| Charteris and the Hindenburg |
[Nov. 24th, 2008|08:06 pm] |
For anyone who gets the Weather Channel (of all things): you can catch a tiny glimpse of our favorite globe-trotting crime writer this week.
Their series "When Weather Changed History" is rerunning an episode on the crash of the Hindenburg. About seven minutes into it, they show some newsreel clips of passengers talking about the zeppelin's maiden voyage--and one of them is Leslie Charteris, monocle and all. :) It's only a couple of seconds long, but it's quite fascinating to see and also hear the genius behind the Saint.
The episode will air a couple of times a night through Saturday. |
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| News for fansd in the UK |
[Oct. 4th, 2008|01:31 am] |
Hi,
don't know haw many of you are or aren't subscribed to the Epistle ( The official mailing list of the saint club ) , but Hodder in the UK are doing a new print run of the Saint, but only a very small one so if they don't sell in spades that'll be it. Anyway here's all the details from the club sec.
I'm going to let you into a secret,
There are plans for more Saint books. Take yer pick as to whether you'd like
more reprints or new adventures (be they 21st century or period)-there are
plans for both.
But publishing is a business. And businesses have to make money, otherwise,
well, they go out of business. And one reason Saint books stopped in the
1980s was because they weren't making money.
The only way to see more Saint adventures in print is for us all to do our
best to make sure these anthologies sell well. Paraphrasing what Leslie said
about The Saint Sees It Through.
"Give them to your friends for Christmas. Have the pages separated and use
them to repair your living-room, instead of the ordinary wallpaper which is
so hard to get. Tear them up and use them for confetti. Give them to your
children for cutting out paper dolls. Use them for door stops, for squashing
cockroaches, for holding down the lid of the pressure cooker. Mount stamp
collections in them. Soak the ink out of the pages and boil it down to make
your own shoe polish. Let Junior chew up the pages to make spit balls. Use
them for bait to lure the termites out of the walls so that you can get them
with the DDT. Break them up and use them for kindling. Split the sheets with
a razor and use them for Kleenex. Keep several copies handy for throwing at
cats on the back fence, or to climb up on to reach the top shelves of the
closet. Do anything you like with them, but for Chris'sake buy thousands of
copies so."
.that we can get more Saint adventures in print.
Seriously, Hodders are giving these books a piddlingly small print run and
have virtually no budget to promote them. But if they don't sell, then Saint
books in the UK are pretty well doomed. I've done my best to spread the word
to as many relevant websites as possible but I'm open to suggestions. If you
can think of ways these books can be promoted-at no cost-or people/web sites
who should be told about them, then spread the word!
Ian
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| TV Alert |
[Apr. 11th, 2008|09:26 pm] |
During the month of May, Turner Classic Movies will be airing the RKO Saint movie series as Saturday-morning double features. Besides the Louis Hayward and George Sanders films, they will also be showing the rare Hugh Sinclair entries.
( Complete schedule of Saintly movies ) |
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| Various news |
[Nov. 7th, 2007|12:05 am] |
We've had some new members join us recently. Welcome! Don't feel shy about introducing yourself, and telling us the story of your Saintly fandom. 0:)
For those who have the Turner Classic Movies channel, there's a treat to look forward to this Monday, November 12th. Starting at 11am Eastern, TCM will be airing a full seven of the RKO Saint movies of the 1930s-40s. This includes the original The Saint in New York with Louis Hayward, all five of the George Sanders films, and even the rare Hugh Sinclair entry The Saint Meets the Tiger (which I have never seen on TCM in my three years of watching for all things Templar).
And in case anyone here has been following it, I might mention that I've finally posted the last two installments of my Saint fanfiction story, The Beast of Matanzas Bay. |
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| New Saint Fanfiction |
[Oct. 5th, 2007|09:58 pm] |
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For those of you who may be interested in some fan-written Saintly fiction, I'm pleased to introduce The Beast of Matanzas Bay, a Saint story I've been working on for the last eight months. The first two chapters are online now, with the remaining four to follow over the next several days. I hope you might enjoy it. :) |
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| Vendetta for the Saint |
[Jun. 4th, 2007|10:45 pm] |
| [ | Feeling |
| | cheerful | ] |
| [ | Listening |
| | "Red Rain" - Peter Gabriel | ] |
Given the fairly late publication date of this Saint book (1964, with my copy being a 1966 paperback first edition), I didn't expect much of it--but I found myself pleasantly surprised. Over the course of its 218 pages, it proved itself with a stimulating cross-country chase, a few moments of hilarity, and some loving lingerings over a technological and artistic artifact for which I happen to have a weakness.
( The Saint, the Mafia, and the Holy Grail of Automobiles ) |
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| Reference question |
[Apr. 20th, 2007|09:57 pm] |
Does anyone know offhand in what story/book (and by inference in what year) Simon lost the favorite throwing knife he called Anna? I know it's somewhere in the books I have, because I've read such an incident, but I don't remember it precisely.
I've arbitrarily chosen to set my upcoming Saint fanfiction story in 1937. Although I don't actually specify the year, I'm just fussy enough that I don't want to reference "Anna" if he had already lost her and was using "Belle" instead. |
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| The Saint in Europe |
[Apr. 11th, 2007|10:04 pm] |
| [ | Feeling |
| | placid | ] |
| [ | Listening |
| | local weather--some storms in the area! | ] |
My notes on this book will be short, as ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) beloved_tree reviewed it not long ago, and the stories are all relatively brief and minor interludes in the Saint's career. There are a few intriguing moments, though--the best of them being in a curiously reminiscent vein.
( In a previous incarnation, I was Nero's favorite clown. ) |
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| The Happy Highwayman |
[Mar. 19th, 2007|09:30 pm] |
| [ | Feeling |
| | stressed | ] |
| [ | Listening |
| | "Let Love In" - The Goo Goo Dolls | ] |
If my impressions of The Happy Highwayman seem a bit sketchy, I think this is pardonable, because I read most of it whilst seated in the fairly busy waiting room of a dentist's office. (Not to worry; I wasn't the patient, merely waiting for someone else.) It's another overall solid little book of shorter Saint stories, although there is no defining line in the weightiness of its tales--it mixes lighthearted exploits of profiteering and charity with a couple of the Saint's most unflinchingly ruthless exterminations of the ungodly.
( Have you got any more village idiots hidden around? )
That exhausts my supply of Saint books at present. I have yet to figure out my PBS options. |
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| The Saint is coming to TV in a new series on TNT |
[Mar. 17th, 2007|11:00 am] |
Great news for all you fans of Simon Templar, alias The Saint. In the early 1960s, the author of the Saint books, Leslie Charteris, finally sold the rights to The Saint on TV. This first Saint series starred Roger Moore driving a classic white Volvo P1800. It was a great show.
William J. MacDonald has teamed up with Roger Moore's son, Geoffrey Moore, to acquire the rights to The Saint from Leslie's widow, Audrey Charteris.
They are currently in pre-production of a new TV series of the Saint to be shown on Ted Turner's TNT network. For those of you who don't recall, Bill MacDonald was a co-producer of the Robert Evan's Paramount movie, The Saint, starring Val Kilmer a few years.
Burl Barer, who wrote the paperback novel, The Saint, based on the Val Kilmer movie is a consultant on this new TV series and he promises that they are staying true to the real Charteris novels.
For more information, be sure to check out http://www.saint.org/blog/ for all the latest updates and news! |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 17th, 2007|01:28 am] |
And now, for the second half of our Saintly vacation,
( The Saint on the Spanish Main )
Overall impression: a fun, swashbuckling, varied collection of Saintly adventures -- although here, as in The Saint in Europe, the suspense-and-gunplay is not as pronounced. Simon is on vacation, after all, and trying to fly under the radar of the collective police; so it really isn't surprising that he opts to solve his various misadventures in these two books by means of brains rather than brawn. These two books come recommended for times when you're in the mood to see the Saint do some mystery-solving, general do-gooding . . . and, naturally, some extensive traveling! |
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| The Saint on holiday, part 1! |
[Mar. 17th, 2007|12:10 am] |
| [ | Hideout |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Feeling |
| | tired | ] |
Over my recent vacation I was able to polish off two Saint books (yay for free reading time!) By a not-unhappy coincidence, they happened to both be books in which our maverick hero takes a little time off of his own: The Saint in Europe and The Saint on the Spanish Main. In them, Charteris has the chance to show off not only his flair for plots but also his notable genius for writing about exotic locations; his vivid descriptions wouldn't be out of place on a Travel Channel special.
Owing to the fact that there are quite a few stories in each book, I've opted for posting quick summaries and my brief impressions in two separate entries. This entry will cover
( The Saint in Europe. ) |
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