Thank You, Mr. Moto

Mr. Moto goes to China after seven old scrolls that, put together, show where the treasure of Genghis Khan lies. A band of thieves is after the same scrolls, and when things turn bloody the mild-looking detective’s curiosity turns into something else. Norman Foster directed; this is the second in the run of eight screen films built on the character John P. Marquand created. Peter Lorre, who plays Moto, was a Hungarian Jewish actor who had fled Nazi Germany, and Fox cast him because his small build and reserve suited the type, which is to say that an Asian actor for a Japanese character never came up at all. It opened on 24 December 1937. The record’s summary is written like promotional copy and carries a long dash inherited from TMDB.