 The
Falcon
(30 min)
Show Description
Michael Waring is The Falcon, a
detective with a penchant for getting set up for crimes he doesn’t
commit. The series moves smoothly from one week to the next week as new
dilemmas are introduced at the end of one episode for solving the
following week.
Show History
The Falcon was a radio series based
on a number of popular motion pictures from the early 1940’s. It
premiered on the American Blue Network in April 1943, and aired for the
next ten years. It was here that his transition into a private eye was
finalized, with The Falcon, originally called Guy Lawrence, but now
called Michael Waring working as a hardboiled insurance investigator,
with an office and a secretary, Nancy. It was on different networks with
different days and time slots, but always a 30 minute show. Barry
Kroeger was the first radio voice of The Falcon, followed
by James Meighan, Les Tremayne, George Petrie, and Les Damon. Nearly all
the shows were broadcast from New York.
Each show usually started out with a telephone call
to The Falcon from a beautiful woman. Answering in his slightly British
accent, he would reply to her and another adventure would follow. Waring
was snappy and sarcastic with the incompetent police who were inevitably
unable to solve the mysteries without his help. Like the films, the
radio plots mixed danger, romance and comedy in equal parts. A total of
about 70 shows, representing the length of the run, are available today.
It was this version of
The Falcon
that was made into another short series of films, three in all, with
John Calvert as Waring, produced by Film Classics. And it was this film
version of The Falcon that was adapted, in the
mid-fifties, for a brief syndicated television series, starring Charles
McGraw now as a slightly more hardboiled, and less dashing Falcon. but
again, his occupation had changed. He was now a “famous undercover
agent” who “operates around the world on his hazardous missions,” as the
promos put it.
|
