MR. MOTO

The creator of Mr. Moto, John P. Marquand, had already made a name for himself when he brought out the Japanese spy series. He had been producing stories and articles for magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, a publication that would take many of his pieces. Most of the early ones had to do with historical periods but as the 30s reached their middle, he moved from those to stories of modern people dealing with class issues. Several of these would do quite well, especially The Late George Apley which would earn him the prestigious Pulitzer in 1938.

It was while he was making the transition that he came up with the Moto tales. I read in more than one place that it was likely in response to the death in 1933 of Charlie Chan creator, Earl Derr Biggers, that prompted him to craft these stories. That may be true but I lean away from that theory, based only on the idea that if he were looking for a successor to the incredible Inspector Chan, he would more likely have made his character involved in detective work. There is virtually none of that in the Moto books. They are about international events being ever so carefully manipulated by a small, modest man who preferred to stay in the background as much as possible.

Whatever the genesis, the stories were well received from the moment they hit the pages of the Saturday Evening Post, all of them serialized over time before being repackaged as novels.

The six adventures he produced were said to be highly formulaic and to a good degree they are but wonderfully so and with enough difference as to keep them interesting. Invariably a man and a woman, usually ignorant of each other at the beginning, are thrust by circumstances into situations they are not familiar with and from which they need help extracating themselves. That help comes from Mr. Moto who often looks like a saviour unless one dig deeper and sees it was he who helped with the shoving in the first place. Without a doubt, Mr. Moto is a manipulative rascal.

Five of the six Moto stories were written and published prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was hardly surprising that the author discontinued stories with a Japanese spy as the hero for no matter how good they were, no one would go for them. Even if Mr. Moto often disagreed with the attitudes of his militaristic countries, there would have been no audience for more tales.

With that in mind, it is surprising that the author decided, over a decade after the end of the War, to bring him back for one final adventure. It was bought by the magazine that had taken his others and serialized like them and then made into a book so it must have been received well enough. It is interesting that he stopped there, though. The author would have been in his early 60s which may have played a role. Whatever the reason, three years after he brought Moto back, he died and thus the series ended.

Note: it has been pointed out to me, rightly so, that since the sixth adventure was originally published as a serial under the name Rendezvous In Tokyo, that is its correct name. I've kept the name Right You Are, Mr. Moto because the books were named that.

Nine years and ten or so movies after the first Charlie Chan presentation hit the big screen, the fictional character of Mr. Moto came along. It seems inevitable that no matter how good or bad the series was, someone would figure that if one Oriental detective was popular, two would be as well. The rights to Mr. Moto were snatched up and production started.

The first couple of Charlie Chan (pre-talkies) had oriental actors but the rest starred an Occidental actor as Chan. For that reason, I guess, it was decided that another Caucasian could play the Japanese hero. Slovakian actor Peter Lorre, relatively unknown at the time, got the job.

There were some interesting challenges to be overcome in bringing the book character to celluloid life, other than having a non-Japanese actor play a Japanese man. Three main ones occur to me.

The first was that Mr. Moto often played a much smaller part in each adventure than could be allowed on film. Since this was a Mr. Moto movie, he had to be in nearly every scene. That meant much of the books could not be used. That was solved by using virtually none of them.

The second is that Mr. Moto is sometimes not such a nice guy. In the books he is not really actually bad but he does do things that are highly manipulative and often appearing not very friendly. This would not do for a hero but since the books were not being used anyways, the character could be changed to be nicer.

The third is the most interesting. Charlie Chan was a police detective. Mr. Moto is a spy. Even more different, he was a spy for a foreign government which was increasingly involved in expansion and not friendly expansion at that. Once again, the creative minds in Hollywood were not stymied. Mr. Moto was suddenly a detective as well.

Do not get me wrong. The movies are enjoyable, just as Charlie Chan movies were great fun for me. But to read a Mr. Moto book and then see a Mr. Moto movie can make one scratch a head.

In 1951, NBC Radio presented a short series, lasting 23 episodes, of Mr. Moto. In this incarnation, Mr. Moto is very much a secret agent but he is international in scope and pretty much a freelancer. It is US Intelligence that uses him the most. The tales has him going up against Communists more than anything else but once or twice he is called upon to solve a murder or uncover a bad guy. Also on occasion the stories slip into the realm of high-tech, science-fiction.

The shows lasted 30 minutes. Just over half of them are available online. 10 episodes are said to have been lost forever. [Let me know if that is wrong as I would love to hear them, too.]

In 2004, Moonstone Comics brought out a three-part story about Mr. Moto. The company had made a business out of resurrecting fictional characters from the past and revitalizing them and that is just what was done with the Moto persona. In this iteration, Moto is an American agent of Japanese descent with quite some experience in the cloak and dagger business. While his nationality and background were thus changed considerably from the books, the fact that the story is about a young, embittered Japanese man just released from the detention center at the end of WWII and manipulated ever so carefully by Moto is definitely in keeping with the kind of character he was.

The three comics were later repackaged into one graphic novel.