Excellent but underrated film

Brilliant and touching

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Entertaining addition to the detective series. Putting the Falcon (Conway) in Hollywood of course means getting an inside look at movie-making, along with a whodunit for plot purposes. So catch all those backlot shots from the 40's—the sound stages, the guarded gate, the prop room, the film sets. It's pretty much a snapshot tour. And guys, there're all those half-clad girls traipsing between sound stages. I'd sure like to know what their movie was so I could tune in. And while we're on tour, note shots of the LA Coliseum looking hugely empty, and the Hollywood Race Track currently being replaced with another football stadium.Okay, there's also a murder mystery to weave into a plot. Something about a bullying director and another guy getting murdered; but given the reveal, I think the writers were taking their own insider shots. To me, the best part of the cast is brassy cabbie Veda Ann Borg. She's a good snappy foil for Conway without being clownish. Then too, this is WWII time (1944), so girl cabbies have taken over for guys in uniform. Thus Hollywood has to treat them respectfully. But how in the world could Perry Mason's own sweet Della Street (Barbara Hale) possibly be counted as a murder suspect. Perry would never stand for that. Neither would grouchy Lt. Tragg.Anyway, the whodunit is pretty pedestrian, but I take that as just an excuse for the studio (RKO) tour. And, oh yes, fans of noir shouldn't look for shadowy mood—it all transpires in high-key lighting. As any good sight-seeing tour should.

I switched on TCM and watched "The Falcon in Hollywood," a 1944 entry in the series made after George Sanders, the original lead actor in the role, was replaced by Tom Conway (Sanders' real-life brother, though Conway had changed his last name so he wouldn't find the path to success greased by his brother's coattails), a remarkable little movie that's most noteworthy for its plot premise (spoiler alert!), which is the same as "The Producers" only carefully not played for laughs: an unscrupulous Broadway producer, Martin S. Dwyer (John Abbott), best known for dramas — he did a production of "Hamlet" on the Main Stem and proudly displays a poster for it in his office, along with a bust of Shakespeare, whose dialogue he's fond of quoting — comes to the "Sunset Studios" in Hollywood to make his first film. He picks a musical, Magic Melody, and sells 200 percent of the film to various investors, including John Miles, a playboy with a fortune which he's willing to use part of to bankroll a movie so he can act the lead role even though he's never acted before; Alec Hoffman (Konstantin Shayne), a Stroheim-like director with a string of flops behind him; and Louie Buchanan (Sheldon Leonard), a gambler who was imprisoned in New York for fixing horse races but escaped.Tom Lawrence (Tom Conway), nicknamed "The Falcon," is in Hollywood on a vacation when he encounters movie star Lili D'Allio (Rita Corday), a believer in numerology, at a horse race. He also encounters Peggy Callahan (Barbara Hale, a bit of a surprise to see as a baddie since we're used to her role as Della Street in the 1950's Perry Mason TV series), Louie Buchanan's girlfriend; and Billie Atkins (Veda Ann Borg in a great vehicle for her), a lady cabdriver who zips Tom Lawrence around the L.A. streets (playing themselves instead of being safely represented by the RKO backlot) at near-warp speeds. She explains that she's a stunt driver in movies when she isn't working as a cabbie, and her salty performance makes her a considerably more interesting character than the more openly attractive glamour girls the cast abounds in — Hale, Corday and Jean Brooks (Richard Brooks' first wife and the star of the magnificent Val Lewton production "The Seventh Victim") as Roxanna Miles, costume designer for Magic Melody and John Miles' estranged wife, who has the hots for director Hoffman and hopes to marry him — as does D'Allio. There's a lot of running around the "Sunset" lot and the character of an old gatekeeper who becomes a red herring, but eventually Tom Lawrence figures out the whole plot: producer Dwyer was sabotaging his own production, including murdering his leading man, wounding his director with a supposedly blank-loaded gun (and deliberately exposing the day's film, ruining it so that it couldn't be developed and reveal the truth about the attempted murder of Hoffman), and eventually killing Buchanan with a trick ring from India that contains poison in its metal so that as the wearer has it on, the poison is slowly leaching into his system and ultimately knocking him off.The film has some interesting real-life L.A. locations, including a confrontation at the Coliseum as well as an opening scene at the Hollywood Turf Club at which we meet most of the principals, but the most fascinating thing about it is the "Producers" plot element (Dwyer was sabotaging his own film so he wouldn't have to pay off the investors since either it would never be released at all or would fail) done deadly seriously. It was actually an urban legend on Broadway for decades before Brooks filmed it — indeed, Groucho Marx actually wanted to use it as the plot for "A Night at the Opera" but MGM production chief Irving Thalberg vetoed it.

A great tour of the RKO backlot. Tom Conway suave as ever gives us a turn around the streets of 1940's Hollywood, including a trip to the Hollywood Bowl. Barbara (Della Street) Hale is on hand again as are the fabulous Sheldon Leonard and Robert Clark(I) in his second film role. Veda Ann Borg is brash and funny, Konstantin Shayne mutter Shakespeare with panache, and Jean Brooks(II) adds her charm to an early send up of Edith Head. And take a look at that lovely underrated under used Rita Corday. It all starts at the Hollywood race track, a mad dash around street cars down the Boulevard and ending up at the RKO gate. Prop rooms, prop building, soundstages, costume shop, the RKO stock swimming pool and finally the loft of the soundstage. It's fast, funny and an exceptional tour of a working studio. There is even a charming Arab actor Useff Ali as the "I can play any ethnic" in what is only one of his two film roles. Too bad he didn't have a longer career. The B pics at RKO had a great family of ensemble players..........Enjoy them.

The other night was a whole night featuring the Falcon series on TV. Since I had never seen any I thought this would be a good chance. I picked The Falcon In Hollywood as I thought that it would not only introduce me to the Falcon but give me some behind the scenes of Hollwood as well. It was incredibly boring and worse than any tv movie I'd ever seen. What people don't remember is what might have been funny in 1944 is not funny any more. I like old black and white movies ( I am almost 60), but this was awful. Strange that just a few years later, Boston Blackie on TV had a real chemistry between the characters that this lacked.