Here are 10 things you should know about Esther Howard, born 132 years ago today. Following a successful decade on Broadway, she became one of Hollywood’s most prolific character actresses.
Tag: Murder My Sweet
10 Things You Should Know About Dick Powell
Here are 10 things you should know about Dick Powell, born 115 years ago today. For our money, he executed one of the most impressive career reinventions in Hollywood history.
10 Things You Should Know About Claire Trevor
Here are 10 things you should know about Claire Trevor, born 112 years ago today. An Oscar winner, she enjoyed success on stage, in pictures, in radio and on television.
10 Things You Should Know About Anne Shirley
Here are 10 things you should know about Anne Shirley, born 103 years ago today. She made more than 65 movies before retiring at age 26.
A Frothier, Funnier ‘Farewell, My Lovely’
As we advised you to do, we recorded the first eleven entries in RKO’s “The Falcon” series of mysteries on TCM the other day, and by last night, we’d worked our way up to watching the third one, The Falcon Takes Over.
The Falcon movies aren’t great, but they have a certain frothy charm, the repartee’s enjoyable enough, and at least some of them feature both Allen Jenkins and James Gleason in supporting roles, and that’s a combination that’s hard to beat.
We were especially looking forward to this picture because it’s based on Raymond Chandler‘s Farewell, My Lovely. In this version, it’s George Sanders as The Falcon, not Philip Marlowe, who solves the crime, but it was fun to see a familiar story played out in a different style, a different city (NYC rather than Los Angeles) and with a different set of characters.
One recognizes the source material right away, as just two minutes in, Moose Malloy has already made an appearance, and his name is…Moose Malloy. And the lost love he’s trying to track down is named Velma.
In fact, the filmmakers didn’t bother to change many of the characters’ names: Jessie Florian, Jules Amthor, Ann Riordan and Laird Burnett are all present and accounted for.
The Falcon Takes Over doesn’t stack up to Murder, My Sweet (1944) or Farewell, My Lovely (1975); it’s an entirely different kind of picture. But it is just smidge darker than the typical Falcon picture, and we found that suited us just fine.