bill nagy

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Carlton Rood (David Bauer) is a hot-shot lawyer who always gets his clients acquitted – even when they’re obviously guilty. His latest client, Joe Sholto (Bill Nagy), burnt down his own warehouse in order to collect the insurance money (in the process, a policeman was killed in the blaze and his cleaning woman, Agnes Yarrow, was blinded).

Agnes (Margaret Vines) confirmed that Sholto was present at the scene, but under Rood’s remorseless courtroom questioning she wilts. Sholto therefore walks free, but the Saint isn’t prepared to let it rest there. Instead, he dishes out his own unique brand of justice ….

Apart from popping up in the pre-credits sequence, Simon doesn’t do a great deal during the first half of the story. But he’s not really missed, as his absence allows the plot to be nicely set up, with Sholto’s ruthless character brought to the fore. Ruthless he might be, but clever – hmm, maybe not. It possibly wasn’t the wisest move for him to have torched his own warehouse (surely he could have hired someone to do so?) And if he had brought in some outside thugs, then Agnes would have struggled to connect them to her employer.

Taking Willis Burnham (Robert O’Neill) along to assist him wasn’t too clever either. From the moment the pair enter the warehouse, fire on their mind, Burnham wears a perpetually worried expression (he seems such an obvious weak link).

The New York setting of The Element of Doubt is convincingly realised. Stock footage is kept to a minimum whilst the use of American-born actors such as Alan Gifford and David Bauer is a plus (with the British cast essaying fairly credible American accents).

It’s a pity that Alan Gifford, appearing again as Inspector Fernack (following his turn in The Careful Terrorist) didn’t become more of a regular. Fernack, a creation of Charteris’, is essentially the American equivalent of Claude Eustace Teal. Both might have a low opinion of the Saint, but every so often they’re forced to admit that his unorthodox approach does produce results. Fernack has a nice comedy moment when he welcomes the glamourous insurance agent Mary Hammond (Anita West) into his office. He doesn’t quite slobber all over her, but he comes close!

Earlier the same year, 1962, Anita West had left Blue Peter after presenting just sixteen editions (she had decided that her imminent divorce from Ray Ellington might prove an embarrassment for the show).

David Bauer gives a solid performance as Rood. He may be well aware that his clients are often guilty, but he doesn’t overplay the sleaze – instead Carlton Rood radiates an air of solidity and respectability. At least until he steps into court, which is when he’s prepared to use any dirty trick at his disposal in the service of his clients. The way he reduces Agnes to hysteria is slightly chilling (even if Margaret Vines does overplay the moment somewhat).

So with Sholto now free, Simon elects to go undercover – sporting a pair of glasses and a not terribly convincing Texan accent – in order to sow discord between Rood and Sholto (he hints to Sholto that Rood’s planning to double-cross him). As with some of Moore’s other accents, I’m not sure whether it’s deliberately supposed to be bad, or whether that was the best that he could do ….

Although Sholto is quite ruthless in the teleplay – locking Agnes in the burning warehouse – this is nothing compared to his behaviour in Charteris’ original story. There he shot and killed Mr Yarrow (a character absent here) and blinded Agnes with acid fired from a gun.

Simon remains in the background until the last fifteen minutes or so, but since the story culminates in a well-acted tale of double-cross (orchestrated by the Saint, gleefully playing Rood and Sholto off against each other) it merits a score of four halos out of five.

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The Saint, vacationing in Rome, spots a damsel in distress, Sue Inverest (Suzan Farmer), who is locked in an argument with a stroppy cab-driver, Marco (Warren Mitchell). Simon smoothly sorts out Marco and equally smoothly proposes to show Sue the sights – starting with the Colosseum. But he’s hardly begun to display his impressive knowledge of history before he’s coshed by two thugs, who then abduct Sue. Since she’s the daughter of an American politician, Hudson Inverest (Alexander Knox), it seems clear this wasn’t a random abduction. But why was she kidnapped – for money, or is there some other reason?

The Saint‘s ability to travel all over the world despite rarely leaving the leafy environment of Borehamwood is well known. But The Latin Touch does manage an early spot (albeit very brief) of genuine location shooting and these shots mingle pretty well with the studio work. It also has to be said that the studio Colosseum set is quite impressive – we only see it for a short time, but it was money well spent.

It’s easy to spot that the two men who target Simon and Sue are bad ‘uns – the Frank Sinatra hats and flashy shoes are dead giveaways. The revelation that Sue is the daughter of an American governor comes as something of a surprise, since Suzan Farmer doesn’t display a trace of an American accent. Presumably accents weren’t her strongpoint.

She’s only onscreen for a few minutes before being nabbed, but Farmer still manages to create a vivid impression. It’s interesting that after Sue’s taken we don’t see her again until the 39th minute. You’d have expected a few scenes with her to have been scattered through the story in order to ramp up the tension, but instead the human side of the drama is played out by Hudson and his wife, Maude (Doris Nolan). Hudson puts duty first whilst Maude, as might be expected, is concerned only about her daughter.

Hudson faces a difficult moral dilemma. Sue has been snatched by Mafia kingpin Tony Unciello (Bill Nagy), who demands that his younger brother, Nick, languishing in an American jail (his death warrant signed by Hudson), is reprieved from death row. It’s highly debatable that Hudson would have the authority to do this (it’s hard to believe that the American government would agree to such a course either) but the way the story plays out it does seem that he has the power of life and death over Nick.

Warren Mitchell gives a lovely performance as Marco, this episode’s comic relief. Marco is a rather slippery petty criminal, but Simon’s easily able to recruit him to the side of the godly. Tony Unciello, like Sue, is rather lacking in screentime until the last ten minutes or so but Nagy’s scenes with Moore when they do arrive are good. Hungarian-born Nagy might have seemed an odd choice to play an Italian/American gangster, but he’d do so again later (in Goldfinger).

With Tony remaining camera shy for most of the episode, it falls to others to sketch in aspects of his personality, such as the glamourous nightclub singer Maria (Carroll Simpson). Maria’s short scene – she pulls back her hair to reveal a nasty scar (a legacy of her time with Tony) – helps to illustrate precisely what sort of man he is. Since The Saint was extremely restricted in how it could depict violence (Leslie Charteris’ original stories often, much to his chagrin, had to be toned down) this scene is useful in the way that it suggests Tony’s violent nature without having to depict it. Slightly surprising that Carroll Simpson, who is rather compelling, only seems to have made this single screen appearance.

Warren Mitchell’s entertaining as always and Bill Nagy’s nicely menacing, but The Latin Touch does suffer from a lack of tension, since it’s impossible to believe that Sue won’t be rescued in the end. Given this, it rates a solid, but not spectacular, three halos out of five.

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