Charlie Chan's Greatest Case Charlie Chan's Greatest Case Charlie Chan's Greatest Case (1933) is an American pre-Code murder mystery film starring Warner Oland as the Oriental detective Charlie Chan. It was based on the Earl Derr Biggers novel "The House Without a Key" (1925). Oland made a series of Charlie Chan films; along with three others, this one is considered to be a lost film. "The New York Times" reviewer wrote, "As far as the mystery of these particular murders is concerned it is not difficult for the audience to decide on the identity of the slayer, but the manner in which Chan makes
Charlie Chan Biggers's sympathetic treatment of the Chinese reflected and contributed to the greater acceptance of Chinese-Americans in the first third of [the twentieth] century." S. T. Karnick writes in the "National Review" that Chan is "a brilliant detective with understandably limited facility in the English language [whose] powers of observation, logic, and personal rectitude and humility made him an exemplary, entirely honorable character." Ellery Queen called Biggers's characterization of Charlie Chan "a service to humanity and to inter-racial relations." Dave Kehr of "The New York Times" said Chan "might have been a stereotype, but he was a stereotype on the side