The Falcon in Hollywood (1944)

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

Tom Conway was one of those natural actors, like Bob Mitchum or Dean Martin, who could stroll through the most low-budget and sometimes unworthy movies without losing his aplomb. Of Conway's Falcon movies this is certainly one of the better ones, but its claim to fame is not another smooth performance from its star but rather the twist at the end. If you don't want to hear it, read no further. I repeat: Stop reading this review. Okay, for the rest of you, let me just say this: Mel Brooks must have seen "The Falcon in Hollywood" before he wrote "The Producers." The big difference is that the Falcon (and the viewer) don't tumble to the shady accountancy until the end, which explains why the investors were killed off.

Falcon in Hollywood, The (1944) *** (out of 4) Entertaining entry in RKO's series has The Falcon (Tom Conway) on vacation in Hollywood when a famous actor is murdered. The finger points to various people in the production so The Falcon must sort it all out. This is perhaps the best that I've seen from the series due in large part to a very good supporting cast and a nice little mystery that remains interesting throughout the film. Most of the action takes place on the backlot of a studio so we get all sorts of nice scenes, which work themselves well into the mystery. A lot of Hollywood props are used as gags or evidence and this too adds to the fun. The characters working on the film within the film are all very entertaining. We get your typical crazy German director, the playboy, a jealous wannabe star and a producer who's always going around quoting Shakespeare. Conway is also very energetic here and delivers his best performance in the role since The Falcon's Brother.

A welcome return to form for the Falcon series -- having run out of ideas for the standard city-based plots, the studio evidently tried putting the Falcon into unaccustomed environments to try to milk a few more scripts out of the formula, and oddly enough it actually tends to work quite well. In these later films ("The Falcon and the Co-Eds", "The Falcon Out West", "The Falcon in Hollywood") the focus seems to swing back onto the actual crime rather than the amiable surrounding tom-foolery, and the comic relief -- being more sparingly employed -- is more successfully funny."Hollywood" is in my experience the best of the films mentioned above, with a really quite ingenious plot and some interesting characters. Of course we've all seen "The Producers" now... but the cast of Hollywood 'types' -- from the Germanic martinet director to the playboy leading man, the distrait Shakespearean Englishman, the costume diva, the exotic star with a villa and swimming-pool and the gangster's moll trying to make her big break in the movies -- still has its own charms to offer, not least in watching the film subvert the stereotypes! (There's also a nod to a famous Sherlock Holmes case in there, for the alert.)