Actor Roland Winters; Starred as Charlie Chan in Six Movies

Roland Winters, the last and least known of the three film actors who regularly portrayed Charlie Chan, has died of a stroke at the Actors’ Fund Nursing Home in Englewood, N.J.

The Boston native was 84 when he died Sunday.

Winters had several stage and radio credits before coming to Hollywood in 1948.

He succeeded Warner Oland and Sidney Toler as latter-day Chans, the proverb-laden, sophisticated Asian detective created by Earl Derr Biggers.

Other actors contributed to the Chan genre both before and after Winters, but he was considered the last of the regular players, making six of the films between 1948 and 1952.

(J. Carroll Naish was seen in a Chan television series in the 1950s.)

Other Winters films included “Captain Carey, U.S.A.” with Alan Ladd, “The West Point Story” with James Cagney, “So Big” with Jane Wyman and “Blue Hawaii,” a 1961 picture in which he was seen as Elvis Presley’s father.

His Broadway appearances came in “Calculated Risk,” “Country Girl,” “Cook for Mr. General,” “Who Was That Lady I Saw You With?” and “Minnie’s Girls.”

On TV he appeared in the “Meet Millie” series from 1953 to 1956, and on “The Smothers Brothers Show” in 1965-66.