Actor Sidney Toler’s 2-year sabbatical from Charlie Chan.

Happy Birthday Actor Sidney Toler (April 28th!) Most Chan film buffs are aware Actor Sidney Toler was the second successful actor to play Detective Charlie Chan. He continued the role following Actor Warner Oland’s untimely death, August 1938. Toler hit the ground running starting his debut in Charlie Chan in Honolulu 1939 making a total four Chan films that year, followed by four more in 1940, two in 1941, just one in 1942, then…nothing! But after a 2-year absence the pace once again picked-up with four films in 1944?

These Charlie Chan films were highly popular (noteworthy, they saved 20th Century-Fox studio from bankruptcy.) Toler was halfway through what was eventually a total run of 22-Chan movies, more than any other actor to play the role. So what was the reason for that break from 1942-1944?

Through four years and eleven films, Toler played Charlie Chan for Twentieth Century-Fox. However, in 1942, following the completion of Castle in the Desert, the series was terminated.  With war raging throughout the world, the overseas market that had made Charlie Chan films profitable for Fox was now unavailable.

Toler immediately worked to gain the screen rights to the Charlie Chan character from Eleanor Biggers Cole, the widow of Chan’s creator.  He had hoped that Twentieth Century-Fox would distribute new Charlie Chan films if he could find someone willing to finance the new movies.  However, this did not happen.  Instead, Monogram, a Poverty Row film studio, picked up the series.

Rush Glick, The Charlie Chan Family Home, Sidney Toler

So after playing Detective Charlie Chan the last four years, when 20th Century Fox dropped the francize in ’42 what was Toler suppose to do? Ask The Thin Man (ref Nick and Nora Charles) or I should say a spinoff of The Thin Man film series.

Most mystery aficionados know Dashiell Hammett’s hardboiled novel, The Thin Man, 1933, and the highly successful six-movie run (by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer), staring: William Powell as Detective Nick Charles, Myrna Loy as wife Nora Charles, and canine actor Skippy as their dog, Asta. The films were so popular that Columbia Pictures tried to duplicate that same movie magic (a comedy/drama husband and wife team that investigates crimes) with the film A Night to Remember, 1942. Know who played that film’s detective? I’ll give you one guess!

If you guessed Sidney Toler, you’re correct. If you haven’t seen the film it’s an obvious attempt to piggyback on the success of The Thin Man series. Only this film didn’t quite arrive there. While the main actors did well, Brian Aherne and Loretta Young, they were no match for Powell and Loy. Replacing the amateur sleuth and his rich wife in “Thin Man,” A Night to Remember features a mystery author and his wife. The couple finds a dead body in their apartment and are bent on solving the murder.

When “A Night” was released in 1942, three of the six Thin Man movies had been released and the fourth was in production that same year. In “A Night” similar copycat antics are obvious; the comedic bedroom scenes on twin beds, tricking a cabbie to whisk his wife away keeping her out of his investigation. And leading man Actor Brian Aherne sported the same pencil thin mustache that William Powell wore in The Thin Man films. There was even a replacement for Asta (the dog) with a turtle named “Old Hickory.”

So with the teetering fate of the Charlie Chan films still up in the air the timing couldn’t be better for Sidney Toler. And fortuitously, A Night to Remember was an A-movie production; an opportunity that would help elevate his career! The Chan films were B-movies, lower class productions with limited budgets and star power. A-movies on the other hand like The Thin Man series and A Night to Remember were Hollywood’s golden tickets. They featured top actors and actresses to where the big production dollars went.

So there you have it. The reason for the 2-year break Sidney Toler took from the Chan films. There was no follow-up to A Night to Remember. But just suppose it had become the box office success Columbia Pictures had hoped for, then taken off into a film series! Would Sidney Toler have tried to star in both? He played a detective in A Night for Columbia Pictures and of course Detective Charlie Chan for Monogram. Could he have kept pace alternating between the two series in starring roles? Or would he have given up the Chan series (B-films) to concentrate on the more prestigious A-films? I guess we’ll never know.

Sidney Toler: April 28, 1874 – February 12, 1947.

“Fate settles all things, and all things arrive at their appointed time.”

Charlie Chan, Keeper of The Keys, 1932, Chapter 15