Today would have been Roland Winters' 100th birthday. He shares a centennial year with the venerable Keye Luke.
Roland Winters was born Roland Winternitz in Boston, Massachusetts on November 22, 1904. He was in his middle teens when he worked on a cargo ship that sailed to Central America and later to the West Indies during the summer. It was at about this time that Winters began his career on the stage, working in theater groups around Boston. In 1924, at the age of twenty, he was acting in Broadway productions, beginning with "Firebrand," which was produced by a friend of his brother. During this period, Winters also played bit parts in a couple of silent films.
In 1931, Winters got the job of announcing Braves and Red Sox games on radio station WNAC. He continued to work in radio until 1947 when he was cast in the role of Van Duyval in the Twentieth Century Fox production of "13 Rue Madeleine" which starred James Cagney.
James S. Burkett, who, with Philip N. Krasne, had purchased the screen rights to Charlie Chan from Sidney Toler in 1943, had Winters test for the role, following the death of Toler. Immediately after Winters' trial scene, Burkett informed him that the part was his. So, at the age of 43, Roland Winters, more than thirty years younger than the late Sidney Toler whom he had replaced, became Charlie Chan onscreen.
Winters appeared in six films as the detective. With plans to shoot possibly three more Charlie Chan pictures in Europe, these plans, as well as the series, came to an abrupt halt as the British Pound was devalued unexpectedly, thus drastically cutting the funds that had been set aside in a London bank by Monogram Pictures.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Roland Winters...and "Thank you so much."
