He is most remembered for playing several Chinese and Chinese-American characters: Dr. Fu Manchu, Henry Chang in Shanghai Express, and, most notably, Honolulu Police detective Lieutenant Charlie Chan in 16 films.

As a young man, Oland pursued a career in theater, at first working on set design while developing his skills as a dramatic actor.

He was cast as an exotic menace in director Josef von Sternberg's 1932 classic film Shanghai Express opposite Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong.

[8] After portraying a Chinese ambassador in the 1935 film Shanghai, he abandoned character work and pursued his starring series as Charlie Chan exclusively.

[9][10] The scripts almost always called for Oland to comment on the action by offering nuggets of Oriental wisdom: "Hasty deduction like ancient egg.

Around this time, he was involved in a public incident when, having ordered his chauffeur to drive him to Mexico, he was observed during a rest stop sitting on the running board of his car throwing his shoes at onlookers.

The same day he left the United States by steamship, turning up in southern Europe, then proceeding to his native Sweden, where he stayed with an architect friend.

In Sweden, Oland contracted bronchial pneumonia, worsened by the apparent onset of emphysema from years of heavy cigarette smoking, and he died in a hospital in Stockholm, on August 6, 1938, aged 58.

[12] [13] His last film, the unfinished Charlie Chan at the Ringside, was re-shot with Peter Lorre replacing Oland, and released as Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938).