The Falcon's Adventure

 

Final Flight

The Falcon's Adventure
USA 1946
Directed by William Berke
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

The Falcon’s Adventure was the character’s swan song from the famous series, in as much as it’s the last of these particular movies based on the adventures of The Falcon, although certain websites might say otherwise and, if any of them do, I’ll point out why they’re wrong at the tail end of this review.

So, the thirteenth story in the series sees Tom Conway return as the titular character, alias Tom Lawrence. This was Conway’s tenth Falcon movie, after taking over halfway through the fourth film in the series, when his fictional brother Gay Lawrence, played by Conway’s real life brother George Sanders, was killed. So Tom became much more familiar in the public eye as the face of The Falcon, for sure.

This one is a plot involving an attempted kidnap of a woman, Louisa Braganza (played by Madge Meredith, more on her later) as just one of many attempts to wrestle free the secret formula invented by her uncle to manufacture industrial diamonds. As he and Goldie try to help her, The Falcon and his faithful sidekick are hindered and chased by the police, for both the murder of her uncle and also the murder of her uncle’s genuine customer for the formula. It’s up to them to stay two steps ahead of the law, protect Louisa and bring the criminals to justice. All in a couple of days work for The Falcon, of course.

It’s the usual romp full of wit, charm, mystery solving and action and, frankly, as entertaining as the best of them. The actors are all pretty good and this time around we have an actor returning too. I mentioned in my review of the previous movie in the series, The Falcon’s Alibi (reviewed here), that the faithful Goldie Locke character had been replaced once again by yet another actor, this time one without much personality for the role. Well, I guess the producers must have been of the same mind because Edward Brophy (aka Timothy Mouse in Dumbo), who had once played Goldie in The Falcon In San Francisco (reviewed here) returns to the role here and he certainly brings a lot more over the top and much needed humour back to the role.

There are a couple of other ‘items of interest’ in this one too. A little way into the Falcon’s misadventure, he has to come to the aid of a second damsel in distress on a long train journey. Turns out it was a ploy to wrestle the diamond formula away from The Falcon but, luckily, he had planned for just such an attempt and he sleeps through the trap... helped along by gas pumped through his sleeping carriage’s door... safe in the knowledge that he’s already substituted the envelope containing the formula with a fake, while the real one is in the safe hands of the conductor. I, on the other hand, was completely taken in by this attempt so, yeah, that was a nice surprise.

The other thing that’s interesting about this movie is a couple of the director’s segues in and out of a scene. The film opens with an establishing shot which the camera then pulls back from so that we can see that it’s merely a photograph being held up (kinda unnaturally but it makes the shot work) by Goldie as he and the Falcon pack their bags for yet another vacation they are destined not to take. It’s a nice piece of film syntax shenanigans and it’s kinda repeated in reverse later when The Falcon is handed a business card with a photograph of the alligator farm in Miami that the two intend to visit. The camera moves in on the photo and before we know it, it’s the establishing shot for the next scene... which is again pretty cool and a nice, visually sophisticated way of doing things.

Now I said I’d get to actress Madge Meredith so here it is. Shortly after the release of this and her next movie, Meredith was wrongfully convicted and jailed for four years in her involvement in a kidnapping case involving her agent. It was later overturned and her imprisonment cited as a mockery of the legal system, the rest of her short career playing out as supporting roles in television shows. So, maybe she would have gone far without the false conviction and may be not... we’ll never know.

And finally, this 13th film was indeed The Falcon’s last adventure, despite what you might read about there being 16 films in the series. Or at least, the last adventure for the character of Tom Lawrence. The rights to the name The Falcon were sold to another film company who made three more Falcon movies but, although on their credits they still cite Michael Arlen, the writer of the short story on which this character was based, those three films and also the subsequent 1950s TV show, The Adventures Of The Falcon, are all featuring an entirely different character, Michael Waring, based on the writings of a guy called Drexel Drake. Despite the Arlen erroneous credit, there really is no relationship between those films, the TV show... and the run of 13 Falcon films that RKO produced in the 1940s.

So in conclusion to both this review and my series of reviews of these films, I will say that The Falcon’s Adventure is yet another cracking, light hearted mystery romp which is to be recommended by lovers of the genre and that the film series did indeed, as was intended, give The Saint films (which you can also find reviewed on this blog), a run for their money. All thirteen of these films can be purchased on two muti disc DVD sets from Warner Archives in the US. Definitely worth checking out if you are in the mood for some light and frothy entertainment of an evening.

The Falcon In Hollywood

Nitrate Death Rate

The Falcon In Hollywood
USA 1944
Directed by Gordon Douglas
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

Well here we have another interesting diversion in the successful Falcon series for RKO pictures. The Falcon In Hollywood is directed by none other than Gordon Douglas, one of those interesting American directors whose name comes up often associated with some quality films such as the second of the Flint movies, the Tony Rome movies, westerns such as the brilliant Rio Conchos (reviewed by me here) and not forgetting the classic giant ant movie THEM!

This one must have been fairly cheap to produce for RKO since, apart from the opening sequence set at the races and a brief interlude set in a deserted sports stadium, the whole of the film is pretty much set on the RKO back lot and, apparently, it still looks pretty much the same now as it did then. In the opening scene of the movie, we are introduced to a new Detective Inspector played by Emory Parnell and his sidekick played by Frank Jenks. I guess neither of these characters were considered strong enough to return to the franchise in a regular fashion as their predecessors had but, Parnell does reappear in another Falcon movie later as another character. They’re on the trail of an ex-con who The Falcon testified against, played by Sheldon Leonard (the ‘giving out wings’ guy from It’s A Wonderful Life) and they look up The Falcon, aka Tom Lawrence (once again played by Tom Conway) to see if he knows where he is.

Following on from a mix up with a couple of women and a bag, The Falcon finds himself travelling to the film studios with an over eager taxi cab driver, reflecting the wartime spirit of ‘jobs for gals’ by being a lady. She also becomes The Falcon’s ‘assistant’ for the movie and is played, quite brilliantly, by the remarkable Veda Ann Borg (I need to find some more of this lady’s movies but, apparently, I’ve already seen her at some point as she starred as Margot Lane in one of the serials about The Shadow). Borg and Conway make quite a team in this and it’s a shame her character didn’t become a regular role in the series after this.

So, anyway, The Falcon discovers a freshly murdered corpse on a set but, when he tries to show it to the studio security, the corpse has disappeared. He finds it again later and shows it to the police but, by then, a valuable ring which was already on the corpse the first time around has gone. So The Falcon becomes embroiled in the case and it’s the usual affair with almost every character in the film having a motive for the murder and then either dying or being put out of the picture before their guilt is proved. It also includes the now clichéd and, sadly, real life set up where someone is shot by an innocent actor because the blanks in her gun have been switched for live ammo.

The film doesn’t suffer from the usual studio conceit of having The Falcon assailed by various ‘real actors and actresses’ cameos to help promote themselves (and I’m sure I would have loved it even more if it had). Instead, it sticks to telling its mystery story with no real references although, in a couple of sequences, a black cat is highlighted (again, making me think of Conway’s role in Cat People and one of its sequels, The Seventh Victim).

And there’s not much more to be said about this one other than, there’s a really nice moment where we are told the characters are off to the ‘miniatures department’. We are then cut to a fairly typical establishing shot of a car parked outside a building but, then, a big hand comes into the frame and picks up the car, clueing us in that this is indeed the department in question. It’s a nice shot and even though I knew they were going to do it, it was literally only a second before it happened that I twigged it, which is nice.

So another short review but these really are fairly short and somewhat formulaic movies so there’s not always a great deal to say about each one. This is only the second of The Falcon movies that doesn’t have a cliffhanger lead in to an untold Falcon adventure and, I’m guessing this is something which would be the new normal for the series (I guess I’ll find out soon). The Falcon In Hollywood is certainly a fun and fast paced mystery adventure and, looking at the ‘more than healthy’ box office receipts, one of the more successful of the franchise. So, lots to recommend it.

The Falcon And The Co-Eds

Educating Danger

The Falcon
And The Co-Eds
USA 1943
Directed by William Clemens
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

And so onto the next in the popular series of films based on The Falcon character of the 1940s, The Falcon And The Co-Eds. This one has a kind of different atmosphere to the preceding films but then, the series does seem to keep reinventing itself in both big and small ways as it progresses. For instance, Tom Lawrence has no real assistants in the mystery solving department in this one and not much in the way of romantic interest either (not a single fiancé in sight and I think the young ladies in the film, who are college students at Bluecliff Seminary, are supposed to be slightly underage for anything intimate for the most part but, again for the most part, I would say the actresses playing them are not).

Now, I had no idea what a co-ed is because we don’t have the term in England but, apparently it’s some sort of slang for a woman studying at a mixed boys/girls school or, as in this case, college. I’ve also still no idea why the term is applied in this title because, well... it’s an all female school (apart from one of the teachers... two if you count the first murder victim, who is dead before the story even starts) and so the term seems to be complete nonsense if you ask me. Still, it may mean something more to an American audience perhaps but... I’m not getting any help from the definitions found on the internet, it has to be said.

Okay, so Tom Lawrence, alias The Falcon (played once again by Tom Conway), is called in by the student daughter of a friend when it’s common knowledge, due to the psychic prophecies of one of the girls, Marguerita (played by Rita Corday), that one of the teachers has been murdered rather than, as one of the resident doctors who teaches psychology there has signed on the death certificate, suicide. In fact, Lawrence is pretty much compelled to be there, actually, when the gal steals his car to get him to the seminary to retrieve it. The so called suicide is hushed up because the head mistress doesn’t want to bring any hint of scandal to the college but, it’s not all that far into the proceedings before she herself is run through and killed with a fencing sword by a person unknown.

So The Falcon, posing as an insurance investigator, is roaming the campus trying to solve the mystery and, somehow, the police end up on the grounds pretty soon too. Actually, the two police who are the regular guys, Cliff Clark as Inspector Donovan and Edward Gargan as his sidekick Detective Bates, are pretty important here to help remind audiences that they are watching a Falcon film, in some ways because, as I said, this isn’t the usual milieu inhabited by the central character. I’m happy to say that the running joke dialogue between Donovan and Bates has been reinstated for this movie, after a curious absence from their regular repartee in the previous film.

Of course, there’s no question that The Falcon will eventually find the real culprit behind the murders but he comes to it pretty late and, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised that the solution this time around wasn’t at all easy to work out. I only had my suspicions about the same time Lawrence figures it out near the end. I think part of the reason for this is that it's put together just like one of those typical Italian gialli films in terms of the amount of characters who could have done the deeds. There’s an abundance of suspects and, like a giallo, one of the prime ones is suddenly bumped off half way through the film, eliminating her from the long list of possible suspects.

It’s fast paced enough with some humorous dialogue and even some natty song and dance numbers thrown in. For some reason, because of the fact that some cliffs factor in to the story at some point, the director chooses to not only have the dreary credits sequence filled with a picture of the rolling waves of the nearby sea but also seems to use it at least four times throughout the film as some kind of transition shot... although it establishes really nothing in terms of connecting the scenes in any useful manner, it has to be said. Also, though it’s quite clear that much of the film is shot on location, including many of the cliff scenes, there are also some quite ham fisted examples of visual effects which do tend to get in the way of total immersion into the movie. Such as a few shots of Conway and some other actors walking along the cliff with it clearly being a back projection and the cast walking on a treadmill. Or some worse shots where two of the characters are clearly superimposed quite badly when standing on a cliff’s edge.

It’s also very much of its time too... as shown by a scene where The Falcon picks up one of the college girls (the actress was 20 at the time) and giving her ‘a good spanking’. Which is something that many young audiences watching these days would make a fuss about but, honestly, even in the 1970s when I first saw this film, it wasn’t really anything anybody would bat and eyelid at. So, yes, this film probably wouldn’t win any awards with the fashionably woke brigade but, The Falcon And The Co-Eds is still an enjoyable romp and, just a little bit different from the atmosphere of the preceding stories, as I said earlier. As usual, the film ends with the title character being cliff hangered onto another case and, I believe for once the dangling plot line left here as a punchline might actually get picked up in the next film in the series. So I’ll report back on that one when I revisit it again.

The Falcon Strikes Back

She Done Him Bond

The Falcon Strikes Back
USA 1943
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
RKO/Warner Archive
DVD Region 1

Warning: Some big spoilers.

It was all change over at RKO for The Falcon series with The Falcon Strikes Back, which was managing to not only keep going but flourish after George Sanders had left the franchise. If you’ll remember, Sanders had relinquished the role in the previous film, The Falcon’s Brother (reviewed here) when his real life brother, Tom Conway, came to help out as The Falcon’s brother, Tom Lawrence. The Falcon was shot dead in an act of heroic self sacrifice in the final minutes of that last movie and his brother became the new Falcon.

Interestingly, two of the actors who were in the last film, including The Falcon’s regular sidekick from the previous movies, were not retained for the next adventure. However, in a bizarre choice, the studio decided that the characters themselves would keep going with different actors. Personally, since The Falcon is not the same character as his dead brother, they could have changed the characters too but... well, anyway, long standing sidekick character Goldie is now played by Cliff Edwards and the oriental houseboy, played by the famous Keye Luke in The Falcon’s Brother, is now played by Richard Loo.

To give the series some kind of continuity from the last one, in Conway’s first solo Falcon movie, we have Jane Randolph reprising her role as Marcia Brooks, the reporter from the previous film. We also have Inspector Donovan played once again played by Cliff Clark in his second Falcon movie (contrary to what the IMDB might tell you... they really need some fact checkers there) and Edward Gargan playing the Inspector’s sidekick, the fifth time so far in the series that he has played the ‘dumb detective’ role.

Although the Nazi lead in from the ending of the previous film is totally ignored... it seems to be a thing now where a new adventure is teased at the end and then completely ignored in the next movie (including the ending of this one)... it still has a plot lightly dealing with the subject of the Second World War, which was now playing out in the US as an ever present worry. This time around The Falcon is knocked unconscious and framed for the theft of a huge sum of War Bonds (just what he would do with them is not made clear). He escapes police custody and, with the aid of Goldie, his houseboy and the reporter, gets caught up in two completely different mysteries which converge at a hotel resort, a mystery involving both a ‘war bonds’ swindler named The Duchess and a murderer who is, actually, killing off the criminals with a gun rigged with a silencer (or suppressor if you like... I understand that these weren’t that good or useable at the time, or for many decades for that matter, if they ever were but, as usual, they work perfectly well in the movies).

It’s a pleasant romp of a mystery ticking all the right boxes and, like his brother, The Falcon only has to kiss an objecting woman for her to do an about face, swoon and then help him as much as she possibly can (ahh... those were the days). Now, I have to say that, back in the 1940s, it probably wasn’t a huge surprise as to who the murderer was in this film but I didn’t see it coming until about ten minutes before the reveal on this one. The reason is very simple... I’m not used to seeing the comedian Edgar Kennedy in diverse roles...

Edgar Kennedy was a comic whose theatrical comedy shorts I used to watch on TV in repeats during the 1970s as a kid. I was also used to him from numerous appearances in Laurel And Hardy shorts and, later on, when I saw him opposite The Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. However, I think in the 1940s, audiences would have been more used to him indulging in straighter, more sinister roles than I’ve ever seen him in and so, they would have had the advantage over me I think. So it came as a surprise, somewhat, when I figured out he was pretty much the only other person the killer could be by the end of the movie. He even falls to his death from a rooftop, being chased by The Falcon at the end.

There are a couple of other things in this movie which I think are worthy of note. One is that, at the start of the film, the sound of accompanying imagery such as speeding trains, ships, a pneumatic drill and a large hammer on a building site, are used as a visual metaphor to explain the state of The Falcon’s hangover as he is trying to sleep it off, in his introductory scene at the start of the picture. Which is a nice touch.

The other thing is when Edgar Kennedy, who is a puppeteer (using the credited ‘Velma Dawson Puppets’), brings in a puppet of Goofy and does an impersonation of him. The first thing I thought of when I saw this was... copyright and legal suit coming the way of RKO studios, surely? However, further research shows that Walt Disney was indeed still releasing films through RKO at the time, so I can only assume that this was above board (or RKO would have been in a lot of trouble, I guess).

And that’s that. The series was continuing to be popular and Conway would go on to portray The Falcon (or rather his brother) for another eight movies after The Falcon Strikes Back... all of which I hope to review for this blog soonest.

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.

The Gay Falcon

Lawrence
Flight n’ Gal

The Gay Falcon
USA 1941
Directed by Irving Reis
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

George Sanders made five movies in 1941 alone, which was pretty much par for the course in Hollywood of old. The first one he shot that year was his final appearance as Simon Templar in The Saint In Palm Springs (reviewed here). The series continued without him but Sanders’ final 1941 movie was the first of what was a 13 film series based on a Michael Arlen character called The Falcon... who was very much like The Saint, although he was more like a private detective. Indeed, the creator of The Saint, Leslie Charteris, who wasn’t best mates with RKO, tried to sue the studio as he saw the character as a cheap imitation of him (the results of the dispute have never been made public, as far as I can see). Hugh Sinclair carried on in the role of Templar in the series of movies based on The Saint character.

Now, it’s often said that The Falcon film series was 16 films long but that’s actually not true. The last three movies are based on another writer’s novels of a character also called The Falcon, although, for some reason, the series was still credited up as being Arlen’s character, even though it’s clearly not the same person. This would explain why the two Warner Archive DVD collections only cover the first 13 films. That being said, Sanders only played The Falcon in the first three and, in an interesting move... oh no... I’ll get to that interesting swerve in the series when I get to the third movie.

Anyway, Sanders was now heading up The Falcon series and, in a move to give audiences a more ‘saintly experience’, they also cast Wendy Barrie as his long suffering fiancé who is trying to get him to give up crime solving and other women. Barrie had already starred opposite Sanders in three separate Simon Templar movies, although she played different characters in each. The Falcon also has a side kick in these films, much like The Saint would often have a ‘stooge’ helping him out. In this film it’s Allen Jenkins playing ex-thief Jonathan G. 'Goldie' Locke. And another element which is interchangeable with The Saint films was the common practice of having a police inspector who gets things wrong and eventually accepting the lead character’s help to solve the crime... in this film it’s Arthur Shields as Inspector Mike Waldeck.

In the books, the lead character is actually called Gay Falcon but, in the first film here, he’s Gay Laurence (which changed to Gay Lawrence for the next two) and The Falcon is more of an alias (again, as in The Saint films). So yeah, if you watch The Gay Falcon it is pretty much like watching another Saint sequel, to be honest, although the screenplay on this one doesn’t quite have the same, well, written sparkling wit of Sanders’ former role.

That being said, it’s an entertaining enough watch although it’s a little light on action. I can’t remember if the series gets more action oriented as it goes on because, the last time I watched these would have been in the early 1980s on BBC2 at 5.40pm or 6.20pm on weekday evenings, when the re-runs of the Charlie Chan and The Saint films had run their course. However, light on action doesn’t mean it’s light on murders (there are three of them) and there’s lots of running around as both The Falcon and Goldie are both under suspicion from the police at various points in the movie.

Sanders pays it cool and his new female assistant (Nina Vale, for this one movie only) helps him get by the police while at the same time bringing down the wrath of his fiance, who inadvertently gets him into more trouble as the story goes on. Although I suspected the real villain of the movie, who is revealed in a twist near the end of the picture, I didn’t really see it coming until I’d remembered at the end of the picture, just before the reveal, that I’d considered this a possibility at the start of the movie... so that’s kind of good. The camera work is quite good too, with people being framed in the 4:3 ratio as and when they are needed in the shot and almost making up ‘too perfect’ photographic compositions on cue. There’s a lovely sequence, for example, where Sanders and Vale have broken into a hotel room and are waiting on the ledge outside the windows for the returning owner of the apartment to leave again. When that happens, Sanders re-enters the room but we stay outside as Sanders is perfectly framed in a middle slice of the screen with square petitioned window frames creating the space for the action on either side. There’s some quite nice stuff in the movie, for sure.

Paul Sawtell provides some appropriate but not too striking music here and the pace, even without much action, is fairly fast and, like I said, it’s an okay entry into the series which would run for quite a few installments. Each story ends with a kind of cliffhanger preview which may or may not dovetail into the next film in the series. I don’t believe the throwaway end scene of a lady in distress is picked up in the next one but I’ll let you know soon enough. I’ll be working my way through these pictures, revisiting them now after many decades and I’ll bring the reviews to the blog as I work my way through them. I loved these as a teenager and I’m sure I’ll be spellbound by them now. So I’ll make A Date With The Falcon again sometime soon.

The Saint Strikes Back

Saint George

The Saint Strikes Back
USA 1939
Directed by John Farrow
Warner Archives Edition Region 1

Well I’m happy to say that this second movie of Leslie Charteris’ popular character The Saint, the first of five from the original series in which George Sanders took over the role of Simon Templar from Louis Hayward, was not nearly as hard to watch as I was expecting it to be, bearing in mind the following two factors:

1. I love Louis Hayward’s interpretation of the role in the first of his two films playing the character, The Saint In New York (reviewed here) and believe this is really the one where the character was nailed and played just like the character in the books. They really got it right.

2. I really don’t empathise with George Sanders too much. He wrecked the romance between The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, leaving Mrs. Muir the only option of finding true love after her own death and he was rather indifferent to the fate of Quiller in the movie adaptation of The Quiller Memorandum (aka The Berlin Memorandum) too. Yes, I know I’m totally responding to his on-screen image but until I see evidence to the contrary, this is the way I’ll always continue to see him. This reaction to him is, of course, evidence that he was probably a great actor.

Now I don’t know why Louis Hayward didn’t continue to play The Saint in subsequent films in the series until another single stab at the role in the fifties, but Sanders really isn’t too much of a disaster in the role. Certainly, from what I remember of the novels, his interpretation of the role is a valid one, and the film is done fairly faithfully, from what little I can recall, to the spirit of the story on which it was based (She Was A Lady aka The Saint Meets His Match by Leslie Charteris). However, although the character continues to have all those wonderful one liners, I find Sanders’ delivery of his lines just way too slow and, well, almost lazy. I keep wanting him to spit out what are, in all honesty, supposed to be quick-fire, screwball comedy style one-liners, like the way I read them in the books (yeah, I know, don’t go there... not getting into that argument with you). George is just a little too laid back for my liking... I can’t imagine this guy doing anything fast. However, the plus side to this is, of course, that this characterisation of Templar now seems a lot more confident... if some guys are pointing guns at your chest and you can’t be bothered to do anything that quickly, you must be a confident so-and-so, right?

George Sanders whistles a tune in this film for the first time, which is also worked into Roy (Cat People) Webb’s score for the movie. This is used in some of the subsequent films and scores in the series as a signature tune for The Saint and was even re-used for the character as late as the opening prelude jingle to the start of the theme tune in the 1978 Ian Ogilvy version of the TV show, Return Of The Saint. There seems to be much dispute as to who actually wrote this theme tune, with many saying it was Webb and Leslie Charteris, the author of the novels on which these are based, saying he composed it for George Sanders to whistle on set. Either could be true... I don’t know if Webb would have been involved with providing source music before the film was in the can or not but he certainly used it in the score and Sander’s whistle “could” have been added in post-production or even in pick up shots. I guess it’s something we’ll never know the truth of but it’s an iconic jingle which will live forever in fans of the character.

The film keeps up links to the previous film in the series by a few references and the addition of a recurring actor/character... which is probably a good idea if you’re going to suddenly change the lead actor on everyone, I guess. Of course, there’s a much clever way of changing your lead actor as seen in The Saint copycat movie series toplining, The Falcon... but I’ll get to that on this blog sometime later this year or early next year. Got ‘em lined up in a pile to watch after I’m done with the majority of The Saint series (want to watch them all in chronological order which means The Falcon series starts before the first Hugh Sinclair movie in The Saint series, I think). Anyway, where was I? Recurring character... to this end, Jonathan Hale returns as Inspector Fernack, the US equivalent of Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard (in the books set in England) from the first movie. It would, however, be true to say that the character has changed somewhat. It’s a subtle shift but where the character was a very helping hand to Templar in the first film, and very much a character in his own right, here he has been reduced to the role of bumbling comedy sidekick, very much fulfilling the same function that the excellent Nigel Bruce portrayal of Dr. Watson used to fill in the Basil Rathbone series of Sherlock Holmes movies. So Hale is great to watch but the comic vignettes with Sander’s Saint pranking him are something I could have done without... I prefered the more dangerous and infinitely more intelligent version of Hales characterisation of Fernack that he used opposite Louis Hayward a heck of a lot more.

Still, it’s really not a bad movie and there are some great little “spot the actor” moments in this one. A young Tristram Coffin (yeah, that’s right, King Of The Rocket Men) can be glimpsed right at the start and a less minimal role is filled by a young Neil Hamilton, who readers may remember best as Comissioner Gordon opposite Adam West’s Batman. There’s also Willie Best, playing Simon’s butler, who used to turn up in films in the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto series', on hand too. But the big find in this one is an early, sizeable, happy-go-lucky sidekick role for a young (he was never young) actor called Barry Fitzgerald, here playing a thief named Zipper Dyson. I’ll never forget Fitzgerald’s performance opposite John Wayne in The Quiet Man and he’s an absolute pleasure to watch here, too.

Definitely a nice little movie, this one, and I’m sure I’ll warm to Sander’s portrayal as the series continues (and to his role as The Falcon in the first four movies in that film series). Looking forward to them a lot. Give this one a go if you’ve not seen it before but I’d definitely start off with The Saint In New York, which this is technically a sequel to, before seeing this one.