Charlie Chan at the Olympics

While Charlie's multi-talented son Lee is traveling by ship to Europe as a member of the US Olympics team, his father searches at home for a newly invented remote control device for planes which is probably on its way to be sold to some obscure foreign power (the political tensions all over the world are already perceptible three years before the beginning of WW II, but the movie doesn't show any affiliation or enmity yet) - and happens to be on the same ship with Lee and his friends, guarded by a 'femme fatale' (Cecil B. DeMille's adoptive daughter Katherine in her probably best role) who arouses the dislike of the young athletes only because she keeps flirting with one of them although he's got a steady girlfriend...

Charlie, in the meantime, has found out the 'traveling route' of the device, and 'overtakes' it, first by plane and then aboard the famous zeppelin 'Hindenburg' (which would crash only a year later). But from the moment on that the athletes (one of whom 'smuggled' it into the country without even knowing it), the spies and the police mingle, there is constant confusion, until Charlie seems to have it safely in the hands of the German police authorities - BUT the spies have got Lee...

From this moment, we really FEEL the agony of Charlie as a father, and his dilemma of handing the important invention over to the spies or risking his son's life - certainly a very earnest and dramatic entry in the 'Charlie Chan' movies, but not without its lighter moments; and besides that, we get a glimpse of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin - a real time document.

"Charlie Chan at the Olympics" starring Warner Oland was made in 1937, with a backdrop of the 1937 Olympics which were held in Berlin, Germany.

Charlie is going to see Lee Chan compete in swimming when a device for airplanes, that allow them to work without a pilot, is stolen during a test run and the pilot is killed. Obviously someone was hiding on the plane and stole the device. Charlie sets out to help recover the device for the U.S. Lee meanwhile is on a ship with other Olympic hopefuls and a couple of suspects in the robbery.

Once in Germany, Charlie works with the Berlin police to help track down the thieves.

Never in your life have you seen more helpful Nazis. There is not one mention of the German political climate - and the footage of the Hindenburg had every single swastika airbrushed out. What is also interesting is the footage of the Olympics, including some of Jesse Owens.

I found this film somewhat distracting - a bunch of suspects, a bit confusing as to plot, probably because I was too busy looking at Olympic footage. However, I enjoyed it particularly because of Warner Oland and Charlie Jr., played by Layne Tom, Jr., who is delightful. Tom is still alive as of this writing, 85 years old, and became a prominent architect. This is one of his favorite films. I love Keye Luke but Lee here is a bit annoying as he kept misquoting his father and adding, "or something like that." Of course that was the script, but it was too much.

America was really trying to stay out of any potential conflict in Europe, as you will be able to tell from this film.

Another well-directed Warner Oland Chan filmmaking full use of stock footage from 1936 Berlin Olympics and the dirigible Hindenburg. Chan is on trail of stolen aircraft autopilot and killers who will make an attempt on his life and again kidnap No. 1 son Lee. Keye Luke is allowed to play his part without disguise and too much oriental racial humor. Good supporting cast and great shots of the game ceremonies and Jesse Owen in the relay race. For those who want to view more of these games, without Chan, see Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia 1. Teil - Fest der Völker and Olympia 2. Teil - Fest der Schönheit (1938). Continuity with other films suffers when Layne Tom, Jr. is introduced as #2 son Charlie. We have seen much older sons in his family at the circus and we will later see Victor Sen Yung as #2 son Jimmy and even later as Tommy Chan.

This is a good mystery, but once again it is impossible to share in the clues that only Chan can see and from that catch the thief and murderer. `When all players possess suspicious cards, good idea to have joker up sleeve.' Story line is somewhat believable – enough for a good afternoon's watching. Concluding scenes have oriental detective admit he is willing to risk loss of son and self in order to maintain honor and loyalty to United States. One of the best in the series. Recommended.

... that being that the film is set at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

A plane is doing a test flight with a brand new invention vital to the defense of the United States when the plane disappears. The audience can see inside the cockpit that someone hiding inside the plane overpowers the actual pilot, but the cast is denied this knowledge. Charlie Chan finds the plane with the body of the pilot nearby while on a fishing trip with one of his younger sons. A careful investigation leads suspicions to somebody who is part of the American Olympic team, and thus he has left Hawaii for Berlin. Therefore Chan goes to Berlin himself to continue the investigation. A further complcation is that oldest Chan son Lee is a competitor in the games there.

Set in 1936, there is quite a bit of stock footage of the 1936 Olympic games. There is one shot with the torch bearer running down the stairs with people in the crowd on either side of him clearly performing the Nazi salute. The Berlin police are portrayed as pedantic stumble bums whose hearts are in the right place and who act and dress like the Kaiser is still alive versus the rather lethal group that they had become by 1936 - not a group you'd want to tangle with.

What is really ironic is that Charlie postulates that the radio control device will be sold in Germany to some unnamed group of international terrorists because they feel "safe" in Germany during the games because of the presence of so many people from many nations. It's so interesting to see how the United States and the rest of the world did not take Hitler's Germany seriously until it was almost too late.

Some unnamed source at IMDb alleges that CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS, a film capitalizing on the then recent 1936 Berlin Olympics (taking place in Germany under Chancellor Hitler) and released on May 21, 1937, in the U.S and in the early fall of that year in Europe, was "pulled from circulation shortly after its release because it takes place in Nazi Germany." Could someone please define "shortly after its release"? The film, while sympathetically portraying the civilian police force in Berlin (interestingly played for irony and possibly surprise or subtext by frequent film villain Frederik Vogeding), pointedly incorporated actual newsreel footage of Jessie Owens' Olympic triumph which was so upsetting to the Herr Hitler. The film plot had considerable hurdles to surmount in avoiding the identification of the foreign power trying to steal the "McGuffin" military device. Most U.S. or British films of the period would have been more blatant in assuming the national guilty party, but Germany was still a major market for U.S. motion pictures (even if the Chan character himself must have been an anathema to Nazi Party leadership).

Even with the unsettling Anschlus in Austria and the Munich Crisis over the dismembering of Czechoslovakia; with the invasion of Poland and the formal start of European hostilities in World War II still a little more than a year away (U.S. entry into the conflict more than four years away!), America and much of the rest of the world was doing its best to ignore distressing realities within the Reich. While CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS had to do a fine dance to play to that desire to turn a blind eye, it largely succeeded. It is difficult to believe that 20th Century Fox would withdraw an entry in the wildly popular Chan series in anything which could be realistically considered "soon" (anything less than six months). A specific DATE of the withdrawal would be appreciated.

While the film over all may be one of the lesser Chan efforts, it has moments (the initial set-up in the U.S., the travelogue race to Berlin, the scenes in the Olympic Stadium and the final confrontation with the killers) which are as good as any in the canon. To be dismissed as "pulled from circulation shortly after its release" if it is demonstrably not true would be unfortunate.