The Saint (1945, 1947-51) aired “The Chiseling Chimpanzee” aka “The Monkey” on December 10, 1950. We have run only nine previous episodes of this fine show, this episode being only the 5th since November of 2019 and the first since November of last year (2024). For new listeners I borrow freely from past episodes’ opening remarks as they deal with the creator and partial history of The Saint on radio, in print, and on film. It is estimated there were in the neighborhood of 157 unique (i.e., original) episodes (depending on which historian you talk to) of which approximately 57 are in circulation.

Crime and mystery novelist Leslie Charteris’ (photo top right, 1907-1993) famous detective Simon Templar was dubbed The Saint by the underworld, though he was hardly what the monicker implied. The story goes that he came by the name because of his initials, S. T..  The Saint, as a radio show (there were movies, TV shows, novels, and even comic books), ran first in 1945, and then from 1947-1951, with almost all episodes featuring the incomparable Vincent Price (photo lower right, 1911-1993). Before Price assumed the role of The Saint, there were two others before him, beginning with the 1945 run:  Edgar Barrier (January-March 1945) and Brian Aherne (June-September 1945). With the rare episode where actor Barry Sullivan would fill in, Vincent Price was the voice of The Saint from July 9, 1947 through May 20, 1951. The final 22 episodes after Price departed saw actor Tom Conway as The Saint, from May 27, 1951 through October 21, 1951.

The first Saint novel was published in 1928 when Charteris was just shy of his 21st birthday and was titled Meet the Tiger. In later years Charteris practically disowned the novel, remarking that it was so poorly written he wondered how it ever got published. Instead, he preferred to count 1930’s second Saint novel Enter the Saint as the first true Saint novel. Be that as it may, he would write Simon Templar adventures (novels, short stories, and novellas) off and on for the next 33 years, the final Saint book written solely by himself being a collection of stories in 1963 titled The Saint in the Sun. Thereafter, all of the Saint titles would be ghost-written but credited to Charteris, who remained in an editorial capacity, reading the manuscripts and editing where necessary. Of interest to science fiction readers is that the first of the ghost-written Saint novels was written by none other than Harry Harrison (1925-2012, SFWA Grand Master 2009, photo at left), and was 1964’s Vendetta for the Saint. Harrison, also an illustrator early in his career (the legendary Wally Wood would ink Harrison’s pencils for several SF comics, among them Weird Fantasy and Weird Science), also wrote the syndicated The Saint comic strip.

Simon Templar falls into the camp of the “soft-boiled” detective, in line with such as Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes, and Dashiell Hammett’s Nick Charles (who prefer solving crimes with their wits rather than their fists), as opposed to the “hard-boiled” branch of the detective tree and the likes of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Boston Blackie. The iconic stick figure with halo representing The Saint was first introduced in the early stories as a calling card Templar would leave so that his enemies would know who was responsible for their downfall. The title card/logo above was used in the 1960’s The Saint TV series starring future James Bond star Roger Moore. The TV series originated in the UK and ran from 1962-69, but was picked up by NBC in America and ran as a summer replacement in 1966.

On American radio, however, Vincent Price was the undisputed, one and only Simon Templar, The Saint. His velvety voice and witty banter embodied the proto-typical suave, bon vivant hero/detective, though in a number of episodes the sexual innuendos written for not only his lines, but those of other characters were a bit too risque and obvious for the perceived audience in the late 1940s, though The Saint‘s legion of fans didn’t seem to care.

“The Chiseling Chimpanzee” is a serious, yet at the same time subtly-humorous foray into monkey business of the deadliest kind. For some unknown reason a monkey holds a secret so valuable to the bad guys that they are more than willing and able to kill for it. But when the monkey gets offed by mistake a whole new round of confusion and questions come into play, with even more violence and danger on Simon Templar’s plate for him to work through before he can begin to uncover the secret of “The Chiseling Chimpanzee” and make certain the bad guys get their just desserts. Another unusual, oddball case sublimely suited for the sophisticated sleuthing skills of our very own Simon Templar, the Saint.

(The CD linked at top includes this episode and 19 others, all digitally remastered and restored.)

Play Time: 29:41

{This episode of The Saint aired on a Sunday evening in early December of 1950. With the Christmas vacation still several weeks away, the neighborhood gang knew the only presents in their near future were the ones they gave to themselves, so off to the nearby newsstand they went the following day after school, searching for adventure and the kind of excitement that only some of their favorite pulps could give them. Black Mask (1920-51) was the crème de la crème of the detective pulps and one of the few remaining into the early 1950s. While a monthly for most of its long run, in 1944 it scaled back to a bi-monthly publication, a schedule it maintained until its final issue in July of 1951. G-Men Detective (1935-53) started out as a monthly in the 1930s with just the short title of G-Men. With the decline in interest in federal agent crime fiction (thanks in part to the surfeit of such material from many years of Hollywood gangster films), the magazine became G-Men Detective in 1940 and altered its publication schedule to bi-monthly, though even that would become irregular over its final decade. With a broader range of quality fiction it found an accompanying increase in readership, which helped keep it afloat into the 1950s when many another detective pulp had long since ceased publication. Super Science Stories (1940-43, 1949-51) was edited in its first iteration by a young Fred Pohl until 1943 when he entered the war. Upon a revival in 1949 it was Ejler Jakobsson at the editorial helm. While both editors were forced to acquire stories for a pittance, Jakobsson was under even greater financial pressure and had to rely on some reprints, while Pohl, even offering as low as less than a penny a word to his authors (some of whom were his friends), managed all original fiction. Counting both iterations of the magazine, it ended up publishing a combined total of 31 issues, though both editors were able to acquire stories by well known, popular SF writers, a few of which were Isaac Asimov, Henry Kuttner, Ray Bradbury, Poul Anderson, Murray Leinster, Fredric Brown, and A. E. Van Vogt. It was a bi-monthly in 1950.}

[Left: Black Mask, 11/50 – Center: G-Men Detective, Fall/50 – Right: Super Science Stories, 11/50]

To view the entire list of weekly Old Time Radio episodes at Tangent Online, click here.