You might want to check the Cast list on imdb for that information
Peter Sellers ... Sidney Wang
Do you think they're cognisant of how bad they got it? Lets hope not, poor b@sterdsshare
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In the vast majority of movies and TV shows, Charlie Chan has been played by a Caucasian actor doing a rather horrible accent and using broken English. However, it was Asian actors who played Chan's sons — never referred to by name, it was always "Number One Son" or "Number Two Son". which explains the movie's "Number Three Son" bit.
Not to mention that the Peter Falk character describes Wang's son as "Japanese."
All of this was obviously meant ridicule the antiquated practice of actor's in "yellow-face."
"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"
In this movie, Wang's "Number 3 Son", Willie is Japanese — and adopted. When Wang was explaining that he'd been adopted by Lionel Twain (and thrown out when Twain finally noticed that he was Oriental), he further mentioned that he'd adopted all of his children.
Most likely it was indeed meant as a jab at casting Caucasian actors to play Asian characters. The Sidney Wang character was a parody of "Charlie Chan"; someone who wasn't played by an Asian actor until well after this movie.
(Did anyone else catch the pun on Willie Wang driving a Woody?)
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"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things,"
Of atoms, stars and nebulæ, of entropy and genes.
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Just watched it on TCM. Wang also explains his son as being Japanese when he first meets Dick Charleston (David Niven) on the road in the beginning of the film. Charleston says, "Japanese? I thought you were..."
Wang cuts Charleston off and explains that he and his wife, Mrs. Wang, were unable to have children so they adopted, and Number Three son was Japanese.
Thanks for the update. (You must have seen it more recently than I did.)
(Did anyone else catch the pun on Willie Wang driving a Woody?)
«"A very sporting kind of vehicle, wouldn't you say?"»
It has been a "sporting" vehicle for a very long time. It's a wood-trimmed station wagon produced on and off by Pontiac (division of General Motors) since the 1940s. It had a really great comeback when surfing became popular in the late 1950s, early 60s. They have since been supplanted by the minivan and the SUV.
I'm old enough to remember when Cleopatra went to the Temple of Ra to lead a few cheers.share
Speaking of getting jokes... it took me a minute until I got it when Wang reads the address "22 Twain" with his Chinese accent (not pronouncing it as "Twenty two Twain", but as "Two Two Twain"). I started cracking up (as I've seen this movie a couple times before). Then, after all these years I finally got the pun of Truman Capote's character; "Lionel Twain". Can't believe I never realized that in previous viewings!
shareChoo-choo train!
Rebuild the WTC exactly as before and keep old movies accurate!
I'm surprised that no one has commented so far on the fact that while the name and persona of the character he's playing is supposed to be Charlie Chan, the physical appearance of the character (except in the opening scenes when he sports Charlie's familiar white panama suit) is that of Fu Manchu.
Every time I've seen this film something about Willie Wang kept subliminally reminding me of Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu and it wasn't until I Googled images of Charlie Chan that I made the connection.
And lets don't forget that Peter Sellers also starred later in that unfortunate Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.
"If you don't know the answer -change the question."
Mr. Yunioshi - Mickey Rooney - Breakfast at Tiffany's
And Chan's sons, played by actors of Asian ancestry, always spoke with perfect American accents.
shareThe commentary here is that Charlie Chan in the movies was played by non-Asian American actors -- Warner Oland and Sydney Toler.
Mr. Wang's son was played by a Japanese actor, which is also a commentary on the practice (a still ongoing practice) of "An Asian from any country can play an Asian from any other country". Although, in the film they specified that Wang's Japanese son was adopted.
well seeing it I thought it was a real chinese guy
nycruise-1
Not to mention that the Peter Falk character describes Wang's son as "Japanese."
All of this was obviously meant ridicule the antiquated practice of actor's in "yellow-face."
"why is that wrong for Yellow face but when they mock the whites its okay? "
So-called 'white people' are the N-word of the world these days, ironically.
White, heterosexual men especially, can be treated ANY old way and no one bats an eye. Do anything even slightly offensive or slightly racial (or genderial) against anyone else, and the whole world becomes enraged.
I guess the 'logic', if there can be such a thing when it comes to racism, is that since 'white people' basically conquered the world and built all kinds of empires, enslaved all kinds of 'indigenous people', murdered, pillaged and waged wars, now it's OK to 'strike back' at the former empire.
Of course modern white people have -nothing- to do with the slavemasters of history, and the fact that there were also asian, black, and basically 'you-name-it' slavemasters, or the other fact that there were also lots of white slaves, do not seem to matter, or even surface to most people's consciousness, so the racism against white people can freely continue.
It's remarkable to me that people can speak against racism with such conviction, and then turn around and say and do the most racistic things imaginable without seeing any contradiction, just because the race happens to be the 'politically acceptable punching bag'.
It's a crazy, hypocrite world, and political correctness makes it a true hell.
This kind of humor is difficult to pull off successfully, because people think it's racism against asians, when it's REALLY aimed exactly against the people who pulled off this type of stupid 'blackface'-style mockery of asians without understanding very basic things, like 'there are different types of asians, not all asians are the same', 'it's just as offensive as blackface', 'asian people CAN learn perfect english' and so on.
It's exactly because TV show and movie makers during history were offensive against chinese, japanese, korean, vietnamese and other asian people, that makes it funny.
This type of humor is like laughing at racists, but modern, clueless people only see it BEING racist humor, and get offended by it.
It's hard to be anti-racist in a world that sees anti-racists as racists..