Post by Avatar on Jun 25, 2024 7:23:14 GMT
... with tongue firmly in cheek.
This was a weird one. Warner Oland was drunk as usual. The little kid (Number 6 son) he shared a chunk of this movie with, out-acted him. There are numerous W. C. Fields type interactions and moments on celluloid.
What follows is replete with spoilers.
Math, technology and geography.
18 hours Honolulu to San Francisco (Pan Am clipper seaplane) 2,400 miles at average speed of 133 mph.
13 hours from San Francisco to New York ( American Airlines DC-3 airliner) 3,000 miles at an average speed of 230 mph. Collate though: it had to stop at least once (Kansas City stopover likely. 1,805 miles. 1,200 further to New York).
61 hours from Lakehurst to Frederickshaven (Hindenburg Zeppelin) at an average speed of 65 mph.
WRONG!
The problem is that 13 hours cross-country. in 1937. The DC-3 had a cruise speed of 200 mph in civil service. To make that 3,000 miles cross-country with 1 day layover at Kansas City to change planes would take a plane change that adds 24 hours. So instead of 18 + 13 + 61 = 91 hours or 3.8 days to reach National Socialist Germany from Honolulu, the fastest likely time, allowing 3 days layover, (San Francisco, Kansas City and New York plane changes.) would be (18 + 24 = 42) + (9 + 24 = 33) + (6 + 24 = 30) + 61 = 148 hours or a shag longer than 6 days. If we add another day at San Francisco for layover for change from the Clipper to the Dakota, then the actual time is 7 days. The steamship Manhattan, with the crooks, will beat Charlie to Hamburg. Part of the problem is that cross-country leg. Figure 15 hours, not 13 hours in the air, and 72 hours for changeovers. That is 87 hours from San Francisco to New York. 87 + 61 = 148 hours. So a three-way check sum shows that Hollywood scriptwriters, then as now, do not know technology, geography or math.
Batty is the mule.
Pauline Moore plays a female athlete on the US team. Depending on which print you watch, you can tell she is tall for a woman of the 1930s. Figure her at 5 feet 5 inches, or almost 1.67 meters. By contrast Keye Luke, who plays Charlie Chan's Number 1 son, is shorter than she is at about 5 feet 4 inches. Stacked shoes anybody?
Time error. Money? What is that?
Allegedly, the Hindenburg beat the Manhattan by a full day. This is actually impossible. 4,000 miles / 20 knots / = 200 hours or 8.3bar days transit time. Assuming our pursuers chased the crooks with a 1-day delay, their arrival would be simultaneous, or the pursuers would be a day behind more likely, owing to Atlantic weather in the air.
BTW a 1937 ticket on the Hindenburg or on the SS Manhattan, cost about $450.00.
The cross-country flight Charlie Chan took to pursue the thieves of the American robot drone controller was $1,600.00 in 1937 ticket dollars. You can bet the Washington accountants at the FBI, or whoever paid, would be screaming in that fictional timeline.
German efficiency.
Let us just say, that as usual, Charlie's colleagues are portrayed as ineffective. In this case, the Ordnungspolizei or "Order Police" or possibly the Gemeindepolizei or what we would call the "city cops" are bumbling idiots as represented by "Captain Strasser". The fake murder scene and the in through the porthole antics of Lee, Charlie Chan's son, add just enough comedy to underscore this set piece scene.
Historicity and politics.
You know the camera McGuffin was a red herring. The inter-mix of Hollywood sets and Berlin Olympics stock footage is not seamless. Because of marketing, (Nazi Germany was a film market then; as CCP China is now.), the film was deloused and neutered of potentially embarrassing "political messaging" that might irritate the Nazi government. Hollywood and its affinity for dictators has NOT CHANGED in that regard.
Getting back the robot.
That was too quick and easy. But of course Betty, as mentioned, was the mule to get the drone control off the Manhattan. If you did not figure that one out, shame on you. Cue Charlie and the switcheroo. By this time, you should know who killed the test pilot and originally stole the robot. If not, then you better stop drinking a shot, every time you see Warner Oland weave on his feet or blow a line or miss his stand mark in shot. It is amazing how he managed all those 20th Century Fox films.
Ticket to the Olympics.
I had fun deciding if the Honorable Charles Zaraka was supposed to be a diplomat from Argentina, Spain or some fictional European Ruritania. In real terms, the name is possibly of Slavic origin, so you can narrow the Ruritania to some Balkan state or possibly Turkey or Russia. My best guess, here, is RUSSIA. It was well-known at that time, that Stalinist Russia was stealing everything American-developed that was not nailed down, that they could not buy. There were enough traitors running around to make it relatively easy.
Lip-reading.
One of those traitors is Hughes. Since Zaraka and Chan share a box, how can Hughes figure out what they discuss? The history of espionage has lip-reading as a tool beginning with the Spanish Inquisition, crossing over to Elizabethan England, to make its way into America where George Washington's spies used it in New York City upon the British imperialists. I have no idea if the brain-dead Nazis or the Stalinists ever tried it, but those clowns were actually not too bright, so I can well imagine Hughes, the American traitor, would have to use it in this movie. The clown Hughes hired to lip read uses American Sign Language, (AMSIL), which is a surprise to me, because it accurately spells out what is spoken as seen on camera and written in notation and shown to the audience! The attention to detail is astonishing in this matter, which makes the math and geography gaffes above inexcusable.
Bait and kidnap.
Zaraka has Lee, Chan's son, kidnapped. The swap is the robot for the boy. This is a Chan movie, so obviously Chuckles is going to use a dummy device to trade for his son, since foreigners are too dumb to figure out a decoy. In this pas de stupid, the Hollyweird techs at least got radio-triangulation approximately correct. You take two signal angle bearings, off a baseline side and solve the triangle. Where the bearings intersect, is where you drop in to service your target who radioed you; "Here I am, come here and kill me."
Who saves whom?
Hughes. What? The American traitor saves Chan? Not really. He just wants the robot for himself. He muscles in on Zaraka, IDs the decoy and picks up where Zaraka was thwarted. You get the feeling that this contrivance has been dragged out too long at this point. By now I decide that Strasser and his goons are Gemeindepolizei or Berlin City Police. They are still incompetent, but at least they show up.
Cartwright is wrong.
I never liked the Cartwrights. So of course this one who invented the robot turns out to be the other traitor. (SARCASM). He killed the pilot and stole his own invention.
Science Fiction Movie category, not a murder mystery.
Lee, Charlie's son, wins the 100 meter free style at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. You have got to be kidding? Gold Medal? Science Fiction!
Avatar
This was a weird one. Warner Oland was drunk as usual. The little kid (Number 6 son) he shared a chunk of this movie with, out-acted him. There are numerous W. C. Fields type interactions and moments on celluloid.
What follows is replete with spoilers.
Math, technology and geography.
18 hours Honolulu to San Francisco (Pan Am clipper seaplane) 2,400 miles at average speed of 133 mph.
13 hours from San Francisco to New York ( American Airlines DC-3 airliner) 3,000 miles at an average speed of 230 mph. Collate though: it had to stop at least once (Kansas City stopover likely. 1,805 miles. 1,200 further to New York).
61 hours from Lakehurst to Frederickshaven (Hindenburg Zeppelin) at an average speed of 65 mph.
WRONG!
The problem is that 13 hours cross-country. in 1937. The DC-3 had a cruise speed of 200 mph in civil service. To make that 3,000 miles cross-country with 1 day layover at Kansas City to change planes would take a plane change that adds 24 hours. So instead of 18 + 13 + 61 = 91 hours or 3.8 days to reach National Socialist Germany from Honolulu, the fastest likely time, allowing 3 days layover, (San Francisco, Kansas City and New York plane changes.) would be (18 + 24 = 42) + (9 + 24 = 33) + (6 + 24 = 30) + 61 = 148 hours or a shag longer than 6 days. If we add another day at San Francisco for layover for change from the Clipper to the Dakota, then the actual time is 7 days. The steamship Manhattan, with the crooks, will beat Charlie to Hamburg. Part of the problem is that cross-country leg. Figure 15 hours, not 13 hours in the air, and 72 hours for changeovers. That is 87 hours from San Francisco to New York. 87 + 61 = 148 hours. So a three-way check sum shows that Hollywood scriptwriters, then as now, do not know technology, geography or math.
Batty is the mule.
Pauline Moore plays a female athlete on the US team. Depending on which print you watch, you can tell she is tall for a woman of the 1930s. Figure her at 5 feet 5 inches, or almost 1.67 meters. By contrast Keye Luke, who plays Charlie Chan's Number 1 son, is shorter than she is at about 5 feet 4 inches. Stacked shoes anybody?
Time error. Money? What is that?
Allegedly, the Hindenburg beat the Manhattan by a full day. This is actually impossible. 4,000 miles / 20 knots / = 200 hours or 8.3bar days transit time. Assuming our pursuers chased the crooks with a 1-day delay, their arrival would be simultaneous, or the pursuers would be a day behind more likely, owing to Atlantic weather in the air.
BTW a 1937 ticket on the Hindenburg or on the SS Manhattan, cost about $450.00.
The cross-country flight Charlie Chan took to pursue the thieves of the American robot drone controller was $1,600.00 in 1937 ticket dollars. You can bet the Washington accountants at the FBI, or whoever paid, would be screaming in that fictional timeline.
German efficiency.
Let us just say, that as usual, Charlie's colleagues are portrayed as ineffective. In this case, the Ordnungspolizei or "Order Police" or possibly the Gemeindepolizei or what we would call the "city cops" are bumbling idiots as represented by "Captain Strasser". The fake murder scene and the in through the porthole antics of Lee, Charlie Chan's son, add just enough comedy to underscore this set piece scene.
Historicity and politics.
You know the camera McGuffin was a red herring. The inter-mix of Hollywood sets and Berlin Olympics stock footage is not seamless. Because of marketing, (Nazi Germany was a film market then; as CCP China is now.), the film was deloused and neutered of potentially embarrassing "political messaging" that might irritate the Nazi government. Hollywood and its affinity for dictators has NOT CHANGED in that regard.
Getting back the robot.
That was too quick and easy. But of course Betty, as mentioned, was the mule to get the drone control off the Manhattan. If you did not figure that one out, shame on you. Cue Charlie and the switcheroo. By this time, you should know who killed the test pilot and originally stole the robot. If not, then you better stop drinking a shot, every time you see Warner Oland weave on his feet or blow a line or miss his stand mark in shot. It is amazing how he managed all those 20th Century Fox films.
Ticket to the Olympics.
I had fun deciding if the Honorable Charles Zaraka was supposed to be a diplomat from Argentina, Spain or some fictional European Ruritania. In real terms, the name is possibly of Slavic origin, so you can narrow the Ruritania to some Balkan state or possibly Turkey or Russia. My best guess, here, is RUSSIA. It was well-known at that time, that Stalinist Russia was stealing everything American-developed that was not nailed down, that they could not buy. There were enough traitors running around to make it relatively easy.
Lip-reading.
One of those traitors is Hughes. Since Zaraka and Chan share a box, how can Hughes figure out what they discuss? The history of espionage has lip-reading as a tool beginning with the Spanish Inquisition, crossing over to Elizabethan England, to make its way into America where George Washington's spies used it in New York City upon the British imperialists. I have no idea if the brain-dead Nazis or the Stalinists ever tried it, but those clowns were actually not too bright, so I can well imagine Hughes, the American traitor, would have to use it in this movie. The clown Hughes hired to lip read uses American Sign Language, (AMSIL), which is a surprise to me, because it accurately spells out what is spoken as seen on camera and written in notation and shown to the audience! The attention to detail is astonishing in this matter, which makes the math and geography gaffes above inexcusable.
Bait and kidnap.
Zaraka has Lee, Chan's son, kidnapped. The swap is the robot for the boy. This is a Chan movie, so obviously Chuckles is going to use a dummy device to trade for his son, since foreigners are too dumb to figure out a decoy. In this pas de stupid, the Hollyweird techs at least got radio-triangulation approximately correct. You take two signal angle bearings, off a baseline side and solve the triangle. Where the bearings intersect, is where you drop in to service your target who radioed you; "Here I am, come here and kill me."
Who saves whom?
Hughes. What? The American traitor saves Chan? Not really. He just wants the robot for himself. He muscles in on Zaraka, IDs the decoy and picks up where Zaraka was thwarted. You get the feeling that this contrivance has been dragged out too long at this point. By now I decide that Strasser and his goons are Gemeindepolizei or Berlin City Police. They are still incompetent, but at least they show up.
Cartwright is wrong.
I never liked the Cartwrights. So of course this one who invented the robot turns out to be the other traitor. (SARCASM). He killed the pilot and stole his own invention.
Science Fiction Movie category, not a murder mystery.
Lee, Charlie's son, wins the 100 meter free style at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. You have got to be kidding? Gold Medal? Science Fiction!
Avatar
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