The Falcon is the nickname for two fictional detectives. Drexel Drake (real name Charles H. Huff) created Michael Waring, alias the Falcon, a freelance investigator and troubleshooter, in his 1936 novel, ''The Falcon's Prey''. It was followed by two more novels – ''The Falcon Cuts In'', 1937, and ''The Falcon Meets a Lady'', 1938 – and a 1938 short story.
Michael Arlen
Michael Arlen (born Dikran Sarkis Kouyoumdjian;, , 16 November 1895 – 23 June 1956) was an essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter. He had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England, ...
created Gay Stanhope Falcon in 1940. This Falcon made his first appearance in Arlen's short story "Gay Falcon" (aka "A Man Called Falcon"), which was originally published in 1940 in '' Town & Country'' magazine. The story opens with the words "Now of this man who called himself Gay Falcon many tales are told, and this is one of them." Arlen's Falcon is characterized as a freelance adventurer and troubleshooter – a man who makes his living "keeping his mouth shut and engaging in dangerous enterprises."
Film appearances
Arlen's Falcon was quickly brought to the screen by
RKO Radio Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, is an American film production and distribution company, historically one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Kei ...
. The
1941
The Correlates of War project estimates this to be the deadliest year in human history in terms of conflict deaths, placing the death toll at 3.49 million. However, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program estimates that the subsequent year, 1942, wa ...
film '' The Gay Falcon'' redefined the character as a suave Englishgentleman detective with a weakness for beautiful women. Though Gay Falcon was the character's name in Arlen's original story, the character was renamed Gay Laurence for the film. (The surname was spelled "Lawrence" in subsequent films.) Thus "The Falcon" became an alias or nickname, à la "The Saint." In later outings, in various media, the character had a variety of "real names," still being known as The Falcon. Neither in films nor on radio was the nickname ever explained.
''The Gay Falcon'' was intended to establish a replacement character for
Leslie Charteris
Leslie Charteris (; born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin; 12 May 1907 – 15 April 1993), was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction, as well as a screenwriter.The Saint (Simon Templar), who had appeared in a popular RKO film series. To that end,
George Sanders
George Henry Sanders (3 July 1906 – 25 April 1972) was a British actor and singer whose career spanned over 40 years. His heavy, upper-class English accent and smooth bass voice often led him to be cast as sophisticated but villainous charac ...
, star of ''The Saint'' series, was cast in the Falcon role, with "Saint" love interest
Wendy Barrie
Wendy Barrie (born Marguerite Wendy Jenkins; 18 April 1912 – 2 February 1978) was a British-American film and television actress.
Early life
Although sometimes stated to have been born in London, other sources, including Barrie herself, ...
continuing opposite Sanders. In the Falcon movies, as in the Leslie Charteris "Saint" novels of the period, the hero is almost always accompanied in his travels by a wisecracking sidekick, portrayed variously by Allen Jenkins (in the first three Falcon films), Don Barclay,
Cliff Edwards
Clifton Avon "Cliff" Edwards (June 14, 1895 – July 17, 1971), nicknamed "Ukulele Ike", was an American pop singer, musician and actor. He enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s, specializing in jazzy renditions of pop sta ...
, Edward Brophy, and Vince Barnett.
The new Falcon films followed the "Saint" pattern so closely that author Charteris sued RKO, charging unfair competition. Charteris told author David Zinman in 1971, "RKO switched to The Falcon, a flagrant carbon copy of their version of The Saint, in my opinion with the single mercenary motive of saving the payments they had to make to me for the film rights." Charteris actually pokes fun at The Falcon in his 1943 novel '' The Saint Steps In'', with a character making a metafictional reference to the Falcon being "a bargain-basement imitation" of The Saint.
George Sanders appeared in the first four Falcon features. When Sanders tired of B leads, he bowed out of the series in ''The Falcon's Brother'' (1942). In the film, Gay Lawrence is killed by assassins, prompting his brother Tom, played by Sanders's actual older brother, Tom Conway, to become the new Falcon. Producer Maurice Geraghty later revealed that RKO executives had recruited Conway simply as a way to induce Sanders to make one more Falcon picture, after which the series would end. "So it was astonishing to them when Tom Conway caught on right away and carried the series on – even outgrossing the pictures George had made." After ''The Falcon's Brother'', Conway starred in nine more Falcon films through 1946.
As with other series of B mystery films, the plot of a Falcon movie generally revolved around a particular locale that the detective was visiting. An oft-used gimmick in the Falcon series was to tack "teaser" epilogues onto the ends of films. In each teaser, a previously unseen woman would approach the Falcon, usually in desperation, and signal the title and locale of his next movie. A teaser rarely had anything to do with the plot of the upcoming film, since that film had not yet been produced.
The Falcon was revived for three more films, all made in 1948, but these featured the earlier "Michael Waring" character as created by Drexel Drake. However, he was referred to as "Watling" and the credits still claimed he was based on a character created by Michael Arlen. Actor-magician John Calvert played "The New Falcon" in three low-budget features produced by Film Classics. The character went on to appear (as Michael Waring) in
radio
Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...
and
television
Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
television series
A television show, TV program (), or simply a TV show, is the general reference to any content produced for viewing on a television set that is broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, and cable, or distributed digitally on streaming plat ...
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive durin ...
's '' Farewell, My Lovely'')
*Starring George Sanders and Tom Conway as the Lawrence brothers; Gay is murdered and Tom Lawrence, his brother, becomes The Falcon
**''
The Falcon's Brother
''The Falcon's Brother'' is a 1942 American crime drama film in which George Sanders, who had been portraying " The Falcon" in a series of films, appears with his real-life brother Tom Conway; with Sanders handing off the series to Conway, who ...