A Date With The Falcon

Marry In Haste

A Date With The Falcon
USA 1942
Directed by Irving Reis
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

Warner: Some spoilers lurk within.

Released just three months after The Gay Falcon (reviewed here), which was the first film in this 13 movie series, A Date With The Falcon once again stars George Sanders as Gay Lawrence, Allen Jenkins as his sidekick Goldy and, contrary to what the muddleheaded IMDB has to say about the matter in their trivia section, Wendy Barrie is back as his fiancé Helen Reed. And this time, The Falcon and Helen are getting ever closer to tying the knot, if only Gay can make his rendezvous on time and take the agreed plane to cart them off to their wedding. But, of course, instead of catching the plane they are trying for... and much to Helen’s mounting ire during the course of the movie... the three become embroiled in another criminal adventure.

This is the first of many not based on the original short story by Michael Arlen (as the first film) but just using his character. However, in spite of the Hollywood tendency to spin their own yarn to suit the screen and mess things up, this one proves that the studio certainly knew their job here as it’s a much more pacier and fun film than the previous installment.

The plot involves an inventor, Waldo Sampson (played by Alec Craig), who can copy and manufacture diamonds which have exactly the same properties as real ones from which they cannot be told apart. The problem where he’s concerned, it turns out, is that he’s a ‘kindly inventor’ and has developed the formula to manufacture these as a cheap option for their use in industrial equipment like drill heads. Of course, this is not why criminals want both the formula and the man behind them and it isn’t long before Waldo is found dead... or is he? What most people don’t realise is that it’s only his twin brother who has been iced by ‘the bad guys’ and that the real Waldo has been kidnapped so the formula can be extracted from him and sold for a profit. Enter The Falcon, who finds himself accidentally involved in the case, despite trying to refuse Inspector Mike O’Hara, played by James Gleason. Something that both Helen and Goldy are a mite displeased about.

This one has quite a nice few touches that set it apart from a lot of the stuff going on in films I’ve seen from that period. Not that they’re necessarily unique, of course... just that I haven’t seen nearly enough films from this period, obviously...

One thing the story does, for instance, is have the criminals try to take out The Falcon, first by shooting at him and, when that fails, by kidnapping him as a deterrent in case he should decide to get involved. So, yeah, a kind of pro-active strategy because The Falcon’s former reputation precedes him and they want to take no chances. Thus they inevitably bring about their own future doom by involving him peripherally in the plot against his will. This is something, actually, that a lot of criminal gangs in the Doc Savage novels of the 1930s and 1940s used to try regularly, because Doc’s larger than life personality was such that if he ever got involved in their plot, their chances of carrying it out successfully would be pretty slim. So, yeah, it’s an old storytelling ruse for sure but I don’t remember it coming up too many times in the movies. It somehow feels a bit too convenient to me here, though.

The film rolls along at a breakneck pace too. The Falcon manages to get his kidnappers’ car pulled up by insulting the police in a neighbouring squad car and using their fury at him to arrest him and bring him safely out of the grasp of his captors. Once again, George Sanders shows a flair for a good comic turn and, in a later scene where he’s not concentrating on what he’s doing, perfectly times, along with Wendy Barrie, a moment where he manages to pour champagne on a table instead of in her glass without either of them noticing. This is shortly before the villains have him in their clutches once again.

As usual, his fiance gets him in even more trouble trying to get him out of it. For example, when he gets into a hotel room and finds the dead body purported to be that of the inventor, he clambers out onto the ledge outside a fifth floor hotel room to evade capture by the police when they arrive, only to have his waiting fiance on the street below make a scene and call attention to him, allowing the police to discover him. Which is a neat little thing right there... normally those ledge walk scenes in thrillers always work.

And, like the previous film, both Goldy and Helene both find themselves running afoul of the police in different situations and both end up under arrest while the police attempt to round up their number one suspect, The Falcon. Of course, all goes well at the end and, like the previous movie, everything comes out in the wash when all the guilty and innocent parties converge in the police station. This one doesn’t end up with a ‘new case’ dropping The Falcon’s way as the last film did and, that wasn’t picked up in this one anyway. Instead, we have a scene where Gay, Helen and Goldy are in a plane and on their way to their wedding destination. Whether the next film picks up from that I can’t remember (it’s been a few decades since I last watched these) but I’ll find out soon enough courtesy of Warner Archives’ two volume collection of the films in the series.

A Date With The Falcon has less stunning shot set ups in it compared to the prior movie but makes up for it with a wittier script, a lively and continually twisty plot and, of course, a nice ensemble of actors who have good chemistry together. Definitely a good time if you like 1940s mystery thrillers and I look forward to the next ones. It’s just a shame that George Sanders... oh no, wait, I’ll get to that in a couple of Falcon movie reviews’ time.