CHARLIE CHAN ON BROADWAY (1937)

On an ocean liner heading from Germany to New York City, Billie Bronson is barricaded in her bathroom by the thuggish Mitchell while he ransacks her room, looking for something he doesn’t find. As it happens, next door to her is detective Charlie Chan and his son Lee, returning from their adventure at the Berlin Olympics. They come to her rescue and later she sneaks a wrapped package into Chan’s room and it leaves the ship in his luggage. We learn that Billie’s package contains a diary that could blow the lid off of some criminal enterprises. While Charlie is the guest of honor at a police dinner, Lee catches Billie in their hotel room, looking for the package. She claims she had the wrong room by mistake, but the suspicious Lee follows her to the Hottentot Club where a number of people are interested in the diary: reporter Speed Patten who has offered to pay for her story, freelance photographer Joan Wendall, club owner Johnny, his mistress Marie, and mobster Buzz Moran who warns Billie to get out of town. Billie winds up shot dead in Johnny’s office and Lee is held by the cops until Pop frees him. Back in Chan’s hotel room, the package is gone and Mitchell (from the ocean liner) is found dead with a crumpled diary page in his hand. Chan works with Inspector Nelson and eventually gathers the suspects in a room to solve the case.

This is a fairly typical entry in the Chan series with Warner Oland and Keye Luke as father and son. There are rumors that Oland may have suffered a nervous breakdown around the time of filming, and indeed he only did one more Chan film, but he and Luke are fine here. There are several suspects, a couple of red herring clues, and a killer whose identity is a surprise. There is an interesting gimmick: the Hottentot Club hosts a Candid Camera night where patrons can bring their cameras and take candid shots of everyone in the place. This was apparently a real trend at the time, and a photograph taken at the club provides an important clue. As usual, Lee is a bit bumbling but at one point he does save Charlie from getting shot. A solid supporting cast includes Harold Huber as the inspector, Leon Ames as Buzz, Donald Woods as Speed, J. Edward Bromberg as Speed's editor, Douglas Fowley as Johnny, Louise Henry as Billie, and Marc Lawrence as Mitchell. My only real complaint about the movie is that despite the title and the use of "Give My Regards to Broadway" in the beginning, the film has no Broadway feel; with its bland, cheap sets it might as well be set in Cleveland or Kansas City. Pictured are Louise Henry and Donald Woods. [DVD]