The Falcon in Hollywood

A great tour of the RKO backlot. Tom Conway suave as ever gives us a turn around the streets of 1940's Hollywood, including a trip to the Hollywood Bowl. Barbara (Della Street) Hale is on hand again as are the fabulous Sheldon Leonard and Robert Clark(I) in his second film role. Veda Ann Borg is brash and funny, Konstantin Shayne mutter Shakespeare with panache, and Jean Brooks(II) adds her charm to an early send up of Edith Head. And take a look at that lovely underrated under used Rita Corday. It all starts at the Hollywood race track, a mad dash around street cars down the Boulevard and ending up at the RKO gate. Prop rooms, prop building, soundstages, costume shop, the RKO stock swimming pool and finally the loft of the soundstage. It's fast, funny and an exceptional tour of a working studio. There is even a charming Arab actor Useff Ali as the "I can play any ethnic" in what is only one of his two film roles. Too bad he didn't have a longer career.

The B pics at RKO had a great family of ensemble players..........Enjoy them.

A welcome return to form for the Falcon series -- having run out of ideas for the standard city-based plots, the studio evidently tried putting the Falcon into unaccustomed environments to try to milk a few more scripts out of the formula, and oddly enough it actually tends to work quite well. In these later films ("The Falcon and the Co-Eds", "The Falcon Out West", "The Falcon in Hollywood") the focus seems to swing back onto the actual crime rather than the amiable surrounding tom-foolery, and the comic relief -- being more sparingly employed -- is more successfully funny.

"Hollywood" is in my experience the best of the films mentioned above, with a really quite ingenious plot and some interesting characters. Of course we've all seen "The Producers" now... but the cast of Hollywood 'types' -- from the Germanic martinet director to the playboy leading man, the distrait Shakespearean Englishman, the costume diva, the exotic star with a villa and swimming-pool and the gangster's moll trying to make her big break in the movies -- still has its own charms to offer, not least in watching the film subvert the stereotypes! (There's also a nod to a famous Sherlock Holmes case in there, for the alert.)

Back to the city and business as normal (?) for Tom Lawrence aka the Falcon in solving crimes the cops can't [#10/13]. "Hollywood" had a nice sunny feel to it, the War was a million miles away and people wanted to get even further away from it with an escapist movie industry to help.

The Falcon's busy losing at a racetrack but quickly gets mixed up with 2 beautiful women (Hale and Corday) and embroiled in tracking down an apparently stolen handbag. This leads to Sunset Pictures backlots where the body of a murdered man is discovered along with a gallery of suspects. The 2 best things here are the riveting but unfortunately intermittent tour of the RKO studios and props as the Falcon and his wisecracking female taxi driver played by Veda Ann Borg investigate, and the tight intelligent scripting. I wished there'd been much more behind the scenes for an even better picture of the studio. I kept expecting Borg to exclaim "Come up to my place!" – Conway wouldn't have been as backward as Sinatra! John Abbott as the Shakespeare-obsessed studio boss had many amusing scenes, and Emory Parnell effortlessly swapped from baddie in Mexico to goodie in Hollywood. And the story actually made solid sense this time without detracting from the entertainment, you can follow it from first to last, and even though the baddie's identity is pretty obvious from early on it was all logically explained. The searching of dead Ted's apartment has always stuck with me though for the bit where the Falcon and Borg are philosophising about how sad a dead man's room is and the poignant line about if he had been "worrying about tragic things like a broken shoelace" that morning.

Recommended to fans of the genre, not to others. One of my favourite Falcon's, one I've watched again and again and still hope to.

While on vacation on the west coast, the Falcon finds himself approached by Peggy Callahan – the girlfriend of criminal Louie Buchanan. Peggy leaves her bag behind in place of Lawrence's companion's bag. He pursues her in a taxi driven by gobby taxi-come-stunt driver Billie Atkins and gets onto a the grounds of a Hollywood studio. While looking for Peggy the Falcon and Billie stumble onto the body of actor Ted Miles. The police are called and, even on holiday, Lawrence finds himself investigating yet another crime.

After not thinking much of the Falcon being Out West and In Mexico during his last two films, I feared that him being in Hollywood would be another location gimmick replacing any actual substance or entertainment value. It may be because the Hollywood setting just meant that the production stayed at home and saved money on a lot of set design but this film was actually pretty good and used Hollywood well but as a backdrop to a solid mystery. It does take some work to get it started but once Lawrence gets onto the lot it livens up and keeps that pace well for the rest of the film. Unlike the last two films the mystery is actually pretty good and develops to a satisfying solution. Douglas uses the locations well (RKO itself being the main one) and the film has a great "off-set" feel to it that you don't always get with b-movies – nice to see compared to the gimmicky feel to the West and Mexico and it bodes well for San Francisco (which I have not yet seen).

Conway seems a lot more relaxed and more like himself than when In Mexico. While in Mexico we had a Mexican "Goldie" character and here we have a female wise-@ss, in the shape of Borg; she is sassy and fu in a very clichéd and obvious manner but it works well. Parnell and Jenks are a poor man's Clark and Gargan but don't have that much to do. Perry Mason's Hale is good, as is Brooks. Shayne is a bit hammy but effective while series regular Rita Corday turns up yet again early on in the film.

Overall then an enjoyable entry in the series that fans will enjoy and may be slick and enjoyable enough to suit newcomers looking for an easy b-movie to watch. The location is not obtrusive and the material is good, giving the actors more to work with than in the last two films.

Falcon in Hollywood, The (1944)

*** (out of 4)

Entertaining entry in RKO's series has The Falcon (Tom Conway) on vacation in Hollywood when a famous actor is murdered. The finger points to various people in the production so The Falcon must sort it all out. This is perhaps the best that I've seen from the series due in large part to a very good supporting cast and a nice little mystery that remains interesting throughout the film. Most of the action takes place on the backlot of a studio so we get all sorts of nice scenes, which work themselves well into the mystery. A lot of Hollywood props are used as gags or evidence and this too adds to the fun. The characters working on the film within the film are all very entertaining. We get your typical crazy German director, the playboy, a jealous wannabe star and a producer who's always going around quoting Shakespeare. Conway is also very energetic here and delivers his best performance in the role since The Falcon's Brother.