The Lone Wolf (Michael Lanyard)

Created by Louis Joseph Vance
(1879-1933)

Louis Joseph Vance‘s MICHAEL LANYARD, better known as THE LONE WOLF, didn’t start out as a private eye, but as a criminal.

However, like Jack Boyle’s Boston Blackie, thanks to his numerous reboots, reincarnations and re-imaginings in radio, film and television, The Lone Wolf is now remembered by many, if at all, chiefly as a sort of gentleman thief turned private eye.

First introduced in the 1914 novel The Lone Wolf: A Melodrama by Louis Joseph Vance, Lanyard was an English-born orphan of unknown parentage who endured a horrid Dickensian childhood after arriving at Troyons, a Parisian restaurant, where he was “raised” by the cruel and disreputable “Madame,” and trained in the criminal arts by the mysterious Irishman, Bourke who had a “heart as big as all outdoors,” and took the young boy under his wing. Somehow, Michael survived until adulthood, and became a charming sort of rogue, a European jewel thief who worked alone (hence the nickname), despite a soft spot for damsels in distress and a yearning for travel.

It’s a sudsy read—they weren’t kidding about the melodrama—but there’s also plenty of pulpy action: narrow escapes, car chases, rooftop flights, and even an airplane chase. Not bad for 1914.

The character proved to be popular, right from the start, and appeared in several more novels over the next two decades, and was said to be the inspiration for Leslie Chartis’ The Saint.

His first appearance in film was in the 1917 silent film The Lone Wolf, only three years after the first novel appeared, and he remained a criminal right into the talkies. By 1939’s The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt, he was supposedly “reformed,” a former gentleman thief turned amateur sleuth on the side of the good guys, although law enforcement for the most part remain wary. In The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady (1940), he acquired a valet, Jamison, whose chief job, it seemed, was to provide comic relief, and to become hopelessly entangled in the plots.

The films are enjoyable enough, and while there are no real must-sees among them. there’s are a few nice surprises in store for old movie buffs, with “Hey! Is that…?” appearances in them by Ida Lupino, Lloyd Bridges, Rita Hayworth and Elisha Cook, Jr, scripts by Dalton Trumbo, Stuart Palmer and Jonathan Latimer, and even a few of that were directed by Edward Dmytryk.

In 1948, after appearing in close to two dozen films, The Lone Wolf moved on to radio, and began a new career, with the cultured European jewel thief now an American private eye, even if the cops still didn’t trust him. The radio series proved successful enough to eventually spawn a 1954 television series. The TV show had a rather schizophrenic hero, with actor Louis Hayward playing the character as a retired French gentleman by day, and the shadowy, wall-crawling Lone Wolf by night.

The Lone Wolf eventually did go gently into that good night, until he was unexpectedly resurrected in comic book form in 2002 by Moonstone, along with—yes–Boston Blackie. Seems you can’t keep a good character down… but they’re sure trying. I mean, in the latest incarnation, The Lone Wolf was a young busty babe in skin-tight leather.

Say WTF?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Louis Joseph Vance was born in Washington, D. C. in 1879, and was educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. Around the turn of the century, he began writing short stories and verse, and already had several novels under his belt when The Lone Wolf: A Melodrama was published in 1914. By then, he’d already moved to Hollywood, intent on becoming a screenwriter and to capitalize on his novels, and by 1915 had founded Fiction Pictures, Inc., a motion picture production company whose films were distributed by Paramount Pictures, and eventually sold to Famous Player. The Lone Wolf, was featured in seven more novel and at least a couple of dozen films, and radio and television series. Vance fell asleep while smoking a cigarette ind his New York City apartment in 1933, and died in the resulting fire in 1933. His widow received an estate of less than $10,000.

COLLECTORS’ CORNER

Sorry, boys, I don’t know where you can find the nifty pendant featured in the old TV show. Maybe eBay? Gary Stark, a visitor to this site, had one given to him as a kid, so we know they’re out there. Somewhere…

UNDER OATH

“Vance was a bestselling novelist as well as a pulpster giving the Lanyard stories a polish often missing from his contemporaries.”
— David Vineyard

NOVELS

The Lone Wolf: A Melodrama (1914) | Read this book for free
Apparently also in the March 1914 issue of Munsey’s Magazine.
The False Faces (1918) | Read this book for free
Alias The Lone Wolf (1921) | Read this book for free
Red Masquerade (1921) | Read this book for free
The Lone Wolf Returns (1923)
The Lone Wolf’s Son (1931)
Encore The Lone Wolf (1933)
The Lone Wolf’s Last Prowl (1934)
BY OTHER AUTHORS
The Lone Wolf and The Hidden Empire (1947) by Carl W. Smoth

SHORT FICTION

“Old Man Menace” (1927, The Saturday Evening Post)
“The White Terror” (August 1965, The Saint Mystery Magazine)

COLLECTIONS

The Lone Wolf Omnibus (2003) | Kindle it!

FILMS

THE LONE WOLF
(1917, Herbert Brenon Film Corporation)
Silent
Premiere: July 30, 1917
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Screenplay by George Edwardes-Hall
Directed by Herbert Brenon
Starring Bert Lytell as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Hazel Dawn
Alas, no known copies of the film have been found, and it’s presumed lost.
THE FALSE FACES
(1919, Paramount)
Silent
70 minutes
Premiere: February 16, 1919
Based on the novel The False Faces by Lousi Joseph Vance
Screenplay by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Irvin Willat
Produced by Thomas H. Ince
Starring Henry B. Walthall as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Lon Chaney, Mary Anderson, Milton Ross, Thornton Edwards, William Bowman, Garry McGarry, Ernest Pasque
THE LONE WOLF’S DAUGHTER
(1919, Thomas H. Ince)
Silent
70 minutes
Premiere: December 21, 1919
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Screenplay by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by William P. S. Earle
Produced by J. Parker Read, Jr.
Starring Bertram Grassby as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Louise Glaum, Thomas Holding, Edwin Stevens, Thomas Holding, Fred L. Wilson, Wallace Beery
THE LONE WOLF
(1924, Associated Exhibitors)
Silent
60 minutes
Premiere: April 27, 1924
Based on a short by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by S.E.V. Taylor
Starring Jack Holt as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Dorothy Dalton, Wilton Lackaye, Alphonse Ethie, Tyrone Power, Sr., Charlotte Walker, Lucy Fox, Edouard Durand, Robert T. Haines, Gustav von Seyffertitz, William H. Tooker, Paul McAllister
THE LONE WOLF RETURNS
(1926, Columbia)
Silent
61 minutes
Premiere: August 15, 1926
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Screenplay by J. Grubb Alexander
Directed by Ralph Ince
Starring Bert Lytell as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Billie Dove, Freeman Wood, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Gwen Lee, Alphonse Ethier
The first of many Lone Wolf flicks from Columbia, this one starred Bert Lytell who had already played the character several times in prior films, including the first Lone Wolf film way back in 1917.
ALIAS THE LONE WOLF
(1927, Columbia)
Silent
70 minutes
Premiere: August 22, 1927
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Edward H. Griffith
Starring Bert Lytell as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Lois Wilson, William V. Mong, Ned Sparks, James Mason, Paulette Duval, Ann Brody, Alphonse Ethier
THE LONE WOLF’S DAUGHTER
(1929, Columbia)
“Silent” (included talking sequences, music and sound effects)
72 minutes
Premiere: February 18, 1929
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Screenplay by Sig Herzig
Directed by Albert S. Rogell
Starring Bert Lytell as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Gertrude Olmstead, Charles K. Gerrard, Lilyan Tashman, Donald Keith, Florence Allen, Robert Elliott, Ruth Cherrington
Remake of the 1919 silent film, now with some sound.
LAST OF THE LONE WOLF
(1930, Columbia)
70 minutes
Premiere: August 26, 1930
Based on the story by Louis Joseph Vance
Adapted by John Thomas Neville
Scenario by Dorothy Howell
Directed by Richard Boleslawski
Starring Bert Lytell as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Patsy Ruth Miller, Lucien Prival, Otto Matieson, Alfred Hickman, Halie Sullivan, Pietro Sosso, Henry Daniell, James Liddy
Now with sound! Billed as a “Romantic Crook Drama,” presumably Bert Lytell’s last appearance as The Lone Wolf.
CHEATERS AT PLAY
(1932, Fox Film Corporation)
58 minutes
Premiere: January 27, 1932
Based on the short story “The Lone Wolf’s Son” by louis joseph Vance
Screenplay by Malcolm Stuart Boylan
Directed by Hamilton MacFadden
Starring Thomas Meighan as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Charlotte Greenwood, William Bakewell, Ralph Morgan, Barbara Weeks, Linda Watkins
THE LONE WOLF RETURNS
(aka “The Return of the Lone Wolf”)
(1935, Columbia)
68 minutes
Premiere: December 31, 1935
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Roy William Neill
Starring Melvyn Douglas as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Gail Patrick, Tala Birell, Arthur Hohl, Thurston Hall
A remake of the 1926 film.
THE LONE WOLF IN PARIS
(1938, Columbia)
66 minutes
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Albert S. Rogell
Starring Francis Lederer as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Frances Drake, Walter Kingsford, Leona Maricle, Olaf Hytten, Albert Van Dekker
THE LONE WOLF SPY HUNT
(1939, Columbia)
67 minutes
Based on a character created by Louis Joseph Vance
Screenplay by Jonathan Latimer
Directed by Peter Godrey
Starring Warren William as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Ida Lupino, Rita Hayworth, Virginia Weidler, Ralph Morgan, Don Beddoe, Tom Dugan
THE LONE WOLF STRIKES
(1940, Columbia)
57 minutes
Premiere: January 26, 1940
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Story by Dalton Trumbo
Screenplay by Harry Segall, Albert Duffy
Directed by Sydney Salkow
Starring Warren William as THE LONE WOLF
with Eric Blore as Jamison
Also starring Joan Perry, Alan Baxter, Astrid Allwyn, Montagu Love, Robert Wilcox, Don Beddoe
THE LONE WOLF MEETS A LADY
(1940, Columbia)
71 minutes
Premiere: May 30, 1940
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Story by Louis joseph Vance and Wolfe Kaufman
Screenplay by John Larkin
Directed by Sydney Salkow
Starring Warren William as THE LONE WOLF
with Eric Blore as Jamison
Also starring Jean Muir, Warren Hull, Thurston Hall, Victor Jory, Roger Pryor
THE LONE WOLF KEEPS A DATE
(1940, Columbia)
65 minutes
Premiere: November 23, 1940
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Screenplay by Sidney Salkow and Earl Felton
Directed by Sydney Salkow
Starring Warren William as THE LONE WOLF
with Eric Blore as Jamison
Also starring Frances Robinson, Bruce Bennett, Thurston Hall, Jed Prouty
THE LONE WOLF TAKES A CHANCE
(1941, Columbia)
73 minutes
Premiere: March 6, 1941
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Screenplay by Sydney Salkow and Earl Felton
Directed by Sydney Salkow
Starring Warren William as THE LONE WOLF
with Eric Blore as Jamison
Also starring Lloyd Bridges, June Storey, Henry Wilcoxon, Thurston Hall, Don Beddoe, Evalyn Knapp
SECRETS OF THE LONE WOLF
(1941, Columbia)
66 minutes
Premiere: November 13, 1941
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
Screenplay by Stuart Palmer
Starring Warren William as THE LONE WOLF
with Eric Blore as Jamisonxx
Also starring Ruth Ford, Roger Clark, Victor Jory, Thurston Hall, Fred Kelsey, Victor Kilian, Marlo Dwyer, Lester Sharpe, Irving Mitchell, John Harmon, Joe McGuinn
COUNTER-ESPIONAGE
(1942, Columbia)
71 minutes
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
Starring Warren William as THE LONE WOLF
In the mid-1940s Columbia dropped the “Lone Wolf” from the titles of several of the films in hopes of attracting new audiences.
ONE DANGEROUS NIGHT
(1943, Columbia)
77 minutes
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Michael Gordon
PASSPORT TO SUEZ
(1943, Columbia)
76 minutes
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Andre De Toth
Starring Warren William as THE LONE WOLF
with Eric Blore as Jamison
Also starring Ann Savage, Robert Stanford, Sheldon Leonard, Lloyd Bridges, Gavin Muir
THE NOTORIOUS LONE WOLF
(1946)
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
and a story by William Bowers
Screenplay by Martin Berkeley, Edward Dein, Garrett Graham
Directed byD. Ross Lederman
Produced by Ted Richmond
Gerald Mohr as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring Janis Carter, Eric Blore, John Abbott, William B. Davidson, Don Beddoe, Adele Roberts, Robert E. Scott, Peter Whitney, Olaf Hytten, Ian Wolfe, Edith Evanson, Maurice Cass.
THE LONE WOLF IN MEXICO
(1947)
69 minutes
Based on a character created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Ross Lederman
Starring Gerald Mohr as THE LONE WOLF
with Eric Blore as Jamison
Also starring Sheila Ryan, Jacqueline de Wit, Nestor Paiva, John Gallaudet
THE LONE WOLF IN LONDON
(1947)
68 minutes
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by Leslie Goodwins
Starring Gerald Mohr as THE LONE WOLF
with Eric Blore as Jamison
Also starring Nancy Saunders, Evelyn Ankers
THE LONE WOLF AND HIS LADY
(1949)
71 minutes
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Directed by John Hoffman
Starring Ron Randell as THE LONE WOLF
Also starring June Vincent, Alan Mowbray, William Frawley

RADIO

THE LONE WOLF
(1948, Mutual)
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Starring Walter Coy as THE LONE WOLF
Later replaced by Gerald Mohr

TELEVISION

THE LONE WOLF
(1954)
Syndicated as Streets of Danger
39 episodes
Based on characters created by Louis Joseph Vance
Writers: Jonathan Latimer, others
Directors: Alfred E. Green, Bernard Girard, Seymour Friedman, Rodney Amateau
Starring Louis Hayward as THE LONE WOLF
Guest stars:Barbara Billingsley, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Morgan, Joe Besser, Adela Mara, Virginia Grey, Elisha Cook Jr.
- SEASON ONE
- “The Long Beach Story” (aka “The Smuggling Story”)
- “The Avalanche Story” (aka “The Reno Story”)
- “The Chinese Story”
- “The Carnival Story”
- “The Blue Lantern Story”
- “The Ski Story”
- “The Plantation Story”
- “Pursuit”
- “The Malibu Story” (aka “Malibu-Laguna”)
- “The Murder Story”
- “The Honolulu Story”
- “Skid Row”
- “The Arena”
- “The Karachi Story”
- “The Las Vegas Story” (May 14, 1955)
- “The Italian Story”
- “The Hunt”
- “The Oil Story”
- “The Boy Story”
- “The Emerald Ring”
- “The Department Store Story”
- “The Mexico Story”
- “The Art Story”
- “The Carlsbad Big Lie Story”
- “The Last Ballet Story”
- “The Beverly Hills Story”
- “The Jet Story”
- “The San Francisco Story”
- “The Savage”
- “Deep Sea Diving”
- “The Werewolf Story”
- “The Stamp Story”
- “The Minister Story”
- “The Robbery Story” (aka “Memo: Robbery”)
- “The Wife Story”
- “The Planetarium Story”
- “The San Pedro Story”
- “The Runaway Story”
- “The Newhall Story” (aka “Phoenix-Newhall”)
- The following episodes may–or may not–be alternative titles for the above episodes.
- “The Blue Lantern Story”
- “Centerville”
- “Death of a Lawyer”
- “Missing Child Story”

COMICS

THE LONE WOLF | Buy this book
(2003, Moonstone Books)
48 pages, black & white
Based (very very loosely) on a character created by Louis Joseph Vance
Written byDan Jolley & Marie Croall
Art by Gabriel Rearte
Cover by Doug Klauba

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Moonstone Books
For more information on the Lone Wolf comic, this seems like a good place to start.

THE DICK OF THE DAY

May 6, 2023
The Bottom Line: The gentleman thief has been an amateur sleuth, a spy, a private eye & a wall-crawling blonde in skin-tight leather in a century-plus career in books, film, radio, television and comics.

The Lone Wolf (Michael Lanyard)