Sat 26 Oct 2019
A TV Episode Review: THE SAINT “The Latin Touch” (1962).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[21] Comments
THE SAINT “The Latin Touch.” ITV, UK, 60m, 11 October 1962 (Season 1, Episode 2). Black and white. First shown in the US in first-run syndication, dates unknown, then per Wikipedia, it was picked up by NBC as a summer replacement series in 1967 (in color). Roger Moore (Simon Templar, aka The Saint), Alexander Knox, Doris Nolan, Bill Nagy, Warren Mitchell, Peter Illing, Marie Burke, Suzan Farmer, Robert Easton. Screenplay: Gerald Kelsey and Dick Sharples, based on the character created by Leslie Charteris. Director: John Gilling.
Wherever Simon Templar goes, he always seems to find someone in trouble to help. In this case, he’s in Rome wandering around the outside the ruins of the Coliseum, when he overhears a young woman arguing with an aggressively over-shady taxi driver about the amount he would like to overcharge her. Solving that problem quickly, he walks off with her, only to be slugged over the head and then waking up to discover she has been kidnapped.
It turns out that she is the daughter of the governor of Indiana, who is in Rome with his wife on a combination of vacation and trade mission. It is not money the kidnappers want, however, but a reprieve of a deported Mafia boss’s brother about to executed back in the states. Templar, of course, offers to help the distraught parents, but time is not on their side.
Besides the more than satisfactory performance of Roger Moore, who was still very youthful looking at this early stage of his career, Alexander Knox’s well-defined role as the worried father, caught in a serious bind — choosing between his daughter’s life against that of a hardened criminal — is of special note, as is that of Warren Mitchell as the street savvy cabdriver, the first of three such appearances. And with veteran director John Gilling at the helm, the 60 minutes of running time (less commercials) goes by very quickly.
With that said, I should also point out the only flaw I saw: I was able to pick up on the final twist a lot faster than The Saint did. That shouldn’t have happened!
October 26th, 2019 at 12:38 pm
Count me as a longtime fan of actor Alexander Knox.
October 26th, 2019 at 1:30 pm
Not many people know this, but besides being a very good actor Alexander Knox was not bad as a mystery writer, too:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=37592
October 26th, 2019 at 12:46 pm
The best source for the Saint is saint.org
http://www.saint.org/sttv.htm
Here in the TV section it explains how The Saint began as a syndicated series in America for 71 episodes starting in 1962. Then in 1966 a new contract was done and the Saint left black and white for color and NBC picked up the series.
There is also a book out called THE SAINT ON TV which features a foreword by Leslie Charteris. It was published in 1968 and contained novella adaptations of TV episode THE DEATH GAME (story by John Kruse and teleplay by Harry W. Junkin) and THE POWER ARTIST (teleplay bu John Kruse).
October 26th, 2019 at 1:26 pm
Michael
I read the info on saint dot org about the Roger Moore TV episodes before posting this review, and what I understood it to say was that the dates given there for the series, starting in 1962, were for the original UK broadcasts only, with the pre-NBC syndicated series in the US not coming along until later.
October 26th, 2019 at 5:32 pm
Steve, it is confusing.
For the 1962 series:
“…but ITC could not find a network in the US”(ABC,CBS and NBC said no)
“ITC syndicated The Saint in the US…”
In 1966 ATV-ITC got a new contract. These were new and in color. There were 41 original color episodes NBC carried in 66-69. Along with the black and white ones.
I wish I owned THE SAINT ON TV because I seem to remember Charteris discussing how tougher he was to agree to the second deal.
But what the heck you could be right.
October 26th, 2019 at 6:14 pm
Michael
I’m always right.
Except when I’m not.
And I have learned to be gracious when people convince me that I’m not.
No matter. I guess what I’d like to see, more than anything else, is a list of the Roger Moore episodes with the dates they were shown (or their syndication dates) in the US. So far I haven’t seen one, only ones with UK dates.
OTOH I just may have seen such a list and not realized it.
When I posted this review, I was really thinking people would read it and say things like, That Roger Moore, wasn’t he a whiz? You could tell he was really going to amount to something.
October 26th, 2019 at 7:04 pm
Roger Moore, usually too frustrating for me to watch. Always wanting him to be tougher, somehow. Less of a ‘playboy’ in his roles. There used to be a Saturday night ‘Brit lineup’ on PBS in my hometown and if it was Patrick McGoohan in ‘Secret Agent’ or ‘Danger Man’ (or whatever it was called?) I’d stay in my seat. When Roger Moore’s Saint-slot aired I’d usually get up and ‘putter around. I’ll actually defend Moore against a lot of criticism –with honest fervor, too–but privately, I myself always wanted better from him. He was outstanding in a few special instances (‘The Wild Geese’, just one example) and I just can’t explain why he never followed up that tough-guy angle. He proved he could do it.
October 26th, 2019 at 8:07 pm
My favorite story about Moore is that when he was cast as the Saint Vincent Price was in England filming, and running into Moore started giving him advice on how to play the character with Moore looking somewhat puzzled because he was completely unaware Price had been the Saint on radio, a fact Price never bothered to mention in the conversation.
I think the first four seasons were all Charteris material with original episodes only beginning when the color episodes started. Moore doesn’t have much to do in some of the first season episodes with the Saint mostly a catalyst at the beginning and end, but by the second season he commands every episode as Moore had become popular with fans and new viewers.
While Moore is not my idea of the classic Saint (more Cary Grant for that) he was very much the Saint of the post War era, certainly from the mid fifties on, and his suave easy to take personality probably made the Saint more acceptable to audiences unfamiliar with Charteris more cold blooded early version.
For the time period he was certainly the best choice for television where audiences then might have been shocked by Simon murdering a vicious brute by spilling paint cleaner on his tie so he would smother in his sleep while drunk. Some of the stories had to be changed drastically to tamp down some of the originals more murderous escapades as more avenger than sort of private eye. He frequently finds himself working for an insurance company or some such to recover stolen items where in the original he was often as not merely relieving the crooks of ill gotten gains for himself with no official or semi official status. It is hard to imagine Moore playing him as the laughing cold blooded killer of THE SAINT IN NEW YORK.
Moore was ideal as that kinder less blood thirsty version. Television had turned the Lone Wolf into an insurance investigator (admittedly reformed from his former occupation), Mike Hammer into a generic private eye, and Robin Hood spent more time helping the poor and outwitting the Sheriff than robbing the rich. The Baron went from jewel thief to Texas oil baron, the Rogues worked secretly for Scotland Yard helping people, and Harry Lime was making up for his past. That the Saint was even vaguely still Charteris character was a miracle, even if you tended to wonder how he lived since he never seemed to profit from any of his adventures.
Re Knox, he also wrote a good adventure novel that was optioned to be filmed
October 26th, 2019 at 8:15 pm
Beautifully said, David. I don’t disagree with either you or Lazy G.
I’d have liked Roger Moore to have been a little tougher in the role too — I’m a bigger fan of The Saint’s early books than I am of the later version — but Moore’s interpretation was meant for TV as it was the 60s, and he was very very good at it.
October 26th, 2019 at 8:11 pm
I liked Roger Moore as The Saint. He had the right likable smugness. Hated him as the slapstick James Bond and boy wonder Ivanhoe. He was better than Tony Curtis in the embarrassingly dated PERSUADERS.
As for the series THE SAINT, it is ok entertainment. Something to have on when you are doing other things. I found the black and white episodes better than the color NBC episodes.
Not a fan of the books and found Charteris to be a jerk in THE SAINT ON TV.
ITV Lew Grade was less interested in THE SAINT’s British success than he was in reaching the American market. Some of ATV-ITV series to get an American run were SECRET AGENT, THE AVENGERS, and THE BARON. Others like DEPARTMENT S were syndicated only in America.
October 26th, 2019 at 8:29 pm
Fun Facts:
– The Governor’s wife is played by Alexander Knox’s real-life wife, Doris Nolan: the Knoxes had moved to GB following Knox’s blacklisting.
– How’d they get Bob Easton, Hollywood’s #1 hillbilly, to play the Gov’s aide?
That’s him in the horn-rims in your screen grab.
– Although he mainly played US officials and such, Alexander Knox so resented his blacklisting that he refused to work in America to the end of his days (so the story goes; correction welcomed if needed).
October 26th, 2019 at 8:56 pm
Easton played a liaison officer with the American Embassy in this one, and I enjoyed seeing him in the part, but what he was doing in England at the time, I don’t know. They certainly didn’t fly him in from the states just to play the role.
October 26th, 2019 at 9:35 pm
Steve, his bio at IMDb says he married an English woman and lived for several years in England.
October 26th, 2019 at 10:00 pm
I don’t know much about Easton, and I certainly didn’t know that. Thanks, Michael!
October 27th, 2019 at 12:58 pm
By every account I’ve ever read, Moore was a swell, disarming, affable, self-effacing guy. Several fun anecdotes attest to this.
Vincent Price as the radio ‘Saint’ I found to be not bad, –but not great either. ‘Just okay’. No surprises either way. Price’s Simon Templar resides in a Manhattan penthouse, is a patron of the arts, and enjoys a steady string of female friends to take around town.
There are some fun moments where Price is allowed to wield his wonderfully sardonic delivery of very acidly-written lines. Those are the best episodes.
But the program as a whole, teetered and creaked for lack of freshness. Too many obligatory set-pieces. Example: Simon returns to his alma mater where star athletes are turning up murdered. H’mmm, is the head coach the guilty party? Of course it couldn’t be Simon’s old dean, with whom he still has such a warm relationship. No, not in a million years…
And there’s at least two episodes where Simon outwits a gun-toting villain with, “I know you won’t believe me, but there really is a police sergeant standing right behind you”.
I have a couple fave shows though: one where Simon has a ditzy farmgirl on his hands, and one where a cruise-ship doctor is running amok.
Often in radio Saint, Price appears in person at the conclusion making a gov’t PSA. Sincere and earnest-sounding about them too.
It was all standard fare, but it was a good contribution to the genre’s audio lineup and there would have been a noticeable gap without it. Popular show.
October 27th, 2019 at 1:57 pm
A terrific extended description of the Vincent Price radio show, Lazy. Thanks! I now wish I’d actually listened to my collection more at the time I was putting it together. Even if my reel-to-reel player still works, the tapes themselves may not be playable. I’ll have to go looking online.
October 27th, 2019 at 2:57 pm
Thank ye very much. Oh –and I know there’s many ‘Falcon’ fans here on Mfile — recall seeing threads devoted to Falcon. Now there’s two programs very akin to each other, Saint/Falcon.
Both ‘Shadow’ and ‘Saint’ each had –for comic relief –marble-mouthed cabbie pals who drove them around town during their cases (in both cases, named, “Louie” I think?)
As opposed to deadly-serious Green Hornet, there’s many more light-hearted ‘gentleman sleuths’ on radio which I haven’t even been exposed to. I’m only highlighting ones I’ve come across. There’s scores of them; “Rogue’s Gallery”, “Mr. and Mrs. North”, etc.
If I had to pick one it might very well be Dick Kollmer(sp?) as “Boston Blackie”.
It’s just a tad friskier with some laugh-out-loud antagonism between Blackie and his ‘Javert’, the long-suffering Inspector Farraday, (whom I always picture as James Gleason). This show has the fistfights and car-chases that Falcon, Saint, and Shadow all seem to lack.
Ah yea. Boston Blackie, ‘enemy to those who make him an enemy…friend to those who have no friend’. This is a kind of tagline that The Saint should have had.
October 28th, 2019 at 6:33 am
post #8, that is for sure, polished prose. Professionalism on display.
November 6th, 2019 at 5:35 pm
When I was about ten or eleven in the late 1960s all I wanted to be when I grew up was The Saint, having a Volvo sports car just like his, and with a bit of cross-series mash-up Emma Peel from The Avengers as my girlfriend (with Juliet Harmer from Adam Adamant as first reserve, Shirley Eaton coming a close third). I still enjoy watching the colour episodes of The Saint which are regularly repeated on ITV4 in the U.K. (except for the episode The Gadic Collection which anyone who has seen the episode will know why it’s not shown). I’ve just watched the first two b/w episodes – a couple of points: Roger Moore has a slight American accent compared to the colour episodes, he also plays the character with a harder edge, perhaps closer to Leslie Charteris’ original creation. It’s nearly fifty years since I’ve read any, I remember preferring the books before Hoppy Uniatz appeared, a character I didn’t like at all.
November 6th, 2019 at 10:45 pm
I like your choice of would-be girl friends, Jamie, though when I was that age, Juliet Harmer was far off into my future. Later on, though, she certainly made ADAM ADAMANT well worth watching.
And yes, based on this episode, at least, I thought Roger Moore was very much in The Saint mode as I remember the latter best.
October 22nd, 2022 at 10:44 pm
Okay, this is driving me crazy: can somebody PLEASE explain the ending of this episode to me?! How the Hell did that clue tell the governor where they were? What specifically did it tell him? It’s driving me nuts!
Thanks,
Khan