Tom Conway — The New Falcon (1943) 🇺🇸

Why a tall, handsome and extremely personable young man like Tom Conway should be going around scaring movie-goers is a Hollywood mystery which defies solving. With his good looks and charm Conway ought to be singing moonlight serenades to enraptured heroines. Instead, producers insist he go skulking about up to no good, as in “The Cat People” or his newest venture in malevolence, “I Walked With a Zombie.”

by Kay Proctor

So far Conway has been pretty philosophical about it all.

“Horror pays off!” he said blithely. “Besides, every now and then I get a breather like one of the Falcon series, which acts as a purifying agent. Then I’m ready for a fresh dish of dastardly doings.”

Horror has paid off for Conway. So adept has he proved in modern horror pictures, which depend on psychological menace and good acting rather than physical violence, grotesque make-up and scaly hands, or tombs swinging open at midnight, as to have built himself a whale of a fan following in the two years he has been in Hollywood. Maybe his face and name are not wholly familiar to the sophisticates of big cities, but in the smaller towns and cities from coast to coast, movie-goers know him and love him… or, rather, hate him for the villain he is on the screen.

With his advent as the new Falcon of that popular series, his circle of fans is destined to widen immeasurably. But once let him get his teeth into a good romantic lead like he played in England, and all America will become Conway-conscious. He has what it takes to make the ladies cry for more.

Conway was born in Leningrad (it was St. Petersburg then) in 1904. His father was a British rope manufacturer and his mother a Russian. Thus he is a British subject. The family lived in Russia until the Revolution and then fled to England. Tom was 13 at the time. In his early schooling he had a half-hearted interest in engineering which failed to develop into a concrete ambition.

“To be honest, I had only one interest in college,” Conway said. “To get through it as quickly and as easily as I could.”

Following graduation he chose South Africa as the place to earn an honest living. This included everything from day labor in gold, asbestos and copper mines, to assistant superintendent of an asbestos mine, and later a bit of ranching. Malaria, however, cut the African adventure short and he returned to England to become a salesman for a safety glass manufacturer. By sheer coincidence that job led him direct to the theater. A potential customer he was trying to sell was preoccupied with casting a Little Theater play. It turned out he wanted no part of Conway’s safety glass but he did want Conway — for the leading role in his show, No. 17. Conway made a bargain with him; in exchange for an order large enough to fill his sales quota, he would play the role.

No. 17 proved a hit — and Conway found the kind of work he liked. He’s been at it ever since, first with the Manchester Repertory Company, next with a number of British stock companies, then with the British Broadcasting Company, and finally in Hollywood since 1940.

His first American picture, made under contract to M-G-M, found him playing the heavy for the first time in his life. The novelty of the role appealed to him taut that novelty was destined to wear painfully thin in the next two years. There was a brief flurry after he played in “The Trial of Mary Dugan,” when the studio said “Ah! A find in leading men!” and started the usual romantic build-up. But his very next picture found him again cast as the villain, and it was the same story for eight pictures in a row.

Conway still is a little baffled about one experience at Metro. A New York producer had been wanting him to play the lead in Peep Show and had postponed production until Tom might be available. Each time a starting date was suggested, the studio nixed it on the grounds Conway was needed for a new picture. Finally there came a lull and negotiations got under way again. Overnight, however, the studio again reneged; Conway was needed immediately “for one of the top roles in a very important picture.”

“The top role” turned out to be the half-baked part of the villainous explorer in “Tarzan’s Secret Treasure.” Any high school Thespian could have met its demands. The New York producer is still waiting to produce his show, incidentally.

Conway finished his contract at Metro and immediately moved his make-up box over to R-K-O where he has been busy ever since.

Hollywood has tried its best to kill off Conway in a startling variety of ways. In “Rio Rita” he got blown up for the dirty Nazi he was. In “The Bad Man” Wallace Beery shot him because he was a dirty oil swindler. In “Sky Murder” he got stabbed in the neck by Edward Ashley because he was a dirty fifth columnist. In The Trial of Mary Dugan he got stabbed in the back by John Litel (unjustly, this time) because Litel wanted his wife. In Tarzan’s Secret Treasure he got eaten by crocodiles because he wanted to lead the world to Weissmuller’s [Johnny Weissmuller] gold; and in “The Cat People” he was torn to pieces by a black panther because he kissed Simone Simon. Of them all, he preferred the latter, he says; at least he got a kiss out of it.

Conway lives rather quietly in the social whirl of Hollywood. He plays a lot of first-rate tennis, skies, and rides horseback to keep fit. He likes to design boats and is an inventive lad. One day when the thermometer was in the high nineties he took the family vacuum cleaner (the kind that lies flat on the floor) and stuck it in the icebox. One flick of the switch and he had his own air conditioning system to cool things off!

Incidentally, Conway has a kid brother who also works in the movies. His name is George Sanders. Years ago when they both were playing on the British stage people used to get them confused, so in 1937 they flipped a coin to see who would keep the family name of Sanders and who would use a new one.

British tradition was shot to pieces when Tom lost. The eldest son always carries on the family name. Tom stuck to his bargain. At least George helped him make up a new name.

Tom Conway breaks his record of portraying villainous characters to step into the lead of the Falcon series, vacated by George Sanders

“Your fate is love when your hands have winning softness” says Irene Hervey

Gloria Irene Hervey with Allan Jones, Universal Pictures’ Stars. Aren’t her hands adorable! Irene uses Jergens.

“It’s up to a girl, herself, to have nice hands,” says Irene Hervey, one of Hollywood’s lovely Stars. “Jergens Lotion is easy to use and it does help prevent mortifying roughness. Yes‚ I use Jergens; and I hear the other Stars in Hollywood prefer Jergens Lotion, 7 to 1.”

Jergens Lotion for soft, adorable hands

Collection: Hollywood Magazine, February 1943