The Saint in New York

This by my lights is a splendid and very good story about Leslie Charteris's enigmatic character, Simon Templar, "the Saint"; it was the first of a series of films which starred several actors inn the role. Louis Hayward is fascinating inn the part, occasionally a bit stodgy but intelligent, and compelling. The film was directed by Ben Holmes, and also stars Kay Sutton as an enigmatic bad girl, Sig Ruman, Jonathan Hale, Jack Carson and many others in small but effective parts. The storyline is what set\s this ethical masterpiece apart. Templar is tracked down in foreign parts by an honest man representing a group in New York who want to bring down the mysterious crime boss who is poisoning the city with his influence. Templar, for his own reasons--the challenge, the chance to accomplish something worthwhile--agrees to risk his life; not for altruism but for his own code of values, his own desire to use his talents to the full. He starts pushing, commits some questionable break-ins and more,, all the time making himself more dangerous and getting closer to finding out who the big fella" is. I will not reveal the climax or the ending, except to say Templar has fallen in love with Kay--but she can never be his after what happens. Roy Webb wrote the music; the production values of this B/W gem are subtle and a little above average. But what drives it is the script, written from Charteris's novel,; it is the best of an interesting series because it is fast-paced, original, clever in dialogue and clear in its contexted ethical purposiveness; the group who hired him and the viewers finally come to know that they picked the right man, whatever doubts they may originally have had about the famous and notorious Simon Templar. Sutton is very good; Carson and several others are very competent also. Highly recommended.

Louis Hayward is "The Saint in New York" in this 1938 film starring the Leslie Charteris character of Simon Templar, aka The Saint. Here, Simon is sent to New York to deal with gangsters who have escaped punishment by the justice system, and also to identify the man behind all of them, "The Big Fellow." I have to admit that though I've seen Roger Moore, Ian Ogilvy, and George Sanders in the role and enjoyed them, my favorite Saint has always been Louis Hayward since I first saw this film years ago. Hayward is smooth as silk both in manner and voice, as well as charming and lethal. While Sanders especially, with his talent for the acerbic, mined the humor in the role, Hayward mines the elegance, the grace, the light touch.

Hayward is backed up by the beautiful Kay Sutton, who reminded me of Kay Francis, Sig Ruman, Jonathan Hale, and Jack Carson in an early role.

Very good. It's a shame Hayward didn't do the role more.

So it begins, the start of the realisation of Leslie Charteris' literary creation, one Simon Templar, AKA: The Saint. And it's a good start to be sure.

Templar here is played by Louis Hayward, all smirky confidence, lithe and deadly, Templar is "hired" by some big city suits to snuff out New York's baddies who have in turn been snuffing out policemen and getting away with it. He's deadly, has a quip on the tongue and laughs in the face of danger, and of course he can charm the ladies as well. He gets into scrapes, meaning we get to enjoy his many escapes from impending death, he does indeed assassinate bad guys; and has us firmly on side in the process, and he crucially has us hankering for more of Charteris' rogue good guy!

It's good old fashioned fantastical fun mixed with some rugged 1930s gangster shenanigans. Hooray! 7/10

Hayward does cut a dashing figure with an easy smile, a penchant for poetical one-liners, and a snap-brim fedora. His version of the Saint is also more interesting than the standard sleuth of the period since he's not above breaking the law when it serves justice or following his own code of integrity. Too bad this kind of character complexity didn't survive the many sequels.

The story itself is pretty routine: cleaning up the city by getting the mysterious Big Fellow. Not much excitement or suspense as the one-man-army sort of bounces back and forth between bad guys, snapping off occasional nifty one-liners. Then there's the sexy Kay Sutton to ease the eyes after all the ugly bad guys. And though her delivery sometimes sounds a flat note, she and Hayward manage to make their boilerplate romance surprisingly wistful.

Anyway, I've got to say this about someone, and I think it's director Ben Holmes. How many of these programmers have you seen where somebody gets shot in one scene, yet turns up miraculously made whole in the next. Not here. The Saint gets wounded in one scene and, by golly, he favors that shoulder for the rest of the film. So an unofficial Oscar for Attention to Neglected Detail to Ben Holmes by default since such matters are usually the job of the director. Then too, on a slightly different note, I hope cable comes up with Holmes' intriguingly titled Cutie on Duty (1943) sometime real soon.

Although I had seen all of the other films in the Saint series, I had never viewed this one. This was the very first one in the series. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Louis Hayward played the character as a dapper but stern enforcer. His assignment is to rid New York of its' 6 most dangerous criminals. His intentions are not to capture them but to intentionally kill each of them. His verbal jousting with some of his intended victims provide lots of entertainment as well as suspense. The character, as portrayed by Hayward (long one of my favorite actors) never loses his cool detachment and always maintains his sense of humor. IMHO this is a very good film. Lots of entertainment including suspense, action, and humor.