Sidney Toler

During his long career in New York's theatre scene, Sidney Toler acted with a host of future screen luminaries, including Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. He also wrote and directed extensively for the stage, in both the US and Canada. Toler made his own transition into the movies in 1929. Over the ensuing decade he appeared in some 50 films, playing alongside the superstars of the day, including Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant in Joseph von Sternberg's "Blonde Venus," Clark Gable in "The Call of the Wild," and Bette Davis and Henry Fonda in "That Certain Woman." The role that would bring Toler lasting fame, however, was an improbable one for a Missouri native of Scottish extraction: that of the Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. Toler took on the role after the death of Warner Oland, who had completed sixteen films for Twentieth Century-Fox as Charlie. Toler would make a further eleven films in the role before Fox, constrained by wartime rigours and winding up its production of "B"ù pictures, dropped the option. But Toler had not seen the last of Charlie Chan: he returned to the role when the smaller Monogram Pictures picked up the franchise in 1944. In total, Sidney Toler made twenty-two Charlie Chan movies. After his death in 1947, the role was taken up by Roland Winter.