Reading Burl Barer’s excellent book on The Saint was when I realized some characters are Dad Heroes.
A dad joke is defined as the kind of joke a father would tell their kid. A Dad Hero is a character Dad and others of his generation loved but as pop culture shifts to the world of their kids, then their grandkids, the hero fades into bar-trivia status.
This is not a criticism of Leslie Charteris’ creation — I’m a fan of both the books and the Roger Moore TV series. The thing is, though, when I was a kid in the UK, “the infamous Simon Templar” was everywhere. The TV show. The books. The Saint Magazine. A comic-strip. Not long afterwards, even though the books and the show are still easy to find, the Saint quietly faded from pop culture.
When the book came out, the Val Kilmer The Saint was in production and Barer hoped it would re-establish the character. Instead, it tanked. 2017’s The Saint was much better (I’m glad Greg Hatcher mentioned it in one of his columns) but didn’t generate any interest in a revival.
That’s not surprising. The number of people who’d be interested in a Saint revival because they like the character or appreciate some of the continuity touches (Eliza Dushku’s character Patricia was Simon’s sidekick/lover in the books) are fewer every year. If you’re not one of them — well, it’s still a good movie but there’s plenty of other good movies to watch. As Dafydd Neal Dyar says in The Savage Dyaries, Indiana Jones proved you can do an old-style pulp adventure film without using an actual pulp character. Why negotiate rights and give some creator’s estate a share of the box office when you can be just as successful with a new character?
I’d put the excellent My Name Is Modesty in the same category (it’s another where Greg’s recommendation led me to it). It’s a good origin story for Peter O’Donnell’s spy/thief/troubleshooter, and the creators know their Modesty Blaise. However it was supposed to be a side project tying in with a big-budget, big-screen Modesty Blaise adventure that never happened. I suspect one never will, even though I’m a Modesty fan.
It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. A decade ago I read the 1953 book Clubland Heroes by Richard Usborne, looking at the fictional creations of John Buchan (best known now for the novel that inspired Hitchcock’s The Thirty-Nine Steps), Sapper (creator of Bulldog Drummond) and Dornford Yates (no idea). In 1953, readers might have remembered the characters from their youth; kids might have known the books from their parents’ library. I’ve read one Bulldog Drummond, one John Buchan and no Dornford Yates. We’re talking grandad heroes here.
The number of characters who achieve immortality are few and far between. James Bond and Conan have made it; Zorro, despite all the novels, movies and TV shows, doesn’t seem to be (I joked about “Spoiler: Don Diego Vega is Zorro!” at a book club meeting recently, thinking everyone would get that it’s not a spoiler. Nobody did).
But to paraphrase James Cain, the books are still there on my shelf. I can read them regardless of who else does. And if I want to talk about them, there’s here, and no shortage of other places online to do it.
I can live with that.
