Warner Oland (born Johan Verner Ölund; October 3, 1879 – August 6, 1938) was a Swedish-American actor. His career included time on Broadway and numerous film appearances. He is most remembered for playing several Chinese and Chinese-American characters: Dr. Fu Manchu, Henry Chang in Shanghai Express, and, most notably, Honolulu Police detective Lieutenant Charlie Chan in 16 films.[1]
Early years
Oland was born in the village of Nyby, Bjurholm Municipality, Västerbotten County, Sweden. He claimed that his vaguely Asian appearance was due to possessing some Mongolian ancestry,[2][3] though his known ancestry contains no indication that this was so.[4] In his native Sweden, one theory (to explain his appearance) is that Oland's family was possibly of Sami heritage. According to a 2024 biography, there are plenty of Sami people near Oland's place of birth, but that there is not much in Oland's family tree that would suggest that they were of Sami heritage.[5]
When he was 13, Oland's family immigrated to the United States, in November 1892, on board the S/S Thingvalla, which sailed from Christiania, Norway, to New York. After an initial stay in New York City, the family settled in New Britain, Connecticut. Educated in Boston, Oland spoke English and his native Swedish, and eventually translated some of the plays of August Strindberg.
As a young man, Oland pursued a career in theater, at first working on set design while developing his skills as a dramatic actor. In 1906, he was signed to tour the country with the troupe led by Russian-American actress Alla Nazimova (1879–1945). The following year, he met and married the playwright and portrait painter Edith Gardener Shearn (1872-1968). Shearn made an ideal partner for Oland. She mastered Swedish, helping him with the translation of Strindberg's works that they jointly published in book form in 1912.[6]
Film career
Career beginnings
After several years in theater, including appearances on Broadway as Warner Oland, in 1912 he made his silent film debut in Pilgrim's Progress, a film based on the John Bunyan novel. As a result of his training as a Shakespearean actor and his easy adoption of a sinister look, he was much in demand as a villain and in ethnic roles. Over the next 15 years, he appeared in more than 30 films, including a major role in The Jazz Singer (1927), one of the first talkies produced.
Oland's normal appearance fit the Hollywood expectation of caricatured Asianness of the time. He portrayed a variety of Asian characters in several movies before being offered the leading role in the 1929 film The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu.[7]
A box office success, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu made Oland a star, and during the next two years he portrayed the evil Dr. Fu Manchu in three more films (although the second one was purely a cameo appearance). He was cast as an exotic menace in director Josef von Sternberg's 1932 classic film Shanghai Express opposite Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong. In Werewolf of London (1934)
Oland played a werewolf, biting the protagonist, played by Henry Hull.[8] After portraying a Chinese ambassador in the 1935 film Shanghai, he abandoned character work and pursued his starring series as Charlie Chan exclusively.
The Charlie Chan franchise
In 1931, already familiar from his Oriental roles, he was cast as Charlie Chan in the international detective mystery filmCharlie Chan Carries On. The enormous worldwide boxoffice success of his Charlie Chan film led to more, with Oland starring in 16 Chan films in total. The series, Jill Lepore later wrote, "kept Fox afloat" during the 1930s, while earning Oland $40,000 per movie. Oland took his role seriously, studying the Chinese language and calligraphy.[9][10] The scripts almost always called for Oland to comment on the action by offering nuggets of Oriental wisdom: "Hasty deduction like ancient egg. Look good from outside."
Final year and death
Despite his wealth and success, Oland suffered from alcoholism that severely affected his health and his 30-year marriage. In January 1938, he started filming Charlie Chan at the Ringside. However, a week into shooting, he began behaving erratically and eventually walked off the set, causing the film to be abandoned. After a spell in the hospital, he signed a new three-picture deal with Fox to continue playing Chan.
During this period he was involved in a bitter divorce from his wife. He was forbidden, by court order, from traveling overseas or moving his assets abroad. Around this time, he was involved in a public incident when, having ordered his chauffeur to drive him to Mexico, he was observed during a rest stop sitting on the running board of his car throwing his shoes at onlookers.
The divorce settlement, favouring his wife, was announced to the media on April 2, 1938. The same day he left the United States by steamship, turning up in southern Europe, then proceeding to his native Sweden, where he stayed with an architect friend. In Sweden, Oland contracted bronchial pneumonia, worsened by the apparent onset of emphysema from years of heavy cigarette smoking, and he died in a hospital in Stockholm, on August 6, 1938, aged 58.[11]
Following cremation in Sweden, his ashes were brought back to the United States by his ex-wife, for interment in the Southborough Rural Cemetery in Southborough, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where the Olands had previously resided in an historic farmhouse.[12][13]
His last film, the unfinished Charlie Chan at the Ringside, was re-shot with Peter Lorre replacing Oland, and released as Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938).
In Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda describes his encounter with an unnamed famous actor, presumably Oland, while travelling by train. The actor was initially critical of Yogananda's Indian garb but their conversation soon evolved into an amicable philosophical discussion.[14]
^"Warner Oland". Chicago Daily Tribune. August 7, 1938. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
^"Warner Oland". New York Times. August 7, 1938. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
^Goldberg, Philip G. (2018). The Life of Yogananda. New Delhi: Hay House India. p. 103. ISBN978-9-3868-3252-8.
Other sources
Alistair, Rupert (2018). "Warner Oland". The Name Below the Title : 65 Classic Movie Character Actors from Hollywood's Golden Age (softcover) (First ed.). Great Britain: Independently published. pp. 196–199. ISBN978-1-7200-3837-5.
Katchmer, George A. (1991). Eighty Silent Film Stars: Biographies and Filmographies of the Obscure to the Well Known (hardcover) (First ed.). Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland. ISBN978-0-89950-494-0.
Huang, Yunte (2010) Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History (New York: W W Norton) ISBN978-0-393-06962-4
