Tom Conway (born Thomas Charles Sanders; 15 September 1904 – 22 April 1967) was a British film, television, and radio actor.
He is remembered for playing suave adventurer The Falcon in a series of 1940s films and psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd in Cat People (1942) and The Seventh Victim (1943).
[3] He had small roles in Waterloo Bridge (1940), with only his voice heard, Sky Murder (1940) with Walter Pidgeon, and The Wild Man of Borneo (1941).
Conway was a villain in Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941) with Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan, Mr. and Mrs. North (1941) with Gracie Allen, and Rio Rita (1942) with Abbott and Costello.
At RKO, Conway's brother George Sanders had starred in three popular "B" movies as The Falcon, eligible man-about-town and amateur detective, constantly being accused of crimes and using his wits to trap the guilty parties and clear his name.
Producer Maurice Geraghty later revealed that RKO executives recruited Conway so they could induce Sanders to make one more Falcon picture, after which the series would end.
[5] Conway followed this success with an excellent role in Cat People (1942), the first of producer Val Lewton's legendary horror cycle.
[6] Conway was top-billed in Lewton's The Seventh Victim (1943) playing the same role, psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd, from Cat People, though his character was seemingly killed in that film.
"[2] Between his Falcon and Val Lewton assignments, RKO starred Conway in B mysteries: A Night of Adventure (1944), Two O'Clock Courage (1945), and Criminal Court (1946).
Conway was borrowed by United Artists for Whistle Stop (1946), in which he supported George Raft, Ava Gardner, and Victor McLaglen.
[8]: 302 In spite of a similarly refined England accent, Conway was not as well-received as Rathbone by audiences; he played Holmes for only one season.
He was a leading support actor in Lost Honeymoon (1947) and Repeat Performance (1947) for Eagle-Lion, Fun on a Weekend (1947) for United Artists, and One Touch of Venus (1948) for Universal.
In 1948, he moved the franchise to his father's Reliance Pictures, an independent company distributing through Fox, and hired Tom Conway to play Bulldog Drummond in The Challenge (1948) and 13 Lead Soldiers (1948).
Independent producer, Sam Baerwitz, cast Conway in low-budget crime stories released by Fox; The Checkered Coat (1948), Bungalow 13 (1948), I Cheated the Law (1949), and The Great Plane Robbery (1950).
"[9] Conway appeared on the early television panel show Bachelor's Haven (1951), an advice-to-the-lovelorn forum patterned after the successful New York-based series Leave It to the Girls.
[10] In 1951, he replaced Vincent Price as star of the radio mystery series The Saint,[8] portrayed by Sanders on film a decade earlier.
Apart from a lead in Confidence Girl (1952), he played supporting roles: Tarzan and the She-Devil (1953), Paris Model (1953), and Prince Valiant (1954).
In 1957, the series resumed on NBC, now filmed in England and renamed Saber of London, with Donald Gray in the title role.
[12] Conway performed in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "The Glass Eye" (1957) as Max Collodi, receiving critical praise.
In 1964 he appeared on the top-rated Perry Mason series in "The Case of the Simple Simon," playing Guy Penrose, leading actor in a travelling repertory company.
In September 1965, he briefly returned to the headlines when he was living in a $2-a-day room (monthly $60, equivalent to $580 in 2023) in a small Venice, Los Angeles hotel at 23-1/2 Windward Avenue, operated by former vaudevillian Agnes Lavaty.
Gabor's account differs from published reports,[23] which state that Conway was transferred from the hospital to a convalescent sanitarium, where he stayed three months.