Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)

'Charlie Chan at the Circus' is just one of a long running series of Charlie Chan films, many of which stared the Swede Warner Oland. Chan is an ethnic Chinese detective working for the Honolulu police department, Hawaii being at this time just a U.S. territory. Though played principally by white actors in film Chan is intended as a mostly positive portal of a smart Asian character, not the most common thing in American films at the time these were made. Changing sensibilities have largely sidelined the character from the contemporary zeitgeist, but for awhile he was really popular. So popular in fact that he eventually grow beyond  Hawaii as the setting for his adventures, he was sent all over the place in his films, in this one to California to solve a murder at a circus and to interact with characters who at that point were called midgets, as well as acrobats, shady circus promoters, and of course "number one son" Key Luke (Chan is shown in this film to have a dozen children). The plot here is maybe a little smarter then I'd expected, with plenty of suspects in the Agatha Christi tradition. I've got three more of these to watch so we will see how the quality holds up, **1/2