THE FALCON was the nom de guerre of a true man of mystery.

He was either MICHAEL WARING, a shadowy figure who took on the underworld with the aid of his friend Sarge, avoiding the police because they tended to blame him for their unsolved crimes, created by Drexel Drake in 1936 and originally appearing in a series of novels and at least one short story. Several Films under RKO were developed.

The success of the films also led to a radio series that premiered on the American Blue Network in April 1943, and aired for the next ten years on various networks. It was here that his transition into a private eye was finalized, with The Falcon, now called MICHAEL WARING working as a hardboiled insurance investigator, with an office and a secretary, Nancy. 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 in turn 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 operated "around the world on his hazardous missions," as the promos put it.

As Richard Meyers points out, in TV Detectives, "the character had come full circle. The Mike Waring the gravel-voiced McGraw played was basically the same rough-hewn adventurer Arlen had presented to his readers in 1940."

THE FALCON
(1943, NBC Blue; 1945, Mutual; 1950, NBC)
30-minute episodes, weekly
Based on characters created by Drexel Drake
Writers: Palmer Thompson, Eugene Wang, Stanley Niss, Jay Bennett, Bernard Dougall
Directors: Carlo De Angelo, Stuart Buchanan, Richard Lewis
Producers: Bernard Schubert, Jr.
Announcers: Russ Dunbar, Ed Herlihy
Starring Barry Kroeger as MICHAEL WARING, THE FALCON
(later replaced by James Meighan, Les Tremayne, George Petrie, and Les Damon)
with Joan Banks as Nancy
Also starring Ethel Everett, Joan Alexander, Mandel Kramer, Robert Dryden