Talk:Lone Wolf (character)

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Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

For a character and series that covered so many books, and decades of movies, this one seems poorly covered by wikipedia. I found an article from a defunct website that gives more information, but was completely unsourced, therefore unusable. Here is the text, perhaps I can get back to this or someone else can use this to research further and create a proper article out of it.

Louis Joseph Vance's MICHAEL LANYARD, better known as THE LONE WOLF, didn't start out as a private eye, but as a criminal.

However, like Jack Boyle's Boston Blackie, thanks to his numerous re-creations in film, radio and television, The Lone Wolf is now best remembered these days, if at all, chiefly as a sort of gentleman thief turned private eye.

All of Vance's books feature Lanyard as a charming sort of rogue, a European jewel thief with a soft spot for damsels in distress, trained in the criminal arts by the mysterious Irishman, Bourke. It's said The Lone Wolf was the inspiration for Leslie Chartis' The Saint. He certainly proved to be popular, right from the start.

His first appearance in film was in 1917, only three years after the first novel appeared. He remained a criminal right into the talkies, but by 1939's The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt, he was a reformed gentleman thief and amateur sleuth on the side of the good guys. In The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady (1940), he acquired a valet, Jamison, whose chief job, it seemed, was to provide comic relief, and to become hopelessly entangled in the plots.

In 1948, after appearing in close to two dozen films, The Lone Wolf moved to radio, and began a new career, with the cultured European jewel thief now an American private eye, even if the cops still didn't trust him. The radio series also proved successful enough to eventually spawn a television series, in 1954. The TV show had a rather schizophrenic hero, with actor Louis Hayward playing the character as a retired French gentleman by day, and the shadowy, wall-crawling Lone Wolf by night.

Ffejmopp (talk) 14:52, 5 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

I agree that this article is underdeveloped, and is little more than a list of appearances. In addition, the lead description of the character skews toward the film, radio and TV adaptations. In the books he is simply a charming criminal, he doesn't reform and become a detective, although he does solve mysteries in the pursuit of his criminal goals. But the site you quote suffers the same problem, and gets some facts wrong, ex. Jamison/Jameson is a fixture of the films before the title mentioned, at least two pictures earlier in 1939; the film you named was the first appearance of Eric Blore in that role, not the first appearance of the character. The weasely statement that Lanyard was an inspiration for the Saint is not supported by the Simon Templar article. 50.153.250.190 (talk) 14:55, 19 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

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