Hollywood Memories: Falcon Studios and Fencing Masters

Ralph Faulkner (Photo: West Coast Fencing Archive)

In the late 1970s, my brother and I took fencing lessons in Hollywood.

I don’t remember exactly how this happened, but there we were, at a place called Falcon Studios on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard as you headed east toward Western Avenue.

The owner was an old man named Ralph Faulkner, and his place was also old and a bit sprawling – with a building in front, a courtyard directly behind that and another open and airy building behind that. This is where people learned and practiced their swordplay.

We were not athletic kids. And even now I wonder why and how we wound up at Falcon Studios.

Ralph was a bit crotchety, and I remember him shouting “NO!” and striking some students on their sides if they made a mistake. That made me nervous.

But, thankfully, Faulkner was not our instructor. That task fell to another guy named Nick Evangelista.

I remember something called a parry… which is a defensive action in fencing, with multiple variations.

It sounded like “perry” … a cadence from Evangelista sounded like this to me – “Perry cease, perry cart – perry contra-de-cart…”

Perry freaking Mason…

In reality, it was probably more like this:

“Parry sixte…parry quarte…parry contre de quarte…”

Did I mention that we were not athletic. And, we didn’t speak French.

I seem to remember that Uncle Roger’s son Bruce joined us on these fencing adventures – and it might have been him who convinced our father that it would be good for us.

But fencing lessons, like the tap dancing lessons we took, were things to be endured. Hell, in tap dancing, Chris and I never moved our arms. Instead, we let them hang at our sides. We made it look more like clogging or someshit.

I’ll write about our tap lessons some other time.

But like many other experiences I took for granted while coming of age in Hollywood, I have come to realize how magical they were. I was living a charmed life.

Faulkner himself was legendary. His first film appearance was a minor role in the 1917 silent film, “War and the Woman,” and he appeared in more than two dozen movies and television shows over the course of his lifetime. It is said that he got into fencing as a method of rehabilitation after a filming accident in 1922.

He competed in the 1928 and 1932 Summer Olympics and opened Falcon Studios with his wife, with Faulkner handling fencing coaching and instruction for film folk while wife Edith Jane apparently handled theatre training. I’m thinking now that the front building was for the theatre component.

Faulkner showed us a small garden with cement slabs containing the footprints and hand prints of movie stars from bygone days, his own version of what had long been done at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (now TCL Chinese Theatres). Did I see Errol Flynn, Mary Pickford or Douglas Fairbanks on those slabs? Looking back over nearly 50 years, memory is a funny thing.  Maybe somebody can help me out here.

Nick Evangelista said in an article on his website that he apprenticed himself to Faulkner for eight years – and that his first experience with him was so traumatizing that it took him two weeks to gather up the courage to go back.

Nick Evangelista at Falcon Studios, 1976
(Photo: Evangelista School of Fencing)

I can dig it.

Evengelista is a fencing maestro. He opened his first school in 1981. He has authored a series of books about fencing, including Fighting With Sticks and The Art and Science of Fencing. He also published Fencer’s Quarterly Magazine.

While we were at Falcon Studios, Evangelista was our teacher. Thorough and experienced, but way less terrifying to us than the old man.

My brother still has his foil and fencing mask. We sucked, though.

As I have said before, there is so much to plumb from the recesses of my memory – and I want to get it all down to the best of my ability.

Enjoy these posts? I’d love it if you would subscribe.

• Falcon Studios
• Fencing
• Hollywood
• Nick Evangelista
• Ralph Faulkner