The Adventurer (1972) episode 5: Poor Little Rich Girl

After last week’s display of fencing you may well ask yourself…what sport is Gene excelling at in the opening of this week’s episode? Well, it is a case of ‘Silver Gene Racer’ as Gene completes in a motor racing competition. Despite a pit stop to take a call from that pesky Mr Parminter, Gene still manages to bring home the cup, to add to the countless other cups currently cluttering up chez Gene. A small price to pay though, for being brilliant at everything.

For once it is Gene who has to explain to Parminter what is going on in this week’s episode, which centres around Suzy Dolman (Judy Geeson) a free spirited dropout who has decided to reject her privileged background in favour of a hippie existence hitchhiking around Provence. Suzy has appeared on The Adventurer’s radar due to her headline making decision to sign away her entire fortune, a 51% share in an oil company to a small, fanatical “Red country”. An offer that has been generously accepted by the country’s slimy, sneering Consul (John Savident) who would surely take the number one spot in an “Adventurer villain most likely to win a Lenin look-a-like competition”. Should the similarity be lost on some viewers we also get a crash zoom in on a portrait of the real Lenin that adorns the Consul’s office, subtlety isn’t in this series’ vocabulary.




Since the future of the oil business is at stake it is up to Gene and Co to put the kibosh on the deal going through, prevent Savident from grapping Suzy’s assets, and try to convince Suzy that signing over every penny she has to a bunch of Lenin fanboys may not be the smartest decision she’ll ever make.

This episode of The Adventurer appears rightly pleased by its coup of securing the services of Judy Geeson, a hip young actress who’d first come to prominence in 1967’s To Sir with Love, and thereafter cornered the market in playing strong willed yet vulnerable wild child roles. Poor Little Rich Girl does fit in quite nicely with her roles in films like ‘Three into two won’t go’ and ‘One of those things’, in which the culture and generation gap between Geeson and her older male co-stars fuelled the dramatic fireworks. Poor Little Rich Girl can’t be accused of squandering Geeson’s talents. The personality and philosophical clashes between Suzy and Gene dominate the episode’s opening half, with Suzy’s rejection of money and responsibility pitted against Gene’s unswerving belief that capitalism and big business can be a force for good. The fact that this series is brought to you courtesy of Chevrolet /General Motors had I’m sure no bearing on the fact that this episode fights in Gene’s corner of these debates, or how much of this episode is taken up by Chevrolet vehicles doing their thing around the back roads of rural Provence.

After week in, week out of women falling head over heels for Gene, it does make a refreshing change to encounter a female character who is initially at loggerheads with him. Suzy even gets to insult him by claiming “I’m not one of your fans”, wash your mouth out with soap young lady!! After an ear bashing like that Gene is in need of an ego boosting pit stop, which comes in the form of a visit to a transport café. Of all the transport cafes in all the world, Gene just so happens to stop at one that has a poster for one of his films hanging on the wall. The poster in question being for his foray into French ‘art’ cinema “La Vallee du Funnerre”, a poster that of course is in immediate need of a Gene Bradley autograph.




A long, black cloud is hanging over Gene in this episode…oh, no, hang on that’s just Stuart Damon’s shadow. Yes, Damon’s character Vince Elliott is back in the show, and raring to do as much adventuring as Gene will allow, which isn’t very much. Vince’s purpose in this episode being to dress up as a gendarme and occasionally drag diversion signs into the middle of the road in order to send the bad guys in the wrong direction….not exactly up to the James Bond level of excitement is it? Again Damon and Gene’s screen time together defines their positions in the show’s hierarchy. Gene the supercool dude out to rescue the damsel in distress in his Chevrolet, Damon given the silly uniform and lowly job of hanging around in the middle of nowhere, arranging and rearranging street signs…. Eat my dust, Damon!!!





The behaviour of the good guys in this episode is at times suspect, Gene steals Suzy’s purse, causing her to get in hot water with the owner of the transport café. She is then picked up by Damon’s fake gendarme who locks her up in a mock-up of a jail in order to prevent her business deal going through. Technically Gene and Co are guilty of theft, impersonating a police officer and false imprisonment in this episode, it is just as well they are allowed to run around Europe with seeming immunity from prosecution…and less we forget, everything they do is to serve the greater good. Try telling that to Suzy though, who really loses it in that phoney police cell, in the process reminding us that when Judy Geeson does go nutzoid onscreen the results can be fucking terrifying. There is definitely a proto-Inseminoid look of madness in Geeson’s eyes during this scene.




Poor Little Rich Girl is yet another Adventurer episode that insists on casting an actor whose height was at odds with its star’s strict requirements. In this case 6’0” John Savident, yet another who has fallen foul of the show’s ‘sit down for Gene’ rule, and is tellingly required to remain seated in all his scenes playing opposite Gene. You’d think the producers of this show would cast people whose size was more in keeping with Gene’s comfort zone. I mean, surely Kenny Baker, Rusty Goffe and Charlie Young Atom weren’t totally inundated with work throughout 1972.


Since Savident is prevented from standing up in Gene’s company, much of the subsequent villainy in this episode is relegated to henchmen who abduct Suzy from Gene’s apartment and steal documents signing Suzy’s shares in the oil company over to them. Proving once again that the most glamorous stars of the show always get handed the least glamorous assignments, Catherine Schell and Damon have to disguise themselves as French peasants in order to prevent the papers from leaving the country. Gene on the other hand gets to fire up the Chevrolet and speed off to a bullring where Suzy is being held hostage. Eagle eyed viewers will note this is the exact same bullring that Gene’s movie was being shot in at the start of Episode one. For a show with such a globe-trotting ethos about it, the world of The Adventurer often seems like a small one at times. The overall message of this week’s episode seems to be “money itself isn’t evil, just some of the people who have it are” either that or- if you have to speed off to rescue a troubled wild child from Commie goons make sure the car you’re driving is a Chevrolet.


On a sad note this is the last we’ll see of Stuart Damon on the show, not that we ever saw much of him anyway. So, its bye bye Vince Elliott, we hardly knew you. By the time of next week’s episode Vince will have regenerated into Ed Bishop and for some reason will be calling himself ‘Wayne’.



 

The Adventurer (1972) episode 4 : Thrust and Counter-Thrust

As all proud owners of ‘Gene Barry Sings of Love and Things’ know “singing has always come naturally to the tall and handsome actor” and will of course agree with the sleeve note’s modest assessment “when you listen to the appealing songs Gene has recorded for this album, you naturally ask the question ‘Why hasn’t Gene Barry recorded an album like this sooner?’”. Of course, you didn’t think The Adventurer would deprive us of this side to the Gene Genie’s talents did you? Yes, Thrust and Counter-Thrust manages to work Gene’s singing into the proceedings.

Well originally it did anyway, however when ITV4 repeated this episode in 2005 they cut the scene in question out. No doubt just to make way for more adverts…since surely they couldn’t have possibly thought Gene’s singing was too bad to inflict on their audience…could they? However, have no fear, the DVD preserves the scene in all its intended glory, so all the Gene fans out there can enjoy it over and over again.

Proving that there really is no end to Gene’s talents, this episode opens with a fine display of fencing from the man himself, yes he is great at that as well. It has certainly got this week’s love interest, a Countess no less, all hot under the collar. Not even the aristocracy it seems can resist his trousers. Incredibly Thrust and Counter-Thrust actually gives us something of a Gene backstory, which comes pretty close to acknowledging that Amos Burke-Secret Agent and Gene Bradley are basically the same character. 10 years earlier Gene had been a secret agent before adopting the cover of being a famous actor, and the only people who fully know about Gene’s pre-acting life are Mr Parminter, the American President, the British Prime Minister ….and rather inconveniently a Russian colonel called Andreyev. Even more inconvenient is the fact that Andreyev now moves in the same social circles as Gene’s Countess girlfriend. Still this doesn’t prevent Gene from getting the whole gang together (yes, he and Catherine Schell actually have scenes together in this episode, miracles do happen) and cooking up a typically complicated mission.

Thrust and Counter-Thrust is batshit crazy, even by Adventurer standards, big hearted Gene decides to put on a song and dance show at the Moravian embassy, with himself as the star attraction. However, he has an ulterior motive for putting on the show, involving his male assistant Gavin (Garrick Hagon) who adopts the guise of Gene’s support act ‘Wild Man Jones’ a hippie musician complete with Afro wig, glue-on goatee and flower power threads. It’s a rare example of one of Gene’s co-stars getting the chance to dress more outrageously than the man himself. Naturally, Gene’s song and dance routine goes down a storm with an adoring crowd of old ladies, as the Gene Genie serenades them with one of those wonderful songs. Quite literally as he performs a song called ‘One of those Wonderful Songs’. Some jazz hands action and cane swinging ensures that this audience is soon eating out of his hands. ITV4 should hang their heads in shame for depriving their audience of this.





Gene’s old school showbiz shtick might be music to the ears of this audience, but Wild Man Jones’ incoherent piano playing bombs with the same audience. However there is a twist, Wild Man Jones’ piano solos actually contain ‘hidden messages’ in Morse code that are being overheard by the captured spy Anton Jurzyck whom Colonel Andreyev has hidden away upstairs at the Moravian embassy. Will Gene get to rescue Jurzyck from the embassy, and live to get his leg over with Euro-Royalty? Will Diane get an extra blanket for her bed during her stay at the Moravian embassy? (doesn’t Catherine Schell get all the exciting sub-plots!!) Will Gavin alias Wild Man Jones go on to cut an entire concept album containing songs full of hidden messages in Morse code? Will the audience be disappointed to discover the ‘Thrust and Counter-Thrust’ of the title has no sexual connotations whatsoever? Tune in, then drop out to discover the answers.





The first response to this episode is to wonder ‘what were they on when they wrote this?’ The second is to immediately retract that statement, since none of the makers of this episode look to have been around young people in a good few decades, let alone any mind altering substances. If you delight in seeing not remotely hip filmmakers trying to get down with the kids, only to make fools of themselves on a grand scale then you may well consider Thrust and Counter-Thrust the greatest thing since Dracula AD 1972. Man, this episode is outta sight, dig that funky gear on that cat Wild Man Jones, this Adventurer show is better than grass, Wild Man Jones rocks!!!, no need to call the fuzz, man, cause this is more mind blowing than hanging out with Johnny Alucard during a jazz spectacular at the Albert Hall!!!

Well, maybe not quite, the more The Adventurer tries to be with it, the more is reveals its aged stuffiness. Gene makes jokes about Wild Man Jones’ hair (“what does your barber say?”) and Wild Man’s clothes are meant to evoke middle aged chuckles over what the kids are wearing these days, which is rich considering the Gene Genie’s attire during the series. The brainwave for this episode probably went something like this “have you seen those youthful hooligans of today, with their long hair, jazz festivals and free love…and the music, it’s not like it was in my day, back then we had proper music like that appealing ‘Gene Barry Sings and Love and Things’ album, now that was real music, you can’t call that rot of today music, why it’s so loud it might as well be Morse code messages designed to help defecting Russian spies for all the sense it makes. Hang on!! That would make a great storyline for the Gene Barry show that Lew Grade is putting together”….and thus in that moment Thrust and Counter-Thrust was born.





Rightly or wrongly Thrust and Counter-Thrust gives the impression its makers’ only real remaining pleasure in life was making actors look stupid. Garrick Hagon sure earned his money this week for what they made him wear, Stuart Damon certainly missed out on nothing by having to sit this one out. Spare a thought too for actor David Lawton who in the role of Jurzyck spends the first part of the episode bandaged up like the invisible man and the second half in the Wild Man Jones outfit as the Adventurer gang try to smuggle him out of the embassy under the guise of a stoned out Wild Man Jones. Further suspicion that the Adventurer was just a front for the British film industry to humiliate Gene Barry on a weekly basis, is added to by the fact that this episode ends with him exiting with a woman’s hand bag over his shoulder!! Gene obviously wasn’t afraid of expressing his feminine side, had someone asked Sean Connery to sign off a James Bond film like that they’d have gotten a right clout around the ear.

 

The Adventurer (1972) episode 3: Double Exposure

What could be better than one Gene? Two Genes of course, as this episode sees Gene playing the dual role of Gene Bradley and Gene Bradley’s hitherto unknown stunt-double Frank Jordan. That’s double the fun, double the excitement, double the screen time, and yes, double the trousers, folks.

As the episode title implies, actors playing two roles is something of a theme this week, with guest star Donald Houston initially playing Jan De Groote, a Dutch businessman who has recently married Elayna (Ingrid Pitt). Unbeknownst to De Groote, Elayna is actually the ruthless secret agent ‘Hummingbird’ (“on the outside she is hummingbird, on the inside she is all vulture” sez Gene). Houston also gets to play a bad guy, who just so happens to closely resemble Jan De Groote, and whom Elayna replaces the real Jan De Groote with. While the real Jan De Groote is kidnapped and worked over by Elayna’s cronies, the fake Jan De Groote and Elayna are busy draining the real Jan De Groote’s fortune.

Never one to be outdone, Gene calls on his lookalike stunt-double Frank, and attempts to mess around with the fake Jan De Groote’s head. Mainly by staging fake assassination attempts on fake Jan, in which Frank masquerades as Gene, while the real Gene turns up with a bald cap on and takes pot shots at fake Jan. Gene’s plan seems to be to unnerve the fake Jan into leading both Genes to the real Jan. There is nothing complicated about this plot, eh?





Actually the plot of Double Exposure sort of makes sense until the introduction of Frank Jordan/Fake Gene, which brings with it a whole number of plot holes. Chiefly being, if Gene is trying to deflect suspicion away from himself by always appearing to be by fake Jan’s side during these assassination attempts, then why pose as the assassin himself? Since the assassin’s resemblance to Gene would surely just serve to throw suspicion back onto Gene. However, logic and The Adventurer are never the greatest of bedfellows.

The two Genes subplot does come across as a bit of a self-indulgence for Barry. It is as if Barry felt having another actor play two separate roles in one episode may upstage him, and insisted that two separate roles be written for him as well. Exposure to the Barry back catalogue tends to indicate that he had quite the fondness for dual roles. One of the later episodes of Burke’s Law had seen him play both Amos Burke and Burke’s Irish uncle, with as much of an overblown accent as you can imagine “top o’ the morning to ya Amos, ya sure got the luck o’ the Oiresh”, which seems to have planted the seed for this tale of two Genes.





Double Exposure does have quite a bit going for it though, there is a terrific car chase that sees Gene and Donald Houston burning rubber through the streets of Amsterdam, no doubt appeasing the Chevrolet sponsors in the process. It is hard to believe that this sequence was staged by the same director who gave us the sorry sight that was the fight scene in episode 2, which was car crash television of an altogether different variety. After years of only being able to evoke overseas settings by stock footage, The Adventurer finally sees the ITC crew get to travel to actual locations as well. This episode positively screams out “by jingo, we really did shoot this one in Amsterdam chaps, and to prove it, canals and windmills pop up in every other scene”.

Double Exposure also has the Ingrid Pitt factor on its side too. Pitt enjoys the rare distinction of being one of the few actresses with a ‘sex symbol’ reputation who didn’t get cast in The Adventurer as Gene’s love interest. Instead, she gets to sink her teeth into a femme fatale role, with Donald Houston’s wimpy, nervous wreck of a character only emphasising Pitt’s cold villainy. Of course, height could have been a factor in why there is no romantic interaction between Pitt and Barry. Pitt was only 5’5’’ which is shorter than the 5’7’’ of Hungarian giantess that is Catherine Schell. However the fact that in the three scenes they have together, Pitt is seated in two of them and in their last scene, the big confrontation between Gene and Hummingbird, neither are seen in the same shot, tends to suggest Pitt had fallen foul of Gene’s phobia of acting alongside tall women.

For someone who almost exclusively gravitated towards playing good guys, Gene appears to relish the rare opportunity to indulge in some onscreen villainy here, even if it is put on villainy. Playing two roles does seem to have given Gene his mojo back, he is positively hyperactive in this episode, running around Amsterdam airport with a gun and a bald cap on and putting the willies up poor Donald Houston. In his ‘hitman’ disguise, Gene cuts a genuinely mean and menacing figure, with a look that unintentionally anticipates the ‘what would you look like bald and unshaven’ face warping phone apps of today. To prove my point –and to also prove I have too much time on my hands-, here is what Gene looks like in this episode, and here is what the photo of Gene on the cover of ‘Gene Barry Sings of Love and Things’ looks like after being run through such an app.




….and since I can’t resist cashing in on the current craze for ‘what would you look like as a woman’ face warps…here fellas, is the fox you’ve been waiting for…Miss Jean Barry

 



Presumably playing two roles put Gene in such a generous mood that he even allows his co-stars to do something in this episode. Garrick Hagan, the longest suffering…sorry serving...actor to play the “didn’t you used to be Stuart Damon” role, gets to futz around with some Bond-esque gadgetry on the roofs of Amsterdam. Even the Hungarian giantess has something to do, crashing into Ingrid Pitt’s car and distracting her while Garrick uses some kind of magic ink to erase Jan’s signature from a number of business papers. A subplot that even the episode itself fesses up to being utterly pointless. So much goes on in Double Exposure that it nearly forgets to flatter Gene. A situation rectified in the last scene, where Frank/Fake Gene (who you’ll be unsurprised to learn shares Gene’s taste in trousers) marvels at Gene’s ability to pull the birds. Yes, men might look like Gene, they might even wear the same trousers as Gene, but there can be no bigger babe magnet than Gene himself… accept no substitute, ladies.








Gene Bradley will return in… ‘THE SPY WHO SCALPED ME’

The Adventurer (1972) episode 2: Return to Sender

Episode 2 of The Adventurer sees Gene mistaken for a friendly bear from deepest, darkest Peru who gets adopted by the Brown family and fed lots of marmalade… ok, maybe not, but Mr Barry is really rockin’ that ‘Paddington Bear’ look at the start of this episode. Return to Sender, shot under the title ‘Spy Man’s Holiday’, opens with Gene once again in grumpy git mode, this time because of the British weather. “Do you realise it’s been raining for weeks, do you know what that does for me, can’t wait to hit those beaches in France”.

Mr Parminter wants Gene to work a secret mission into his French holiday, but Gene has only one thing on his mind, indicated by a quick cut-away to a bikini-clad actress. It does tend to fly in the face of typical ITC series heroism, the message of the scene seems to be that the Gene Genie is after some tail, so leave the saving the world crap to some other guy. “There’s only one thing that interests me down there…and it’s something you wouldn’t know about” Gene bitches to Parminter…did my ears deceive me or did Gene just basically ‘out’ Mr Parminter there, and make Mr P the first, openly acknowledged to be gay character in an ITC series?. No time to ponder on that though, because Gene is goin’ where the sun keeps shinin’, through the pourin’ rain, goin’ where the weather suits his clothes, bankin’ off of the North East winds, sailin’ on summer breeze, and skippIn’ over the ocean like a stone…

Soon we are back in the French Rivera, just in time for a bit of Chevrolet pleasing product placement, as Gene drives his Chevy to a luxury hotel where he checks in for his regular ego massage. No soon as he has entered the lobby, then he is mobbed by women, all hungry for his John Hancock. Even the bad guys in this episode are in awe of the Gene Genie “hey isn’t that Gene Bradley, I’ve never been that close to a film star before…wait until I tell my Mum”.




Gene is soon back to being grumpy again though when a female corpse turns up in his bathroom “this is my bathroom you know” he moans on the blower to the long suffering Mr Parminter. In what will become a reoccurring theme in Adventurer episodes its left to Parminter to explain this week’s overly complicated plot to Gene over the phone. Michelle (Pamela Salem), a secret agent who works for Parminter, had been transporting a microchip across Europe alongside Gene’s male assistant, who used to be called Vince and be played by Stuart Damon, but is now called Gavin and played by Garrick Hagon. Unfortunately they were run off the road by two bad guys Fleming and Gorman (Patrick Mower and Donald Burton), Gavin was injured in the crash but Michelle escaped with the microchip. Unable to get in contact with Parminter, Michelle ended up at the hotel Gene is staying at, where she concealed the microchip behind a stamp then attached it to an envelope. In the midst of Gene’s impromptu autograph session in the lobby, Gene mistook Michelle for a fan and signed the envelope. Michelle then had the envelope sent up to Gene’s room, and managed to sneak into his room herself, only for the bad guys to show up as well and murder her in the bathroom. Good God, it’s only when you try to transcribe them do you realise just how convoluted and illogical Adventurer episodes are. Incredibly, the plot gets even more complicated when Gene realises that he has given away the signed envelope to a star stuck young girl called Debbie, and Fleming and Gorman show up again to kidnap this week’s love interest Valerie (Sharon Gurney).

An intended holiday trying to pull the birds in the French Rivera therefore transforms into a race against time to retrieve the microchip from Gene’s young fan Debbie, and rescue Valerie from Fleming and Gorman who have her held hostage on their yacht. The big set piece of this week’s episode though is Gene’s helicopter pursuit of Debbie’s family across the French Rivera, ending with him landing the chopper on a motorway and forcing their car to a standstill. As Gene can’t be seen to be a total bastard, who terrorises an innocent family and snatches his autograph off a little girl, he has thoughtfully brought along a signed photograph of himself for little Debbie to have instead…because let’s face it what little girl doesn’t dream of receiving a signed photograph of a 53 year old man. Lest we forget, “Gene Bradley is Everyone’s Pin-Up, and Nobody’s Fool”.




No look at ‘Return to Sender’ can ignore the fight scene that occurs midway through this episode. If it was intended as a legitimate action scene, it is quite tragic, if it was intended as the homage to old slapstick comedy that it comes across as, then it is simply fabulous. It plays something like this…girl throws a pillow at Patrick Mower which causes him to drop his gun… Gene wrestles with Patrick Mower for a while… girl hits Patrick Mower with a fake vase which makes no noise when it shatters…Gene suddenly has a handful of plant leaves which he proceeds to slap a man around the face with, to understandably no great affect…bad guy takes a swing at Gene, misses him by a mile but Gene reacts as if it had connected…Gene goes to swing on a curtain rail, but it collapses under his weight and the whole curtain falls on top of him…he then gets knocked out.

 

I still shake my head and laugh whenever I recall this scene; it is as if the scene turned out so badly that they tried to salvage it by passing it off as pure comedy. Either that or, even at this early stage, the crew were creating their own amusement by trying to make Barry look as foolish as possible without him realising it. This episode does after all open with him dressed like Paddington Bear!! The fight scene makes Barry/Bradley look like an ineffectual joke, there is even a put down from Mower at the end of the scene about how big Hollywood stars always need stuntmen to look good onscreen. A line which feels extremely meta given Barry’s extensive use of a stuntman in this scene, something that either due to ineptitude or malice the director hasn’t even bothered to disguise.

Did Gene need others to make himself look silly though? he seems to have been his own worse enemy in that respect. Ironically in his prime, circa Burke’s Law/Secret Burke/G.B. Sings of Love and Things, he was a relatively conservative dresser, smart suits, tuxedos, maybe the odd polo neck jumper. However the older he got, the wilder and dare I say more ‘adventurous’ his fashion sense became, as he attempted to turn to clothes to make himself look younger. By the end of all 26 episodes of The Adventurer you’ll be convinced that, in terms of fashion, Gene Barry was the white Rudy Ray Moore, every costume change brings a new assault on the senses. Safari jackets, oversized sunglasses, tartan suits, shirts made from old curtains, mustard coloured underwear, all form a part of the Bradley dress sense, but none can hold a candle to Gene’s taste in trousers. A piece of apparel that burned itself so deep into my psyche that I once used to post on a certain message board under the username ‘Gene Bradley’s Trousers’, such was their impact.

Rumour has it that a low-regarded, shot on 16mm ITC series will soon be making its way onto Blu-Ray, remastered in all its high definition glory for the very first time. The Adventurer certainly fits the bill of being a low-regarded, shot on 16mm ITC series, although all the smart money seems to be on the series in question being Jason King… I don’t think the world is yet ready for the sight of Gene Bradley’s trousers in HD, even in SD they are a sight to behold.




BTW: a search of the internet reveals there was a tie-in novelisation of The Adventurer, released in early 1973. One Robert Miall, who seems to have quite the career novelising ITC series, was given the task of fleshing out Return to Sender into a paperback novel (back cover blurb: “in Nice two girls brought double trouble. One was warm and willing, the other cold and contorted- a corpse on his bathroom floor.”) I can’t help feeling my life will never be fully complete until I’ve seen how Miall managed to translate the sight of Gene bitch slapping a man with a handful of plant leaves into the printed word.