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The Falcon (aka Michael Waring, Gay Stanhope Falcon, Gay Stanhope Lawrence, Tom Lawrence)

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Drexel Drake
Pseudonym of Charles H. Huff
(1887-1959)

Or possibly:

Michael Arlen
Pseudonym of Dikran Kouyoumdjian
(1895-1956)

 THE FALCON was the nom de guerre of a true man of mystery.

He was either MICHAEL WINGATE, a shadowy figure who took on the underworld with the aid of his friend Sarge, avoiding the police because they tended to blame him for their unsolved crimes, created by Drexel Drake (real name Charles H. Huff) in 1936 and originally appearing in a series of novels and at least one short story.

Or he was GAY STANHOPE FALCON, a sort of freelance adventurer and troubleshooter, definitely on the hard-boiled side, created by Michael Arlen (real name Dikran Kouyoumdjian) in a 1940 short story.

Either way, The Falcon was a man who made his living “keeping his mouth shut and engaging in dangerous entreprises,” according to Otto Penzler’s Detectionary. And, like Boston Blackie, despite his murky origins, he enjoyed a long, lucrative and convoluted career in film, radio and television, even as his occupation and his actual name were changed from medium to medium.

THE MOVIES

Regardless of the date of his first literary appearance, The Falcon was first brought to the screen in a 1941 RKO film, as a replacement for its popular series of B-movies featuring Leslie Charteris’ The Saint, which had starred actor George Sanders and been shot in the United States. Except for the name change and the fact that production had moved to the U.K., at first it was pretty hard to tell the difference — which didn’t escape the notice of Charteris. Or his attorneys.

Charteris sued, apparently successfully (presumably for a large chunk of cash), and the movies continued, with Sanders playing The Falcon. Wendy Barrie, who had played the Saint’s girlfriend, even appeared in the first couple of Falcon movies as… the Falcon’s girlfriend.

And so, just like the Saint, The Falcon was a good-looking suave, sophisticated type, a sort of freelance gentleman adventurer operating out of New York City, much to the dismay of the local constabulary. He wasn’t British, though — he was American, but he bore a light British accent — just like the Saint. The first film, 1941’s The Gay Falcon, proved successful enough to warrant a long string of sequels, three with George Sanders in the lead, although he was now called GAY STANHOPE LAWRENCE (as far as I know, none of the films or television or radio episodes ever explains why he’s known as The Falcon) and nine more with Sanders’ real-life brother, Tom Conway, as the Falcon’s brother, TOM LAWRENCE, who took over the nom de guerre.

Over the course of the RKO series, the Falcon gradually became more of your standard private eye. In fact the third Falcon flick, 1942’s The Falcon Takes Over, was the first filmed adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, substituting The Falcon for Philip Marlowe. (And actor Tom Conway went on to play another private eye, Mark Saber, on American television).

Capitalizing on the films’ success, there were two novels written “by” George Sanders, one of which is a Falcon/Saint send-up. One of the books was written by Leigh Brackett and the other by Craig Rice, who had supposedly worked on some of the Falcon films.

RADIO, MORE MOVIES & TELEVISION

The success of the films also led to a radio series (cleverly titled THE FALCON) that premiered on the American Blue Network in April 1943, and aired for the next ten years on various networks. It was here that his transition into a private eye was finalized, with The Falcon, now called MICHAEL WARING working as a hard-boiled insurance investigator, with an office and a secretary, Nancy. Barry Kroeger was the first radio voice of the Falcon, followed by James Meighan, Les Tremayne, George Petrie, and Les Damon. Nearly all the shows were broadcast from New York.

The producers made sure to announce that this Falcon was based on Drexel Drake‘s character, not Arlen‘s, but they weren’t shy about insinuating that their Falcon was also the hero of the RKO films, and I’m sure both the radio shows and the movies benefited from the confusion. There’s also little doubt that most fans didn’t care.

Each show usually started out with a telephone call to The Falcon from a beautiful woman. Answering in his slightly British accent, he would reply to her and another adventure would follow. Waring was snappy and sarcastic with the incompetent police — who were inevitably unable to solve the mysteries without his help. Like the films, the radio plots mixed danger, romance and comedy in equal parts. A total of about 70 shows, representing the length of the run, are available today.

It was this version of the Falcon that was made into another short series of films, three in all, with John Calvert as Waring, produced by Film Classics. And it was this film version of the Falcon that in turn was adapted, in the mid-fifties, for a brief syndicated television series, The Adventures of the Falcon, starring Charles McGraw now as a slightly more hard-boiled, and far less dashing Falcon. But again, his occupation had changed. He was now a “famous undercover agent” who operated “around the world on his hazardous missions,” as the promos put it.

As Richard Meyers points out, in TV Detectives, “the character had come full circle. The Mike Waring (that) the gravel-voiced McGraw played was basically the same rough-hewn adventurer Arlen had presented to his readers in 1940.”

Or, we assume, Drake in 1936.

HUH?

NOVELS

SHORT STORIES

FILMS

   

RADIO

TELEVISION

ALSO OF INTEREST

RELATED LINKS

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Adam Jezard for his help with this page. Also, a big thank you to Jack French for the radio info.

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