WARREN, Ohio – It was a hundred years ago in January that Charlie Chan, the fictional detective, made his first appearance.
The Chinese-Hawaiian sleuth was just a secondary character in the 1925 romantic mystery novel “The House Without a Key,” which was written by Warren native Earl Derr Biggers.
The novel wasn’t about Chan, but he became its one enduring element.
Hollywood would go on to make 50 movies based on the character, mainly in the 1930s and 1940s. And Biggers would write six Charlie Chan detective novels.
Next month, Charlie Chan aficionados from across the country will gather in Warren to celebrate Biggers and his inscrutable and wise detective character.
The event, dubbed “Celebrating a Century of Charlie Chan: The Chinese American Detective Made in Ohio,” will include a panel discussion at 2 p.m. Aug. 15 in Warren-Trumbull County Public Library. Discussion topics will include the transition of the novels to the silver screen, the aphorisms of Charlie Chan and the music used in the films. The panel will be followed by a question and answer session. Admission is free to the public but space is very limited.
The panelists will be Lou Armagno of Brecksville, a longtime Charlie Chan fan and author of a book about the character; Rush Glick of Cleveland, webmaster of a Chan fan website; and Michael Votta Jr., a music professor and expert on the music of the films.
The 1939 film “Charlie Chan at Treasure Island” will be screened at 7 p.m. the same day at the Robins Theatre. Tickets are $9.25, and the public is welcome.
The Charlie Chan gathering is being presented by Armagno and Glick of Cleveland, who runs the CharlieChan.org website.book about the character; and Rush Glick, webmaster of CharlieChan.org, a fan website.
It started humbly, with the two superfans deciding to meet up in the author’s hometown to mark the centennial of the book that started it all.
“Originally, it was just me and him,” Armagno said. “Then Rush said, ‘The Family members [his name for followers of his fan site] want to come, too.’”
It won’t be a big convention; Armagno is expecting maybe 10 people from the fan site to show up. They will travel here from Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Washington, D.C., he said.
The weekend itinerary will begin with dinner and a reception Friday evening, Aug. 14; two full days of activities Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 15-16; and a farewell breakfast Sunday morning, Aug. 17.
On Aug. 16, the group will visit the site of Biggers’ family home, take a walking tour of Warren’s millionaire’s row and discuss ways to promulgate the Charlie Chan story.
“This will be a once in a lifetime event for us in the Charlie Chan community,” Armagno said. He notes that there is a plaque in Warren’s library that honors Biggers as a great American novelist.
How It Started
Armagno was introduced to Charlie Chan as a teenager growing up in Cleveland.
“I watched the late movies on TV on Friday nights,” he said. “They were enticing.”
He also became intrigued with the author, partly because he was an Ohioan who spent the early part of his career as a night-shift police reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Biggers was born in Warren in 1884 and graduated from Harvard University in 1907.
He was surprised when Charlie Chan became the fan favorite of his first novel.
“[Biggers] never thought Chan would get this big,” Armagno said. “He doesn’t even appear in the first novel until about a third of the way through. But he kept getting fan mail that said, ‘Give us more Chan.’”
The author came up with the character while vacationing in Hawaii in 1920, which explains why he made Chan a detective with the Honolulu police department.
When Armagno was stationed in Honolulu during his stint in the military in the late 1990s, he would visit the locations from the novels. “It fascinated me,” he said.
One thing about the character that Armagno appreciated most was his penchant for aphorisms – pithy sayings that imparted wisdom and philosophical truths.
After years of research, he published his book, “The Wisdom Within: Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan,” in 2022. The book’s secondary title, “The Original Aphorisms inside the Charlie Chan Canon,” explains the theme.
“My book is about the aphorisms from Biggers’ six novels,” Armagno said, explaining they are different in their tone and usage from the films.
“In the movies, the aphorisms were used as comic relief, whereas Biggers placed them in for insight,” Armagno said.
The creation of Charlie Chan came during the period between the world wars, when the American detective story was on the rise.
The characters, for the most part, reflected the times. Except for Charlie Chan.
“They were hard hitting, and quick with a gun,” Armagno said. “And then there was Charlie Chan, a family man with 12 kids. He was not muscular. He uses his brain instead of brawn and hardly ever shoots a gun.”
Biggers’ use of aphorisms by the character also reflected the era.
“At this time, people in the upper class were enamored with philosophers, and Biggers was one of them,” Armagno said. “He put aphorisms in the novels that were probably based on Buddha and the ‘I Ching.’”
Armagno pointed out that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes detective series, and Biggers were contemporaries who were engaged in their writing careers at the same time.
But their detectives were much different.
“Sherlock Holmes is methodical and straightforward thinking,” Armagno said. “But Chan is the opposite. He studies people and their emotions. I call them the yin and yang of detectives.”
To learn more about the Charlie Chan fan weekend in Warren, go to Armagno’s website or click HERE.
Pictured at top: A movie poster for “Charlie Chan at Treasure Island.”