reiner: Marie Norman

John McGuierre: Hal Blake

Shirley Deane: Louise Norman

Paul Stanton: Joe Kinney

J. Carol Naish: Tom Holt

Boothe Howard: Dan Farrell

Drue Leyton: Nellie Ferrell

Wade Boteler: Lt. Macey

Shia Jung: Su Toy

John Aasen [sic]: Giant Man

John Dilson: Doctor

Franklyn Farnum: Mike (the ticket-taker)

Paul McVey: Ringmaster

Annie Mar: Mrs. Charlie Chan

Florence Ung: # 1 Chan Daughter

Richard Ung: # 2 Chan Son

Francis Hoo: # 2 Chan Daughter

Mae Jean Wong: # 3 Chan Daughter

Gene Hoo: # 3 Chan Son

Stanton Hui: # 4 Chan Son

Helen Quon: # 4 Chan Daughter

Faye Hee: # 5 Chan Daughter

Hippie Hoo: # 5 Chan Son

Eunice Soo Hoo: Infant Chan Daughter

(This still of Annie Mar as Mrs. Charlie Chan is

courtesy of www.charliechan.info)

It's a good thing to be able to speak a foreign language as Lee tries out his French in this still from Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo, courtesy of Rush Glick's www.charliechan.info.*

Of course, you should be sure to actually STUDY it and not go trailing off after Pop on a new case or guess what can happen?!

(This still was contributed to Rush's site by Gene Lue and has the director, Eugene Forde, in the center (back to us) and Don Clark on the right at the camera.

. . .

A great site worth checking out!

www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html.

. . .

*That's where we'll meet tonight at 8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. (EDT), we'll start our tapes/DVD's of CC in Monte Carlo at 8:30.

New images from Monaco for Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo, our Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charlechan.info, from 8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. (EDT) and we start our tapes/DVD's at 8:30.

First a couple of maps plus where Charlie and Lee Chan could have gambled and/or stayed while in Monte Carlo:

Chan Fan Evan, from Nevada, wants to know what Charlie Chan is doing in Monte Carlo* since Charlie Chan didn't gamble (except for one time at the Race Track but that was a special occasion) because you have to be tight with your money with the 14 Chan kids to raise!

(Courtesy of www.charliechan.info)

Plus~a bonus question:

What do Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo have in common

with Charlie Chan in London?

Both the bartender, Al Rogers, in Monte Carlo and Lake, the groom in London, were both found dead in their rooms, both seemingly by suicide.

But Charlie Chan knew better, didn't he?!

(This still from CC in London is courtesy of www.charliechan.info.)

. . .

*Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo is our Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charliechan.info, 8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. (EDT) and we start our tapes/DVD's at 8:30.

We only have two bloopers from Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo, our Monday Night Chat Room Movie (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], we start our tapes/DVD's at 8:30):

The murderer is involved in what we might call a technical blooper. He runs into the road at the end of the movie. He turns around and sees a truck about to hit him. There's a glitch in the film just before it does like they spliced two pieces of film together there.

Harold Huber informs Charlie Chan at the beginning of the movie that he, Huber, will be paying our Chinese friend's hotel bill. Huber says "Please!" in perfect English as he takes the bill in hand. No French accent! (You may have to turn up the volume.) [Courtesy of Norm Vogel]

Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo* has a great cast including Virginia Field as a former mannequin (what we would now call a model), Kay Linaker, Sidney Blackmer and Harold Huber.

Harold Huber has a very special place as a Chan actor. He and Keye Luke were the only two to cross over to another series.

Mr. Moto's Gamble had started out as a Chan vehicle for Warner Oland, who walked off the set. Twentieth Century-Fox scrambled after Oland's death and decided to salvage what footage they could as a Moto movie.

This still from 1938's Mr. Moto's Gamble (courtesy of www.charliechan.info) show Huber as Lieutenant Riggs with Keye Luke as Lee Chan and Peter Lorre as Moto.

Funny that I never noticed how hairy Harold Huber's hands looked before!

On to the rest of the cast!

Warner Oland: Charlie Chan

Keye Luke: Lee Chan

Virginia Field: Evelyn Gray

Sidney Blackmer: Victor Karnoff

Harold Huber: French Police Inspector

Kay Linaker: Joan Karnoff

Robert Kent: Gordon Chase

Edward Raquello: Paul Savarin

George Lynn: Al Rogers

Louis Mercier: Taxi Driver

George Davis: Pepito

John Bleifer: Ludwig

George Renavent: Renault

George Sorel: Gendarme

Eugene Borden: Hotel Clerk

Andre Cheron: Croupier

Marcelle Corday: Concierge

Gennaro Curci: Waiter

Jean De Briac: Gendarme

Victor De Linsky: Gendarme

Art Dupuis: Bit Role

Antonio Filauri: Waiter

Constant Franke: Croupier

Robert Graves: Gendarme

Sherry Hall: Bartender

Alponse Martell: Gendarme

Manuel Paris: Doorman

Jean Perry: Gendarme

John Picorri: Waiter

Albert Pollet: Attache

Joseph Romantini: Attache

Leo White: French Butler

. . .

*Our Monday Night Chat Room Movie, at www.charliechan.info, from 8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. (EDT), we start our tapes/DVD's at 8:30.

Trillo and Suede in Boxford Park

I have fallen in love with a new movie detective team that takes us back to when the Charlie Chan movies were in their heyday!

We're talking about a movie that Monogram WISHES they could have made in England at the end of Roland Winters' run as our Chinese detective in 1949!

(Courtesy of www.farnfilm.com)

We're talking about Jonathan Geffner's "Boxford Park" that he stars in with his good friend, Suede, as "Trillo and Suede."

(Courtesy of http://gefffner.com)

(Maybe it's the other way around.

It depends on who gets to you first!)

(Courtesy of www.farnfilm.com)

I'll let you read about the plot line yourself at http://www.farnfilm.com/trillo/html/movie.html.

(Courtesy of www.farnfilm.com)

I've also fallen in love with some of the stills from the movie. . . . How can you not with a better-looking team with more talent than Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy?!

(Courtesy of www.farnfilm.com)

(Courtesy of www.farnfilm.com)

How did my picture get in--oops, sorry, that's Aunt Sarah!

(Courtesy of www.farnfilm.com)

And these folks are for the dummy-challenged among us!

. . .

You can down load "Boxford Park"--free!--at http://www.farnfilm.com/trillo/html/movielink.html.

For a promotional video about the whole project (plus outtakes, parents might want to check it first), you can download free at http://www.farnfilm.com/trillo/html/project.html.

Jonathan is trying to get "word-of-mouse" out about "Boxford Park" plus raise much needed capital to turn it into a full-length feature plus at least 12 episodes of our heroes.

Anybody who would be interested can contact Jonathan at:

Geffner Productions, Inc.

mail@geffner.com

http://geffner.com

http://trilloandsuede.comm/movielink.html

For Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo, our Monday Night Chat Room Movie (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], we start our tapes/DVD's at 8:30):

For those of us who prefer Keye Luke and his character of Lee Chan . . . I now have proof of how hot he is!

Plus proof that some people just can't wait for Halloween, as Lee finds out in this still where some of the locals are at least trying out their costumes!

Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo is our next Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charliechan.info (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], we start our tapes/DVD's at 8:30).

One of the stars of our movie is Kay Linaker who plays Joan Karnoff, one of several of her roles in Chan films.

So, Kay, this is for you!

This still is courtesy of www.scarletstreet.com/imagesINTERVIEW/phillips2a.jpg where you can link to a multi-part interview with the name she has gone by for some time now, Kate Phillips.

The picture is from her first film, The Murder of Dr. Harrigan. One of the ironies (and unforuntately at that) is that Mignon Eberhart wrote the original novel, From What Dark Stairway, with Linaker's Sally Keating as the detective. Kay "was robbed" when the powers that be decided to make Ricardo Cortez's character (Doctor George Lambert) the detective.

Not to mention that Chad Bennett (one of Kay's former students) reports that Linaker had Mary Astor on the set as an ally to run herd on Cortez. He had a tendency to do things like upstaging his coworkers when he could get away with it!

(Courtesy of www.charliechan.info)

Kay Linaker did make a few Chan movies along the way to changing her name to Kate Phillips and writing

(Also courtesy of www.scarletstreet.com)

The Blob!

Kay eventually settled in Keene, New Hampshire, where she began teaching.

You can check out Keene State College at www.keene.edu.

Kay Linaker, we salute you for what continues to be a great career!

Boo-time Again?

I wish you had been with me when I posted over at Rush Glick's message board at www.charliechan.info!

I posted all the movies that we will watch next month, October, in his chat room!! Rush has all these neat smilies but I had such a kick clicking the Halloween-y ones!!!

BBBWWWAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

Please remember that we will have our annual Virtual Halloween Party on October 31st this year and everyone is encouraged to come and sigh in (or sign in!) as a Chan Character. (This isn't a necessity, however! We won't send the Ghost Squad after you if you don't!)

(Courtesy of www.exiledesigns.com/boutiue/free/previews/ghosts.jpg)

I'll be posting the character list again of who has taken which character for those who still have their selections to make.

Also who is bringing what so you all put your thinking caps on while checking out our October Movies!

. . .

October 3: Charlie Chan at the Circus

. . .

October 10: Charlie Chan in The Scarlet Clue

. . .

October 17: Charlie Chan at the Opera

. . .

October 24: Charlie Chan's Secret

. . .

October 31: Dead Men Tell

. . .

BOO!

I wish I had a picture to go with this!

Shirley Temple Black wrote her superb autobiography, "Child Star," in 1988 (McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York) and included this description of Orson Welles on pages 283 - 284:

. . . Formal in his double-breasted suit coat and pleated trousers, he looked faintly Chinese with his oval face, jowls, scraggly beard, and crescent of drooping mustache. Only his voice was distinguished, deep and reverberating, each tone treasured.

. . .

I suggest you check it out in your library, only partly to see the photograph of Shirley Temple playing croquet with Orson Welles!!!

Charlie Chan and son come across a bottle of red ink in The Red Dragon.* It's a possible clue to their mystery.

A bottle of ink may very well be what the suspect uses but my mother was taught to usually use in Chinese calligraphy and painting was ink sticks.

This gentleman is holding a Chinese brush about the same way you hold an ink stick like the ones below.

You'll find a grinding stone in the center of this set with a smaller bowl for water. You use the spoon in it to transfer only the amount of water you need at the moment to the larger container to grind the stick to the desired thickness of ink.

Believe me, it's a lot easier to do than describe. Of course, mastering the actual art of Chinese calligraphy or painting is something else!

Maybe I should have the actual calligraphy lesson some other time!

* * *

What, no Chan picture? No way!

Don't you love it?!

. . .

*The Red Dragon is our Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charliechan.info, from 8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. (EDT). We start our movies at 8:30.

Let's Rumba!

Yes, Charlie Chan does a mean Rumba in The Red Dragon, our Monday Night Chat Room Movie at Rush Glick's www.charliechan.info (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], we start our tapes/DVD's at 8:30).

"At the Capitol Night Club, cutting in on son Tommy, Charlie Chan asks questions as he dances the rumba with artist Iris Ling."

(Courtesy of Rush's http://charliechangallery.tripod.com/id43.html.

I found two websites that show how to do the Rumba (aka Rhumba).

The first one has a diagram showing the dance steps at http://www.laventure.net/tourist/rhumba.jpg.

The other one has dance steps plus background material at http://nfo.net/dance/rhumba.html.

. . .

Enjoy!

Today is Blooper Day for The Red Dragon, our Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charliechan.info (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], we start our tapes, DVD's at 8:30).

(Courtesy of Rush Glick's www.charliechan.info)

These are courtesy of Norm Vogel:

When Charlie Chan is explaining about the "95th Element" to the Inspector, he starts to get confused, as if he's desparately trying to remember his lines! (I'm surprised that they didn't reshoot that scene, unless it was made by "One-Shot" Beaudine!).

Also, no one can figure out what the typed word was but once it's solved EVERYONE seems to remember where the thermostat was and wasn't! I mean, WHO notices something like THAT?!?!?!

AND . . . as he was typing it (as he was dying), he only hit about 3 or 4 keystrokes, but the word has over TWICE that many! Go figure!

Lastly, I find it "odd" that Charlie Chan would PUSH the button on the t-stat [sic]: If anyone ELSE had on one of those gizmos on them, he would have KILLED THEM, TOO! Strange!

. . .

Just a passing thought:

If life hands you lemons,

make darn sure you have enough sugar!

These French lobby cards for The Red Dragon are from Rush Glick's www.chariechan.info, also site of our Monday Night Chat Room (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], we start our tapes/DVDs at 8:30).

Makes you wonder if they understood it was The RED Dragon!

Not to mention the funky drawing of Victor Sen Yung as Tommy Chan?!

The Red Dragon is our Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charliechan.info (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], we start our tapes/DVDs at 8:30).

One thing that comes up in the course of the movie are the "banderillos" on the wall behind the desk with the typewriter.

Sorry, but I couldn't find any pictures of the scene with the banderillos!

However I did come up with this rather . . . interesting Red Dragon on Google. It takes a second to realize that it's a hand puppet!

So I pulled up photographs of banderillos in actual use in bullfights.

(NOTE: These pictures are at least as tame as anything you'd see Sunday afternoon during our own football season!)

Psst . . . psst . . . yeah, you in that last picture . . . .

Don't you think you're pressing your luck just a little bit?!

Our Monday Night Chat Room Movie is The Red Dragon (www.charliechan.info, 8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], our tapes/DVDS start at 8:30).

The cast is international with Fortunio Bonanova, which you might not expect with Monogram. Besides, I love the name of the cab driver: Augie Gomez!

Sidney Toler: Charlie Chan

Fortunio Bonanova: Inspector Luis Cavero

Benson Fong: Tommy Chan

Willie Best: Chattanooga Brown

Carol Hughes: Marguerite Fontain

Barton Yarborough: Joseph Brandish

Don Costello: Charles Masack

George Meeker: Edmond Slade

Marjorie Hoshelle: Countess Irena Masak

Mildred Boyd: Josephine

Barbara Jean Wong (as Jean Wong): Iris Ling

Robert Emmett Keane: Alfred Wyans

Donald D. Taylor (as Donald Dexter Taylor): Walter Dorn

Lucio Villegas: Police Scientist

Charles Trowbridge: Prentiss

Richard Lopez: Bellhop

Augie Gomez: Cab Driver

Toni Raimando: Powder Room Attendant

Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum* is not only set in a wax museum but features a radio show aired by remote broadcast.

(Courtesy of www.charliechan.info)

The technitian, Tom Agnew (on the right), also "appeared in scores of programs from radio's "Golden Age", such as "X Minus One", "Inner Sanctum Mysteries", the "Shadow", the "Mysterious Traveler", the "Whistler", and "Suspense". In addition to appearing in may episodes of the latter series, Mr. Osborne also played its host/narrator, "The Man in Black", early in the run, in 1942 - 1943.

(Courtesy of www.imdb.com)

. . .

*Our Monday Night Chat Room Movie at www.charliechan.info, 8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. (EDT), our tapes/DVDs starting at 8:30.

Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum is our Monday Night Chat Room movie at www.charliechan.info (8:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. [EDT], starting our tapes and DVDs at 8:30).

However . . . it wasn't the first movie about or set in a wax museum.

One of the best-known--and probably best-loved--was Mystery of the Wax Museum with Lionel Atwill (who looked like he could have haunted a house all by himself!) and Fay Wray.

One of the things that sets Mystery apart from other horror movies is Glenda Farrell as a wise-cracking reporter who is the prime mover in furthering the plot of Mystery in the Wax Museum. A "working girl" who not only has a legitimate job but has a prominent part in a movie set in 1933, decades before equal opportunities laws were set in place!

*

It also had Arthur Edmund Carewe as a drug-addict who was also show-cased in Museum. This wasn't something that Hollywood usually did back then.

Vincent Price's House of Wax changed these elements since they reflected a different era in America twenty years later.

Glenda Farrell's star reporter who shares rooms with Fay Wray has become Paul Picerni's Scott Andrews, a sculptor who lives with his mother!

Arthur Edmund Carewe's drug addict became Nedrick Young's alcoholic, a part that was uncredited beause he had been blacklisted in the days of McCarthyism in Hollywood.

. . .

So stock up on the popcorn, candy and sodas.

Start the vcr or DVD player.

Call in the kids and have a

horrific time of it!

. . .

*A rather interesting bit of Warner's publicity,

campaign, don't you think?!?!