Our Monday Evening Chat/Film Viewing for 2/22: "The New Adventures of Charlie Chan"
FROM CHARLIE CHAN: “Silence often speaks louder than words.”
Monday greetings to you, and Happy Birthday, JAMES HONG! Moving along on our CHARLIE CHAN FILM TOUR 2016, we will have reached a detour where we will be viewing two Charlie Chan cases that are not a part of the film series. This week we will be sharing “The Great Salvos” and “The Counterfeiters,” two episodes from the 1957 TV crime drama “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan,” starring J. Carrol Naish as Charlie Chan and James Hong, whose birthday we celebrate, as Number One Son, Barry! “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan” contains 39 half-hour episodes. The first four take place in and around Los Angeles, California, and the fifth, the first of our offerings this week, happens in our nation’s capital. The remainder of the series is based in Great Britain and Europe with the exception of one visit to Cairo, Egypt! One of the beauties of this series is that numerous actual locations were used in the process of producing “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan.”
Also, per our newly inaugurated custom, we will be sharing, before our featured presentations, a vintage Charlie Chan radio show; “The Escaped Musician,” starring Ed Begley, which can be found on the Internet at: http://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/crime/charlie-chan/charlie-chan-the-escaped-musician
OUR PRESENTATIONS: “The Great Salvos” (1957; Runtime: 26 minutes), “The Counterfeiters (1957; Runtime: 26 minutes), AND “The Escaped Musician” (radio program, circa mid-1940s; Runtime: 24:20).
SUMMARIES:
“The Escaped Musician” – It is midnight. In a small white house in a quiet San Francisco neighborhood Mrs. Vinney Poste, slender and youthful despite her forty years sits at the piano and plays quietly while she watches the clock on the wall with anxious eyes. Then Detective Charlie Chan turns up at her house to inform her that her son was not at his violin recital today but had been involved in a burglary, which ended with murder!
“The Great Salvos” - Charlie Chan, who is in Washington, D.C. with son, Barry, becomes involved in a case of espionage after plans for a new jet engine are stolen. Suspicion falls on a brother and sister mind reading act from Hungary.
“The Counterfeiters” - Charlie Chan is called to Paris when the Bank of France reports the theft of printing plates used to produce 5,000-franc notes. Chan must rely on connections that date back to the war as he seeks to solve this complex case.
NEW TIME: We begin with arrivals and greetings at 7:30 EASTERN TIME. Then, we share our radio program which will be followed at exactly 8:15 when we roll our features from “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan.”
LOCATION: Our Charlie Chan Family Chat Room, which is accessed at http://www.charliechan.info/id17.html.
IF YOU LACK A COPY OF OUR FEATURES: Often our features can be found available online, sadly, tonight’s features are NOT presently available online.
OF NOTE: J. Carrol Naish, who plays Charlie Chan in “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan,” appeared opposite Warner Oland in “Charlie Chan at the Circus.” Less than 20 years later, he would find himself portraying the detective. Also, James Hong, Number One Son, Barry in the TV series, was just getting his acting career off the ground at the time he appeared in the series! Mr. Hong, who has had a long and distinguished acting career, continues to appear in films and on television to this day.
PLEASE have a pleasant, safe Monday, and I hope to see you in our Chat Room as we share our features together!
