Tonight's Wild Wednesday presentation is the first in the series of Falcon movies that came out in the 1940s! The sometimes droll but suave George Sanders has the lead role. Prior to this, George Sanders was in five movies as Simon Templar or "The Saint."
The title is "The Gay Falcon."
In 1941, many words had different interpretations than today!!
Why is The Falcon gay? It's very simple, that's his first name!
The Falcon is trying to go legit, so he's on his first day at his new job as a stock broker!
When his fiancé pops in to see how he's doing, she finds him peering out the window!
He's not real busy, so he's peeping on some gal in the other building!
The Falcon's fiancé Elinor is portrayed by Nina Vale. Nina was only ever in three movies, this one, "Cornered," and "Mysterious Intruder." Kind of mysterious herself, there's hardly any information to be found on her except that she was born in Massachusetts as Anne Hunter. I couldn't even find a birth or death date.
I finally did find this newspaper clipping at Newspapers.com
from the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle" Jan. 20, 1946 edition.
Gay Laurence likes to drink spinach juice!
The Falcon's best pal and associate Goldie Locke doesn't appreciate spinach juice as much as The Falcon does!
Allen Jenkins has 158 credits to his name and besides Goldie, most of them had colourful names like:
Lefty, Chimp, Spudsy, Carbarn, Kewpie, Slats, Fishcake, Crusty, Dodo, Pinky, Skeets, and Droopy, just to name a few!
There are lots of female roles in this film that include Gladys (The Black Cat) Cooper on the left, and Wendy (The Hound Of The Baskervilles) Barrie on the right!
The Falcon has quite an eye for the ladies!
The truly great Hans Conried has a very small, but funny part as Herman, the Police sketch artist!
Somehow from the description given, the drawing comes out looking like Mike, the Chief Inspector, who is not happy about it at all! The Irish born Arthur (Daughter Of Dr. Jekyll) Shields has the role of Mike!
"The Gay Falcon" is based on a murder mystery that was written by Michael Arlen!
It was a short story that first appeared in "Town and Country" magazine in 1940.
It was a short story that first appeared in "Town and Country" magazine in 1940.
Bulgarian born as Dikran Kouyoumdjian, Michael moved to England at six years of age, became a writer, and on becoming an English citizen changed his name to Michael Arlen. He looks like a character right out of one of his own books.
In 1924, Michael wrote his best-selling book, titled "The Green Hat,"set amidst the glamour and intrigue of a post-war 1920's London.
Michael Arlen became such a popular writer that he was on the cover of Time magazine in 1927.
Michael wrote all kinds of books and stories, but nothing ever attained the popularity of "The Green Hat." After World War II, Michael moved to New York, whereupon he suffered writer's block for the last ten years of his life.
Turhan (The Mummy's Tomb) Bey makes any movie interesting! He would follow up this role with an appearance in "The Falcon Takes Over."
It's a real shame that they don't interrogate people like this any more!
"The Gay Falcon" is a winner just like the players on these pre-flipper pinball machines were before the ban on pinball machines for being public nuisances and menaces to society was put into effect!
George Sanders was "The Falcon" in three more movies. The fourth was titled "The Falcon's Brother" and had Tom Conway (George Sanders's real life brother) as Gay's brother. Gay gets killed in that film, but the show must go on, and Tom Conway goes on to make nine more movies as "The Falcon!"
No comments:
Post a Comment