The character of the Falcon, an amateur gentleman detective similar to Leslie Charteris' "the Saint", was created by Michael Arlen, a Bulgarian-born British writer of Armenian descent, and was then taken up by Hollywood in a series of crime dramas. Arlen's hero was named Gay Falcon, but in the films he was, for unknown reasons, renamed Gay Lawrence, "the Falcon" being a nickname. (Arlen's choice of a forename for his hero was a strange one. I am well aware that in the thirties and forties the word "gay" did not carry its modern meaning of "homosexual", but even then "Gay" was well-established as a feminine Christian name). In the first four films the Falcon was played by George Sanders, who had also played the Saint in a series of films based on Charteris' books. Feeling that he was becoming typecast, Sanders dropped out of the series after the fourth film in which a new Falcon was introduced, Gay Lawrence's brother Tom. This character was played by Sanders' real-life brother, Tom Conway. (His real name was Tom Sanders; "Conway" was a stage name).
"The Falcon Out West" (aka "The Falcon in Texas") is one of Conway's contributions to the series. The Falcon is called in to investigate when Tex Irwin, a wealthy Western rancher, collapses and dies in a New York nightclub. The cause of death is established as rattlesnake venom, and as New York nightclubs are not the natural habitat of the rattlesnake the Falcon correctly suspects foul play. The action then moves to the Irwin ranch in Texas where the Falcon has no shortage of suspects- Irwin's ex-wife, his gold-digging fiancée Vanessa Drake, his business partner Dave Colby, his foreman Dusty and Colby's beautiful daughter Marion.
The film rather incongruously combines the conventions of the detective murder mystery with those of the Western. The film was made in 1944 and the action is supposed to take place in that year, but the Falcon seems to travel backwards in time, from a 1940s New York to a Texas that does not appear to have changed much since the Wild West of the 1870s or 1880s. It incorporates what have been described as all the "standard horse-opera clichés", including ambushes, shootouts, stage coaches and Indians. As in many standard Westerns of the period the portrayal of the Indians is rather stereotyped and condescending.
I preferred Tom Conway's interpretation of the Falcon to that of his brother, who struck me as being just a little too laid back, even when serious matters like murder were at stake. Conway manages to achieve the necessary lightness of touch without descending into frivolousness. As a murder mystery, however, this is not a very interesting one; I could spot who the murderer was a mile off, long before the solution to the crime was officially announced. The Western setting adds little of interest; trying to cross the whodunit with the horse-opera was not a great success. 5/10
