Warner Oland — The Most of Every Moment (1936) 🇺🇸
There is a man by the name of Johan Warner Oland who animates the screen at well-selected intervals with his distinguished presence.
by Ruth Rankin
You know him as Charlie Chan. He is six feet tall, fifty‑five years old, weighs two‑hundred‑pounds, and looks about as Oriental as your Uncle Jack. Which is exactly what his wife and intimate friends call him — Jack.
He was born in Umea, Sweden, and came to Boston with his parents when he was thirteen.
Warner Oland has built Chan to be the only character on the screen who has perpetuated himself, and Chan has built Oland a tremendous following. He is now so closely identified with the character that much of his fan-mail is addressed to Charlie Chan.
Warner has accomplished Chan with no make‑up. It’s all in the expression. He pushes his eyes together a trifle, droops his moustache — presto! The lasting charm of his characterization derives from the way he plays it for the first time, always.
Now — is his professional personality all accounted for? Because I’m dying to dash on to Warner Oland, the honorable, a gentleman of some dimension. Everyone knows his career. Very, very few persons know him. Probably I wouldn’t either (he shies at publicity) if it didn’t happen that his beloved Schnauzer, Shaggety Ann, is the daughter of my own Peggy — which makes me practically his dog’s grandmother! (At my age, too.) We’ll go into this dog business later. You can’t start with the dog when you have the Olands to talk about — although of course they are so crazy about Shags they wouldn’t care a darn!
You could travel the world over and never find a more enchanting pair than Warner and Edith Oland. They are not in the least indigenous to Hollywood. They are, in fact, the least Hollywood of any actor’s family I know. They belong to the entire world, and you cannot name any spot in it where they would not be perfectly at home.
The Olands are slightly mad in a perfectly nice individual way. They never have a dime on their persons. They borrow from the chauffeur. If he doesn’t happen to have a dime either, Edith writes checks in her beautiful artist’s hand, checks for the funniest things. They live in four places — a bungalow in Beverly Hills when Warner is making a picture. At other times, they live in a beach house in Carpinteria, a beautiful old farmhouse out of Boston (it was built for Governor Bradford’s daughter), or on a 7,000‑acre island off Mexico, which they own. Somewhere in the interval, they manage to gallop off to Europe, taking a Ford and leaving three large impressive cars in the garage. (No actor alive but Warner Oland ever did that.) They have a cook in all of their homes, because they are epicures and can’t bear to take chances with anything so important as food. Their hospitality is lavish, but never ostentatious.
Edith and Warner are painters of distinction. Edith Shearn was a distinguished portrait painter before her marriage and has interested Warner in painting to the extent that he has done some really lovely things. His landscapes are a revelation — delicate, spiritual things — contrasted with Edith’s bold strokes and brilliant sunlight. Had she not more or less abandoned her career after marriage she would rank with the best moderns.
Their Carpinteria place is the most beautiful house I have ever been in, because it serves the true purpose of a house — it makes you glad to be alive. It sings with color, color unplanned, with the unerring instinct of the true artist. From the Modigliani on a wall to the huge portfolios of Diego Rivera sketches, to the Swedish fireplace, the immense hand-carved table they have hauled around the world, the brilliant oils of their own and the museum-pieces of Chinese and Swedish porcelains, the broad couches and the Mexican dishes on the table, this house is a soul-stirring experience.
The Olands make the most of every moment, Luncheon in their house is an Event, beautifully planned — a gourmet’s dream. And you sit at the table until five o’clock in the afternoon to hear the best conversation extant. They have fragrant minds, these two.
One hears of their recent trip to Mexico and the visit with the Diego Riveras. Before they departed, if you had asked whom they would rather know in all the world. I am sure they would have answered “Diego Rivera!” in one voice. It happened this way.
The Olands were staying in a splendid old monastery at Saint Angel, now an inn. They went often to a delightful bookshop owned by an interesting Spaniard.
Diego Rivera lived near in his modern‑Aztec house — “charming from our windows. We admired it each day, never daring to hope we would meet the great painter,” Edith tells, with that brilliant enthusiasm, so much a part of her.
One morning the Spaniard ran up to them exclaiming, “You are the translators of Strindberg! Why did you not tell me that?” And so they were elected. Then he remarked: “Diego is coming in half an hour Will you stay and talk with him?” Would they!
Edith describes Rivera — “He is a great big simple lovely man.”
Their Mazatlan island fringes fifteen miles of virgin ocean. “Nice little hacienda,” Warner remarked the first time they went to see it. “Hacienda muchos!” corrected the native who was piloting the boat. (There is an estuary there where Cortez kept his ships.)
The native paddled and paddled, they went (in and on, and Edith would ask, “Is this still our property?” in an awed voice. “Si, señora,” obliged the native.
When they go to Europe, they drive to New York because Shags, the pup, doesn’t care for trains! The only thing she didn’t attend with them in Paris was the Grand Prix. But she accompanied them to the market place at six A.M. and had her pot of onion soup. Recently, Shags presented them with eight children. But she didn’t worry half as much about it as her owners did. The housing problem was serious, so Edith finally turned the beach house next door, which she bought for a studio, into a palatial dwelling for the pups.
In Paris, the Olands avoid the smart places and stay in rooms on the left bank. Then Edith drives them around, the Eiffel Tower first, to touch base, as it were, and get her bearings. They are very apt to wind up anywhere — sometimes on a painting spree they get so far away from their pension, they have to stay the night. Sometimes they drive way into the wine country, sampling the Spring wines… I should say the Olands would be the grandest persons you could possibly imagine to be with in Europe. They are never on display, and only a few good friends ever know they are there.
Edith is a little bit of a thing with a girl’s figure, who is always poised for flight. She is ageless, one of those immortals who will be forever thirty in appearance and activity. Edith is the sort of person who arouses you to a peak of enthusiasm which does not leave you tor days. You want to go out and do all the available art galleries right away, and compose a symphony or write a magnificent book or even learn to cook better than any one else… I think she is the most inspiring woman alive, and the most self-less. She is interested in everything that happens — and I will wager Warner Oland has never had a dull moment since he has known her!
The reason they married, Edith says, is because “we’ve loved fine things and liked each other.”
He was playing in Peer Gynt in Boston, she was producing and acting in some one-act plays. She was recently home from Paris where she had studied and “starved for artistic opulence”! A friend asked if she would like to meet the new Scandinavian actor.
He had on a straw hat with a red band and he was carrying a white poodle — he looked exactly like something out of a French print… A very gay and worldly blade, indeed.
So — I give you the Olands, two rare and civilized souls. And completely unique in Hollywood.
The Olands never keep money. They live in four houses. They are happily married. They won’t travel on trains, their dog hates trains
Collection: Photoplay Magazine, January 1936
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see also Warner Oland — A Highbrow Villain from the Arctic Circle (1918)