Charlie Chan's Courage
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
George Hadden
Warner Oland
Drue Leyton
Donald Woods
Paul Harvey
Murray Kinnell
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Mrs. Sally Jordan asks her faithful, former houseboy, Charlie Chan, now a detective with the Honolulu police force, to personally transport to El Dorado a pearl necklace that she has sold to millonaire J. P. Madden, as something seems suspicious in the transaction. Bob Crawford, son of the jewelry store owner who has set up the deal, precedes Chan to Madden's house to insure that the place is safe and, on the train, meets Paula Graham, a film director's assistant traveling to El Dorado to arrange a film shoot on Madden's property. As they approach the ranch by cab, they hear gunshots. Inside the house, Martin Thorne, Madden's secretary, bends over a body in the bedroom and, when he answers Paula and Bob's knock, tells them that Madden is away and urges Bob to stay, though Bob has revealed that the pearls will arrive the next day by messenger. Chan arrives the next day dressed as a menial, calling himself "Ah Kim," and Thorne hires him as the new cook, as the regular cook is away. While snooping around, Chan notices that a revolver from Madden's collection has been removed and used recently. In Madden's bedroom, he finds bullet holes in the wall and blood stains on the carpet, which someone had attempted to conceal. Believing Madden to have been murdered by Thorne, Bob is amazed when Jerry Delaney, whom he believes to be Madden, shows up. As Bob and Chan drive into the garage one night, they find the dead body of the former cook. The cook's talking Chinese parrot, who made comments suggestive of a murder, is then discovered poisoned, which reveals to Chan that both the cook and the bird witnessed something amiss. Delaney demands that the necklace be handed over, and privately Bob asks Chan for the goods, but Chan is not yet convinced that everything is as it should be and holds on to Mrs. Jordan's property. Chan and Bob discover a suitcase in the attic that belongs to Delaney and ascertain that he arrived by train the night before Bob's arrival. The movie crew finally arrives, and when the director asks Paula to investigate an old mine where he wants to shoot a scene, a crook jumps out and attacks her. Bob goes looking for Paula, discovers her at the mine and struggles with the crook before finally overpowering him. Paula tells Bob that there is another captive in the mine, Madden. Soon after, Victor Jordan, Sally Jordan's son, arrives at the Madden ranch and blows the whole investigation by telling Delaney that Bob should have handed over the pearls days earlier and demanding that Chan, or "Ah Kim," deliver the pearls as his mother instructed. Delaney uses his left hand to sign a receipt, and Chan, knowing Madden to be right-handed, grabs the pearls and pulls a gun on him. Sergeant Brackett arrives and doesn't believe that "Ah Kim" is really Chan; he gives the pearls back to Delaney, just as Madden enters with a bandaged shoulder. Madden reveals that Delaney, his look alike, has a history of impersonating him and accuses Thorne, rightly, of double-crossing him. The case solved and the pearls safely delivered, Paula, Bob and Chan travel back to San Francisco, and on the rear train platform, Paula and Bob embrace happily.
Cast
Warner Oland
Drue Leyton
Donald Woods
Paul Harvey
Murray Kinnell
Reginald Mason
Virginia Hammond
Si Jenks
Harvey Clark
Jerry Jerome
Jack Carter
James Wang
De Witt C. Jennings
Francis Ford
Lucille Miller
Mary Mclaren
Gail Kaye
Larry Fisher
Sam Mcdaniels
Carl Stockdale
Lita Chevret
Susan Fleming
Caryl Lincoln
John David Horsley
George Magrill
Frank Mills
Sherry Hall
James P. Burtis
Paul Mcvey
Wade Boteler
Teru Shimada
Paul Hurst
Frank Rice
Crew
W. Abbott
Sid Bowen
Alfred Bruzlin
Duncan Cramer
Samuel Kaylin
Joseph La Shelle
S. Mcdonald
Arthur Miller
Seton I. Miller
Hal Mohr
Royer
Winfield R. Sheehan
John Stone
Bill Thomas
Alex Troffey
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Believed to be lost. Please check your attic.
Notes
The plot summary was based on a screen continuity in the Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Scripts Collection at the UCLA Theater Arts Library. Sources conflict concerning the credits for director and cameraman. While production charts list both George Hadden and Eugene Forde as directors and Arthur Miller as the cameraman, reviews and the Fox trade paper advertising billing sheet credits only Hadden as director and lists Hal Mohr as the cameraman. According to a pressbook for the film, this was Hadden's first directorial assignment; he had been theatrical producer David Belasco's "right-hand man" during the last six years of Belasco's life, and had also worked as a dialogue director in films. According to Motion Picture Herald, some scenes in this film were shot in the Mojave Desert. Universal Pictures produced a film based on the same source in 1927 entitled The Chinese Parrot, directed by Paul Leni and starring Marian Nixon and K. Sojin. For more information on the series, please consult the Series Index and see the entry above for Charlie Chan Carries On.
