The Saint in New York

Leslie Charteris's suave adventurer Simon Templar may have been played by Val Kilmer in a 1997 mega-budget feature, but in this first film in RKO's resolutely low-budget nine-film series, Louis Hayward proved to be perfectly cast as the haloed hero. Subsequent Saints were George Sanders and Hugh Sinclair, but Hayward returned for the last film The Saint's Girl Friday made in 1954; the next time the Saint appeared on screen was in the guise of smoothie Roger Moore in the 1960s TV series. However, no other adaptation followed Charteris's source material as closely as this one.