There are two things that I enjoy the most that set the Charlie Chan film series apart from the other B-detective films of the 1930s and 1940s. One is Chan's frequent use of pithy, but wise sayings. The other is the scenarists' inclusion of Chan's children in many of the films who are often found to be on the receiving end of many of Charlie's well-placed verbal shots—"Better a father lose his son than a detective his memory" in Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise (1940). Also mentioned are a few members of the extended family—"Man without relatives is man without troubles."

Because of Chan's large family, it is not uncommon for questions to arise concerning his family, relatives, and the names of his children. Although the family members are characters of fiction, one however has to carefully distinguish between the novels and the films, as there were only rare cases where the film faithfully followed the novel it was based on. In the six novels Biggers wrote, Charlie Chan and his honorable wife are parents to 11 children, a brood large enough for the Chans to field their own family baseball or football team if they wanted to. Charlie candidly declares in The Chinese Cat (1944), "Once you have large family, all other troubles mean nothing."

As a devoted family man, Charlie always has a picture of his family in a large wallet placed near his bed in his travels around the world. In Charlie Chan in London, Chan, his wife, and 10 children are shown in one photograph and a separate photograph shows a young baby—probably child Number 11 from Charlie Chan's Chance. However this is at odds with the end of the movie when Charlie says that at home, he has 12 children and one wife.

Four films later in Charlie Chan's Secret (1936), Charlie has a picture of himself, his wife, and 11 children. In Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936), the entire Chan family consisting of Charlie, his wife, and 12 children (five sons and seven daughters) are shown together entering a circus tent in the order of increasing height (and probably age) with Charlie last, holding the baby which he calls their "latest blessed event." One can only wonder how Charlie and his wife manage to have such a large family when he is frequently solving mysteries in places other than Honolulu.

The 1938 entry, Charlie Chan in Honolulu, is notable in many respects. First, the role of Charlie Chan is now played by Sidney Toler following the death of Warner Oland. Secondly, the departure of Keye Luke as Number One son from the series now introduces Number Two son Jimmy for the first time. Thirdly, Charlie and his wife confirm that they now have 13 children and a grandchild is born at the film's end.

However one scene at the beginning of the film shows 11 children at the family dining table—now seven boys and four girls—with Number Two son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung, then credited as Sen Yung) seated at the head of the table next to Charlie. The discrepancy of two fewer children is easily resolved when Jimmy explains Lee's absence, now attending art school in New York, and Number One daughter Ling is in the hospital about to give birth to the Chans' first grandchild. With 13 children, there are now eight sons and five daughters accounted for. Apparently somewhere between the "Circus" and "Honolulu" films, the Chans despite adding one child, have gained three sons and lost two daughters!

In Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939), an old friend praises Chan's wife as an "institution," having given birth to 13 children. In Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940), Charlie responds to his chief superior that he likes to use the element of surprise and not to be its victim. When the police chief then inquires if Chan was ever surprised, Charlie with a smile admits the only time was "When honorable wife announced arrival of 13th offspring."

When the production of the Charlie Chan films changed studios from 20th Century-Fox to Monogram, viewers were informed of another increase in the family's size. In Monogram's first entry, Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944), a long-time friend who hasn't seen Charlie in ten years asks him about his wife and seven children. Charlie retorts that they have seven more and that "Everything grow rapidly in Hawaii." Two films later (Black Magic, 1944), Charlie remarks, "I have 14 children; they all try to boss me." Thankfully for Charlie, there are no further additions to the family for the rest of the series.

No matter how many children the Chans have, all cast members having roles of the various Chan children were ethnic Asians. This was unlike the standard Hollywood practice at that time of casting non-Asian actors, such as Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, Roland Winters, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff, in the major roles depicting Oriental characters like Chan, Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong.

The Black Camel is another significant film for me. Although ten children are seen in one scene, none are ever referred to by name, nor are they listed in the film's credits—leaving the viewer to guess which ones might be the future Number One son or Number Two daughter of the later films. Secondly, The Black Camel has one of the series' funniest dialogues between Charlie and two of his children. Although Chan in many ways honors tradition having been born in China, his children are fully Americanized in their behavior and speech, unlike his own stilted delivery, and he finds it difficult to understand their new ways and language.

A scene at the dinner table concerns a discussion about a less than flattering report card from school, a topic that occurs again in Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise (1940), but apparently with a different son. One son presents his report card to Charlie, initiating the following exchange between Chan, the son, and a daughter:

Lee Chan: The Second Number One Son
Even though Fox Film Corporation had already made six previous Charlie Chan films with Warner Oland, Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) is the series' first film that features one of Chan's children in a major role. Also, the viewer is introduced to two more innovations that would be standard fare throughout the rest of the series. One is the custom of Charlie's often referring to his various children by number, such as "Number One son" Lee, played by the affable Keye Luke. A second innovation is that of one or more of the children acting as Charlie's uninvited and often troublesome assistant when their detective father is assigned a case—"Father who depend on son is happy or foolish according to son."

Of all the Chan offspring in the series, Lee is probably the best remembered, and often pops up unexpectedly in various parts of the globe wherever his father comes to town. Because of his travels with his father, Lee develops the strange hobby of appropriating towels as mementos from the hotels he has stayed in and ships he has sailed on.

In some of the films, Lee actually has a job, often employed as some kind of purchasing agent or trade representative. Coincidentally, he is often sent on business to the same location as is his honorable father. In Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935) Lee meets his father, telling him that his firm sent him to Shanghai to look into the trade situation. Charlie then ribs Lee by asking, "Selling oil for lamps in China?" Ironically, it was Luke who had a bit part as a Chinese soldier in the film, Oil for the Lamps of China (1935), which was released about a month before "Shanghai" went into production.

Lee and many of his siblings of the later films are bilingual, and are comfortable conversing in English or Chinese. However, it is Lee who mangles the French language in Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo. At the film's beginning, he tries to impress Monaco's chief of police (Harold Huber) with an introduction. With a quizzical look, the policeman responds in English, "That is French, no?" Charlie carefully reminds Lee, "Fortunately assassination of French language not serious crime." A short while later in the same film, Lee doesn't remember his father's earlier advice and, tries explains to a pair of gendarmes how he and his detective father just discovered a dead body on a lonely road. However, errors in Lee's French grammar and pronunciation cause the police to arrest them both on suspicion of murder. In the jail cell Charlie tersely admonishes Lee, "In future, remember that tongue often hang man quicker than rope."

None of Lee's shortcomings however diminish his strong devotion to and concern for his father's welfare. Always appreciative of Lee's help, Charlie remarks, "Confucius say, no man is poor who have worthy son."

Keye Luke was born June 18, 1904 in Guangzhou (formerly Canton), China. At an early age he and his family immigrated to the U.S. where he grew up in Seattle. After graduation from high school, Luke then went to the University of Southern California. Drafted into military service during World War II, he went back to college to learn Mandarin Chinese for the Marines, but it wasn't until 1944 when he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Luke was a talented artist. He entered the film industry as a billboard designer and caricaturist, and in 1933 was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild. Ironically, he did publicity artwork for the Fox studio in connection with several of the early Charlie Chan films.

Luke tells the story that his becoming an actor was mainly the result of being in the right place at the right time. When he did his first picture in an uncredited supporting role with Greta Garbo in The Painted Veil (1934), Luke got the role because his former boss at MGM called him to his office one day. As Luke fondly reminisced with actress Beulah Quo during a 1977 dinner of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California:

Coincidentally, this film also featured Charlie Chan's Warner Oland, with whom Luke would join one year later in the increasingly popular Charlie Chan series.

From his first appearance as Number One son Lee Chan in Charlie Chan in Paris, Luke continued the role seven more times with Oland. While filming Charlie Chan at the Ringside in 1938, Oland unexpectedly left the set and eventually went to Sweden where he died of bronchial pneumonia. Twentieth Century-Fox salvaged much of this uncompleted project and reworked it as the 1938 movie, Mr. Moto's Gamble with Luke again playing the part of Lee Chan, but now as an assistant to Mr. Moto, a Japanese detective played by Peter Lorre.

With Oland's death, Sidney Toler was picked to continue the Charlie Chan role and Keye Luke's pay was cut by the studio. Jon Tuska writes in his book, The Detective in Hollywood, that producer Sol Wurtzel once commented to Luke, "With this team, there's one smart one and one dumb one. You're the dumb one." This verbal slap and resenting the cut in pay caused Luke to quit the series. His role was then replaced with a new character—Jimmy Chan as the Chans' Number Two son. Ten years later, Luke would reprise his Lee Chan role for the last two movies of the series at Monogram with Roland Winters. Although he was never in a Charlie Chan film with Toler, Luke and Toler did appear together in Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943).