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Our film for Monday evening: "The Black Camel"

FROM CHARLIE CHAN: “Wages of stupidity is hunt for new job.”

WELCOME, on this Martin Luther King holiday! This week, we will be sharing “The Black Camel,” starring Warner Oland in his second appearance as Charlie Chan. This film was based very closely on the story of the same title by Earl Derr Biggers. Detective Charlie Chan is called on to solve the mystery of the murder of a Hollywood movie star, who was visiting the Islands to make a new picture. Chan’s Number One Daughter, played by Ivy Ling (daughter of E.L. Park who played Chan in “Behind That Curtain”), asks her Pop, “Who Killed Shelah Fane?” Can the detective bring the killer to justice?

“The Black Camel” was shot in great measure on Honolulu and on the “other side of the Island.” Even the shots made for rear-projected scenes were filmed while the “Black Camel” film crew was on Oahu. This offers a fun look at the way things looked in Honolulu and environs back in 1931!

Along with our Charlie Chan feature, our weekly “extra,” is the 1936 radio dramatization of “The Landini Murder Case,” which is an adaptation, starring Walter Connolly, of Earl Derr Biggers’ “Keeper of the Keys,” the only Biggers Chan Story never to have been made into a film. We continue the adventure with Episode 10 (the first eight are presently lost to us, unfortunately).

OUR PRESENTATIONS: “The Black Camel” (1931; 71 minutes) …AND “The Landini Murder Case, Episode 11” (1936; 15 minutes).

FILM SUMMARY: Hollywood star Shelah Fane, who is in Hawaii shooting a film on location, is murdered in her beach house in Waikiki. Detective Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department is called on to investigate. "Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate. Tonight black camel has knelt here," Chan tells the assembled suspects.

FILM NOTES: The novel “The Black Camel,” by Earl Derr Biggers, was originally published serially in ‘The Saturday Evening Post’ between May 18 and June 22, 1929. Sources conflict concerning the release date of the film. According to information in the Twentieth Century-Fox Records of the Legal Department at the UCLA Theater Arts Library, some scenes were shot in Honolulu, where some of the of the film's music was also recorded.

TIME: We begin with arrivals and greetings at 7:30 EASTERN TIME. Then, we share our special short “extra” which will be followed at exactly 8:15 when we roll our feature for this Monday evening, “The Black Camel.”

LOCATION: Our Charlie Chan Family Chat Room, which is accessed at http://www.charliechan.info/id17.html.

IF YOU LACK A COPY OF OUR FILM: Often our features can be found available online. Happily, our featured film IS available online at this address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwkTewuR_HM

And, for our Chan radio drama, you may use this link: https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/crime/charlie-chan/charlie-chan-11-landini

OUR MONTHLY POLL: Please take a moment to cast your vote in our January 2018 Poll, located at our Entrance Page (http://www.charliechan.info/index.html)!

NEXT WEEK: Join us on Monday, January 22, we celebrate the birthday of “Charlie Chan number Four,” J. Carroll Naish, as we share two adventures from “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan“television crime drama from 1957.

SO, I look forward to seeing you as we share “The Black Camel,” a unique film in the Charlie Chan movie series.

Sincerely,

Rush Glick