The Saint went through many iterations over the years, and those familiar with them will have their favorite actor or series, for instance, author Leslie Charteris said the 1960s TV version with Roger Moore was his. But Nobody's will be Hugh Sinclair.
George Sanders was a cool-tempered, urbane, public school Englishman, always a charming rogue, with just a hint of menace. Sinclair looks like a stand-in for Anthony Eden, and maybe more dried out than dry wit.
The story would be easily applied to the Saint character, but this one, made in Britain, seems to have ideas that the Saint as we knew him from the RKO Sanders series wasn't good enough, and had to be recast as Bulldog Drummond. Drummond, as we would be familiar with him in 1941, had standard elements of all detective series, but Drummond notably had a girl, usually his Fiancée, and a stupid/scared Bertie Wooster-type comedy relief hanging on to him through all the action.
Why the Saint should take up this formula is up to question. Did the British think the Drummond treatment was an improvement over the Saint's usual, more self-reliant performances? Obviously, something must have been imperfect about the Sanders entries; why else would RKO kick a series over to their UK studio if it was a big success in Hollywood?
This strategy apparently did nothing for the Saint, and the Brits made one further entry with Sinclair, ditching the goofy sidekick, and making more of a regular set-up in "The Saint Meets the Tiger", but it's handled in a dull way, and RKO didn't even want to take a chance with releasing it in America, so two years later, it was sold to Republic, who did, and, nobody much cared. An inglorious, but only temporary, end of the Saint.
George Sanders was a cool-tempered, urbane, public school Englishman, always a charming rogue, with just a hint of menace. Sinclair looks like a stand-in for Anthony Eden, and maybe more dried out than dry wit.
The story would be easily applied to the Saint character, but this one, made in Britain, seems to have ideas that the Saint as we knew him from the RKO Sanders series wasn't good enough, and had to be recast as Bulldog Drummond. Drummond, as we would be familiar with him in 1941, had standard elements of all detective series, but Drummond notably had a girl, usually his Fiancée, and a stupid/scared Bertie Wooster-type comedy relief hanging on to him through all the action.
Why the Saint should take up this formula is up to question. Did the British think the Drummond treatment was an improvement over the Saint's usual, more self-reliant performances? Obviously, something must have been imperfect about the Sanders entries; why else would RKO kick a series over to their UK studio if it was a big success in Hollywood?
This strategy apparently did nothing for the Saint, and the Brits made one further entry with Sinclair, ditching the goofy sidekick, and making more of a regular set-up in "The Saint Meets the Tiger", but it's handled in a dull way, and RKO didn't even want to take a chance with releasing it in America, so two years later, it was sold to Republic, who did, and, nobody much cared. An inglorious, but only temporary, end of the Saint.