1904-11-22 ( 120 years old ) in Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Roland Winters (born Roland Winternitz) was an American actor who played many character parts in films and television but today is best remembered for portraying Charlie Chan in six films in the late 1940s.
Monogram Pictures eventually selected Winters to replace Sidney Toler in the Charlie Chan film series. Winters was 44 when he made the first of his six Chan films, The Chinese Ring in 1947 and ending with Charlie Chan and the Sky Dragon (also known as Sky Dragon) in 1949. His other Chan films were "Docks of New Orleans", "Shanghai Chest", "The Golden Eye" and "The Feathered Serpent". He also had character roles in three other feature films while he worked on the Chan series.
Yunte Huang, in Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, noted differences in the actors' appearances, especially that Winters' "tall nose simply could not be made to look Chinese." Huang also cited the actor's age, writing, "at the age of forty-four, he also looked too young to resemble a seasoned Chinese sage."
In contrast to Huang, Ken Hanke wrote in his book, Charlie Chan at the Movies: History, Filmography, and Criticism, "Roland Winters has never received his due ... Winters brought with him a badly needed breath of fresh air to the series." He cited "the richness of the approach and the verve with which the series was being tackled" during the Winters era." Similarly, Howard M. Berlin, in his book, Charlie Chan's Words of Wisdom, commented that "Winters brought a much needed breath of fresh air to the flagging film series with his self-mocking, semi-satirical interpretation of Charlie, which is very close to the Charlie Chan in Biggers' novels."
After the series finished, Winters continued to work in film and television until 1982. He was in the movies So Big and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, played Elvis' father in Blue Hawaii and a judge in the Elvis film Follow That Dream. He made appearances as the boss on the early TV series Meet Millie as the boss and the courtroom drama Perry Mason. In one episode of the Bewitched TV series, he played the normally unseen McMann of McMann and Tate. He also portrayed Mr. Gimbel in Miracle on 34th Street in 1973.
Movies
You Can't Go Home Again
1979-04-25
Miracle on 34th Street
1973-12-14
Loving
1970-03-04
Doc
1969-07-28
Big Deal in Laredo
1962-10-07
Follow That Dream
1962-04-11
Everything's Ducky
1961-12-20
Blue Hawaii
1961-11-22
A String of Beads
1961-02-07
The Iceman Cometh
1960-11-14
Cash McCall
1960-01-20
The Computer Comes to Marketing
1960-01-01
Never Steal Anything Small
1959-02-11
Jet Pilot
1957-10-11
Top Secret Affair
1957-01-30
Bigger Than Life
1956-11-20
So Big
1953-10-31
She's Working Her Way Through College
1952-07-09
Follow the Sun
1951-05-22
Raton Pass
1951-04-07
Inside Straight
1951-03-01
Sierra Passage
1950-12-31
The West Point Story
1950-11-25
To Please a Lady
1950-10-13
Between Midnight and Dawn
1950-10-01
Convicted
1950-08-01
The Underworld Story
1950-07-26
Killer Shark
1950-03-19
Captain Carey, U.S.A.
1950-02-21
Guilty of Treason
1950-02-20
Malaya
1949-12-27
A Dangerous Profession
1949-12-10
Once More, My Darling
1949-09-10
Sky Dragon
1949-04-27
Tuna Clipper
1949-04-11
The Feathered Serpent
1948-12-19
Kidnapped
1948-11-28
The Return of October
1948-10-26
Cry of the City
1948-09-29
The Golden Eye
1948-08-29
The Shanghai Chest
1948-07-11
Docks of New Orleans
1948-03-21
The Chinese Ring
1947-12-06
Citizen Kane
1941-04-17
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