Main Cast: George Sanders, Lynn Bari, James Gleason, Allen Jenkins, Helen Gilbert
Release Year: 1942
Country: US
Run Time: 63 minutes
Plot
The plot of the RKO Radio programmer The Falcon Takes Over will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has seen the 1944 Philip Marlowe mystery Murder My Sweet: indeed, both films were based on the same Raymond Chandler novel, Farewell My Lovely. It all begins when brutish prison escapee Moose Malloy (Ward Bond) forces nervous Broadwayite Goldie Locke (Allen Jenkins) to drive him to a posh nightclub, where Moose hopes to be reunited with his old girlfriend. Unable to find his elusive sweetheart, Moose tears the joint apart, obliging Goldie to flee for his life. As it happens, Goldie is the assisant of private eye Gay Lawrence (George Sanders), aka The Falcon, who has been hired by foppish socialite Lindsey Marriot (Hans Conried) to ransom a necklace stolen from Marriot's lady friend Diane Kenyon (Helen Gilbert). Shortly afterward, Marriot is murdered, and the Falcon discovers that there's an inextricable link between the dead man and the inimitable Moose Malloy. The rest of the film follows the plot convolutions set down by Chandler in Farewell My Lovely, carefully retailed to suit the breezy urbanity of George Sanders as the Falcon. Though Murder My Sweet is the better of the two versions of the Chandler novel, The Falcon Takes Over has a few advantages of its own, notably the casting of future Oscar winner Ann Revere as blowzy murder suspect Jessie Florian. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Albert S. D'Agostino - Art Director, Field M. Gray - Art Director, Feild M. Gray - Art Director, Renie - Costume Designer, Ruby Rosenberg - First Assistant Director, Irving G. Reis - Director, Harry Marker - Editor, Constantin Bakaleinikoff - Composer (Music Score), Constantin Bakaleinikoff - Musical Direction/Supervision, George Robinson - Cinematographer, Howard Benedict - Producer, Lynn Root - Screenwriter, Frank Fenton - Screenwriter, Raymond Chandler - Book Author
The Falcon Takes Over, also known as The Falcon Steps Out, is a 1942 black-and-whitemystery film directed by Irving Reis. The film was the third, following The Gay Falcon and A Date with the Falcon (1941), to star George Sanders as the character Gay Lawrence, a gentleman detective known be sobriquet the Falcon.
Though the film featured the Falcon and other characters created by Michael Arlen, its plot was taken from the Raymond Chandler novel Farewell, My Lovely,[1] with the Falcon substituted for Chandler's archetypal private eye Philip Marlowe and the setting of New York replacing Marlowe's Los Angeles beat.[2][3] The film was the first adaptation of a Marlowe story – despite Farewell, My Lovely being written after Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939), in which the character was introduced.
Critic Louis Black, in a 1999 article for The Austin Chronicle, wrote that the film "had none of the atmosphere of Chandler's book" and recommended instead the later adaptation, Murder, My Sweet (1944).[3]
Cast
George Sanders as Gay Lawrence aka The Falcon, an amateur detective
^Newman, Bruce (August 29, 2002). "Storied writer's novels, screenplays take up residence on TCM.". San Jose Mercury News. "The studios had so little interest in the character that in the first two movie adaptations of Chandler's books, he was replaced. When RKO bought the screen rights to Farewell, My Lovely, the studio made a craven bid to cash in on the popularity of the Warner Bros. hit The Maltese Falcon, turning Marlowe into a detective called the Falcon (played by George Sanders) and releasing the movie with the title The Falcon Takes Over."
