The Falcon’s Brother (1942)

RKO had enjoyed considerable success in the early 40s with three B-movies starring George Sanders as Gay Lawrence, wealthy playboy and amateur crime-fighter. These movies were effectively a continuation of the very successful Saint B-pictures in which Sanders also starred. By 1942 Sanders was hoping for better things than lead roles in B-pictures and announced his departure from the Falcon movie series. The actor chosen to replace him was his real-life brother Tom Conway. Someone got the bright idea that instead of having Conway take over the role of Gay Lawrence why not introduce him as Gay’s brother Tom? And RKO persuaded Sanders to make one more Falcon movie, The Falcon’s Brother, in which both brothers would appear. 

Since Tom Lawrence obviously shares his brother’s interests - glamorous women, high living, adventure and crime-solving - it makes perfect sense that he would take over his brother’s career as the famous Falcon.

Given all this the movie offers an intriguing opening - a corpse is found in a stateroom on board a ship. The man has been murdered. And the man is - not Gay Lawrence, but Tom Lawrence! Has the Falcon’s brother already been slain before he makes his first appearance in the film? Needless to say things are not quite what they seem to be.

The movie came out in 1942 and with Hollywood war fever at its height it’s not surprising that the war figures prominently. There’s a spy ring although I must confess to being a little unclear as to exactly what they were up to. The Falcon’s world however is a world of glamour so the plot also involves high fashion and beautiful models. Although we are assured that their gowns have been designed within the limits of wartime government regulations!

Of course a 1940s Hollywood B-picture has to have comic relief. This time the comic relief is handled by the Falcon’s sidekick Lefty (Don Barclay), his valet Jerry (Keye Luke) and a couple of bumbling detectives who are always one step behind the Falcon (or in this case one step behind both Falcons). Luckily the comic relief isn’t intrusive and is at times even genuinely amusing.

Tom Conway’s acting style was not dissimilar to his brother’s. The Falcon was a role that suited them both extremely well. George Sanders was the better actor but Conway was more than adequate as a B-movie lead. Jane Randolph plays a Feisty Girl Reporter and does so more than competently. The support cast is solid enough by B-picture standards with Keye Luke having quite a bit of fun swapping back and forth between pidgin English and a very educated accent.

Stanley Logan’s directing career was very brief and there’s nothing here to suggest that he should have had a longer career. The Falcon’s Brother doesn’t quite have the flair of some of the better movies in the series.

Interestingly enough Craig Rice, who co-wrote the screenplay (and was of course a woman), later ghost-wrote a very successful mystery novel which was published under George Sanders’ name - although Sanders may well have contributed to the writing. 

The Falcon movies are available on made-on-demand DVD in two boxed sets from the Warner Archive series. 

This is, to be honest, a fairly routine entry in the Falcon cycle. It does however offer two Falcons for the price of one and it does offer the rare opportunity to see George Sanders and Tom Conway together. Of the Tom Conway Falcon movies I think The Falcon in Hollywood is rather better and The Falcon Out West is more fun.

The Falcon’s Brother is decent enough entertainment. Recommended for 1940s B-movie fans.

A Date with the Falcon (1942)

A Date with the Falcon, released at the beginning of 1942, was the second film in RKO’s successful Falcon B-movie series. The studio had had considerable success with their cycle of B-movies based on Leslie Charteris’s The Saint, with George Sanders playing the hero Simon Templar. The problem was that Charteris wasn’t happy with the movies and pulled the plug on them. RKO promptly bought the rights to another remarkably similar character, The Falcon, and proceeded to make a series of Falcon movies. The Falcon series was effectively a continuation of the Saint series, with Sanders again playing the lead, and was in fact so similar that Leslie Charteris sued them for plagiarism.

The Falcon had been created by Michael Arlen in a 1940 short story. In the story the hero’s name is Gay Falcon. For the movies he was renamed Gay Laurence with The Falcon being a nickname. He was a wealthy playboy adventurer and part-time crime fighter. It’s really not difficult to see why Charteris felt so annoyed. 

Sanders went on to make four Falcon movies after which his brother Tom Conway took over the rôle (some of the Tom Conway movies, such as The Falcon in Hollywood, are pretty good).

A Date with the Falcon begins with Gay Laurence intending to give up his life of adventure. He is going to get married and settle down with Helen Reed (Wendy Barrie). Of course it’s not going to be as simple as this. The Falcon is drawn, reluctantly (or perhaps not really so reluctantly), into a case involving the disappearance of a scientist who has perfected a method of producing perfect artificial diamonds. Considering the profits to be made from the diamond trade it’s not surprising that not everyone is pleased by his new invention. It seems that someone is displeased enough to resort to kidnapping, perhaps even to murder.

The Falcon also finds himself getting mixed up with the glamorous Rita Mara (Mona Maris), and this is something that does not please his bride-to-be Helen one little bit. Sorting things out with Helen may be more difficult than solving the actual crime!

There’s really just enough plot here for the 63-minute running time, with just enough twists to keep things interesting even if those twists are not overly original. The Falcon plays a double game and could easily find himself caught between the bad guys and the police but luckily he’s used to this sort of thing and can usually stay just one step ahead.

This movie suffers a little from that very common problem of 1930s/1940s Hollywood B-movies - there’s just a bit too much comic relief. Much of the comedy is courtesy of The Falcon’s unlikely wise-cracking sidekick Goldy (played by Allen Jenkins) although Helen Reed also provides even more comic relief. The comic parts are not excruciatingly awful, there are just too many of them and they slow things down. On the other hand it has to be admitted that there are some genuinely amusing gags and the window ledge scene is quite inspired.

Sanders by this time had vast experience in this type of part and he’s as smooth and charming as ever. Argentinian-born Mona Maris makes a very fine femme fatale with a touch of the exotic. James Gleason goes gleefully over-the-top as the hardbitten but sympathetic Inspector Mike O’Hara. 

Director Irving Reis does a generally competent if not exciting job. The movie gets off to a fairly slow start but the pace gradually picks up. In fact this is a movie that definitely gets better as it goes. 

RKO B-features of the 40s usually look pretty good with just a hint of the visual style soon to become indelibly associated with film noir. That’s not to say that there’s anything remotely film noir in any meaningful sense about this production, but it at least has a trace of visual grittiness at times.

The Falcon movies are available on made-on-demand DVD in two multi-movie sets in the Warner Archive series although I caught this one on TCM.

A Date with the Falcon is a good solid mystery thriller B-picture that fans of such movies should find quite enjoyable. Recommended.

Son of Fury (1942)

Son of Fury is included in the Tyrone Power Collection boxed set but is rather less of a standard swashbuckler than the other featured movies. 

Directed by John Cromwell and released in 1942, Son of Fury certainly has the right setup for a swashbuckler. The setting is England in the 18th century. Power plays a character, Benjamin Blake, who has been cheated of his inheritance by his wicked uncle Sir Arthur Blake. To add insult to injury the wicked uncle, played with relish by George Sanders, has taken young Benjamin on as a bonded servant and the boy soon comes to realise this this is little better than slavery. Benjamin grows to manhood and it’s obvious that sooner or later things are going to get complicated and nasty, especially given that he has fallen in love with Sir Arthur’s daughter Isabel (Frances Farmer). Sir Arthur accuses Benjamin of attempted assault, a hanging offence if you’re a bonded servant. Benjamin comes to the very sensible conclusion that it would be advisable to get out of England for a while.

Benjamin flees England in a merchant ship. He is persuaded by another member of the crew, Caleb Green (John Carradine), to jump ship with him in the South Seas. Caleb has reason to believe that a certain island possesses an extraordinarily rich pearl fishery. The two of them can easily make their fortune there. The only problem is that the island is well off the regular trade routes and is only visited by European shipping at very irregular intervals. They might become rich men in theory but they might also end up spending the rest of their lives on the island. 

After a while being stranded on a South Sea island doesn’t seem quite so bad. Benjamin has settled down with a beautiful native girl (played by Gene Tierney) and life is good. 

This is the point where the movie runs off the rails for quite a while. While Benjamin is on the island the plot comes to a complete standstill. The movie gives us every single South Sea island cliché and things threaten to become terminally boring. John Carradine’s surprisingly sunny performance and Gene Tierney’s beauty are unfortunately not enough to keep things interesting.

Mercifully a Dutch merchantman finally arrives to free Benjamin from his self-imposed exile (and to free the viewer from increasing boredom). Once Benjamin is back in London the movie is back on the rails and, even more welcome, George Sanders is back in the picture. Benjamin is now a rich man, rich enough to employ the services of a certain Bartolomew Pratt (Dudley Digges). Pratt is a barrister and a Member of Parliament and most importantly he is a man whose speciality is using his very considerable influence to serve the interests of those who can afford his fees. If anyone can prove that Benjamin is the rightful heir to the baronetcy and the Blake family estate it is surely Bartolomew Pratt.

There are still a few plot twists left in this movie before the ending. The ending is somewhat over-the-top and I had a few issues with it although it certainly ties up some loose ends.

This movie’s strength is not in its somewhat corny plot but in the performances, especially the two key performances by Tyrone Power and George Sanders. Power is in his element. Power’s particular gift as an actor was his ability to play swashbuckling heroes who were rather more complex and rather more vulnerable than most. Power was a very different swashbuckler from the outrageous self-confident Errol Flynn. Power’s heroes were more fallible and more likely to be assailed by doubts. What keeps our interest is seeing how the hero will resolve his conflicts, which in the case of a Power hero is not necessarily by athletic prowess and fighting skill. Benjamin Blake is the type of hero Power played very well.

George Sanders of course is best remembered for playing cads and bounders. Sir Arthur Blake is more than a mere bounder. He is a vicious, selfish, sadistic, opportunistic bully on the grand scale. Sanders is in magnificent form. The conflict between Benjamin and Sir Arthur is the heart of the movie and this conflict is explosive and memorable. Sir Arthur is a noted amateur boxer and the first time we see him in this movie he is mercilessly pummeling some poor member of the local peasantry. We will later see him dishing out the same treatment to young Benjamin, after which he takes a whip to the boy. Benjamin is left with physical scars but the psychological scars are far worse and we can be sure that if ever Benjamin gets the chance to repay this debt he will do so with interest. Power and Sanders really are superb in their scenes together. This is the most intensely physical performance I can recall seeing from Sanders.

The supporting cast is impressive as well, with Frances Farmer being slightly disturbing as the ambiguous Isabel - we always feel that Isabel will somehow prove to be trouble and we’re not mistaken. John Carradine I’ve already mentioned - this may be the most cheerful performance he ever gave. Dudley Digges makes the most of his brief but vital scenes. Elsa Lanchester is a kind-hearted barmaid who does Benjamin a good turn. Roddy McDowall plays Benjamin as a boy.

The transfer on this movie is excellent and the DVD includes a brief featurette on Powers’ career. This is one of the five movies in the Tyrone Power Collection, a boxed set that I recommend very highly.

Son of Fury is an uneven movie and is by no means a conventional swashbuckler. Despite losing its way for rather too long in the South Seas it’s worth seeing for the extraordinary performances by Powers and Sanders which are enough to earn it highly recommended status.

The Saint in Palm Springs (1941)

The Saint in Palm Springs was the sixth of RKO’s Saint movies and the fifth and last to star George Sanders. Like all the George Sanders Saint movies it’s a good deal of fun.

Simon Templar, alias the Saint, arrives back in the United States to find the police waiting to arrest him for murder. Or at least the police are going to attempt to arrest him. Needless to say they don’t succeed and in any case it all a ruse on the part of Inspector Henry Fernack (Jonathan Hale). Fernack wanted to get Templar’s attention and when he mentions three rare postage stamps, valued at $65,000 each, he certainly has that attention. An old friend of Fernack’s is bringing them into the country. They’re intended for this friend’s daughter but several attempts have already been made to steal the stamps and Fernack needs some reliable but strictly unofficial assistance.

The Saint soon discovers that whoever is trying to steal the stamps is very determined indeed, and will not hesitate to commit murder to get them.

The daughter, Elna Johnson (Wendy Barrie) is in Palm Springs so that’s where Simon Templar is now headed.

The stamps will change hands a number of times as they get stolen and re-stolen and things get more complicated when Templar finds that there are more people after the stamps than he’d thought. The house detective at the hotel in Palm Springs, Clarence “Pearly” Gates (Paul Guilfoyle), is an old acquaintance of Simon’s. It might stretch credibility a little to imagine that a hotel would apply a convicted pickpocket as the house dick but then I guess it actually makes sense. No-one knows more about thieving than a former professional thief. Pearly’s skills prove to be rather useful to the Saint.

The plot is just complicated enough to keep the reader interested.

Jack Hively had a fairly brief career as a director of programmers like this and taking budgetary constraints into consideration he was quite adequate. Jerome Cady’s screenplay was claimed to be based on an actual Leslie Charteris story.

The movie was obviously shot entirely in the studio, presumably on a rather tight shooting schedule. It won’t convince anyone that it was actually filmed in Palm Springs but you don’t expect location shooting in a 1940s B-movie. Those who enjoy obviously-faked scenes using rear projection will be delighted by the horse-riding scene which is so obviously phony it could almost be intended as parody. Personally I find this sort of thing to be all part of the fun of the movies of this era.

This movie gives Simon Templar a sidekick in the person of “Pearly” Gates. Gates’ main reason for being in the movie is to provide the obligatory and completely unnecessary comic relief, which he manages to do without being excessively irritating, but at least he does serve some purpose in plot terms. The other supporting players are as competent as you’d expect in a B-movie by a major studio.

The main attraction is of course George Sanders. He is perhaps not quite athletic enough but apart from that he is absolutely perfect for the role and he carries it off with his usual effortless ease. The Saint’s dubious early career as a criminal is downplayed somewhat but the movie does retain the suggestion that he has not always been on the correct side of the law. Sanders make the character more debonair and more cynical than the original and these subtle changes constitute, if anything, an improvement.

Odeon’s Region 2 DVD release is barebones but it’s a very acceptable transfer.

The Saint movies are a must for any fan of 40s Hollywood crime B-movies and The Saint in Palm Springs is a good example of the breed. It’s highly diverting if rather lightweight entertainment and it affords an opportunity for George Sanders to shine in a part that suited him so ideally that it could have been written specifically for him. Recommended.

Based on one of the novellas in The Saint Goes West.

Summer Storm (1944)

Summer Storm is one of Douglas Sirk’s earliest Hollywood films although he was already an experienced director in his native Germany when he arrived in the US. It’s a rather odd and uneasy adaptation of an 1884 Anton Chekhov 1884 novella, The Shooting Party . Sirk and Rowland Leigh shared the writing credit.

The setting is switched to 1912, allowing the movie to start in the post-Revolutionary Soviet Union and for the main story to be told in flashback. The only possible reason I can think of for this is that Hollywood in 1944 was besotted by America’s wartime ally and that it was a contemptible effort to show the brutal and vicious Soviet dictatorship in a favourable light.



George Sanders is Judge Fedor Mikhailovich Petroff, a man who has lived the decadent lifestyle of the Tsarist aristocracy and is suddenly seized by the desire for marriage and respectability. Nadena Kalenin (Anna Lee) is a suitable match and Petroff believes he is in love with her. He believes it until he meets a beautiful peasant girl, Olga Kuzminichna (Linda Darnell). It is lust at first sight. Nadena Kalenin breaks off their engagement when she discovers his dalliance with this peasant bombshell.

Petroff’s friend Count Volsky (affectionately known as “Piggy” and played by Edward Everett Horton) has no intention of reforming. He also falls under Olga Kuzminichna’s spell but her father has married her off to his steward Urbenin. Urbenin is a peasant, and Olga Kuzminichna has much higher ambitions, but at least Urbenin is a relatively prosperous peasant and life with him promises to be an improvement on life with her drunken father. She has not however given up her ambitions. She continues her affair with Petroff whilst also (unbeknownst to Petroff) encouraging the attentions of Count Volsky.



Of course this ménage à quatre will inevitably end in disaster, culminating in the tragic shooting party from which Chekhov’s novella took its title.

The screenplay provides the material for the sort of melodrama at which Sirk excelled but unfortunately the movie veers uneasily between melodrama and comedy. Sirk demonstrated two years later with the excellent A Scandal in Paris that he could (rather surprisingly) handle a light-hearted romp very adeptly. The problem is that combining melodrama and comedy in the same movie is a difficult if not impossible trick to pull off. In this movie the two genres clash disastrously. Melodrama has to take itself fairly seriously. You can do melodrama with irony, but not as comedy.



Most of the blame for this can be assigned to Edward Everett Horton. He was a fine comic actor but his performance here is hopelessly out of place. Unfortunately the movie is saddled with further unnecessary comic relief in the form of Olga Kuzminichna’s drunkard father.

George Sanders would have seemed a good choice for the role of Petroff but the normally sure-footed actor never seems to get a handle on the role. Partly this is because the part is underwritten and the character is colourless and dull (which is almost unheard of for a George Sanders performance). Petroff seems unsure if he wants to be a decadent aristocrat or a respectable and dedicated civil servant and family man. This potentially interest conflict is never developed and the characterisation comes across as confused rather than complex.



The one bright spot is Linda Darnell, an underrated actress who gave a superb performance the following year in Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel. She’s totally unconvincing as a Russian peasant but she’s totally convincing as a scheming femme fatale who oozes sex from every pore.

While Darnell and Sanders seem to understand that the movie needs to be played as melodrama Edward Everett Horton is convinced he’s doing a screwball comedy. The combination of this acting dissonance with Sirk’s uncertain direction and Sanders’ hesitant performance fatally undermines the movie. This is Sirk’s worst American movie, worth seeing only for Darnell’s energy, enthusiastic wickedness and hyper-sexuality.

The Odeon all-region PAL DVD gives us a handsome print but without any extras.

A Scandal in Paris (1946)

Douglas Sirk’s 1946 film A Scandal in Paris (Thieves' Holiday) is a fictionalised account of the extraordinary career of François Eugène Vidocq, a famous criminal who became an even more famous policeman.

Vidocq’s misspent youth was very misspent indeed. He allegedly killed a fencing instructor at the age of 14, joined the army several times and was cashiered just as many times, fought many duels, was a professional gambler, a thief, a forger and a pirate. After which he became a police spy and went on to found the French criminal investigation department of the Paris police, the Sûreté. He was one of the pioneers of modern police methods, especially the use of undercover operations and was renowned as a master of disguise



When I say the film fictionalises his life it should be noted that most of what is known about Vidocq comes from his own accounts of his life and is most likely highly unreliable. Either way he was obviously perfect material for a movie, and who better to play a charming rogue than George Sanders?

In the movie version Vidocq is as notorious for his pursuit of the ladies as for his pursuit of dishonest money, and ideally prefers to combine both. Stealing the ruby-studded garter of the girlfriend of the chief of the Paris police is one of his more colourful exploits, although it’s one that will come back to haunt him.



Vidocq actually starts the movie in prison. He escapes along with his cell-mate, Emile Vernet (Akim Tamiroff). He gets a job, posing as a model for an equestrian painting of St George and the dragon, and promptly steals both horse and costume. A chance encounter in a graveyard brings him into contact with the family of the Minister of Police. He naturally takes the opportunity to rob their house. And then an idea occurs to him. The Minister has fired his Chief of Police for being unable to solve the crime - if Vidocq could present him with the solution, and the stolen jewels, the Minister might be persuaded to appoint him as Chief of Police. Just imagine the possibilities that might open up for criminal activities on a scale he has not previously even been able to contemplate.

There is a complication however. The beautiful daughter of the Minister, Therese (Signe Hasso), has fallen in love with the man in the painting of St George, who is of course Vidocq. When she meets the actual Vidocq she discovers he really is the man she wants, but she’s a virtuous young woman and could never marry a thief. In fact she wants to save him from his life of wickedness. Will he choose love or crime?



This movie is a delight from start to finish. It’s a complete romp, and makes no concessions to anything as boring as realism. Vidocq’s biography is outrageous and fanciful and the movie takes its cue from that. The dialogue sparkles. The sets and costumes are extravagant. The tone is light-hearted, sophisticated and good-natured. The scene on the Chinese carousel is a nice touch.

George Sanders is of course superb in a role that allows him full scope for his talents. He gets fine support from Gene Lockhart as Richet, the former Chief of Police, and Carole Landis as Richet’s wife.



This movie is total entertainment and I can’t recommend it too highly. Absolute joy.

Odeon’s all-region UK DVD release boasts no extras but sound and picture quality are generally good.

The Black Swan (1942)

The Black Swan is a colourful pirate yarn with Tyrone Power who was at that time 20th Century Fox’s leading star of swashbuckling epics. And if those sorts of movies are your thing this one will not disappoint.

It’s purportedly based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini, probably the greatest of all authors of swashbuckling adventure stories. In fact the movie has little to do with Sabatini’s novel but it’s still great fun.

The legendary pirate Henry Morgan has been pardoned, given a knighthood and appointed as governor of Jamaica. Acting on the principle that you set a thief to catch a thief Morgan has been given the job of cleaning up piracy in the Caribbean.



Not surprisingly that news draws a mixed response from Morgan’s old buccaneering buddies. Some are willing to accept the royal pardon and the grants of land that Morgan has been given the authority to distribute whilst others refuse to give up their pirating ways.

Chief among those who reject Morgan’s offer is the rough, tough, ruthless and dissipated Captain Billy Leach (George Sanders). Those who accept Morgan’s offer are led by the dashing Jamie Waring (Tyrone Power). There’s a further complication however - Jamie has fallen in love with the beautiful Margaret Denby, daughter of the former governor. Margaret is engaged to Roger Ingram, an elegant foppish wastrel. Ingram sees Jamie as a dangerous romantic rival and he is determined to destroy the handsome reformed pirate But that’s not the end of Ingram’s perfidy - he is also selling information to Captain Billy Leach, assisting the pirate in preying on English shipping.



Jamie Waring is given the task of hunting down Billy Leach but it proves to be a tricky assignment. He finds himself outgunned by Leach’s squadron and Jamie has to pretend he has returned to his piratical ways while trying to find a way to turn the tables.

The mix of action, adventure, romance and humour is irresistible. The action sequences are impressive and it’s all filmed in glorious Technicolor and looks absolutely splendid.



As a swashbuckling hero Tyrone Power is very good although it has to be admitted he’s no Eroll Flynn. He does take his shirt off a lot though which presumably added quite a lot to his sex symbol image. Maureen O’Hara makes a feisty heroine. The strangest thing about this movie is George Sanders’ performance - instead of being the smooth aristocratic villain we expect he’s a scruffy red-bearded old sea dog. It’s bizarre casting but Sanders puts everything into it and he gets away with it.

It’s Laird Cregar though who steals the picture as Henry Morgan. He chews every piece of scenery he can get his hands on and he’s delightful. Anthony Quinn has a small role as Billy Leach’s chief lieutenant.



The Black Swan has everything you could possibly want in a pirate movie. Tremendous fun.

The Region 4 DVD from Bounty is totally lacking in extras but it’s a nice print.

The Saint Strikes Back (1939)

The Saint Strikes Back was the first of five films in which George Sanders played the role of master criminal-turned crime-fighter Simon Templar. The role requires a mixture of sophistication, humour, physical menace, ruthlessness and charm. Sanders didn’t quite have the physical menace but he had all of the other qualities in abundance.

The movie is based on one of the best of Leslie Charteris’s early tales of The Saint, Angels of Doom (also published as The Saint Meets His Match and She Was a Lady). Valerie Travers (Wendy Barrie), the daughter of a police officer who had been dismissed from the force for corruption, becomes a criminal mastermind. Her objective is not crime itself but revenge as she believes her father was innocent.



Simon Templar becomes involved when a mobster is gunned down in a San Francisco night-club. The convoluted plot sees the Saint targeted as a suspect while he works in uneasy partnership with his old friend Inspector Henry Fernack to clear the reputation of Valerie’s now deceased father.



The plot is serviceable but the main asset of the movie is the character of Simon Templar and, even more particularly, George Sander’s performance. John Twist’s screenplay gives Sanders plenty of sparkling dialogue which he delivers with his customary panache. The strong supporting cast is highlighted by Barry Fitzgerald, Jonathan Hale as Inspector Fernack and Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon from the Batman TV series).



RKO’s crime B-movies always had plenty of atmosphere and this is no exception. Director John Farrow would go on to helm some notable film noir titles.

The Region 2 DVD is lacking in extras but looks reasonable enough.