The Vintage Playhouse

The Ultimate Falcon DVD Collection!

17 Movies on High Quality DVD
Starring: Tom Conway & George Sanders

Gay Stanhope Falcon, also known simply as The Falcon, was created in 1940 by Michael Arlen in his short story, "Gay Falcon", which was first published in 1940 in Town & Country magazine. Falcon is a freelance adventurer and troubleshooter, definitely on the hardboiled side, a man who makes his living "keeping his mouth shut and engaging in dangerous enterprises.

The Falcon was quickly brought to the screen by RKO in 1941, in the film The Gay Falcon, in which he was redefined as a suave English gentleman-detective with a weakness for beautiful women. The film was intended to establish a character who would replace Leslie Charteris' The Saint, hero of a popular RKO series of B movies starring George Sanders.

Though Falcon was originally the character's surname, in the film he was renamed Gay Lawrence, so that The Falcon became a nickname, comparable to The Saint. In his later outings, he has a variety of names, while still being known as the The Falcon. None of these films or television or radio episodes made any reference to why he was known as The Falcon.
Sanders appeared in the first three Falcon films, which followed the Saint pattern so closely that author Charteris sued RKO for plagiarism. Sanders, tired of B leads, bowed out of the series in The Falcon's Brother (1942). The Falcon's brother, Tom, became the new Falcon, and was portrayed by Sanders' actual brother, Tom Conway. Conway starred in ten more Falcon films through 1946.

Disc 1