The Saint in New York (film)
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| The Saint in New York | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Ben Holmes |
| Produced by | William Sistrom |
| Written by | Charles Kaufman Mortimer Offner based on the Leslie Charteris novel |
| Starring | Louis Hayward Kay Sutton Jonathan Hale |
| Music by | Roy Webb |
| Cinematography | Joseph H. August Frank Redman |
| Editing by | Harry Marker |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 25, 1938 |
| Running time | 69 min. |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | The Saint Strikes Back |
| IMDb profile | |
The Saint in New York, released in 1938 by RKO Pictures was a crime thiller that marked the first screen appearance of sleuth Simon Templar, alias the Saint. Templar had been created 10 years earlier by Leslie Charteris, and this film is based upon his novel of the same title.
South African actor Louis Hayward becomes the first actor to play the Saint on screen, and is supported by Kay Sutton as the love interest. In the books, Templar's nemesis on the side of law and order is Inspector Claud Eustace Teal; for the film series it was decided to replace that character with Inspector Henry Farnack (Jonathan Hale) who would become a regular in the RKO film series. (The character's name is spelled Fernack in the original novel, but for some reason was changed for the film.)
[edit] Plot
The script followed the novel rather closely. New York is laid low by crime wave. Right-thinking citizens and the police despair of the judicial system. The Crime Commission, of its own accord and despite his off-color reputation, decides to call in the Saint. If judges won't serve the cause of justice, perhaps the Saint will. Templar is charged with bringing six gangsters to justice, or, barring that, eliminating them.
Disguised as a nun, the Saint shoots a gangster just as he is about to plug a policeman (this differs from the original novel in which the Saint shoots an accused cop-killer in cold blood after the man walks free from court). The mystery is who is the Big Fellow? The Saint dispatches all the underlings before he comes, finally and inevitably, to the Big Fellow, who is, just as inevitably, the most upright of all, the man who hired him to start with.
