I’m watching reruns of The Saint with Roger Moore. It seems every pistol I’ve seen is a Beretta M1935. Are pistols for TV difficult to obtain in Great Britain, or does it just look menacing? I’ve fired one, and I believe you could empty the magazine into a drunk while he beat you to death with a bar stool as he bled to death.
…and this episode just had a Webley revolver so that Templar could play Russian roulette with the bad guys. NM.
I only watch it for the car.
Probably just a case of cranking out episodes on a tight schedule and having a limited choice of props.
I remember in one episode, Templar’s pistol turned out to be a cigarette lighter. I’ll bet that one was used a lot of the time.
I’ve fired one as well. I believe you underestimate how getting shot in the thorax 8 times with a .32acp does, in fact, cause even drunks to reconsider their actions. .32 pistols were the gun of choice for cops in many countries for many years.
As for its use in a tv show…guns that could fire blanks reliably were always first choice if a gun was actually going to be shown firing. Revolvers and automatics that didnt require tinkering were favored.
So I exaggerated. Poetic license. I thought policemen had .38s for a while.
Police did have .38s for many decades – until the militarisation of our police forces. .32 ACPs seem to have been popular with gangsters in the first half of the 20th Century. European police forces also liked .32s, and used them well into the second half of the century. James Bond (in the films) used a Walter PPK. The ‘PP’ means * Polizeipistole* – ‘police pistol’. (FWIW, ‘PPK’ means Polizeipistole Kriminalmodell, or ‘Police Pistol - Detective Model’. It has a shorter barrel, frame, and grip, and has areduced magazine capacity. People often think the ‘K’ means Kurz, for ‘short’, because of this.)
The Italian police used the Beretta M1935 .32, come to think of it.
Watching an episode tonight. Deliah and Samson film actors are kidnapped. Bad guy has the M1935.
The Invaders episode, The Captive, 1967.
Unnamed Eastern European embassy, has the Beretta M1935. David Vincent has a good old American six shooter, a snub nose S&W .38.
I guess it is just a Bad Guy Gun.
Bear in mind that the beat police in England have never carried guns.
I don’t remember the Saint carrying one either (there would have been handgun controls at the time it was filmed for sure.)
So the Saint would overpower the bad guys with his fists (then rescue the girl!)
I remember the promo:
[British accent] “Whether it’s guns or girls, The Saint can handle the situation!”
He does not carry one, but he is not above taking a pistol (or a cigarette lighter) away from the bad guys and using it.
Were guns that restricted in GB back then? The Saint series is over 50 years old.
Canonically in the books the Saint hated guns especially early on, once calling them something like nasty noisy creations of the devil, if I remember correctly. His favored weapons were his throwing knives.
Back in the mid-60s I had this toy gun from the show! The sights and silencer were both detachable.
Loved it, but stupidly left it on the car roof one day when the car was parked in the driveway but my dad took it out for some reason and the gun fell off somewhere unknown…
Seems to me he carried one in the glovebox of his car. IIRC, there was a little holster-thingie mounted on the back side of the compartment’s hatch.
Wow! Sights *and *a silencer on a Luger! :eek: I want one too! :o
I was always partial to the guns used by UNCLE agents in the '60s:
I had both the pistol and the THRUSH sniper rifle when I was in fifth or sixth grade. Damned if I know what happened to them, though. 
I’d be happy to have the UNCLE badge again. I’d wear it on a black turtleneck, like Ilya Kurikayin. 