The Saint’s Vacation *** (1941, Hugh Sinclair, Sally Gray, Cecil Parker, Arthur Macrae, Gordon McLeod, Leueen MacGrath, Felix Aylmer) – Classic Movie Review 3226

Hugh Sinclair takes over the halo from George Sanders as Simon Templar in the seventh of the RKO Pictures’ The Saint series, co-written by original author Leslie Charteris and produced and filmed in the UK.

This time The Saint interrupts his holiday to investigate the mystery over a small, innocent-looking Swiss musical box with an unusual tune hunted by secret agents and international crooks in Switzerland, where most of the story takes place. A plot about a missing secret code, treachery, robbery, torture, murder and a continental chase follow. Sinclair lacks Sanders’s ultra-smooth, uber-suave polish but he still produces a creditable performance despite having to cope with a busy and complex but pretty far-fetched mystery story with its Hitchcock-style themes, situations, locations and Macguffin of the music box.

Sally Gray (who played the different role of Penny Parker in 1939’s The Saint in London) co-stars as spunky reporter Mary Langdon, with Arthur Macrae as The Saint’s amiable sidekick Monty Hayward, Cecil Parker as The Saint’s latest nemesis enemy agent Rudolph Hauser, Leueen MacGrath as British secret service operative Valerie and Gordon McLeod as Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard.

Director Leslie Fenton shoots the 1941 movie at Denham Studios in England, hence British character actors like Cecil Parker and Felix Aylmer. Leslie Charteris helped Jeffrey Dell in the screenplay from his 1932 Getaway novel, Getaway (also known as The Saint’s Getaway). Liberties were taken with the original story, with the setting moved to the Second World War and the villains now being Nazis.

Also in the cast are John Warwick, Ivor Barnard and Manning Wiley.

Sinclair returned as The Saint in The Saint Meets the Tiger, the film adaptation of Charteris’s novel Meet – The Tiger!

Sanders had jumped ship to star in RKO’s Falcon series.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3226

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