Warner Oland
Warner Oland, actually Johan Verner Ölund ( born October 3, 1879 in Nyby, Västerbotten County, † August 6, 1938 in Stockholm) was a Swedish- American actor. He became known in the U.S. primarily as Charlie Chan in the film of the same series.
Life
Warner Oland was born in a village in the northern Swedish province of Västerbotten. In 1892 he emigrated with his parents to the United States, where the intellectually gifted young man studied in Boston and translated some works of his Swedish compatriot August Strindberg into English. After training as a Shakespearean actor in Dr. Curry's Acting School in 1906 he went with an ensemble whose star Alla Nazimova was on tour. After several years of stage work that took him, among other things on Broadway in New York, he made his debut in 1912 in the film with a role in Pilgrim 's Progress, an adaptation of the novel by John Bunyan. From 1915 to more film roles followed, including Romance of Elaine, an adventure film with Lionel Barrymore and Pearl White, and the movies Sin, Destruction and The Eternal Sappho (all three with Theda Bara ).
Since it was easy for the embodiment of sinister characters through his classical training, Warner Oland was soon in demand as a performer for villains and aliens. Notwithstanding its Scandinavian origin were Olands distinctive facial features, which he publicly attributed to the Russian parentage of his mother and could be easily accented with makeup still perceived in the U.S. as a typical East Asian, and in the majority of his now following films he was or as Fernöstler. employed as far Eastern villain.
His career as a performer began Asians Warner Oland in 1917 in the film Patria, in which he played a rogue Japanese baron. After appearances as an Indian (The Naulahka, 1918) and Russian ( The Mysterious Client, The Yellow Ticket, 1918), he appeared in 1919 in the movie The Lightning Raider first time as Chinese. Other films in which Oland appeared partly as White, partly as Fernöstler, followed, including the crime film East is West ( 1922), a work directed by Sidney Franklin. 1926 Oland joined Alan Croslands adventure film Don Juan with John Barrymore in the role of Cesare Borgia on. Olands first sound film role was the film version of Manon Lescaut from 1927, When a Man Loves, in which Dolores Costello played the role of Manon and John Barrymore her lover Des Grieux. Right after that was Oland for Michael Curtiz front of the camera.
The most famous film in which Warner Oland occurred is in The Jazz Singer of 1927. Oland stars in this early, recorded in the Vitaphone process music film with Al Jolson a Jewish cantor, whose son dreams of a career as a jazz singer. After various other roles Oland in 1929 committed to the title role of the thriller The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. Self as Dr. Fu Manchu joined in, including Daughter of the Dragon from 1931, with Anna May Wong. 1931 was Oland in Josef von Sternberg's war film Dishonored first time together with Marlene Dietrich in front of the camera; In 1932, Shanghai Express. In 1935, he played in Stuart Walker's horror film Werewolf of London one of the first werewolves in film history.
1931 Warner Oland was first published in the role with which he was most widely known: as the wily, aphorisms spreading over Chinese- Hawaiian detective Charlie Chan. Charlie Chan Carries On was the first of a series of numerous Charlie Chan movies, the 1931-1941 produced the Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox and the title role was up to his death always busy with Oland. Oland took for Chinese language teaching and traveled to study China ( 1935). He also appeared in several other films, such as in the MGM movie The Painted Veil, in which he plays a Chinese general in addition to Greta Garbo, who opposes in the Time of Cholera the lifesaving measures of the white colonialists.
Private life
Warner Oland, who suffered from alcoholism and heavy smoking had died, 58 -year-old during a trip to his native Sweden from pneumonia, which was complicated by emphysema. His successor in the role of Charlie Chan Sidney Toler was.
Oland was married since 1907 with the playwright and portrait painter Edith Gardener Shearn, the sake of him learned the Swedish language and who supported him in the translation of Strindberg's works, which they jointly published in 1912. Because of his alcoholism, she left him in August 1937. Until then, the couple had jointly manages a historic farm in Southborough, Massachusetts. Olands ash was transferred after his death to the local cemetery.