Chairs fly, a door is broken down, bullets whistle, the bad guy drops. Calm is restored. The Saint, moments earlier in the verge of destruction, emerges a bit ruffled but unharmed. Another damsel in distress has been rescued, a jewel thief thwarted, or a potential murderer delivered to the law. Virtue has triumphed, the crime rate held at bay and once again The Saint stands there victorious, halo unblemished.

For four years "The Saint" has been a late night syndicated TV series produced in England in which the plots have been strictly predicable and the culprits thoroughly conventional.

Certainsly, Simon Templar, otherwise known as The Saint, and his inevitably redundant adventures are old enough - it is 40 years since Leslie Charteris created the character. And certainly The Saint has become totally familiar to those who have read of his exploits, heard them on radio or seen them on film. But cliches have a habit of enduring, carried onward by a built-in momentum and then suddenly becoming fashionable all over again.

That seems to be what happened to "The Saint". After its increasing popularity in the past few years in 72 countries in which it has been seen, "The Saint" has gone legitimate i.e. network prime-time television - and is now seen in color on NBC. The effect this will have on the program content is minimal. Except, perhaps, for the inclusion of some updated gimmicks, it will not change. No one seems today ready to tamper with a successful formula.

But the effect on the series' star, Roger Moore, is more apparent. He's gone respectable. And with his new found status he has become reserved, image-conscious and cautious, no longer ready to let the quips fly about the program. Over six feet tall with piercing blue eyes, an absurdly handsome face and a very proper manner, Moore dresses in pin-striped vested suits and appears very much the English gentleman.

Nothing of the rugged Bogart-style influence prevalent among popular Hollywood heroes today intrudes on Moore's well-sculptured features. His hair is sleekly combed and he is as safe in his looks as he is in the romantic hero he portrays. Making waves does not seem to be his inclination.

Yet apparently it hasn't always been this way. There was a day in Hollywood when Moore was being steadily rebuked by his studio for being overly candid and flip about the TV series he was appearing in. First there was the "Ivanhoe" series, for which he had absolutely no enthusiasm. During a filming of one episode he was rather harshly kicked by a horse and he told a reporter: "The horse obviously shares my low opinion of the series".

"The Alaskans" followed and Moore noted at the time: "The only realistic piece of dialogue was 'Mush'". His subsequent assignment as James Garner's replacement in "Maverick", Moore commented at the time, was pure punishment for his telling Jack Warner what he thought of "The Alaskans" and a map Warner had in his office. As the London-born Moore has recalled it: "I went to see Jack Warner about the series. He was sitting in his office with a great map of the world behind his head. England was colored such a pale pink you could hardly see it. I said, "Mr. Warner, I don't like your series and I don't like your map".

Today Moore says:" Never bite the hand that feed you - the hand usually has dirty fingernails anyway. I'd rather be a big fat duck on a dirty pond than an inferior swan on a great lake". It's too soon to tell which kind of bird Moore may turn into since "The Saint" only last month started in its new prime-time slot. Moore himself is reluctant to make predictions.

"There is the automatic built-in success of the title and the familiarity with the stick figure", Moore says. "The scripts are better and the stories always have a very good twist. The Saint stories have never had the sex of Mickey Spillane or the brutality of James Bond. In The Saint I'm not really a real person; the situations are all too extraordinary. Sure, we have the stock-type villains, trying to steal the crown jewels orsomething. Yet we are not playing down to the audience".

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