Actor. He is best remembered for his role of 'Charlie Chan' in the "Charlie Chan" series of movies. Of Scottish ancestry, he was the second non-Asian to play the role of the Chinese Hawaiian detective. Born in Warrensburg, Missouri, and a veteran of the stage, he entered the movie industry in 1929, taking a variety of supporting roles in such films as "The Gay Nineties" (1929), "Madame X" (1929), "Strickly Dishonorable" (1931), "Blonde Venus" (1932), "King of the Jungle" (1933), "Call of the Wild" (1935), "Three Godfathers" (1936) and "The Mysterious Rider" (1938), with supporting roles ranging from soldiers to policemen, bankers, doctors, professors, and even a Mexican peasant. In 1938, with the death of veteran actor Warner Oland, he signed on with 20th Century Fox to take over the role of 'Detective Charlie Chan.' His first film in that role was in "Honolulu" (1938), which saw only modest audience acceptance. His next film, "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island" (1939), is considered by many fans as his best film and the best of the series. He made several other 'Charlie Chan' movies, including "Charlie Chan in Reno" (1939), "Charlie Chan in the City of Darkness" (1939), "Charlie Chan in Panama" (1940), "Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum" (1940), and "Charlie Chan in Rio" (1941), when Fox sold the character rights to Monogram Pictures in 1943. Monogram carried on the character, but without the great scripts and reliable supporting casts, in such films as "Charlie Chan in the Secret Service" (1944), "The Jade Mask" (1945), "The Shanghai Cobra" (1945), "Shadows over Chinatown" (1946), "Dark Alibi" (1946), and "The Trap" (1946). Typecast as 'Charlie Chan', Toler would walk through most of the later films, showing a steady decline in performing. He would appear in only a handful of other film roles after 1938, including "Heritage of the Desert" (1939), "The Adventures of Smiling Jack" (1943) and "White Savage" (1943), but the studio never developed his full potential as an actor. When he died in 1947 of intestinal cancer in Beverly Hills, California, the role of 'Charlie Chan' was given to actor Roland Winters.