The Falcon in Hollywood (1944)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Admirable film.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Tom Conway plays the Falcon, Tom Lawrence, who is on vacation in California and at the Hollywood Club track betting on the horses. He bumps into Inspector McBride (Emory Parnell) and Lieutenant Higgins (Frank Jenks), who ask him if he's seen Louie Buchanan (Sheldon Leonard). He hasn't, but shortly thereafter he does. He then meets an actress, Lili D'Allio (Rita Corday) who uses numerology to predict things. When Lili departs to make another bet, Peggy Callahan (Barbara Hale) sits next to him and asks that he pretends to knows her to dodge those same police. After they leave, Tom learns that Peggy used to be a "hoofer" in Buchanan's club back East. Lili returns to find that her purse is missing and the Falcon tries to find Peggy to retrieve it. After seeing her depart in an automobile, he hails a cab, driven by Billie (Veda Ann Borg), who is also a stunt driver that knows her way around the Hollywood studios, a good thing given that they follow Peggy to Sunset Studios. Billie has heard of the Falcon and is very excited to help him.After Tom bluffs his way past the gate guardsman, he hears a shot from Stage 5. Upon entering, he finds a man's body holding a ring. Hearing a sound, he exits the set and enters the wardrobe department, where he meets its head Roxanne Miles (Jean Brooks). He questions her, but is interrupted and departs, running into the guardsman and Billie. He tells them about the body, but when they follow him, he interrupts a film being made by jumping into a fight sequence. The film's director, Alec Hoffman (Konstantin Shayne), is furious and about that time, the film's producer Martin Dwyer (John Abbott) arrives. Dwyer, a successful Broadway producer, is frustrated that his first picture in Hollywood seems to be jinxed; it's running behind schedule. He is also an eccentric, superstitious and always quoting Shakespeare. When Tom explains about the body, he learns from his double's attire that it was Ted Miles, the lead actor who's also Roxanne's husband. Since the body is missing, no one believes Tom that a crime has happened and he is escorted out.While leaving, the Falcon runs into Peggy who pretends not to know him. Evidently, she is known on the set as Loraine Evans and has been forced on the director by an investor who wants her in the picture even though she's just learning. However, Tom does retrieve the purse, and runs into Lili. Apparently she has an appointment with Dwyer herself. After eluding the guardsman, Billie and Tom find their way into the prop room where they find the body. They exit to call Roxanne, informing her that there's been an accident involving her husband. She calls Alec and they go together to find the body, meeting Tom and Billie, who accuses them of the murder. But just then, the watchman arrives, and Billie and Tom escape once again.Billie drives Tom to Miles's apartment where the Falcon finds a picture of Peggy as well as a investment contract for the film signed by Dwyer. He sends Billie to make a duplicate key of the apartment and soon Peggy shows up. Apparently Miles helped Peggy get away from Louie to become an actress. Suddenly a shot is fired through the window. Tom suspects Louie, and that Peggy maneuvered him in front of the window. When Louie enters the window though, it appears Peggy is upset that he's following her. He wants her to return to his club. When the police arrive, Louie exits through the window, and Peggy sneaks out. When Billie arrives with the duplicate key, the police suspect the Falcon is guilty of the murder until Billie finds a bullet hole and Tom tells them about Louie.The police take Tom to Dwyer's office where Dwyer says that Miles was an investor in the picture but needed money to pay off a gambling debt back East. Dwyer didn't have the $50,000 so he gave him a sacred ring from India. The police feel reassured of their presumption that Louie's guilty, but take everyone to Stage 5 to question the others involved. They learn Lili had predicted the murder. They venture to the plaster making room where Tom discovers the murder weapon encased in a bust. He accuses Alec of hiding it there; he admits it and is taken away by the police. Dwyer is upset because they were scheduled for a full day of location shooting the next day.The next morning, Lawrence is called to the set by Roxanne who explains that Alec was held by the police over night, but is innocent, and that his work on the picture is actually quite good despite all the delays. When they hear that the day's shoot has been called off, they return to Dwyer's office just before the police arrive with the murder weapon and information that the gun was registered to Dwyer. But Dwyer produces a police report indicating that he had reported it stolen two weeks ago. About that time, they learn that Hoffman is out on bail and the location shoot is back on.The location shoot is at Lili's place, complete with swimming pool. It turns out that Lili bailed out the director Alec. During the filming of a scene, Peggy's character accidentally shoots Alec with a gun that was supposed to be just a prop with blanks. Shortly thereafter, Tom finds Louie at the house with Peggy and assumes he's captured the culprit. But Louie says he's trying to solve the mystery, knows who did it, and asks them to meet him at the Coliseum the next day. When they do, however, he shows up dying of poison, contained in the sacred ring he's now wearing.It's pretty obvious now who did it.

Back to the city and business as normal (?) for Tom Lawrence aka the Falcon in solving crimes the cops can't [#10/13]. "Hollywood" had a nice sunny feel to it, the War was a million miles away and people wanted to get even further away from it with an escapist movie industry to help.The Falcon's busy losing at a racetrack but quickly gets mixed up with 2 beautiful women (Hale and Corday) and embroiled in tracking down an apparently stolen handbag. This leads to Sunset Pictures backlots where the body of a murdered man is discovered along with a gallery of suspects. The 2 best things here are the riveting but unfortunately intermittent tour of the RKO studios and props as the Falcon and his wisecracking female taxi driver played by Veda Ann Borg investigate, and the tight intelligent scripting. I wished there'd been much more behind the scenes for an even better picture of the studio. I kept expecting Borg to exclaim "Come up to my place!" – Conway wouldn't have been as backward as Sinatra! John Abbott as the Shakespeare-obsessed studio boss had many amusing scenes, and Emory Parnell effortlessly swapped from baddie in Mexico to goodie in Hollywood. And the story actually made solid sense this time without detracting from the entertainment, you can follow it from first to last, and even though the baddie's identity is pretty obvious from early on it was all logically explained. The searching of dead Ted's apartment has always stuck with me though for the bit where the Falcon and Borg are philosophising about how sad a dead man's room is and the poignant line about if he had been "worrying about tragic things like a broken shoelace" that morning.Recommended to fans of the genre, not to others. One of my favourite Falcon's, one I've watched again and again and still hope to.

Fast paced mystery, surprisingly unpredictable. It's nice to see so many locations in Los Angeles of the mid 1940's. Much of the film gives you studio backlot scenes, and behind the camera context, within a Hollywood soundstage. Even so, the story draws you in, and the characters are believable. The film moves at a good pace, and keeps you guessing. Thoroughly enjoyable.

I was watching this movie on the hangar deck of the USS Yorktown in Ulithi lagoon in the Western Caroline islands in 1945. I remember a scene at a swimming pool. Then a Kamikaze struck the Randolf, an aircraft carrier anchored next to us. The movie was stopped and we went to battle stations. I have tried to locate a copy of this movie so that I could see the ending with no luck.