Leslie Charteris (May 12 1907,
SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, lying north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands. At , Singapore is a microstate and the smallest nation in Southeast...
– April 15 1993), born
Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, was a half-
ChineseHan Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and, by most modern definitions, the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92 percent of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98 percent of the population of the Republic of China , 75 percent of the...
, half
EnglishThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
author of primarily mystery fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of
Simon TemplarSimon Templar is a British fictional character known as the Saint, featured in a long-running series of books by Leslie Charteris published between 1928 and 1963. After that date, other authors collaborated with Charteris on books, until 1983; two additional works produced without Charteris'...
, alias "The Saint."
Biography
Charteris was born to a Chinese father and an English mother. His father was a physician who claimed to be able to trace his lineage back to the emperors of the
Shang DynastyThe Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty was, according to traditional sources, the second Chinese dynasty, after the Xia Dynasty. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as "China proper", in the Yellow River valley...
. Charteris became interested in writing at an early age, at one point creating his own magazine with articles, short stories, poetry, editorials, serials, and even a comic strip. He attended
Rossall SchoolRossall School is a British, co-educational, public school in between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was founded in 1844 by St. Vincent Beechey as a sister school to Marlborough College which had been founded the previous year...
near Fleetwood in Lancashire.
Once his first book, written during his first year at
King's College, CambridgeKing's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.Founded in 1441, the college's formal name is "The King's College of Our Lady and St. Nicholas in Cambridge". It is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the university.- History :King's was founded in 1441 by...
, was accepted, he left the university and embarked on a new career. Charteris was motivated by a desire to be unconventional and to become financially well off by doing what he liked to do. He continued to write English thriller stories, while he worked at various jobs from shipping out on a freighter to working as a bartender in a country inn. He prospected for gold, fished for pearls, worked in a tin mine and on a rubber plantation, toured England with a carnival, and drove a bus. In 1926, he legally changed his last name to Charteris, after
Colonel Francis CharterisColonel Francis Charteris, , nicknamed "The Rape-Master General," was a Scottish aristocrat who had earned a substantial amount of money through gambling and the South Sea Bubble. He was convicted for raping a servant in 1730...
, although, in the BBC Radio 4 documentary "Leslie Charteris – A Saintly Centennial", his daughter stated that he selected his surname from the telephone directory.
His third novel,
Meet - The Tiger!Meet - The Tiger! is the title of an action-adventure novel written by Leslie Charteris. In England it was first published by Ward Lock in 1928; in the United States it was first published by Doubleday's The Crime Club imprint in 1929. It was the first novel in a long-running series of books ...
(1928), introduced his most famous creation - "Simon Templar" - and was a popular success. However, in his 1980 introduction to a republication of the novel by Charter Books, Charteris indicated that he was dissatisfied with the work, suggesting that its only value was as the start of the long-running Saint series. Occasionally he chose to ignore the existence of
Meet - The Tiger! altogether and claim that the Saint series actually began with the second volume, 1930s
Enter the SaintEnter the Saint is a collection of three interconnected adventure novellas by Leslie Charteris first published in the United Kingdom by Hodder and Stoughton in 1930, followed by an American edition by The Crime Club in 1931....
; an example of this can be found in the introduction Charteris wrote to an early 1960s edition of
Enter the Saint published by Fiction Publishing Company (an imprint of Doubleday).
Although he would write a few other books (including a novelisation of his
screenplayA screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. A play for television is known as a teleplay.- Format and style :...
for the
Deanna DurbinDeanna Durbin is a Canadian singer and actress, nicknamed the "sensational Canadian songbird," who appeared in a number of musical films in 1930s and 1940s singing standards as well as operatic arias....
mystery-comedy
Lady on a TrainLady on a Train is a 1945 black-and-white comedy shot in film noir style. The film, starring Deanna Durbin, was directed by Durbin's future third husband Charles David. The film's music score was by Miklós Rózsa...
, and the English translation of
Juan Belmonte: Killer of Bulls by
Manuel Chaves NogalesManuel Chaves Nogales was a Spanish journalist and writer, an enthusiastic supporter of the Second Spanish Republic and friend of the new President Manuel Azaña.-Biography:...
) his lifework — at least in the literary world — would consist primarily of Simon Templar Saint adventures, which would be relayed in novel, novella, and short story format over the next 35 years (with other authors ghost writing the stories on Charteris' behalf for another 20 years thereafter; Charteris acted as an editor for these books, approving stories and making revisions when needed).
Charteris relocated to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1932, where he continued to publish short stories and also became a writer for
Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures Corporation is a Worldwide American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, California. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is the world's oldest existing American film studio; it is also the last...
, working on the
George RaftGeorge Raft was an American film actor identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:...
film,
The Midnight Club. Around this time, Charteris also travelled on the
HindenburgThe Hindenburg disaster took place on Thursday 6 May 1937 as the LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed within one minute while attempting to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, which is located adjacent to the borough of Lakehurst in Manchester Township, New...
on its successful maiden voyage to
New JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered on the north by New York, and to the east by the Hudson River, Upper New York Bay, the Kill Van Kull, Newark Bay, the Arthur Kill, Raritan Bay, Sandy Hook Bay, Westchester County, New York City, Long Island, and...
(the famous disaster did not occur until the aircraft's second year of operation).
However, Charteris was excluded from permanent residency in the United States because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law which prohibited immigration for persons of "50% or greater" Oriental blood. As a result, Charteris was forced to continually renew his six-month temporary visitor's visa. Eventually, an act of Congress personally granted him and his daughter the right of permanent residence in the United States, with eligibility for naturalization which he later completed.
In the 1940s, Charteris, besides continuing to write Saint stories, scripted the
Sherlock HolmesSherlock Holmes is a fictional character of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of British author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...
radio series featuring
Basil RathboneBasil Rathbone, MC , was a South African–born British actor most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes and of suave villains in such swashbuckler films as The Mark of Zorro, Captain Blood, and The Adventures of Robin Hood.- Early life :He was born Philip St...
and
Nigel BruceWilliam Nigel Ernle Bruce was a British character actor on stage and screen, best known for his brilliant portrayal of Doctor Watson in a series of films and in the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes .-Biography:Bruce was the second son of Sir William Waller Bruce, 10th Baronet...
. In 1941, he appeared in a
Life Magazine photographic adaptation of a Saint short story, with himself playing the Saint. He also contributed storylines to a long-running comic strip based upon The Saint.
During the 1940s, a number of moderately successful motion pictures were produced based upon The Saint (though only a couple of films were directly based upon Charteris' writings).
In 1952 he married the Hollywood actress
Audrey LongAudrey Long is an American movie actress, who played supporting roles in films during the 1940s and 1950s....
, born 1922; the couple eventually returned to
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
where Leslie Charteris spent his last years living in
SurreySurrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford...
.
However long-term success eluded Charteris' creation outside the literary arena until the 1962–1969 British-produced television series
The SaintThe Saint is a long-running ITC mystery spy thriller, that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It centred on the Leslie Charteris literary character, Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like adventurer with a penchant for disguise....
went into production with
Roger MooreSir Roger George Moore KBE is a English actor and film producer. He is perhaps best known for portraying two British action heroes, Simon Templar in the television series The Saint from 1962 to 1969, and James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...
in the Simon Templar role.
Many episodes of the TV series were based upon Charteris' short stories. Later, as original scripts were commissioned, Charteris permitted some of these scripts to be novelised and published as further adventures of the Saint in printed form (these later books, with titles such as
The Saint on TVThe Saint on TV is a collection of two mystery novellas by Fleming Lee, continuing the adventures of the sleuth Simon Templar aka "The Saint", created by Leslie Charteris. This book was first published in the United States in 1968 by The Crime Club, and in the United Kingdom later that year by...
and
The Saint and the Fiction MakersThe Saint and the Fiction Makers is the title of a 1968 mystery novel featuring the character of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint"...
, carried Charteris' name as author, but were in fact written by others). Charteris would live to see a second British TV series,
Return of the SaintReturn of the Saint was a British action-adventure television series that aired for one season in 1978 and 1979 in Britain on ITV, and was also broadcast on CBS in the United States. It was produced by ITC Entertainment and ran for 24 episodes.-Premise:...
starring
Ian OgilvyIan Raymond Ogilvy is an English film and television actor.-Early life:He was born in Woking, Surrey, England, the son of advertising executive Francis Ogilvy and actress Aileen Raymond .He was educated at Eton College.-Return of the Saint:He is best known as the star of the 1978 - 1979 television...
as Simon Templar, enjoy a well-received, if brief, run, and in the 1980s a series of TV movies produced in
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...
and starring
Simon DuttonSimon Dutton is a British actor, best known for playing the title role of Simon Templar in a series of Australian-produced television films in 1989, as well as 'Guy' in Not Going Out, a British sitcom....
kept interest in The Saint alive. There was also an aborted attempt at a 1980s TV series in the United States, which resulted in only a
pilot episodeA television pilot is a test episode of an intended television series. It is an early step in the development of a television series, much like pilot lights or pilot studies serve as precursors to the start of larger activity, or pilot holes prepare the way for larger holes. Networks use pilots to...
being produced and broadcast.
Besides being a fiction writer, Charteris also wrote a column on cuisine for an American magazine, as a sideline. He also invented a wordless, pictorial sign language called Paleneo and wrote a book on it. In addition, Charteris was also one of the earliest members of
MensaMensa is the largest, oldest and best known high-IQ society in the world. It is a non-profit organization open to people who score at the 98
th percentile or higher on a standardized, supervised intelligence test...
.
The adventures of The Saint were chronicled in nearly one hundred books. Charteris himself stepped away from writing the books after
The Saint in the SunThe Saint in the Sun is a collection of short stories by Leslie Charteris, featuring the Robin Hood-inspired crimefighter, Simon Templar, whom Charteris introduced in 1928. The book was first published in 1963 by The Crime Club in the United States and by Hodder and Stoughton in the United Kingdom...
(1963). The next year
Vendetta for the SaintVendetta for the Saint is the title of a 1964 mystery novel featuring the character of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". The novel is credited to Leslie Charteris, who created the Saint in 1928, but the book was actually authored by Harry Harrison, a noted science fiction author who also wrote the...
was published and while it was credited to Charteris, it was actually written by
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
writer
Harry HarrisonHarry Harrison , an American and Irish science fiction author best known for his character the Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! , the basis for the film Soylent Green...
. Following
Vendetta, as noted above, came a number of books adapting televised episodes; these books were credited to Charteris but were actually by others (although Charteris himself did collaborate on several Saint books in the 1970s). Several
Return of the Saint scripts were also adapted, and there were also some original stories thrown into the mix. Charteris appears to have served in an editorial capacity for these later volumes. He also edited (and contributed to)
The Saint Mystery Magazine, a digest-sized publication. The final book in the
Saint series was
Salvage for the SaintSalvage for the Saint is the title of a 1983 mystery novel featuring the character of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". The novel was written by Peter Bloxsom based on the two-part Return of the Saint episode, "Collision Course" by John Kruse, but per the custom at this time, the author credit on...
, published in 1983. Two additional books were published in 1997, a novelization of the
film loosely based on the characterThe Saint is a 1997 film based on the character of Simon Templar created by Leslie Charteris in 1928 for a series of books published as "The Saint." Aside from the book series, which ran until 1983, the character has also featured in a series of Hollywood movies made between 1938 and 1954, a 1940s...
, and an original novel published by "The Saint Club" a
fan clubA fan club is a group that is dedicated to a well known person, group, idea or sometimes even an inanimate object . Most fanclubs are run by fans who devote considerable time and resources to supporting them. There are also "official" fanclubs that are run by someone associated with the person or...
that Charteris himself founded in the 1930s. Both books were written by
Burl BarerBurl Barer is an American author and literary historian. He is best known for his fiction and non-fiction writings about the character Simon Templar, also known as "The Saint".-The Saint:...
, who also wrote the definitive history on Charteris and The Saint.
Leslie Charteris died at
Windsor, BerkshireWindsor is a suburban town in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is best known as the site of Windsor Castle....
on 1993-04-16. His wife survived him.
Family
He was married four times:
- to Pauline Schishkin
- to Barbara Meyer
- to Elizabeth Bryant Borst
- (in 1952) to Audrey Long
Audrey Long is an American movie actress, who played supporting roles in films during the 1940s and 1950s....
(1922-), film actress.
Sources
- Burl Barer, The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film and Television 1928-1992. Jefferson, N.C.: MacFarland, 2003 (originally published in 1992).
- The Detective in Hollywood, Jon Tuska, 1978 ISBN 0-385-12093-1
Footnotes
External links