Poor Tom Conway, he's in Southern California to enjoy himself and take in a few races at Hollywood and all kinds of people come out from his past. First Sheldon Leonard whom the Falcon put away with his testimony who would like to even the score. Secondly his former girlfriend Barbara Hale who's trying to make a fresh start in motion pictures only Leonard won't leave her alone. Two cops Emory Parnell and Frank Jenks are around as well. And where the Falcon goes, murders start happening.The Falcon In Hollywood is blessed with one undeniable asset who makes any picture better by her presence. The ever brassy and buxom Veda Ann Borg who plays a cabdriver who kind of attachs herself to Conway and while her presence is a mixed blessing in solving the crime, she's always great to hang around. Between her and Iris Adrian they cornered the market on brassy dames when a film called for one.Two deaths both connected with the filming of a motion picture that John Abbott is producing and Konstantin Shayne is directing happen before the Falcon resolves it. Here's a hint, the plot of this may have been what inspired Mel Brooks to create one of his best films.

This is the tenth Falcon film. It is one of the most amusing and satisfactory of the series. A new director, Gordon Douglas, came into the series, and injected some much-needed fresh energy. But chiefly, this film is remarkable for the pairing of Tom Conway with a female sidekick, a cabbie named Billie, played to superb comic effect by Veda Ann Borg. The two have a wonderful magic together. The producers had stumbled on a formula here which could have generated several more films of the wise-cracking guy and gal type, similar to the Thin Man series. But they retained neither the girl nor the director in future films, which shows that they were asleep at the wheel by this time. It is true that Veda Ann Borg's character gets a bit annoying after a while, through over-persistence, but that could so easily have been fixed. She and Tom Conway 'clicked' because she was not in the category of wolf's prey, so that he could relate to her as a person rather than as a curved shape (not that she was lacking in that department either, but her personality obliterated her looks entirely). Jean Brooks is there again, in her fourth Falcon film. Her icy demeanour makes her once again a chilling suspect. She always added so much to these films, because she was so convincing as either a villainess or a potential one. This film is extremely remarkable for a detective film of the 1940s in that a very large proportion of the dialogue consists of direct quotations from William Shakespeare, most of it uttered by John Abbott, by origin an Englishman who knew how to say the lines properly (he had appeared in England in 'The Importance of Being Earnest' (1937) and 'Mrs. Miniver' (1942) and was well grounded in the Bard). There is also one witty exchange of Shakespearian lines between Tom Conway and John Abbott. There is a wonderful cameo by an obscure uncredited actor, Chester Clute, as the manager of an apartment building (called a 'hotel' in the IMDb character list, though it was not a hotel in the story). The shots around Los Angeles and the RKO sound stages and lot are also fascinating. This is a real winner for avid Falconers.

Back to the city and business as normal (?) for Tom Lawrence aka the Falcon in solving crimes the cops can't [#10/13]. "Hollywood" had a nice sunny feel to it, the War was a million miles away and people wanted to get even further away from it with an escapist movie industry to help.The Falcon's busy losing at a racetrack but quickly gets mixed up with 2 beautiful women (Hale and Corday) and embroiled in tracking down an apparently stolen handbag. This leads to Sunset Pictures backlots where the body of a murdered man is discovered along with a gallery of suspects. The 2 best things here are the riveting but unfortunately intermittent tour of the RKO studios and props as the Falcon and his wisecracking female taxi driver played by Veda Ann Borg investigate, and the tight intelligent scripting. I wished there'd been much more behind the scenes for an even better picture of the studio. I kept expecting Borg to exclaim "Come up to my place!" – Conway wouldn't have been as backward as Sinatra! John Abbott as the Shakespeare-obsessed studio boss had many amusing scenes, and Emory Parnell effortlessly swapped from baddie in Mexico to goodie in Hollywood. And the story actually made solid sense this time without detracting from the entertainment, you can follow it from first to last, and even though the baddie's identity is pretty obvious from early on it was all logically explained. The searching of dead Ted's apartment has always stuck with me though for the bit where the Falcon and Borg are philosophising about how sad a dead man's room is and the poignant line about if he had been "worrying about tragic things like a broken shoelace" that morning.Recommended to fans of the genre, not to others. One of my favourite Falcon's, one I've watched again and again and still hope to.

While on vacation on the west coast, the Falcon finds himself approached by Peggy Callahan – the girlfriend of criminal Louie Buchanan. Peggy leaves her bag behind in place of Lawrence's companion's bag. He pursues her in a taxi driven by gobby taxi-come-stunt driver Billie Atkins and gets onto a the grounds of a Hollywood studio. While looking for Peggy the Falcon and Billie stumble onto the body of actor Ted Miles. The police are called and, even on holiday, Lawrence finds himself investigating yet another crime.After not thinking much of the Falcon being Out West and In Mexico during his last two films, I feared that him being in Hollywood would be another location gimmick replacing any actual substance or entertainment value. It may be because the Hollywood setting just meant that the production stayed at home and saved money on a lot of set design but this film was actually pretty good and used Hollywood well but as a backdrop to a solid mystery. It does take some work to get it started but once Lawrence gets onto the lot it livens up and keeps that pace well for the rest of the film. Unlike the last two films the mystery is actually pretty good and develops to a satisfying solution. Douglas uses the locations well (RKO itself being the main one) and the film has a great "off-set" feel to it that you don't always get with b-movies – nice to see compared to the gimmicky feel to the West and Mexico and it bodes well for San Francisco (which I have not yet seen).Conway seems a lot more relaxed and more like himself than when In Mexico. While in Mexico we had a Mexican "Goldie" character and here we have a female wise-@ss, in the shape of Borg; she is sassy and fu in a very clichéd and obvious manner but it works well. Parnell and Jenks are a poor man's Clark and Gargan but don't have that much to do. Perry Mason's Hale is good, as is Brooks. Shayne is a bit hammy but effective while series regular Rita Corday turns up yet again early on in the film.Overall then an enjoyable entry in the series that fans will enjoy and may be slick and enjoyable enough to suit newcomers looking for an easy b-movie to watch. The location is not obtrusive and the material is good, giving the actors more to work with than in the last two films.