the Saint on American radio, see The Saint (radio program). The next English-language radio series aired on Springbok Radio in South Africa between 1953 and 1957. These were fresh adaptations of the original stories and starred Tom Meehan. Around 1965 to 1966 the South African version of Lux Radio Theatre produced a single dramatization of The Saint. The English service of South Africa produced another series radio adventures for six months in 1970–1971. The most recent English-language incarnation was a series of three one-hour-long radio plays on BBC Radio 4 in 1995, all adapted from Charteris novels: Saint Overboard, The Saint Closes The Case and The Saint Plays With Fire, starring Paul Rhys as Templar. In film Not long after creating The Saint, Charteris began a long association with Hollywood as a screenwriter. He was successful in getting a major studio, RKO Radio Pictures, interested in a film based on one of his works. The first, The Saint in New York in 1938, based on the 1935 novel of the same name, starred Louis Hayward as Templar and Jonathan Hale as Inspector Henry Fernack, the American counterpart of Mr Teal. The film was a success and RKO began a Saint series. Some of the films were based on Charteris's original novels or novellas; others were original stories based upon outlines by Charteris. George Sanders took over the leading role. Sanders's offhand manner captured the urbane yet daring qualities of the Saint character, but after five films RKO assigned him to a new series, The Falcon, in which Sanders played the same kind of debonair adventurer. Charteris saw this as both plagiarism and an attempt to deprive him of royalties, and he sued RKO. Hugh Sinclair replaced Sanders in 1941 and portrayed Templar in two films, both produced by RKO's British unit (the second film was ultimately released by Republic Pictures in 1943). In 1953, British Hammer Film Productions produced The Saint's Return (known as "The Saint's Girl Friday" in the United States), for which Louis Hayward returned to the role. This was followed by an unsuccessful French production in 1960. In the mid-1980s, the National Enquirer and other newspapers reported that Roger Moore was planning to produce a movie based on The Saint with Pierce Brosnan as Templar, but it was never made. In 1989, six movies were made by Taffner starring Simon Dutton. These were syndicated in the United