In short: The Falcon in San Francisco (1945)

Gentleman detective Tom Lawrence (Tom Conway), also known as The Falcon (please do not expect wings, or Redwing), and his suddenly re-added to the series comic relief sidekick “Goldie” Locke (Edward Brophy and his very absent locks) are on their way to San Francisco for a nice relaxing vacation. Also, Goldie plans on talking some random woman into marriage, so he can lower his income tax payments. But while they are still on the train to San Francisco, our heroes stumble upon a new case. Since it involves an adorable little girl (Sharyn Moffett) and her adorable doggie who may or may not be held prisoner in their own home, as well as murder, Lawrence just can’t help himself and gets ever more deeply involved, vacations be damned.

Also appearing will be pretty women sinister (Fay Helm) and – hopefully - goodly (Rita Corday), and the wages of a rum smuggling past.

The mystery plot truly becomes astonishingly complicated in this little programmer directed by the often great Joseph H. Lewis. I’m still not sure if it actually makes any sense, but then, this is not supposed to be a rigidly structured fair play mystery. Rather, this is classic one damn thing after another storytelling where the entertainment value of any given incident is of much greater import than its logic. Which works out very well indeed for the film at hand, with nary a scene going by where Conway doesn’t have opportunity to turn on the charm or get punched, and much joyful energy is expended in coming up with the next complication for out heroes.

Lewis, while not quite in the hired gun auteur mode of his best films, lets things zip along as merrily as this sort of fun material needs, providing enough space for the – one supposes crowd-pleasing – cute little girl with cute little dog business but also moving on before the eye-rolls become too exhausting for the modern viewer. He’s pacing things so well, even some of the Goldie-based comic relief becomes actually funny. But then, when has seeing a guy going after women for all the wrong reasons getting put down by them ever not be funny?

That Conway in his eighth Falcon outing knows how to turn on the charm as well as a semi-boiled kind of toughness is rather a given.

Add to this some genuine location shots (soon to be economized out of the series by RKO), and it’s very easy to still have quite a bit of fun with this merry little mystery today.

In short: Two O’Clock Courage (1945)

When a man with a head wound (Tom Conway) and a bout of amnesia stumbles in front of the taxi of spunky cab driver Patty Mitchell (Ann Rutherford), it’s the start of a very interesting time for both of them. The man, it turns out, may very well be a murderer; at least, there are a couple of hints that suggest it. Patty’s clearly charmed by him, and decides this means he can’t be a murderer, and so she starts going above and beyond everything you know about the job of a cab driver, helping him to evade the police, as well as a silly reporter. She more than aptly assists the mysterious yet increasingly quippy stranger in investigating who he is and who actually did commit the murder he’s be a prime suspect for.

The basic set-up of Anthony Mann’s – still working in the B-slot movie mills for RKO here – Two O’Clock Courage may suggest a noir, but the script by Robert E. Kent and Mann’s light-handed direction turn this into a comedic murder mystery romance closer in spirit to the Thin Man films than the Cornell Woolrich style affair it may sound like. It’s a fun little example of this particular type of film, though, directed with a bit of style and a whole heap of pizazz, merrily going from one pretty improbable sequence to the next with a spring in its step and a merry little tune on its lips, probably a little drunk. With such a fun tone, who cares that the mystery plot’s pretty weak and that the abyss is yawning elsewhere? I certainly do not.


Conway and Rutherford work rather well together too, quipping, pretending to be married, and walking through the whole affair with a bit of ironic distance, chemistry and a certain unflappable (well, very difficult to flap) charm. It’s a lovely little film, not at all suggesting anything of the movies Mann would turn out just a few years later on a regular basis, but a very worthwhile watch nonetheless.