Keye Luke's birthday is coming up next month. Luke was born on June 18th in Canton, China.
The programming department of this site has a few choices in selecting a film for the Keye Luke birthday party (Monday, June 13th). The choices include:
1) "Charlie Chan at the Olympics" (1937) featuring a strong performance by Luke.
2) "The Phantom of Chinatown" (1940) is Luke's only starring role. In the final film of the Mr. Wong series, Luke is the only Asian-American actor, at that time, to play a lead Asian-American character in a Hollywood film.
3) "The Green Hornet" (1940) features Luke, as Kato, in this fun action serial. Due to the release of the new Green Hornet film, it might be fun to take a look at the original film.
QUESTION: How many of us have DVDs or VHS tapes of the Mr. Wong series? Should we include the two Mr. Wong films, that were remade as Roland Winters/Chan film, as part of our Monday night viewings?
Thank you for your input. Looking forward to hearing from all Chan fans.
Keye Luke was one of my favorite CC sons. The chemistry he and Warner Oland had was great. It's a very hard decision because those are very good choices. I think the father-son chemistry that Charlie Chan and Lee had in Charlie Chan at the Olympics was great plus the movie has a lot of historical elements to it. It was a pleasant surprise when I watched The Phantom of Chinatown for the first time and saw Keye Luke in it.
I wish I could give a vote in one way or the other, but I think it I'll leave it up to you all to decide in the end. Either way, it won't be disappointing.
As for Mr. Wong, I had a gift card for amazon and there was a little bit left on it. Unsure what to do, I decided to go through some of the cheap dvds they had and found a Mr. Wong mysteries DVD collection (well it only had four or so movies on it) for very cheap (maybe like $5 or something around that much). I never saw Mr. Wong prior to that, but I enjoyed the movies and now want to get a better collection because some of the movies apparently weren't on the dvd.
I've got The Green Hornet (1940) and The Green Hornet Strikes Again (1941) at my website at http://tommenterprises.tripod.com/id268.html and all the James Lee Wongs at http://tommenterprises.tripod.com/id264.html.
(And a bunch of the English Sherlock Holmes TV series at http://tommenterprises.tripod.com/id265.html.)
I'll bring cake and ice cream if we're celebrating Keye Luke's birthday the Monday before. I'm bound to have lots left over from the fifth!
