THE FALCON IN HOLLYWOOD

US,67 minutes, 1944, Black and white.
Tom Conway, Barbara Hale, Veda Ann Borg, John Abbott.
Directed by Gordon Douglas.

With The Falcon in Hollywood, Tom Conway took possession of the role of the Falcon, previously held by his own brother, George Sanders. They appeared together in The Falcon’s Brother in which the Sanders character is killed, giving his life for a foreign diplomat. Since Tom Conway had appeared as the brother in this film, he was able to step into the shoes of Sanders and make nine Falcon films.

This one is a bit better than the usual, perhaps better written, and also having Gordon Douglas as the director, a director who was to go on to make many standard films but who emerged in the 1960s and 70s with bigger budget thrillers.

There is a murder in the studios in Hollywood during the making of a film. It is interesting to see the Hollywood atmosphere of the times, the guards of the studio being particularly stern in administration of entries, but The Falcon being able to slip in where he wishes. He has been at the races and has encountered a film star who believes in numerology – and whose choice wins the race. While at the races he is met by an East Coast gambler (Sheldon Leonard) as well as his girlfriend (Barbara Hale). When the girlfriend takes the bag of the film star, the star urges the Falcon to recover it for her. He follows her to the studio where the leading man is found murdered.

Quite a lot of suspects are possible, including the film star who resents not being cast in this film, the gangster himself who turns up at the studio, his girlfriend who has a leading part in the film because of the gambler’s investment in it, as well as the costume designer who is associated with the dead actor, the temperamental director of the film who is in love with the costume designer. They are all being rounded up at various times by the local police.

Important to the mood of the film is the taxi driver played by the Veda Ann Borg, a cheery role, plenty of comedy, coming in at the wrong times, driving at high speed, but nevertheless helping the Falcon with his work. She is the kind of sidekick who appeared, always men, in the Saint films as well as the Falcon films.

There is also the film director who is anxious about his film being held up. When all seems to be settled, the leading lady fires a gun and the director is shot.

The main point of the conspiracy to murder is similar to that which Mel Brooks took up in The Produces, sabotaging a production so that it would get go bankrupt and the producer would not have to pay the investors. This means that the Shakespeare-quoting producer is the villain despite his protests about the delays to his film.

This was the kind of interesting crime drama which made for solid supporting features in the 1940s.