Leslie Charteris's The Saint/Simon Templar Discussion Thread
Silhouette Man
The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,852MI6 Agent
I see that we have no thread here on AJB dedicated to the literary works of Leslie Charteris (1907-1993), creator of The Saint, Simon Templar. I have to admit that I was rather surprised by this and so I decided I would start a thread on him and his famous creation as opposed to a thread on the TV series, the films, the radio and comic strip adaptations. These can be discussed here too in relation to their literary counterparts to see how faithful (or otherwise) they actually are to their source material.
Anyway, here's a story of how my interest in Leslie Charteris and The Saint was rekindled:
I recently bought a whole cache (about 40 titles) of Leslie Charteris's The Saint vintage paperbacks from my local Tesco charity book stand. Someone must have donated an old collection. It reignited my interest in The Saint and nearly completed my collection - I had a few books before this bought at different times in second hand bookshops and charity shops. I'll try to post a picture of all the novels at some point...
So, to get things moving along in this thread, I'd love to know if there are any of fans of Charteris and The Saint on AJB? There are obvious parallels with James Bond, but I don't have to tell you lot that!
Anyway, here's a story of how my interest in Leslie Charteris and The Saint was rekindled:
I recently bought a whole cache (about 40 titles) of Leslie Charteris's The Saint vintage paperbacks from my local Tesco charity book stand. Someone must have donated an old collection. It reignited my interest in The Saint and nearly completed my collection - I had a few books before this bought at different times in second hand bookshops and charity shops. I'll try to post a picture of all the novels at some point...
So, to get things moving along in this thread, I'd love to know if there are any of fans of Charteris and The Saint on AJB? There are obvious parallels with James Bond, but I don't have to tell you lot that!
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Comments
Markets etc, when I was first trying to find all the Bond books. " A modern day Robin Hood" . I enjoyed
Them a lot. I think Charteris complained that Fleming had "borrowed" his character for Bond.
I think the TV series with Sir Roger used the stories at first but quickly had to get permission to write
New original adventures as the series was so popular. Sir Roger used his own car for the show ( Volvo p1800 )
Or rather he had just bought one and they offered another for the series.
I had the dvd sets before I emigrated and in one episode is the same Aston Martin used in GF sporting the same number plate BMT 216A.
Ian Ogilvy brought something new to the character and I enjoyed him as well, it's just a shame he couldn't have had a few more seasons himself. There was some solid potential to that.
I almost wish Brosnan would have been able to play Templar in that movie that Moore was trying to get made in the mid-80s. He would have been great in that.
I loved reading the books, like TP I picked them up while trawling for Bond titles. The writing as more elegant, less sadistic than Fleming and a lot more humorous. The Saint Around The World, made up of short stories, I particularly liked.
The books began in the 1930s if I recall, and owe something to Agatha Christie or Somerset Maughan even.
I tried to watch The Fiction Makers on London Live on Sat night, it's a Roger Moore as the Saint thing, not sure if it was a film or episodes spliced together, but after the Saul Bass Pink Panther style credits it was deadly dull, like a poor Avengers episode.
I think in his day Dirk Bogarde would have made an excellent Saint, as maybe Hugh Grant might have if played more like his character in About A Boy. Though both actors tended to need others to bounce off, and can't quite carry a film by themselves.
I too liked Ian Ogilvy but the series was cancelled as it cost too much, unlike the Moore vehicles they really did film abroad.
Other, subsequent incumbents are hardly worth mentioning.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
going to make one series of The return of the saint, but because they had to
pay out so much protection money to the Mafia, that a second series had to be
filmed " Back to Back" to make any money ?
It also had the same car continuity, as it was a white KJS, both here and in Europe
but it had a totally different colour of trim in Europe to the UK model.
Avengers had the same treatment from BL, with different cars being delivered on
set.
The Saint is a fantastic character, why it hasn't been pick up for a new outing, I'll never know.
I'm sure The Saint could work in a modern world, but there is a certain charm to it in the 60s and 70s that would be hard to recreate. When they tried to make it again with Simon Dutton and later for that pilot on CBS with Andrew Clarke, it just didn't work. I'm sure a proper actor could be found and a decent series could be made, but it won't come easily.
Saves the girl. All with a touch of humour. There must still be a market for that. Reminded me
Of an Interview with Ian Ogilvy , he said everyone in Italy kept asking him if he was impersonating
Roger Moore !
and we all know Alan Partridge was a fan .
https://youtu.be/XEk9MvNPdek
Possibly humourous/action programmes may be coming back ?
Here's hoping, TP. -{
It's a shame it didn't continue.
My interest in the Saint got reignited with the Val Kilmer film and I thought that it was an interesting direction for the character to take, having him as a master criminal who used his skills for good.
I believe that in the original series with Roger Moore they wanted the Saint to rock up in a Jaguar E Type but Jag wouldn't give them one so they went to the Volvo. When Return of the Saint happened BL were quick to plug their vehicles and offered up the XJS straight away. The Kilmer film was an opportunity to showcase the new C90 and provide a nod to the old series, as was the cameo by Roger Moore.
As for the books, I could never really get into them.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I don't think he looks anything like Judy Finnigan ;%
Ian Ogilvy was also considered to take over Bond after Moore too
That would have been interesting. I could really see him fitting for AVTAK.
its daunting when theres several dozen books in a series, and theyre all out of print, and theres hardly any used bookstores anymore
but I managed to find the earliest ones so I could start with those
at first I had issues with The Saint's manner of speaking,: when he speaks to the the villains he's not just taunting but emasculating them, always calling them "dear thing" before breaking their noses, I don't recall Moore talking lot that in the teevee show
but when I finally found a copy of volume 1: The Saint Meets the Tiger, Charteris actually explains that: Templar's strategy is to always control the conversation, to constantly leave the bad guy on the defensive and confused ... too bad the first book is the hardest to find then because it explains some of the odder aspects of his character ... in the introductions Charteris always regrets how the early books have dated and wishes he could modernise them, and I gather the first one really bugs him (its set in a Devon fishing village functionally cut off from the outside world, in 1929, before automobiles and telephones were ubiquitous outside the city ... today the same village is probably full of yuppies who commute to London every morning)
btw, first ever episode of the teevee series I ever watched was probably the last made, Vendetta for the Saint, set in Sicily: the leading lady is the lovely Aimee McDonald, from At Last the 1948 Show! bonus points for the Python connection, and she still talks like a helium balloon even when she 's doing a dramatic role
My favorite is probably The Saint in New York, an unusually violent and cynical entry in the series. I'm also quite fond of She Was a Lady a.k.a. Angels of Doom, in which the Saint helps the daughter of a disgraced police inspector get revenge on the men responsible for framing her father. Both of the film adaptations of these books, The Saint in New York and The Saint Strikes Back, are worth checking out.
I like the radio programs quite a bit -- and Vincent Price was in many ways the perfect Saint -- but Leslie Charteris had nothing to do with them beyond getting a credit and collecting a fee.
I don't think it was fair that Sean Connery wasn't allowed the opportunity to play Simon Templar/The Saint in the 1970s/1980s also - He could have done the 1970s series instead of Ian Ogilvy OR had a brand new series in the 1980s with Sean Connery also, probably called "The Return Of The Saint 2" with a Silver OR Grey coloured car.
Maybe, which also brings about the same question as such of why Roger Moore was allowed to do the series in the 1960s.
The Saint in Florida
Leslie Charteris lives the life of his favorite character
By Ian Glass (Tampa Bay Times, Feb. 9, 1964)
The Saint sipped his dry martini on the rocks and eyed the characters lounging in the shadows of the Arcade Tap Room, the ritziest (and possibly only) hostelry boasting customers this hot Saturday afternoon in the little Florida East Coast town of Delray Beach.
Outside, the main drag of Atlantic Avenue, whose trade seemed to be exclusively devoted to the fashion-conscious matrons now drifting down from the cold North for the season, was nearly deserted.
The Saint, who wore a short-sleeved sports shirt, dark slacks and white sneakers (no socks) looked incredulously at the statue of a boy spouting water in the bar’s palm-fringed courtyard, hastily downed his martini and ordered another.
Thus might start a story about that Robin Hood of modern crime and scourge of the underworld, Simon Templar, whose deeds of derring-do over the past 30 years have been chronicled in 36 books and translated into 15 languages.
Inevitably it would unfold with the entrance while the Saint was downing his third martini, of a beautiful girl—with fear in her eyes.
In fact, the suave, 6-foot, 2-inch gentleman at the bar was the creator of this most durable of rogues, 56-year-old Leslie Charteris, who is the embodiment of his hero right down to the engraving of the spindly Saint figure on the identification band of his wrist.
The Saint was the first of a line of handsome, devil-may-care, sybaritic, fast-talking, tough-fisted, irreverent nemeses of evil, whose most popular representative now is probably James Bond, Agent 007 of the Ian Fleming novels.
Mr. Charteris sipped that third martini and fell to musing on the changing public taste in mystery heroes (the girl with fear in her eyes had failed to make an entrance).
“I read very few mystery novels,” he said. “There is always a danger the plot may stick in my subconscious and eventually turn up, embarrassing, in one of my own stories.
“However, I thought I’d better catch up on this Fleming character who was supposedly setting the world on fire. Well, I read two chapters of Goldfinger and had to give up.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. The plot was ancient. I had read it before many years ago in one of Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond stories.
“As for Dr. No…that, let’s face it, was just Fu Manchu in modern dress. Pure hokum. I really cannot understand his success.” He shook his head. “Very puzzling.”
I mentioned I thought Sean Connery, who stars in the Bond movies, would have made an admirable Saint. Mr. Charteris looked pained. “Physically perhaps, yes,” he said. “But he just isn’t sophisticated enough. No culture, you know. Too many rough edges.”
Few people, in fact, could play the part of Simon Templar better than his creator.
The years have been kind to Mr. Charteris (born Leslie Charles Bowyer Yin of an English mother and a Chinese father, the descendant of emperors).
He is still lithe, tanned, handsome and only slightly gray-haired, a fact attributable perhaps to a dislike of over-exertion and a penchant for sunshine (Florida, in the winter, Europe in the summer).
These are luxuries he can well afford. Apart from royalties from his books, the sale of his Saint Mystery Magazine, residuals from old Saint movies that keep popping up on the TV late show and a weekly series of Saint TV adventures now showing in the United States assures him of a green future.
The Saint made his [first] appearance in Charteris’ third detective novel. It was called Meet The Tiger. But the memory of those early days, when he turned out adventures one after another while simultaneously tooling around pre-war London in a slinky Lagonda with a monocle stuck in his eye, makes Mr. Charteris shudder almost as much as the vision of James Bond.
“Those first books,” he said, leaning on the bar, “were awful, frankly.”
“They were immature and shallow and I was at a silly age. What the hell did I know about life then? However, they did make money, which allowed me to indulge in the carefree life.
“I can’t really think of a single novel I wrote I would care to seal in a capsule and leave to posterity. Well, perhaps one—a translation of the autobiography of the Spanish bullfighter Juan Belmonte. But heck, that made no money.
“That’s why I gave up writing novels. I probably will never write another. I find the art of short-story writing much more exciting. The Saint appears only in short stories now.
“Any fool can sit down and write and write and if he writes long enough he’ll come out with something. But it takes an artist to write a good short story. I have written, I believe, a few…”
The first movie Saint was Louis Hayward. “This was a desperate move, actually. The film company had sat on the story for three years waiting for Fredric March to take the part. They finally would up with Hayward.
“George Sanders starred in most of the others. He was even worse. I can’t imagine anyone who less fitted the description of the Saint and he turned in constipated performances.
“My ideal, you know, was always Cary Grant. But we never could afford him.”
Mr. Charteris professed he was pleased with the latest actor to tackle the part: British-born Roger Moore, who plays in the one-hour TV segments.
“I never had to much success, you know, in choosing my screen characters. Hollywood doesn’t lean too heavily on the opinions of the original writers.”
Mr. Charteris, now married to his fourth wife, became a U.S. citizen in 1946. They spend the summers touring Europe where he “gets things in proper perspective again” and also picks up locales for his plots.
“We live in hotels. That is the ideal life. Everything is laid on. I am so untechnically minded I couldn’t replace a door knob.”
It is a different world the Saint lives in now. He rarely kills anyone, rarely indulges even in brawls, relying instead on cerebration to solve the situation. (“I have also become extremely lazy,” Mr. Charteris said, by way of explanation).
The Saint no longer smokes (“How could anyone ignore the overwhelming medical evidence?”), and he has long dropped his first love, the beautiful Patricia Holm (“After all, you know, she’d be about 50 now…”).
And I discovered another sad note when we walked out into the Florida sunshine. Gone, too, are the days of the Hispano-Suiza and the Lagonda.
Mr. Charteris drove off in a battered 1954 Ford station wagon.
thanks for this one @Revelator
its OK he doesn't like Fleming, since he's pretty self-deprecating about his own work too. Interesting to see his defense of short stories vs novels, I see his point; its like the difference between a pop single and a concept album
Glad you enjoyed it! In a couple days I'll post an article Charteris wrote about Bond and Fleming. You can guess what his attitude will be...
I can understand Charteris resenting Bond's success. He'd created a gentleman-tough-guy hero decades before Fleming but the movies treated his hero with much less respect. 1940s Hollywood relegated the Saint to B-movies and programmers, but two decades later Bond was given A-level treatment. And while Bond was ruling the box office the Saint was confined to television. Bond must have seemed like a derivative Johnny-come-lately to the Saint's creator.
That said, Charteris is bullsh*tting when he claims to have figured out the plot of Goldfinger only two chapters in!
looking forwards to it! have you read his books?
I've read the first couple in the series, the ones he disparages, and one much later collection of short stories which the first couple seasons of the tv show were based on. But its a huge series of books, very intimidating to try to collect, really only possible to pick them up at random as you find them.
I've had two of the early Saint books on my shelf for a couple years but haven't gotten around to them, mainly because the older I grow the less interested I am in reading fiction. I still want to read them, along with lots of the authors who influenced Fleming--Sapper, John Buchan, Sax Rohmer, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Dornford Yates, Peter Cheyney, Dennis Wheatley, etc.--but they have to compete with all the non-fiction history books I want to read as well. I also have the nagging suspicion that some of these authors will prove less enjoyable than Fleming himself.