Arabian Knights (1979)

 

Made at the tail end of George Harrison Marks' involvement in hardcore pornography, Arabian Knights was one of a number of short films Marks was commissioned to make in 1978/79 which centred around busty model Nicky Stanton. Bra Wars, Bustman's Holiday and Busty Ravers were all softcore loops financed by the big bust fetish magazine 'Peaches'.  Arabian Knights, Cockpit Cunts, Busty Baller and Big N' Busty were hardcore shorts, with the money for those coming from the euro loop company Color Climax. Nicky had the makings of an all time great Marks model, with a Pamela Green like ability to look entirely different by merely flipping on a new wig. Nicky also had the physical requirements that Marks generally looked for in his models...which is the polite way of saying she had massive tits. Unfortunately the Stanton films caught Marks at a low ebb, creatively. "George was going through a fairly quiet period at that point and seemed to enjoy most of his spare time lounging around the flat, playing with his cats and drinking vodka" remembered his girlfriend at the time "in retrospect I would suspect he was quite depressed as he couldn't see a clear direction and he got bored doing the blue films."

Nicky Stanton

Whereas the early 70s hardcore loops Marks had shot of Clyda Rosen (Autograph Hour, Dolly Mixture) have Marks' eccentricity and personality all over them, the Stanton loops are far more conventional examples of pornography, that realistically could have been made by anyone. Busty Baller has your basic porn loop narrative of...man knocks on a door, woman answers it, they fuck, the end. Big N' Busty doesn't even bother with a premise, cutting straight to Nicky being fucked by two guys. Arabian Knights is the most lavish of the Stanton loops, thanks to Color Climax footing the bill for Arabic costumes, naked extras and a four star hotel as the shooting location, all contributing to an air of late 1970s, well moneyed, sexual decadence. Indeed the film was likely inspired by Marks' involvement with the rich Arabs who indulged in sex tourism during their business trips to London. Many of Marks' models had career sidelines as high class prostitutes, and Marks would act as a reluctant pimp, tipping the girls off when 'the Arabs' were in town, while forewarning them just what they were signing up for. Apparently the Arabs paid well, but had a reputation for the severe, with anal sex being the main order of the day. In her recent autobiography Cosey Fanni Tutti remembers Marks calling her up about the Arabs, asking her "Do you do anal? That's all they want, They'll pay you a couple of grand. It's in their flat in Mayfair". After declining this offer to party with the ass crazy Arabs, Fanni Tutti noted that Marks 'seemed relieved that I'd refused. I turned down all such offers and eventually wasn't asked again'. In Marks' blue movie take on this subject, a rich Arab Sheik is in the process of finalizing a deal with a western businessman (Marks regular 'Short Jack Gold'). To seal the deal the Sheik lays on a parade of harem girls for the pair of them to choose from. After touching up the lineup, the Sheik decides on a threesome with two of the girls (Nicky Stanton and Jada Smith) and gets to experience Nicky's tit-fucking abilities, before blowing his load over Jada's pussy. Playing the role of generous host, the Sheik gives the okay for his western counterpart to partner off with another of the harem girls and do some Middle Eastern drilling of his own. Or as the inimitable hyperbole on Color Climax's 8mm box puts it "they then get down to some really passionate poolside poking and in absolutely no time the two oilmen are gushing their gism all over the place, covering the busty birds in come".

The surprise piece of casting here is long time movie heavy Milton Reid, who appeared in the big budget family movie 'Arabian Adventure' the same year. Here Milton embarks on an altogether more adult type of Arabian Adventure, and seems to be having a ball as the Sheik's servant. A role that gives him the opportunity to line up the naked harem girls, pinch their bums and see some big boobs. On a roll, Milton followed this with a non-sex role as a chauffeur in the hardcore loop Schoolgirl Holiday, and in Bustman's Holiday, Milton strips down to a thong and ends up frolicking in a pool with Nicky Stanton and another big bust model. The mini scandal that erupted over the filming of Arabian Knights (more on that later) didn't exactly do Milton's reputation any favours. My impression though is that his career was winding down at this point, with stories of him becoming muscle bound and suffering from arthritis by the end of the 1970s. While Arabian Knights captured Reid in career decline, the film also marked the debut (and only hardcore performance) of Jada Smith, who soon after would relaunch her career in softcore magazines and films under the name 'Rosemary England'. Long out of the public eye and wanting nothing to do with her past, Jada/Rosemary now runs a B&B on the south coast. Fortunately for her, she retains a degree of anonymity in the Internet age by virtue of her real name. 99.9% of Internet search results for 'Jada Smith' relating to Will Smith's wife, rather than an obscure porn star turned B&B owner.

Incidentally I was surprised to recently discover that the going rate for the women who acted in high end porn loops back in the 1970s was £100 a day, whereas male performers could only expect to walk away with £60 per day. There is an irony in the fact that an industry which is routinely accused of exploiting and demeaning women was actually paying them nearly twice as much as men for doing the exact same job. A boast that few 'respectable' professions can lay claim to in 2022, let alone in the 1970s. In the world of seventies loops, it seems female performers were the ones who were valued, whereas men were paid less, even though the success or failure of these loops tended to rest heavier on the men's shoulders...as well as other parts of their anatomy.

Speaking of male performers, here's what cast member 'Short Jack Gold' had to say about Arabian Knights a few years ago

"Yes I was in that film. It was shot in winter at the Hotel Julius Caesar in Queens Gardens in Bayswater. It took two days to shoot, and was famous for the fact that a few of the girls who stayed at the hotel trashed their rooms, and abused a member of staff who, as a result, tipped of the press as to what was going on. A well known newspaper planted a reporter on the roof of the hotel who was able via a spyhole to observe all that was going on. The next weekend it was headline news and I think GHM ultimately had a court case to answer.

Milton Reid was an ex showbiz pal of GHM who desperately wanted to appear in a GHM "blue movie" Busty Nicky Stanton was also in it and a lady I called Jada, but as you say she went on to more assignments under the Rosemary England name. The other girl in the H/C scenes was called Stevie Taylor who eventually went to the States and did more porno.

They were all terribly sweet and very keen to help the actors if you see what I mean. It was actually snowing outside whilst we were filming, so it felt a bit strange acting as if we were in a desert oasis.

GHM was pretty pissed throughout the whole thing, which is why it took two days to complete. Ah Happy days....."

 

Vampire (1964)

By the mid-1960s George Harrison Marks could stake a claim to being the most famous glamour photographer in Britain. A reputation enhanced by Marks diversifying into directing feature films like Naked as Nature Intended. As well as numerous 8mm glamour films, designed to feature his models taking their clothes off and aimed at the home viewing market.

Regularly billing himself –with trademark immodesty - as ‘The King of the Camera’ and the ‘World Famous Photographer’ Marks was certainly one of the more cineliterate of the characters shooting 8mm glamour films back then, and could boast to owning a bookshelf that creaked under the weight of tomes about the talkies, Charlie Chaplin and Horror cinema. Influences which were visibly filtering down into his own short films. Marks dabbled in horror film themes for a number of his 8mm glamour productions. In ‘The Mummy’ (1966) the eponymous creature plays peeping tom to a number of topless serving girls before attempting to make off with one of them (Teri Martine). ‘Flesh and Fantasie’ (1963) , now more commonly known as 'Nightmare at Elm Manor', sees June Palmer staying the night at a creepy Manor, where she suffers nightmares about being pursued by a cape wearing bald man, and of course loses her clothes in the process. Whilst in ‘Perchance to Scream’ (1967) Jane Paul is transported back to the Middle Ages where an evil monk orders topless women to be flogged and beheaded.

Having let his friend Stuart Samuels play the villains in the latter two films, Marks himself steps into the lead role for 1964’s ‘Vampire’, casting himself opposite topless model Wendy Luton. Like a zillion other 8mm glamour films, Vampire opens with a woman, Carmilla (Luton) undressing, and striking nude poses in her bedroom, before retiring to bed. However all is not well in the land of nakedness, as elsewhere Count Dracula III (Marks) rises from his grave in search of fresh blood. Taking the rather unusual approach of hypnotising his victims with a pendant, Dracula III lures Carmilla back to his crypt where she is soon sporting bite marks on her neck and her very own set of fangs (she has also managed to acquire a pair of panties in the meantime as well). Fortunately for ​Carmilla, she is spared further unpleasantness as dawn breaks, forcing Dracula III back into his coffin.  In a twist on traditional vampire lore, rather than the sunlight reducing her to ashes it instead restores Carmilla back to her pre-vampirised state. Thus allowing her time to wander around the vampire’s lair...pose nude...discover a second vampire asleep in a coffin...faint...pose nude some more...before finally exacting revenge on Count Dracula III.

In light of the comedy name Marks gave to his vampire character it comes as a welcome surprise to discover that Vampire avoids spoofery and is entirely played straight. Hidden under ghoul make-up and with his hair and trademark goatee tinted grey, the Harrison Marks on display here is far removed from the goofy roles he usual gave himself in his own films, or indeed the gregarious ladies’ man, alcoholic, cat lover and pornographer that Marks was in real life.

Special mention should also be given to the eccentric but highly talented Tony Roberts. Marks’ studio manager who built the incredible sets for the glamour films, that over the years would see Marks’ studio transformed into a Chinese garden, an Egyptian pyramid, a French bistro and even an alien spaceship. Roberts lived in a tenement building near to Marks’ Gerrard Street studio, along with the entire Roberts clan which included a brother noted for his love of practical jokes- such as causing explosions and spiking people’s drinks- and a sister who had worked as a Bluebell girl in Paris. Roberts quickly became part of Marks’ inner circle, and together the two men often behaved like a comedy double act. “He was a really nice guy” remembers Teri Martine “kind of on the quiet side, but loved what he did”. Roberts’ sets here really are the business. Decorated in cobwebs and dry ice, his crypt and dungeon creations wouldn't shame a Hammer or Mario Bava film from the period. Its telling that once Roberts’ sets began to disappear from Marks’ 8mm films in the mid-1970s so too did Marks’ interest and enthusiasm for making them.

For an 8mm glamour film, Marks main concerns here seem to have been evoking a horror film atmosphere and savouring his fleeting, ten minutes of glory as a horror film star. Of course that isn't to say Vampire goes completely against type for a Marks production. A huge close-up of Wendy Luton’s breasts, worked into the scene where she explores the vampire’s lair, serves to remind you that –unlike Count Dracula III- it wasn’t Wendy’s neck that Marks’ audience were hoping to get an eyeful of.

Evidently Marks must have enjoyed transforming himself from The King of the Camera to The King of the Undead, as he donned the cape and fangs again a year later for a vignette in his feature film ‘The Naked World of Harrison Marks’(1965). One that saw him being imagined as a Dracula type figure. Not that exciting moments such as that could keep Marks awake during a preview screening of that film “we were no sooner in our seats then George fell asleep” recalls Teri Martine “and was snoring so loud I had to wake him up”.

Viewed collectively Marks’ horror themed 8mm glamour films do put forward a credible case that Marks may well have had a couple of decent horror feature films in him, should the opportunity to fully work in the genre have ever arose. Sadly by the end of the 1960s Marks had become firmly typecast in the minds of the British public as a man who photographed and filmed boobs for a living. “I had a screenplay I wrote, a heavily dramatic feature” he later remembered “but no one would take Harrison Marks seriously with a dramatic feature. They’d say ‘go and do one like the last one with lots of girls and laughs’. I thought fuck it that’s what they want, that’s what they get.” Fate it seemed had decided that it was bare breasts rather than bared fangs that George Harrison Marks was destined to be remembered for.

A slightly different version of this review originally appeared in Bedabbled #4 in 2014. Vampire can be seen online for free at the BFI Player 

Review: Moralpisser (Harrison Marks, 197?)

As regular readers of this blog will know George Harrison Marks is a filmmaker frequently championed around these parts. Aside from perhaps Derek Ford, no one quite personalised the British sex film as much as Marks. With his early 8mm glamour films and big screen outings like ‘The 9 Ages of Nakedness’ Marks reshaped the genre into his own little universe. Resulting in films whose plots were a showcase for Marks’ vivid imagination, starred the women he knew and loved, featured his mates (Stuart Samuels, Tony Roberts, Howard Nelson) in bit parts, and consolidated Marks’ damaged ego as a failed 1950s variety performer by not only making him famous, but allowing him to get his face and personality in front of the camera. The enthralling aspect to Marks is that the full extent of his career has clearly yet to be documented, what with forgotten or anonymously made 8mm films constantly resurfacing, fuelling further interest in the man, his times and his work, as well as rewarding the inquisitive.

A particularly exciting discovery of late is Marks’ hardcore short ‘Moralpisser’. Likely to have been made in the mid-seventies, it is from a time when Marks was still investing a degree of creativity into his hardcore sex films, and just before he began to find making them a chore, resulting in the films themselves deteriorating into generic, 9 to 5 pornography. A bit of detective work suggests that Moralpisser was a hardcore take on a storyline Marks had also used for a softcore short of his called ‘Medium Rare’. While I have yet to see Medium Rare- which starred a bewigged Monique Deveraux- a plot synopsis of that film matches up with the one in Moralpisser, with both films concerning phony mediums whose powers aren’t as inauthentic as they think. The premise of Moralpisser, which is worthy of a connecting sequence in an Amicus horror anthology, sees five strangers meeting up for a séance at the flat of a renowned medium. Four of this bunch (3 gals and 1 guy) are played by little known 1970s porn performers, the odd one out is a bearded older man who seems strangely familiar…… yes, its Marks himself, unable to keep his face off camera, in spite of the fact that he was meant to be directing the film anonymously.

 

Moralpisser captures Marks at possibly the most dilapidated he ever appeared on film. His unshaven appearance, hung-over demeanour and long greasy hair is both testament to his lifestyle having caught up with him by the 1970s and all of the good times he must have had to end up looking that way. Marks is strictly in this film for comic relief, throwing in a few effeminate glances and shrugs at his female co-stars, which recalls all the mincing about he did in The Window Dresser years beforehand. The actor playing the medium, who is attired in a kaftan worthy of Demis Roussos, is recognizable from umpteen soft and hardcore Marks shorts from this period (fellow porn actor Short Jack Gold recalls this man’s first name being ‘Paul’). The séance quickly gets underway and involves the motely group holding hands, swaying about and orgasmically moaning in an attempt to contact the spirit world. All however is not as it seems given that the medium has a couple of tricks up his sleeve, quite literally as the ‘hands’ of his the others are holding onto are actually false hands. While the others are caught up in the séance, the medium uses his real hands (which are hidden under the table) to operate a reel to reel tape recorder that plays soothing music designed to place the others into a trance. With everyone well and truly under the medium’s spell his guests are all instructed into another room, all except poor old Marks who is left on his lonesome at the table, and continues to sway about and mumble nonsense to the spirit world. Once the others are in the next room the amorous nature of the medium’s dastardly plan becomes apparent, with everyone ordered to disrobe which soon leads on to the medium presiding over a sex orgy. All very clever and conniving, even if you can’t help feeling that there must have been an easier way for a moderately handsome, big dicked fellow like him to get laid in the 1970s other than to pose as a medium and employ a set of fake hands and hypnotising music. Still, on the basis of what we see onscreen it was evidently worth all the effort, and the medium gets to have his wicked way with each of the three women, all of whom seem to dig him sexually. Enthusiastic performances, a variety of sexual positions and a more than average amount of money shots in this one present a convincing case for the cast having had a whale of a time making the film.

 

Marks’ previous shorts from the 1970s like A Night at the Bistro Bordello and Dolly Mixture, had been shot at a studio in Faulkner’s Alley and benefited from the set designs of Tony Roberts, who had transformed Marks’ studio into a French Bistro for the former and a mad scientist’s laboratory for the latter. Sadly this was a luxury unavailable to Marks by the time of Moralpisser (reportedly the landlord at the Faulkner’s Alley studio kicked Marks out when he discovered what was being filmed there), which was instead made at the place Marks called home, a ground floor flat at 'The Hall', an apartment block on Grove End Road in St. John’s Wood, a place Marks had been living at since the mid-1960s. To watch Marks’ films from the 1960s and 1970s is to become extremely familiar with this place, it pops up constantly as a filming location in his work during that period. Shooting at his own gaff offering the obvious benefit of privacy to Marks, which would have been essential given the legal question mark that existed over shooting blue movies during this period. Marks’ very own bed is the setting for the sex orgy centrepiece of Moralpisser. Tony Roberts’ sets and creative input might be noticeable by their absence in Moralpisser, but Marks’ own abode is every bit as visually striking as any film set, with each room seemingly boasting its own colour scheme. Bright reds worthy of double decker buses and telephone boxes appear as the dominant colour of choice for Marks’ living room, which has red walls, red chairs, a red table, pretty much red everything. It’s the kind of place that you suspect you’d never be able to forget if you’d ever been there, in fact I’d wager a bet that even today Moralpisser cast members would still be able to recall the day they ventured into Marks’ ‘red room’. Conveniently for Marks it lends itself well to doubling as the lair of a fake medium here, making you wonder if Marks hadn’t made this comparison himself and dreamt up the narrative for this film on that basis.

 

Just to get slightly get away from Moralpisser for the moment, and go all Sherlock Holmes on everyone, also present in Marks’ living room and visible in Moralpisser are several yellowed documents that Marks had put on display on his walls, preserved inside of picture frames with distinct, gold coloured edges. My memory bank of minute details remembered from 1970s porn tells me that the same framed documents appeared as background in a hardcore lesbian shoot that ran in the continental porn magazine ‘Pleasure’. A shoot that is notable for featuring a pre-fame Mary Millington participating in mixed combo action with an afroed black woman and masturbating with a banana (see here). The presence of the framed documents and the further giveaway of bright red walls in the Pleasure magazine shoot meaning that Marks must have taken these photographs of Mary at his Grove End Road pad at some point in time. The fact that the photos capture Mary prior to her nose job and the work done on her teeth, indicates they were taken before her meeting David Sullivan in 1975, and points to them being from very early on in her career. Whilst it is now known that Mary did work for Marks before Come Play With Me, by starring in his softcore short ‘Sex is My Business’, the Pleasure magazine photo-shoot is the first evidence to emerge of Marks employing her in a hardcore capacity in her early days too. Somehow though I doubt the current residents of 'The Hall' in Grove End Road - a building which still stands- will be in any hurry to erect a blue plaque commemorating the fact that Marks made blue films there, or that Mary Millington once pleasured herself with a banana on the premises.

Marks’ ‘red room’ in Moralpisser

Everything about Moralpisser from Marks’ played for laughs cameo to the good time sex scenes have a light-hearted tone to them, leading you to assume that the film will end on a similar note. So it comes as a surprise when Marks royally pulls the rug from under us by taking things in the completely opposite direction. Finally exhausted from all the sex they’ve been having the medium and his guests return back to the séance expecting to find Marks there on his own. Instead they are confronted by the sight of themselves still sitting around the table. The medium and his guests scream wildly at this sight, as the versions of themselves sat around the table turn around and glower at them menacingly. The final shot in the film sees them vanishing into thin air. It’s a puzzler of an ending; have the medium and his guests been dead all along? or have their bodies become possessed by evil spirits during the séance?, or did the séance cause them to lose their souls which drifted away for an orgy and failed to realise they’d become separated from their bodies till the shock ending? Whichever way you interpret this, it is a chilling conclusion and one that takes you totally off guard. Like the onscreen characters, the audience really got more than they bargained for in their pursuit of sexual cheap thrills with Moralpisser, but you can’t help admire the mischievous nature in Marks for pulling a head wrecker of a twist like that on his audience who probably didn’t expect it to be the hairs on the back of their necks that were left standing by the film. So that’s Moralpisser then, a film with laughs, another memorable Marks cameo, raunchy sex, a horror movie worthy ending and clues to a hitherto unknown Marks/Mary Millington connection. What more could you ask for from 1970s pornography?, to quote the board held up by Marks at the end of his 1964 glamour film The Four Poster “what do you want blood?”
 

Tom, Michael, George and the Yarmouth Branch of the Women’s Institute

A quick heads up for this Peeping Tom documentary on Radio 4 next week:

“Tom, Michael and George
Tuesday 02 November11:30am - 12:00pmBBC Radio 4
To mark the 50th anniversary of the notoriously controversial British thriller Peeping Tom, Toby Jones examines the effect of this disturbing tale of glamour-photographer-turned-serial-killer on the careers of two people - director Michael Powell and real-life glamour photographer George Harrison Marks. With contributions from the director's son Columba Powell, actress Shirley Anne Field and director Michael Winner, himself no stranger to controversy.”

Some of Marks’ 8mm films starring Pamela Green are also due to receive a screening by the Yarmouth Branch of the Women’s Institute!!!
("We'll show the two 'tamest' first and leave it up to the ladies if they want to watch more")
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/hampshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9134000/9134461.stm

Review: The Happy Nurses (197?, Harrison Marks)

Sometime in 1976 sex superstar Mary Millington ran into a spot of bother with the law after selling a policeman 8mm copies of Harrison Marks’ softcore Maximus films “Goodnight Nurse” and “The Danish Maid” at her Norbury sex shop, only to see the same copper return a few days later with some of his colleagues to raid the shop. And while the police never really needed a good reason to raid Mary’s shop, one can imagine she’d have been in even more hot water had she slipped him a copy of Marks’ The Happy Nurses, a hardcore “under the counter” production, which used the same sets, storyline and the more opened minded cast members-or should that be cast’s members- as Goodnight Nurse.

Released in Germany by Diamant Films, likely an offshoot of Charlie Brown’s Tabu company, the hospital ward set Happy Nurses opens with the hilariously off the wall sight of Marks’ muscle-bound stooge Howard ‘Vanderhorn’ Nelson, playing an irate foreign patient. A role Howard has been blacked up for, while the typical Vanderhorn disguise also includes a fez and a glue on goatee as an extra touch so people won’t know its him.
Clearly not a happy camper, and presumably suffering from a disease that turns you into a hybrid of Tommy Cooper and Al Jolson, Howard is quickly carted away by wheelchair by one of the staff, and while the Horn is away the doctors and nurses will play. With no patients around, the head doctor and one of the nurses seize the opportunity to screw each other senseless in his office. Elsewhere, a patient turns up on the ward and checks himself into a bed. No one actually bothers to enquire what is wrong with him, but there is a succession of randy nurses on hand to administer blowjobs and fuck him in bed, which while it might not cure his illness, presumably will cheer him up a bit.


Aside from Howard, the other familiar face in The Happy Nurses is Peter, the actor playing the doctor, who Marks also cast in his 8mm short ‘Hot Fingers’. Peter was clearly something of a player in the 1970s London hardcore scene, and pops up in numerous blue films by both Marks and John Lindsay. Slightly more mature looking than your average 70s porn actor, and distinguished by that and his wavy, Sid James type hairdo, he also had a small, uncredited role as -aptly enough- a stud for hire in Stanley Long’s film On the Game, from 1973.

After finishing off with the doctor, the nurse remembers she was meant to deliver an important letter to another of the nurses, and hurries off to find her, inadvertently walking in on her riding the patient. The letter reveals the man isn’t a patient and all, and it turns out he is actually the new ward porter who has been posing as a patient in order to get some free sex on the NHS. Left a not very happy nurse at the news of this deception, the nurse gets her own back by empting a fruit bowl over him, which knocks him out and leaves him with an apple stuck in his mouth. Actually given the spontaneous way sex seems to break out between doctors, nurses and patents in the film, its hard to make sense of why it matters whether he was a ward porter or a patient, still thats the NHS for you!!

Hyped by Tabu in their typically excitable, broken english manner as “a jewel for the broadminded … after this film you are bound to have a permanent itch, if not a quivering cunt”, Marks was definitely firing on all cylinders when he came up with this one, and a boozy sense of mirth is very much in evidence in the films mixture of horny blue movie action, Howard’s music hall like get-up and Marks’ penchant for working slapstick comedy and assorted silly gags into the dirty film equation. While the joke revelation about the ward porter might not be up to much, The Happy Nurses can lay claim to featuring the rudest, dirtiest sight gag Marks surely ever filmed, which entails poor Mr. Nelson being wheeled out again at the end of the film for the honour of suffering an even greater indignity than he does in Come Play With Me. Still moaning at the nurses while they are busy wanking off the ward porter in the next bed, Howard’s complaints are cut short mid-sentence when he is hit in the face by the ward porter’s misdirected spunk!! A freeze frame of Howard fuming and the (obviously fake) cum running down his face ends the film.

Actually this ending comes across -no pun intended- as a bit of an improvisation due, you suspect, to the porn actor running out of steam and failing to deliver the requisite money shot that by rights the film should have ended on, leaving Marks to substitute it with a belly laugh instead. A suspicion further fuelled by an earlier scene with the ward porter and one of the nurses also making use of the same porridge like substance, or whatever the heck it was that Marks used as a double for mansplat, that also ends up being squirted on Howard’s face for the film’s finale. Still while the porn actor doesn’t seem to have been able to deliver all the goods, Howard certainly went way beyond the call of duty for The Happy Nurses, blacking up, spending an afternoon being wheeled around and taking the porn equivalent of a custard pie to the face. Thus providing the film with its wickedly obscene, laugh out loud final moment, and ensuring that the Happy Nurses will live on as surely the only straight 8mm porn film to end with a blacked up, former bodybuilder being ejaculated on!!!

“Life with George Harrison Marks”- A Chat with Louise Sinclair

I was delighted to recently correspond with Louise S. Sinclair, who back in the 1970s worked as a glamour model and dated George Harrison Marks during the Spring of 1979. Louise is happy to reminisce about “those wonderful pre politically correct days of freedom” and her computer-like memory was able to fill in many of the blank spots I had about Marks’ life during that period. Her stories about him are equal parts comedy and tragedy, and provide a frank, but valuable, insight into Marks’ psyche, post Come Play With Me, at the very fag end of the 1970s. Many thanks to Louise for taking this trip down memory lane!!

“I was involved with George during 1979 when he resided in Red Lion Square and had a company called Helena Grant Associations. I became his lover aged 19 and when he telephoned my mother would jokingly say "granddad is on the phone" At that point George had spilt from (his third wife) Toni. I believe it had happened over a year previously. Toni seemed to be involved with a man called Arthur who aggravated George because his identity bracelet had diamonds and George's was plain gold.

George introduced me to his various friends including Milton and Jack as his mistress. I recall little about (Milton Reid), he seemed a fairly disinterested in people character and usually just nodded in my direction. I recall him looking very over weight and George being heavy, the two of them made quite a sight. George liked wearing a striped top which as I told him made him look like a deckchair on legs. I wasn't diplomatic as I was only 18 when I met George.


George was a very heavy smoker and drinker. He also loved dishes such as saukraut and polish sausages. His moods were volatile and I had a quarrel with him when somewhat hungover he demanded that I helped him clean his flat as Toni was expected. I was nursing a heavy cold and when George demanded that I got up and helped him empty ashtrays and remove empty vodka bottles I exploded with rage dressed and left. Toni arrived and seeing the condition he was in promptly confiscated his adored Burmese cats as she thought he was too drunk to care for them. I wrote George a sharp letter calling him a walking vodka bottle. He quickly contacted me to apologize for his thoughtless behaviour. George was quite stingy with money and rarely bought me a gift. He loved wearing bling jewellery and liked to relax in one of his many kaftans. George was a prolific reader and introduced me to Jackie Collins via Lovers and Gamblers. I was instantly hooked and sat reading quietly for hours while George drank smoked and snoozed. He often mentioned his daughter Josie and took us off to a hairdressers where we both had our hair cut and styled.

During this time George was involved in stronger glamour photography. He used to grumble that there was no art left in 60's style glamour - it was strictly open leg material. I was a glamour model but he never wanted me to involve myself in his hard core material. However it led to some amusing encounters. George once told me we had to get up as he was expecting a dishy male model for an audition. I leapt out of bed and hastily applied make up expecting a tall dark handsome hunk. I was very disillusioned to be greeted by a pale skinny young guy with blond hair and a washed out appearance. Perhaps his assets were concealed by his underwear.

I met Rex Peters who was a highly unpleasant little man and Ed Alexander whom seemed okay. George told me not to work with Rex as he was known for getting "forceful" with women. I didn't do any film or television work myself. I almost got slung out of a Health And Efficiency shoot because I was wearing too much make up and horror of horrors suspenders and nail polish. George almost cried with laughter over that episode.

Another time I visited Toni's flat in St Johns Wood to complete a movie. There were several of us and it was exhausting. That film Toni and her boyfriend did was so appalling it was scrapped according to George. It wouldn't surprise me as the shooting was haphazard to say the least. The films Toni and her boyfriend were making were very soft - no open leg or erections. I think they were trying for a Mayfair image. Everything was suggested but nothing happened apart from several very weary models. Toni also had a model there she was helping to get jobs in exchange for a 10% commission. Shooting continued throughout the day and when evening finally arrived I returned to George to find that he had thoughtfully prepared a meal and bath for me.

George had a great love of Vaudeville which I was too young to appreciate and he often compared my figure to that of Pamela Green. However by this time he was no Casanova as drinking had affected his virility. His amusing personality was his biggest asset to a young woman interested in having fun and aware that the relationship would go nowhere.

Saturdays were often spent wandering along Camden Passage where George knew quite a few of the dealers. Lunch was liquid and complemented by plenty of Marlboro cigarettes. When he moved to Stamford Hill he had an elderly couple in residence
downstairs. I believe the wife’s name was Dolly. The journey from East London to Stamford hill was very awkward and gradually our relationship petered out when I became involved with another man.

George was eccentric, amusing but ultimately somewhat afraid of deep intimacy with women. He was very distressed about the death of Mary Millington. I was with him when he received the news. His view was that the Inland Revenue had hounded her to suicide. David Sullivan was a man he felt contempt for. George told me that Sullivan enjoyed a daily breakfast of steak followed by a box of chocolates. He also claimed that Sullivan had collected the earnings from Come Play With Me as a major backer of the film. It seemed that he resented the success Sullivan was enjoying and certainly didn't want to play second fiddle to a man he viewed as an upstart.

George was going through a fairly quiet period at that point and seemed to enjoy most of his spare time lounging around the flat, playing with his cats and drinking vodka. In retrospect I would suspect he was quite depressed as he couldn't see a clear direction and he got bored doing the blue films.”

Howard “Vanderhorn” Nelson (1934-2007)

Sad to report that Come Play With Me actor Howard “Vanderhorn”
Nelson has gone to that great Bovington Manor in the sky, he actually died a few years ago, but his passing went unnoticed at the time, and it wasn’t until this week that I managed to get official confirmation of his death. Born in 1934, Howard was a champion bodybuilder in his youth, who entered the film world thanks to a part in chum Harrison Marks’ 1967 film Pattern of Evil, now considered a ‘lost’ film. Thereafter Howard became something of a fixture at Marks’ Studio, and in his films, going on to appear in two different roles in Marks’ 1969 feature film The Nine Ages of Nakedness and numerous 8mm shorts. “Vanderhorn” was a popular character name of Marks (a Baron Von Vanderhorn appears in the 8mm film Aphrodisia and Howard himself had played an Arthur Vanderhorn in Pattern of Evil) and was a name Howard would adopt as a nickname and sometimes acting pseudonym. Howard even appeared in non-sex character roles in Marks’ hardcore short films in the early seventies, he played one of the hippies at the customs’ desk in Die Lollos, Randy Toole’s roadie in Autogramme Stunde, and the photographer in Duty Free. Howard played these roles under a variety of fake wigs and dark glasses, presumably so people wouldn’t know it was him, although his ex-bodybuilder frame always tends to give the game away. Howard also appeared in soft core 8mm films made by Ken Williams’ Mountain Films Company like “Just the Job” and “Intimacy” (on account of starring Howard, and other Marks regulars like Peta Gareth, Williams’ 8mm films are sometimes erroneously written up as Harrison Marks productions)


Outside of the sex film world Howard turned up as a thug who beats up Linda Marlowe in Lindsay Shonteff’s Zapper’s Blade of Vengeance- a menacing turn that was a far cry from the comedic, asexual musclemen Howard usually played. Howard is probably best remembered though as the unfortunate Mr. Benjamin who gets “the full treatment” from Mary Millington in Come Play With Me, and as Harry “Mr. Super Muscle” Hernia, one of Suzanne Danielle’s many objects of desire in Carry on Emmannuelle, from 1978.

Still involved with Harrison Marks after Marks had made the transition from pornographer to spanking magazine publisher, Howard popped up as a spanking milkman in the second issue of Marks’ New Janus magazine in 1982. Latterly, Howard worked for a time at Lovejoy’s Bookshop, and was occasionally spotted around the Charing Cross Area. As a member of Harrison Marks’ quirky inner circle, you get the impression that Howard would have turned out to have been a real character and no doubt a goldmine of saucy movie anecdotes, sadly attempts made by several people to track him down for an interview came to nothing, and by 2007 time had run out. Howard 'Vanderhorn' Nelson was found dead at his home in Lambeth, South London on the 7th of December, 2007. According to the Met “the Coroner was satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about his death and that he had died of natural causes”. The police then made enquiries to trace Howard's family, but to date, have not found any immediate, surviving relatives.

RIP, the man they called “The Horn”.

Harrison Marks Wos Ere

Harrison Marks’ 4 Gerrard Street Studio in the late 1950s…













And from Cheesecake Magazines to Chinese Hairdos, the building as it stands today, a hairdressers catering to London’s Chinese community (Gerrard Street now being the heart of London’s Chinatown district)










According to legend, in the fifties the building not only housed Marks and Pamela Green’s operation, but was home to a “near-beer” club in the basement which was a regular battleground between rival London gangs, and as a result fist and bottle fights were the order of the day, and blood was spilt on a nightly basis, while the attic was occupied by a veteran prostitute where bodily fluids of a different kind were no doubt spilt on a nightly basis as well.