Milan insists there is no evidence any plaster Falcons were made for use in the 1941 film. He makes the same charge about Risan’s Falcons that Risan makes about his: they were made for the 1975 movie. “The Hank Risans out there will never stop,” Milan harrumphs. “But any four-year-old can see the one in the film matches mine, and the others do not.”
Risan fires right back, saying of the Milan Falcon, “It’s one of the worst fakes I’ve ever seen. A seven-year-old could see this is a fake. Just look at the photos.”
In fact the visual evidence in the movie seems to support Milan’s case in that the Falcon’s recessed breast feathers seen in close-up match his Falcon’s, not those of Risan’s, which are raised and quite different. (Risan argues that this is due to lighting and 1940s photographic techniques.) On the other hand, the actors seem to be holding and moving an object far lighter than 47 pounds.
Risan didn’t care what Gary Milan thought, and he had no intention of going public or initiating any dispute. He wasn’t interested in displaying or selling his Falcons; he just wanted them insured. “It was Q.E.D.,” he says today. “This was over for me.”
The Birds and the Fees
The plot, in fact, was only beginning to thicken. Because just as Risan and his two Maltese Falcons stepped off the stage, another Falcon stepped on—actually two. The first surfaced that same year, 1991, at the Golden Nugget flea market, in Lambertville, New Jersey, where it was spotted by a documentary-film maker named Ara Chekmayan. Chekmayan had earned an Oscar nomination for his 1983 film, Children of Darkness, and was a three-time Emmy winner. He found the little statue—a foot-tall black Falcon made of resin—among several rusted tools. On the bottom of it he found a serial number, 90456 WB. He immediately suspected that the Falcon might have been used in the 1941 film, and he bought it for $8. Much like Risan had done, Chekmayan launched his own quest to authenticate his Falcon. His brother interviewed Meta Wilde; she thought it could be another of the three or four 1941 Falcons. Confident he had a genuine item, Chekmayan put it up for auction at Christie’s East. But Christie’s pulled the item weeks before the auction after Warner threatened to sue if Christie’s claimed the Falcon was tied in any way to the movie.
In fact, there were indications the studio wasn’t entirely sure of the provenance of either the Milan or Chekmayan birds. In a 1997 New York Times article about Chekmayan’s Falcon, the newspaper quoted a Warner executive, who preferred to remain anonymous, saying there was no way to tell which, if either, of the two Falcons had been used in the movie. Prop records had long since been lost. “Basically,” the executive told the Times, “it goes on faith.”
Chekmayan gave in. Risan, for one, believes the Chekmayan bird was made for the 1975 movie. It is made of cold-cured polyester resin, he says, which was invented only in 1946 and, along with the serial number, seems to conform to Baer’s description of the one he made for the later film. Even so, Chekmayan’s story eventually had a happy ending. He did manage to have his Falcon authenticated by a reputable Los Angeles gallery; in 2000, it was sold at auction for $92,000 to an unidentified bidder. Ten years later it was sold again, this time for more than $300,000, to a group that included Leonardo DiCaprio.
The second new Falcon appeared in 1994, and this one’s authenticity couldn’t be dismissed. A heavy lead statuette with a bronze patina, it was found in the California home of the actor William Conrad, star of the Cannon television series, after his death. Warner Bros. confirmed that it had been given to the actor as a gift by studio chief Jack Warner during the 1960s and it had sat for years on a shelf in Conrad’s den. In fact, legend around the Warner lot has it that Jack Warner kept the 1941 Falcon mold and from time to time would have a lead Falcon cast from it as a special gift (although no others of this kind have yet surfaced). Weighing 45 pounds and made of lead, the “Conrad Falcon” closely resembled the Milan Falcon, including the recessed breast feathers. In addition, it had what appeared to be slash marks, which may have been made during the movie’s filming in a scene in which the statuette is attacked with a pocket knife.
Reversing its earlier position, Warner now confirmed that there was not just one Falcon but at least two.
The Conrad Falcon had a notable fate. Christie’s put it up for auction in December 1994, and it sold to the New York jeweler Ronald Winston, son of the famed Harry Winston, for $398,500, then a record price for a movie prop. The Falcon so captured Winston’s imagination that he wrote a short play about what might have happened to the fictional Falcon after the story told in the 1941 film. He hired a well-known Bogart look-alike, Tony Heller, to play Sam Spade and staged the play as a private event for a select group of invited guests.
Afterward, Winston used the Conrad Falcon as the model for a new Falcon made of 10 pounds of gold. Its eyes were two Burma-ruby cabochons. From its beak Winston hung a 42-carat diamond. All told, the Winston Falcon took two years and $8 million to make. It was displayed at the Academy Awards in 1997.
After creating his bejeweled gold replica, Winston sold the Conrad Falcon to an unidentified buyer, for a price he claimed was far above what he had paid. Where that Falcon resides today is anyone’s guess.
On a Wing and a Prayer
For 20 years after insuring his two Falcons, Hank Risan paid them only intermittent attention. In 1999 a friend at Christie’s urged him to sell them at auction. Risan agreed to a meeting or two but dropped the matter when he heard Gary Milan was threatening to sue. “I said, ‘The hell with it,’ ” he says. “ ‘It’s not worth the trouble.’ ”
But the trouble never went away. In 2005, Risan and his Falcons were featured in an online article, the first public mention of their existence. The article quoted a 1991 letter from Vivian Sobchack to the effect she believed they were genuine. Several days later, Sobchack says, Milan called the chancellor of U.C.L.A., claiming she was involved in an unethical appraisal business. Nothing came of it.
The mystery of Risan’s Falcons began to clear up only in 2012, when he decided to sell off a quarter of his guitars and his Falcons. To have a chance of doing so, he needed to update their authentication. It had been more than 20 years, after all, since he had done his initial research. He asked his public-relations consultant, Mark Marinovich, to help out.
