Here are 10 things you should know about George Sanders, born 117 years ago today. The smooth Sanders had an unmatched facility for playing sly cads, and we’re always pleased to see his name in the opening credits of a motion picture.
Tag: The Falcon
10 Things You Should Know About Wendy Barrie
Here are 10 things you should know about Wendy Barrie, born 110 years ago today. She enjoyed success on stage, in pictures and on television.
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.
Fill Your Friday with The Falcon
The Falcon series of motion pictures are entertaining enough but not terribly compelling. They don’t have the compelling sense of darkness and danger that the films noir of the day offered, and they aren’t as funny and fun as the Thin Man series of movie mysteries.
But they do make for reasonably entertaining cinematic diversions, and if you’ve never experienced a Falcon picture, tomorrow, September 2, is your day. TCM is airing the first eleven entries in the series beginning at 6:15 am ET.
The Falcon originated as a character in Michael Arlen’s short story, Gay Falcon, that author’s only contribution to the annals of crime fiction. In the story, the adventurous, debonair good-guy-for-hire we know as the Falcon was actually named Falcon—Gay Stanhope Falcon. But in the movies and on the radio, his name was Gay Laurence (other names were later used) and The Falcon was his nickname, his alias; how he acquired it was never fully explained.
The Falcon was a near-carbon copy of The Saint, so much so that the Saint’s creator, author Leslie Charteris sued RKO for plagiarism (and mocked the character in his 1943 novel, The Saint Steps In). George Sanders played the character in the first four films, but had no interest in continuing his association with the series, so in The Falcon’s Brother (1942), Sanders’ real-life brother, Tom Conway, was brought in to play the Falcon’s fictional brother, Tom, who thereafter also went by the Falcon alias—convenient, no? Conway would play the Falcon in nine pictures from 1943-46.
Beginning in 1948, John Calvert took over the role of the Falcon (whose name was now Michael Waring) in the series’ final three pictures, but they were not successful. Gruff, tough Charles McGraw, a very different type than Sanders and Conway (urbane and sophisticated he was not), would take over the role in 1954 for a syndicated television series that ran for 39 episodes.
TCM is showing the first three of Sanders’ Falcon pictures, the transition entry in the film that saw Sanders and Conway both starring, and the first seven of Conway’s nine pictures in the role. Our suggestion? Take the day off , get up early and dedicate the first 12.5 hours of your Labor Day weekend to getting acquainted with the Falcon.