"Count me out tonight, angel..."

Some radio detectives originated in the pages of novels and short stories, while others transitioned from the big screen to the airwaves.  In the case of The Falcon, it was a little of each as two different characters were blended into one of radio’s longest-running sleuths. The exploits of the gumshoe first came to radio on April 10, 1943. The first Falcon was introduced by Drexel Drake in a 1936 novel The Falcon’s Prey.  Drake’s Falcon, featured in multiple novels and stories, was Malcolm Wingate, a shadowy crime-fighter and Robin Hood figure born in America but raised in England.  Aided by an ex-cop nicknamed “Sarge,” the Falcon preyed on evildoers and came to the aid of the oppressed. Drake’s Falcon predated Gay Stanhorpe Falcon, a freelance adventurer created by Michael Arlen in his 1940 short story “The Gay Falcon.”  It was this Falcon who came to the big screen in 1941 with George Sanders (fresh off a movie run as The Saint) starring as the character.  As if that wasn’t complicated enough, the movie (and its sequels) changed the character’s name to Gay Lawrence, with no explanation of how he earned the name “The Falcon.”  The Falcon of the films began as a replacement for The Saint at RKO, but he evolved into more of a classic private detective.  In fact, his third movie, The Falcon Takes Over (1942), was an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely with The Falcon subbing in for Philip Marlowe.  After four movies, Sanders had enough and his real-life brother Tom Conway took over the franchise as “Tom Lawrence” in The Falcon’s Brother, and played the role for eight more movies. The success of the films led to a radio version in 1943.  The Falcon of the radio was a private eye named Michael Waring, neither the Drake character nor the Arlen character.  The radio series referred to the Falcon’s past in novels and in films, and Drexel Drake was credited as the character’s creator on the air.  Just to add another wrinkle to the genealogy of the character, the Waring Falcon hit the big screen in three films starring John Calvert. Berry Kroger was the first actor to play Waring on the air, and he was succeeded by James Meighan.  For the bulk of the run, The Falcon was played by Les Tremayne and Les Damon.  The actors shared several roles along with their first name; in addition to The Falcon, they each took a turn starring as Nick Charles in The Adventures of The Thin Man.  George Petrie, who played radio private eye Charlie Wild and District Attorney Markham on Philo Vance, was the last actor to play The Falcon on the air. Most of the shows began with The Falcon answering a phone call from one of his many lovely female companions.  He’d politely decline their company for the evening before offering a tease of the adventure he was about to undertake.  Like his radio private eye brethren, Waring’s cases were about equally divided between clients seeking his help and the police calling him in on tough-to-crack cases.  In the early 1950s, owing to the popularity of espionage programs, The Falcon became an intelligence agent for the US Government.  His work took him overseas where he battled enemy spies with the same skills he used on gangsters back in the Big Apple. Despite the long run of the program (The Falcon aired from 1943 until 1954 in multiple runs over NBC and Mutual), only about 100 episodes survive.  Most of them come from the Tremayne/Damon years, so listeners today can hear a mix of Falcon adventures both foreign and domestic.  With his mix of hard-boiled private eye and suave gentleman adventurer, The Falcon is a great character with whom to spend an evening.