This much we knew about Earl Derr Biggers' legendary sleuth, Charlie Chan, prior to 1972, was that he was also a husband and a father, and had two or three of his sons, and a daughter, assist him on cases in the movies.
When Hanna-Barbera acquired a license to adapt the Chan novels into a Saturday morning cartoon, The Amazing Chan & The Chan Clan, they decided he had 10 children. There was the predictable pet to attract the wee ones. Keye Luke, who played Lee Chan opposite Warner Oland in the movies, and appeared as Lee in a Mr. Moto movie with Peter Lorre, was cast as Charlie Chan, the first Asian-American actor to be accorded such an opportunity. Luke had done some voice work for Hanna-Barbera in the late 60's (i.e. Space Ghost--he was the original voice of Brak), and would begin work on the original Kung Fu after recording the first season's episodes of Chan Clan.
However, some Asian-American children originally cast as Chan's children were replaced with American actors, including Gene Andrusco (also heard the same season on NBC's The Barkleys), Lisa Gerritsen (ex-My World & Welcome to It), and future Oscar winner Jodie Foster. Jamie Farr (M*A*S*H) was a writer on the show, but it's hard to tell which episodes he contributed to.
Warnerarchive offers up the familiar intro, complete with funky theme:
Yes, there was a 2nd season, largely forgotten.
The tricked out Chan Van was later reincarnated with Hong Kong Phooey using a hand-held gong to change his car into whatever he needed.
Unfortunately, the nimrods at [adult swim] rebooted the kids' band into a Japanese band, Shoyou Weenie, for an episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law, 30 years later, stripping them of their ability to speak English, but using the same character designs from the 70's. Said episode has previously been reviewed.
Rating: A-.
5 comments:
The cartoon was a good idea but it didn't age well. Especially since the kids often didn't solve the mystery (Papa Chan would do that by episode's end) and often were chasing red herrings. It would have been nice if they were more help than hindering.
I had heard the Asian VAs for the kids were replaced because supposedly they were hard to understand by viewers, although I don't know if that's true. Were any of them (exempting Keye Luke of course) experienced in voice acting prior to this series? Perhaps the excuse had merit.
The Chan books mentioned Charlie had 12 kids at home, so two got the short shrift in the animated series. To be honest, the writers did a great job managing to give solid personalities to so many characters!
As hobbyfan himself noted earlier, some ideas for this show were recycled from an earlier concept called "Duffy's Dozen", a prime-time effort conceived by Bill & Joe themselves that never went beyond the pitch pilot. The Duffys likewise traveled around in a souped-up, all-purpose camper. No offense to the Chan Clan, but I'd like to visit the parallel universe where "Duffy's Dozen" had been bought and made into a series.
The difference was, "Duffy's Dozen" was meant to be a comedy. "Chan Clan" was a comedy-mystery-music series in the same vein as Josie & The Pussycats. Two of the Chan kids had to be written off so they could have a comedy relief pet on the show.
And this was in an era when they didn't build shows around toys.......
I think that 10 kid characters is enough a writing challenge, don't you? Especially considering that the writers also had to write for Charlie Chan himself and for guest stars that would appear. Trying to divide screen time between that large a cast is no easy task.
Funny how the Chans didn't get any kind of rub from Scooby-Doo, though.
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