Obvious question: What has Vendetta for the Saint got to do with Harry
Harrison?
Despite the fact that all of the Saint books have creator Leslie Charteris'
name on the cover, some of the later ones were actually ghost written by other
authors. Harry Harrison wrote Vendetta for the Saint. Harrison reveals
- in his own words - how he came to write the book in the interview
(elsewhere on this page). Harrison wrote the novel at Charteris' invitation,
based on an unused outline he had written for the Saint comic strip.
Harry Harrison's own copy of the novel is signed by Leslie Charteris and
carries the inscription 'But for whom_ etc.' - and for once that old
cliché is true!
Harry Harrison also wrote a number of short stories which were published
under his own name in The Saint Mystery Magazine.
Here's the jacket blurb from the UK hardback edition published by Hodder and
Stoughton in 1965:
Relaxing at a sumptuous mid-day meal in Naples, Simon Templar, alias the
Saint, was understandably annoyed when a brawl interrupted his Lobster alla
Vesuvio. A tweedy English tourist has casually addressed an Italian as Dino
Cartelli - provoking the paunchy individual so named to set his hulking
henchman on the bewildered little Briton.
After forcibly returning the two combatants to their respective corners, the
Saint returned to the marvels of his Neapolitan cuisine and dismissed the
matter from his mind. When the following morning's headlines screamed at him:
TURISTA INGLESE TROVATO ASSASSINATO James Euston of London_ the Saint pledged
himself to a strangely impersonal vendetta which took him to Sicily, a land
particularly suited to that ancient, bloody custom. From then on, except for
an interlude with a luscious Italian pasta named Gina, it was all-out,
heel-stomping war, with the Robin Hood of Modern Crime pitted against the
arch-evil, centuries-old traditions of the Mafia.
Vendetta for the Saint is something of an oddity: a book by Harry
Harrison, written early in his freelance career, in which he pretends to be
another writer. So what is the novel actually like?
First impressions of the book, for me, were disappointing - Harry Harrison
seemed to have imitated the Leslie Charteris style of writing almost too well.
But get past the first few pages, and the story picks up pace and becomes
recognisable as a Harry Harrison story. The Italian surroundings are
particularly vivid - so much so that occasionally the Italian background
characters seem more real that the stereotypical hero.
The story begins with Simon Templar's disturbed lunch: an Englishman seems to
have mistaken an Italian for someone he knew, much to the Italian's great
annoyance. The Saint intervenes before the situation gets out of hand, and
that seems to be the end of the matter - until the Englishman turns up dead
next morning. The local police believe he was the victim of a mugging, but
Simon Templar doesn't. Why would someone kill a man who had mistaken him
for an old friend?
The Saint's vendetta against the murderer leads him to the Mafia, and here
Harrison manages to work in some of the true history of the organisation:
did you know that the name Mafia comes from an acronym for the Italian
resistance movement which existed during French rule of the country in the
thirteenth century? MAFIA comes from Morte Alla Francia, Italia Anela -
Italy wishes death to France!
Harrison's story climaxes with a gun-battle in which the Saint and his allies
take on the villains, who are holed-up in a cliff-top castle.
The fact that Vendetta for the Saint is more Harrison that Charteris
means that it is a novel definitely worth seeking out.
The book was turned into a two-part tv adaptation (see feature on this page)
starring Roger Moore as the Saint, and these episodes have been edited together
into a 94-minute movie for video release.
Set in Sicily, the novel contains a lot of authentic 'small town Italy'
background detail, which Harrison picked up whilst living in Italy. The story
tells of the Saint intervening in a fight in a restaurant when an Englishman
greets an Italian, seemingly mistaking him for someone else. When the
Englishman is found murdered next morning, the police believe him to be the
victim of a mugging, but Templar does not. He sets out to find the Italian
from the restaurant, embarking on, in Italian terms, a vendetta. He discovers
that the Italian has Mafia connections, and the action climaxes with a
gun-battle in a cliff-top castle.
PT: How did you come to write a Saint novel?
HH: I was writing book reviews for The Saint magazine under
Leslie Charteris' name for a small amount of money. I got to do it through a
friend of mine, Hans Stefan Santesson, an author who edited Fantastic
Universe. Leslie Charteris was doing a comic strip of The Saint and I had
comics experience, so I did some outlines and he liked them, and I started
working with him doing the comic strips.
The scripts were very long, about three months of daily comic, and a number of
these were taken by a girl in Paris who wrote them up as novels...
PT: She ghosted Saint novels?
HH: From my ghosted comic scripts! There are more Saint books in France
than there are in America, so a number of my scripts appeared in France as
novels, but never in the States.
One of the reasons the strip was killed was because the stories were so long -
there should only be three or four weeks in a series for people's attention
span. These were three months long - the girl could eventually write a novel
from them. So eventually the strip was killed. At that time I had one or two
outlines that I had done for comic strips, and I went to see Leslie and he
said would you like to expand this into a novel? "Yes!" I said, because I was
dying of starvation! I'd just gone freelance a few years earlier. I didn't
know at the time, but the last three books he 'wrote' were all ghosted.
PT:Vendetta for the Saint is set in Italy and Sicily...
HH: He [Leslie Charteris] hated Italy, he'd never been there. And I
love Italy, so it was a good opportunity to get the Saint to go to Italy,
where he wouldn't otherwise go. So I set it in Sicily. I've never been to
Sicily...
PT: Really? The locations seemed entirely genuine...
HH: I'd spent a lot of time in Naples, and they call Naples and Sicily
'the two Sicilys'- they have the same accent, the same food, so it was just a
matter of getting maps of the city. And I knew Neapolitans very well, so
that's how it came out. So no complaints about that?
PT: No, I thought you were actually in Italy when you wrote it.
HH: No, I wrote it in Denmark. But I lived in Italy for a long time, in
a small town just like that, and I knew the whole feel of it.
PT: Were you taking it entirely seriously when you wrote it?
HH: It was very difficult to take it seriously when I was writing it.
But I worked very hard not to make it a parody. It was a serious work of art.
For money! ... for a lump sum, no royalties, which I was very pleased to get.
I went back and read all the Saint books I could lay my hands on. I'd always
liked them. And you'll do anything for a job of work! I went through and made
a list of all the clichés - his 'teak brown fist', his 'mahogany fist'
- I got to know all the phrases so well that the biggest job - or the craft -
was to write the thing without making it a parody. I mean, at the beginning it
was a parody, and I had to pull myself back.
He [Leslie Charteris] didn't change much of it at all, if a word. He added a
paragraph or two to a chapter, but I don't remember him changing much.
PT: What did Leslie Charteris add?
HH: There is one chapter, or part of a chapter - been years since I
read it - where The Saint drives to a restaurant and back: slows the story
down completely. I did not write that! Leslie put it in as a favour to a
friend who owns the restaurant.*
PT:Vendetta for the Saint was turned into a two-part tv
adventure starring Roger Moore...
HH: So I understand. I was supposed to get more money if they ever made
it into a feature, maybe I should drop them a note!
One thing that did come out of it... I think it was the second or third book I
wrote, and I'd had no reviews of any kind, but when this appeared it had a
half-page review in the New York Times book section by Anthony Boucher -
well-known science fiction, fantasy and mystery editor and writer - and he
said something like: I really enjoyed this book, it's the only Charteris book
which has a plot, which cheered me up!
__________________________
* In Chapter Three Simon Templar "lunched regally" at La Minervetta "...and
finally drove back to Naples refreshed and recharged but no wiser than he had
been when he left."
Harry Harrison's novel was turned into a two-part television adaptation: these
were two of the 43 episodes filmed in colour in the late 1960s and early 70s
(71 previous episodes had been filmed in black and white).
Roger Moore, in his pre-James Bond days, plays Simon Templar, alias The Saint.
The unfortunate English tourist, whose murder sparks off Templar's vendetta,
is played by Scottish actor Fulton Mackay (best known to British tv audiences
as the prison warder in Porridge and the lighthouse keeper in
Fraggle Rock). The villain is played by Avengers veteran Ian
Hendry.
Viewed today, the programmes appear dated. There are some authentic location
shots, but the interiors and some of the night-time 'exteriors' are obviously
studio-bound.
But the action barrels along - after the obligatory (embarrassing) pause for
the halo to appear over Roger Moore's head as he says "The name's Templar,
Simon Templar."
The story follows the plot of the novel fairly closely - though as Harry
Harrison points out, it couldn't really do otherwise since the story has a
straightforward linear plot. Only towards the end does the tv version deviate
from the original, and here the big finale suffers from the restrictions of
the television budget.
But that aside, Vendetta for the Saint is one of the few Harry
Harrison stories to have been adapted for the screen, and as such it is not
to be missed.
The two television episodes were edited together into a 94-minute 'movie' and
released on video in Britain by Channel 5 video.
Simon Templar - alias The Saint, after his initials - is the creation of
Leslie Charteris.
Charteris was born Leslie Charles Bowyer Yin in Singapore in 1907, the son
of a Chinese surgeon and his English wife. He was sent to a Lancashire public
school, and went on to Kings College, Cambridge where - it is said - he
started to write fiction as an escape from loneliness. He dropped out of
university to pursue a writing career, and the first Saint book - Meet
the Tiger - was published in 1929.
Meet the Tiger introduced a hero who was part chivalrous knight (the
surname, presumably, was no coincidence) and part Bulldog Drummond. In
Charteris' own words, Simon Templar was "a dashing daredevil, imperturbable,
debonair, preposterously handsome, a pirate or philanthropist as occasion
demands. He lives for the pursuit of excitement _ for the one triumphant
moment that is his alone."
Often described as a modern day Robin Hood, Simon Templar - in the novels at
least - kept ten percent of all money he recovered from the villains to
fund his own lavish lifestyle. With his own activities bordering on the
criminal, Templar's motive was not the pursuit of criminals, but rather the
fighting of injustice. At the scene of his triumph he would leave behind his
calling card - the famous stick figure with the halo, used here on the title
page of this section of the website.
The Saint series became popular within a few years, and Leslie Charteris
produced a steady stream of them. It has been said that by the end of the
Second World War, Simon Templar was the second most profitable character
created by an English novelist, second only to Sherlock Holmes. Charteris
became an American citizen and lived comfortably in Florida: he was a
millionaire before Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap was first
performed, and before Ian Fleming had James Bond order his first vodka
martini.
Simon Templar was portrayed on film by Louis Hayward first in 1938 for RKO,
and by several other actors including George Sanders. Five different actors
played The Saint on radio, including Vincent Price.
The Saint Mystery Magazine edited by Leslie Charteris became a
bestseller, and Harry Harrison wrote reviews for the magazine which were
published under Charteris' name. Later, several short stories appeared in
the magazine under Harrison's own name. Vendetta for the Saint
appeared as a serial in the magazine. There was also a comic strip which
was syndicated in newspapers internationally: Harry Harrison wrote scripts
for this comic strip, and these led directly to him ghosting Vendetta for
the Saint.
The Saint Television Series
With the popularity of television growing on both sides of the Atlantic,
Charteris was approached several times for the tv rights to the Saint. But
the author had been unhappy with previous screen versions, saying that George
Sanders was 'absolutely wrong' and that the Saint should be 'someone with a
dash of Cary Grant _ a young Douglas Fairbanks.' Charteris was already a
wealthy man, so had no need to sell the rights.
But then Charteris was introduced to producer Robert Baker, who seems to have
made a favourable impression as he was offered an option on the series. Baker
sold the idea to Lew Grade, and terms were agreed towards the end of 1961.
The series was to be filmed by British tv company ATV.
The next challenge was to cast a suitable actor in the title role. Patrick
McGoohan was apparently considered, but he was enigmatic and intellectual,
rather than dashing and romantic. The producers thought of Roger Moore, who
had at that point in his career appeared in Ivanhoe and
Maverick, and Robert Baker is quoted as saying of him:
"He was a good-looking guy, which was very important. He had a strong
personality. He had a light touch which was also important because the
television code was not going to permit us to have the same tough Saint as in
the novels."
The Saint of the novels was occasionally brutal, not averse to a little
torture to obtain information, and on one occasion allowing the villain to be
torn to pieces by his own panther. This side of the character had to be
toned down for family viewing. The Saint could not be seen to really hurt
anyone, and nor could he be allowed to keep any of the money he took from the
villains.
Production of the tv series began in June 1962 at what would become Elstree
Studios. One-hour episodes were not common on British tv at that time, but
Lew Grade was making them with an eye on the American market. But ABC and
CBS both rejected the series as being too British and too old fashioned. It
was eventually picked up by NBC and shown in a late night slot, where it did
remarkably well in the ratings. The show would eventually be syndicated
across the US right through the 1970s.
Originally 26 episodes of the series were planned: 71 black and white episodes
were eventually produced, followed by 43 colour ones. The adaptation of
Vendetta for the Saint formed two of the latter.
There have been two attempts to revive the Saint on television, one in the
late 1970s - The Return of the Saint, starring Ian Oglivy - and one
in the late 1980s: neither caught the imagination of tv audiences like the
original. More recently, a film featuring Val Kilmer garnered mixed reviews.
PT: What did Leslie Charteris add?
But that aside, Vendetta for the Saint is one of the few Harry
Harrison stories to have been adapted for the screen, and as such it is not
to be missed.