Roland Winters

Acting

Roland Winters

Born 1904-11-22 · 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.

Acting credits

Citizen Kane poster
8.0

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Citizen Kane

1941

Doc poster
8.0

An aging doctor in a small town decides to pack up his little black bag, but when a young doctor assumes his practice, the older practitioner can't resist butting in with comic results.

Doc

1969

Loving poster
6.0

Brooks Wilson is in crisis. He is torn between his wife Selma and two daughters and his mistress Grace, and also between his career as a successful illustrator and his feeling that he might still produce something worthwhile.

Loving

1970

Jet Pilot poster
5.5

John Wayne stars as U.S. Air Force aviator Jim Shannon, who's tasked with escorting a Soviet pilot (Janet Leigh) claiming -- at the height of the Cold War -- that she wants to defect. After falling in love with and wedding the fetching flyer, Shannon learns from his superiors that she's a spy on a mission to extract military secrets. To save his new wife from prison and deportation, Shannon devises a risky plan in this 1957 drama.

Jet Pilot

1957

Blue Hawaii poster
6.1

Just discharged GI Chad Gates returns to Hawaii, where he becomes a tour guide, defying his mother's wishes for him to join the family business.

Blue Hawaii

1961

Bigger Than Life poster
7.2

A friendly, successful suburban teacher and father grows dangerously addicted to cortisone, resulting in his transformation into a household despot.

Bigger Than Life

1956

Convicted poster
6.2

A prison warden fights to prove one of his inmates was wrongly convicted.

Convicted

1950

Malaya poster
6.9

After living abroad for several years, journalist John Royer returns to the United States just after the U.S. enters World War II. His boast that he could easily smuggle rubber, a key wartime natural resource, out of Malaya has him tasked with doing just that. He manages to get someone from his past, Carnaghan, sprung from Alactraz and together they head off to South East Asia posing as Irishmen. Once there, Carnaghan lines up some of his old cronies and with Royer and a few plantation owners plans to smuggle the rubber out from under the Japanese army's watchful eye.

Malaya

1949

Top Secret Affair poster
4.9

A publisher uses her magazine and charm to derail a general on the Washington fast track.

Top Secret Affair

1957

Follow That Dream poster
6.1

When the Kwimper family car runs out of fuel on a new Florida highway and an officious state supervisor tries to run them off, Pop digs in his heels and decides to do a little homesteading. He, his son Toby and their 'adopted' children—Holly, Ariadne, and the twins—start their own little community along a strip of the roadside.

Follow That Dream

1962

Cry of the City poster
6.7

Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?

Cry of the City

1948

The Shanghai Chest poster
6.6

Charlie attempts to solve a triple murder in which a dead man's finger prints show up at all three murder sites, and all three victims were connected with the conviction and execution of an evidently innocent man.

The Shanghai Chest

1948

The Chinese Ring poster
5.2

Soon after a Chinese princess comes to the US to buy planes for her people, she is murdered by a poison dart fired by an air rifle.

The Chinese Ring

1947

A Dangerous Profession poster
5.7

A cop-turned-bail bondsman gets involved in a murder investigation involving a former flame.

A Dangerous Profession

1949

Between Midnight and Dawn poster
5.7

Rocky and Dan, war buddies, are prowl car cops on night duty. Dan is a cynic who views all lawbreakers as scum; Rocky feels more lenient. Both are attracted to the radio voice of communicator Kate Mallory; but in person, Kate proves reluctant to get involved with men who just might stop a bullet. By lucky chance, Rocky and Dan cause big trouble for murderous racketeer Ritchie Garris; but when he swears vengeance, Kate's fears may prove justified.

Between Midnight and Dawn

1950

Archie poster
NR

Archie is the 1964 unsold pilot based on the Archie comic book series. The whole gang is included, Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, Mr. Weatherbee, Ms. Grundy… William Schallert (most notably the dad in The Patty Duke Show) plays Archie’s dad and Jean Vander Pyl (Wilma’s voice in The Flintstones) plays the mom.

Archie

1964

Cash McCall poster
6.3

Wealthy hotshot Cash McCall makes his money by purchasing unsuccessful businesses, whipping them into shape and then selling them for a huge profit. When Cash comes across Austen Plastics, a small manufacturing corporation on its last legs, he realizes it might be a gamble to buy the company. But when Cash finds out that the company's owner is the father of his old flame, Lory, he buys the business just to get a second chance at romance.

Cash McCall

1960

The Underworld Story poster
6.3

A blacklisted reporter brings his shady ways to a small-town newspaper after being fired from a big city daily.

The Underworld Story

1950

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff poster
6.6

Lost Caverns Resort Hotel bellhop Freddie Phillips gives an empty threat to one attorney Amos Strickland, and is shortly fired. When Freddie visits his guest's suite to apologize, he finds Strickland dead of a gunshot wound. As the investigators file in, Freddie becomes the scapegoat of the guests in the hotel, who all had a bone to pick with Strickland. It's now up to Freddie and Detective Casey Edwards to find out who the real killer is, all the while avoiding the many vigorous and violent villains staying at the resort.

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff

1949

Raton Pass poster
4.9

Raton Pass is a curious western based on the rules of Community Property. Dennis Morgan and Patricia Neal portray a recently married husband and wife, each of whom owns half of a huge cattle ranch. Neal is a tad more ambitious than her husband, and with the help of a little legal chicanery she tries to obtain Morgan's half of the spread. He balks, so she hires a few gunslingers to press the issue. In a 1951 western, the greedy party usually came to a sorry end; Raton Pass adheres strictly to tradition.

Raton Pass

1951

Miracle on 34th Street poster
7.0

A department store Santa tries to convince a little girl who doesn't believe in Santa Claus that he is Santa Claus, and winds up going on trial to prove who he is.

Miracle on 34th Street

1973

Captain Carey, U.S.A. poster
5.8

Near the end of World War II, a secret American raid on an enemy transportation hub goes very wrong when a turncoat warns the enemy. Led by Capt. Webster Carey, the mission causes the deaths of many bystanders -- among them, Carey believes, his Italian girlfriend, Giulia de Graffi. Back home, Carey stumbles across evidence that might uncover the identity of the informant. But, when he returns to Italy to get even, Carey is stunned by what he finds.

Captain Carey, U.S.A.

1950

So Big poster
5.5

A girl of wealth comes to a Dutch community outside Chicago as a schoolteacher, and while there falls in love with a poor but big-hearted farmer.

So Big

1953

The Feathered Serpent poster
6.1

In order to learn the location of a fabled Aztec treasure, a professor kidnaps his colleague, the only man able to read the ancient Aztec script that is supposed to reveal the location of the treasure. Charlie Chan and his #1 and #2 sons journey to the jungles of Mexico to find the victim and bring the kidnapper and his gang to justice.

The Feathered Serpent

1948