The Falcon in Hollywood

I was watching this movie on the hangar deck of the USS Yorktown in Ulithi lagoon in the Western Caroline islands in 1945. I remember a scene at a swimming pool. Then a Kamikaze struck the Randolf, an aircraft carrier anchored next to us. The movie was stopped and we went to battle stations. I have tried to locate a copy of this movie so that I could see the ending with no luck.

The Falcon films, both with George Sanders and Tom Conway in the lead role, are on the most part very enjoyable. There are some very good ones like the first two Sanders Falcon films and 'The Falcon Strikes Back', though also a few disappointments like 'The Falcon in Danger' and 'The Falcon in Mexico'.

On the most part, 'The Falcon in Hollywood' is very entertaining and one of Conway's better overall Falcon films. Certainly a big improvement over the previous two Falcon films 'Out West' and 'Mexico', both lesser efforts. Not everything works, Cliff Clark and Edward Gargan are missed and while Emory Powell and Frank Jenks are serviceable enough their characters don't have as much impact and their comedy not as interesting.

As a result of having so many people bumped off, it is not hard to figure out very quickly who the perpetrator is, who admittedly I suspected early on. The ending is a little rushed too to a lesser extent, and the start of the film is a tad routine and pedestrian.

However, a lot also does work. The music is lively and haunting enough, and on the most part the production values are slick and atmospheric with particularly nicely done photography. A new director is on board here and there is a very obvious and much-needed energy injected. Further advantages are a very playful script with dialogue that crackles with wit and a mostly absorbing story that is never less than bright, breezy and fun with some suspense and great twists and turns.

Conway gives one of his best performances of the series, performing with suavity and a lot of witty energy. Barbara Hale and Rita Corday are alluring and charming, while brassy and sassy Veda Ann Borg really does liven things up.

In conclusion, very entertaining if flawed and one of the better Conway Falcon films and amongst the top half of the series overall as well. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Fast paced mystery, surprisingly unpredictable. It's nice to see so many locations in Los Angeles of the mid 1940's. Much of the film gives you studio backlot scenes, and behind the camera context, within a Hollywood soundstage. Even so, the story draws you in, and the characters are believable. The film moves at a good pace, and keeps you guessing. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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.)