Quotes from interviews with Harrison Marks from the 1980s and 1990s, several of these have been worked into the umpteenth update of the Naked World of Harrison Marks article http://gavcrimson.blogspot.com/2008/08/naked-world-of-harrison-marks.html
but I thought I should include them here in isolation as well for people who don’t want to scan through that epic again. I’ve also been able to unearth some pictures of the second Mrs. Harrison Marks- Vivienne Warren.
Early glamour photography:
“Up until that time there were two or three very well known photographers who specialized in nude work. One was a bloke called Roy, then there was John Everard and Walter Bird. All their stuff was like love-locked-out through a mist. I photographed these girls as I saw them, with flesh and goose pimples- the lot.”
Making 8mm films:
“Somebody suggested it to me, and I thought it was a good idea, which of course it was. The market was vast because all photographic shops stocked these things- Dixons were my main customer. We started off making 50 foot shorts, then I decided to do 70s, 100s, and 200s, which were 20 minutes long. Originally they were black and white, then we went big and went into colour. It was a big thing in those days.”
Pattern of Evil (1967):
“Halfway through the filming, in walked a guy in a loud blue checked suit. He looked to me like a music hall comic. I asked my agent ‘Is he in showbiz?, he looks like a comic’ He said ‘Yea, he’s a really funny guy he’s got a gun in his pocket and he’s with the mob’.”
Mary Millington:
“She was a sweet girl, a lovely kid”
Janus and his initiation into the spanking business:
“All the characters in the book game used this pub and I got quite friendly with the lads who published a very popular spanking magazine called Janus. One day they asked me to do some films for them- this was before video, incidentally.”
“The chap who founded the Janus magazine was an old fella called Van Ocker. He was getting on a bit- in his 70s- and he was ill. The fellas that owned the magazine had no idea how to put a magazine together and didn’t particularly care. As long as it made money that was it. Anyway one day Van Ocker snuffed it. And I was in the pub listening to these guys say ‘what are we going to do’, then they said ‘hang on, George was in the publishing game for years’.”
Making Come Play With Me:
“I suppose I bit off more than I could chew. I wrote it, directed it, acted in it. I crawled off the set the last day so drained. I said to myself ‘if this is what its all about forget it’. But once a ham, always a ham.”
The unmade “The Reluctant Pornographer”
“its about a top glamour photographer who gets involved in shooting a sex film. Its autobiographical- I’ve taken all the outrageously funny things that have happened in 25 years and its going to blow the porn cinema sky high. Very funny script. ”
Typecasting:
“I suppose I regretted being typecast a bit, I had a screenplay I wrote, a heavily dramatic feature, 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.”
Childhood:
“I was brought up at a time of the most frightening anti-Semitism, Black Shirts everywhere and that fucking man Mosley holding meetings outside Hackney Town Hall of a Saturday night. We used to go to the Hackney Empire and my mother had to walk three-quarters of a mile round to avoid that fucking mob and she wasn’t even Jewish. ”
Wealth:
“you know I used to have three Rolls-Royces in the garage I must have been a cunt of the first order. What did I want with three?”
Spanking Videos:
“I started to get letters from readers asking if videos were available. I thought I had better get into this as well. I’m doing this in a way I’ve done everything else. Giving people what they want with a bit of humour. They’re tongue in cheek, theres always a touch of comedy”.
Monday, 20 April 2009
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Robin Askwith : the Eastender (and film director) that never was
From a redtop in 2005, and Photoplay August 1977
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Greg Smith RIP
Simon Sheridan is reporting the death of ‘Confessions’ series producer Greg Smith at the age of 69.
http://www.cultmovieforums.com/forum/showpost.php?p=253625&postcount=1
Very sad news, surprising as well, in that recent-ish interview he did for the Robin Askwith fansite, he still looked quite young and I’d never have guessed he was in his sixties. Outside of sex comedies Smith’s other diverse film work included the film version of Dad’s Army, the glam rock weirdness of Never Too Young Too Rock and a remake of The 39 Steps, plus further successes on Television and the West End. And of course he was also a one time Mr. Lynda Bellingham as well.
RIP Greg
Might watch one of the Confessions films, or even Never Too Young To Rock, tonight as a tribute.
http://www.cultmovieforums.com/forum/showpost.php?p=253625&postcount=1
Very sad news, surprising as well, in that recent-ish interview he did for the Robin Askwith fansite, he still looked quite young and I’d never have guessed he was in his sixties. Outside of sex comedies Smith’s other diverse film work included the film version of Dad’s Army, the glam rock weirdness of Never Too Young Too Rock and a remake of The 39 Steps, plus further successes on Television and the West End. And of course he was also a one time Mr. Lynda Bellingham as well.
RIP Greg
Might watch one of the Confessions films, or even Never Too Young To Rock, tonight as a tribute.
Monday, 23 February 2009
A Chat With Teri Martine
I recently received some delightful correspondence from Teri Martine, a 1960s glamour model and star of George Harrison Marks’ 8mm film “The Mummy” (1966). Teri also starred alongside her friend, the late great June Palmer in the glamour film “June in Orbit”, in which Teri and June played astronauts forced to strip off when a meteorite storm heats up their spaceship!!!
June in Orbit was directed by June’s partner Arthur Howell, who was by trade an actor/stuntmen for shows like The Avengers and Man in a Suitcase (and years later the film An American Werewolf in London). Howell’s glamour films, which starred June in a variety of guises, arguably rivaled Marks in terms of elaborate sets and imagination. Here are Teri’s memories of Marks, and being menaced by a Mummy and sponge meteorites.
“I met George via the June Palmer Model Agency, about 1966. We dated for a while. I went on location with him several times to Cornwall and Devon along with many other famous models. The Mummy was a fun and scary movie, I was a slave girl and I get caught by the Mummy and laid on a slab. I recall being very scared as the Guy playing the mummy role was so realistic. Tina McGowan was also in that same scene with me, also playing the role of a slave girl. The Mummy gets knifed by one of the pharaohs who saves me!
I remember George taking me to see the preview of his feature film 'The Naked World of Harrison Marks' we were no sooner in our seats and George fell asleep and was snoring so loud I had to wake him up!!! fond memories of the one and only George.
June in Orbit, we certainly did have fun on that one. The sweat that June and I had on out naked bodies was no less than baby oil! The smoke that came up through the porthole as if we were on fire, was a good friend of ours named Pat, he smoked cigars, so we had him behind the scene puffing himself to death on his cigar. Good thing it was silent as we could hardly keep a straight face, listening to Pat choking on the smoke. The part where the ship was suppose to be spinning, was of course Arthur turning the camera which he had built a special stand that he could pivot around with out the camera falling off! The meteors were painted sea sponges hanging on very thin thread from the ceiling. He built the model of the space ship himself and spray painted it with gold paint. Arthur and Pat completely built the set themselves. The bedroom scene was done in the spare bedroom at their flat. Our outfits that June and I wore, were made by her cleaning Lady, (very talented with the needle) our boots we cut at the top to get an oval effect then we spray painted them gold. Gavin would you believe me if I told you I still have my complete outfit from that video, except the boots!!! the paint eventually peeled off! so I pitched them. I still am able to fit into it!!! that's a miracle in itself.”
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
West End Jungle - DVD Write Up
For a humble exploitation film West End Jungle certainly managed to rattle the establishment’s cage back in 1961. Produced in response to the Wolfenden Street Offences Act of 1959, which removed prostitutes from the streets on London, the film argues through a series of “dramatized re-enactments” that the act merely drove prostitution underground, and created numerous fronts for vice in the form of strip clubs and massage parlors where men in search of sex for sale would fall victim to a variety of con games. “The streets of London have been swept, apparently, clean, but the dirt still remains out of sight. Its still there in the West End Jungle” claims the film. Findings that were like a red rag to a bull for Lord Morrison, a Labour peer and self-styled “Father of London”, who just happened to be the president of the British Board of Film Censors at the time and used his position to have West End Jungle banned, claiming the film would bring London into disrepute.
Despite the questionable motivation behind the film, and director Arnold Louis Miller and cameraman/co-producer Stanley Long’s background in girlie magazines and 8mm glamour films, West End Jungle garnered many high profile supporters in the form of the News of the World tabloid and several religious figures who campaigned for the film to be shown in London, without success. Questions were even asked about the film in the Houses of Parliament, culminating in the film being screened to a selection of MPs.
True to the saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity, various local councils overruled the BBFC’s ban on the film allowing it to be shown outside of London, and the film also enjoyed an overseas release as well, even being picked up in the States by American International Pictures. With Northerners and foreigners all eager to see just what was really going in London, the film proved successful enough for Stanley Long to make further “torn from today’s headlines” type film exposes like London in the Raw (1964), Primitive London (1965) and The Wife Swappers (1969). Until a relaxation in censorship and the more permissive climate of the early 70s meant Long could finally drop the moralizing pretence and make out and out sex films, including the hugely successful “Adventures of” 70’s sex comedy series.
Cut to 2009, and 48 years after the fact West End Jungle finally has a censor’s certificate for its DVD release, a ‘15’ certificate no less. Content wise even a ‘15’ seems harsh, but the film’s tone makes it easy to see what wound Lord Morrison up so badly. Long and Miller always had a great inclination towards sensationalism, and here scenarios and narration evoke the most lurid of pulp paperbacks of the time. The London of West End Jungle is one where mustachioed pimps hang about railway stations on the prowl for girls from the provinces “by getting in that car she is taking the irrevocable step to degradation and eventual self disgust” comments narrator David Gell on the pimp’s latest pick-up. Most of the films casualties are however men, usually in the form of sad old blokes taken in by heartless tarts who fawn all over them, but secretly regard them with contempt, or tired businessmen lured into “near beer” clubs where they are easy prey for “hostesses” who working on commission turn on their feminine charms in order to get the men to shell out for overpriced drinks. At the end of the night the men inevitably end up dumped on the street, out of pocket and shamefaced.
As there wasn’t exactly a queue of real life prostitutes and their gullible clientele willing to reenact their con-games on the big screen, most of the men in the film were just friends and family of the crew, including director Miller’s uncle, Nat Mills, one half of the “Nat Mills and Bobby” comedy team of the 1940s. While the ‘prostitutes’ were procured from a nightclub in London’s Dean Street, with the promise of a fiver each for whoever turned up on location the next day, a casting technique that was still being used way into the 1970s by many sexploitation filmmakers looking to “flesh out” their casts with the sort of non-actress strippers and au pair girls who hung around Dean Street. Dressed in lingerie that Miller had bought from Woolworths, the girls certainly look the part. Whether they could act the part is hard to tell, since all their dialogue is delivered in voiceovers. Amusingly, voiceover artist Heather Russell has a tenancy to sound like either Barbara Windsor or Dora Bryan when impersonating the films various prostitutes, lending further hilarity to already comic scenes like the one where a hostess lays on a sob story about her father being dead and her mother a cripple to a rich mark in order that he’ll buy her an overpriced cuddly toy that were served in the clubs. Overpriced drinks, overpriced cuddly toys, these dodgy nightclubs really did have every angle sown up!!!
In another memorable encounter a timid young man uses the pretense of being a photographer in order to call on a “model” who offers her services through an ad in a newsagent’s window. The object of his affection turns out to be a slovenly glamour girl, made up- very badly- to resemble Marilyn Monroe, complete with glue-on beauty spot and a blonde wig that doesn’t match her painted on black eyebrows. Ranking alongside Leonard in The Wife Swappers and Billie Harris in Eskimo Nell, as one of the most unforgettable characters ever to appear in a Stanley Long production, the threadbare Marilyn’s guise is so hopelessly awful that when the would be photographer starts handing over the cash for her to remove her clothes piece by piece, you almost expect the wig to come off as well. A scenario that David Gell bitchingly sums up as a “5 minute session of peering at a girl who could do with a good wash”
Of course the real star of West End Jungle is London itself. Much of the film was shot at night, either on the streets or from a moving car, to the degree that at times the film suggests the work of a curb crawler inadvertently hired to make a film noir with his car radio permanently tuned into an all night jazz station (the actual music in the film is from the library music company DeWolfe, with the title sequence music familiar from its use in many other British and American nudies of the period, it was even used on the intros of Something Weird Video’s 1990s VHS releases). What had once caused Lord Morrison to blow his top, now seems like a real time capsule of smoky nightclubs, seedy Soho back alleys, Piccadilly Circus neon, and can-can girls and strippers doing their thing in the dimly lit, black and white underbelly of London captured here on film nearly half a century ago. “Laughable or Sordid…. perhaps something of both” claims David Gell describing one of the film’s saucy encounters, though he might as well be providing the film’s own epitaph. West End Jungle is certainly laughable and sordid, but its also pretty entertaining as well.
DVD extras include an 8 minute interview with Arnold Louis Miller, a Pathe newsreel from the 1950s on drinking clubs (featuring an ill at ease Paul Raymond), an archive interview with Lord Wolfenden and a booklet which among other things includes reproductions of the News of the World’s campaign to get the film shown, and -testament to West End Jungle’s well traveled status- the original Japanese poster.
Despite the questionable motivation behind the film, and director Arnold Louis Miller and cameraman/co-producer Stanley Long’s background in girlie magazines and 8mm glamour films, West End Jungle garnered many high profile supporters in the form of the News of the World tabloid and several religious figures who campaigned for the film to be shown in London, without success. Questions were even asked about the film in the Houses of Parliament, culminating in the film being screened to a selection of MPs.
True to the saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity, various local councils overruled the BBFC’s ban on the film allowing it to be shown outside of London, and the film also enjoyed an overseas release as well, even being picked up in the States by American International Pictures. With Northerners and foreigners all eager to see just what was really going in London, the film proved successful enough for Stanley Long to make further “torn from today’s headlines” type film exposes like London in the Raw (1964), Primitive London (1965) and The Wife Swappers (1969). Until a relaxation in censorship and the more permissive climate of the early 70s meant Long could finally drop the moralizing pretence and make out and out sex films, including the hugely successful “Adventures of” 70’s sex comedy series.
Cut to 2009, and 48 years after the fact West End Jungle finally has a censor’s certificate for its DVD release, a ‘15’ certificate no less. Content wise even a ‘15’ seems harsh, but the film’s tone makes it easy to see what wound Lord Morrison up so badly. Long and Miller always had a great inclination towards sensationalism, and here scenarios and narration evoke the most lurid of pulp paperbacks of the time. The London of West End Jungle is one where mustachioed pimps hang about railway stations on the prowl for girls from the provinces “by getting in that car she is taking the irrevocable step to degradation and eventual self disgust” comments narrator David Gell on the pimp’s latest pick-up. Most of the films casualties are however men, usually in the form of sad old blokes taken in by heartless tarts who fawn all over them, but secretly regard them with contempt, or tired businessmen lured into “near beer” clubs where they are easy prey for “hostesses” who working on commission turn on their feminine charms in order to get the men to shell out for overpriced drinks. At the end of the night the men inevitably end up dumped on the street, out of pocket and shamefaced.
As there wasn’t exactly a queue of real life prostitutes and their gullible clientele willing to reenact their con-games on the big screen, most of the men in the film were just friends and family of the crew, including director Miller’s uncle, Nat Mills, one half of the “Nat Mills and Bobby” comedy team of the 1940s. While the ‘prostitutes’ were procured from a nightclub in London’s Dean Street, with the promise of a fiver each for whoever turned up on location the next day, a casting technique that was still being used way into the 1970s by many sexploitation filmmakers looking to “flesh out” their casts with the sort of non-actress strippers and au pair girls who hung around Dean Street. Dressed in lingerie that Miller had bought from Woolworths, the girls certainly look the part. Whether they could act the part is hard to tell, since all their dialogue is delivered in voiceovers. Amusingly, voiceover artist Heather Russell has a tenancy to sound like either Barbara Windsor or Dora Bryan when impersonating the films various prostitutes, lending further hilarity to already comic scenes like the one where a hostess lays on a sob story about her father being dead and her mother a cripple to a rich mark in order that he’ll buy her an overpriced cuddly toy that were served in the clubs. Overpriced drinks, overpriced cuddly toys, these dodgy nightclubs really did have every angle sown up!!!
In another memorable encounter a timid young man uses the pretense of being a photographer in order to call on a “model” who offers her services through an ad in a newsagent’s window. The object of his affection turns out to be a slovenly glamour girl, made up- very badly- to resemble Marilyn Monroe, complete with glue-on beauty spot and a blonde wig that doesn’t match her painted on black eyebrows. Ranking alongside Leonard in The Wife Swappers and Billie Harris in Eskimo Nell, as one of the most unforgettable characters ever to appear in a Stanley Long production, the threadbare Marilyn’s guise is so hopelessly awful that when the would be photographer starts handing over the cash for her to remove her clothes piece by piece, you almost expect the wig to come off as well. A scenario that David Gell bitchingly sums up as a “5 minute session of peering at a girl who could do with a good wash”
Of course the real star of West End Jungle is London itself. Much of the film was shot at night, either on the streets or from a moving car, to the degree that at times the film suggests the work of a curb crawler inadvertently hired to make a film noir with his car radio permanently tuned into an all night jazz station (the actual music in the film is from the library music company DeWolfe, with the title sequence music familiar from its use in many other British and American nudies of the period, it was even used on the intros of Something Weird Video’s 1990s VHS releases). What had once caused Lord Morrison to blow his top, now seems like a real time capsule of smoky nightclubs, seedy Soho back alleys, Piccadilly Circus neon, and can-can girls and strippers doing their thing in the dimly lit, black and white underbelly of London captured here on film nearly half a century ago. “Laughable or Sordid…. perhaps something of both” claims David Gell describing one of the film’s saucy encounters, though he might as well be providing the film’s own epitaph. West End Jungle is certainly laughable and sordid, but its also pretty entertaining as well.
DVD extras include an 8 minute interview with Arnold Louis Miller, a Pathe newsreel from the 1950s on drinking clubs (featuring an ill at ease Paul Raymond), an archive interview with Lord Wolfenden and a booklet which among other things includes reproductions of the News of the World’s campaign to get the film shown, and -testament to West End Jungle’s well traveled status- the original Japanese poster.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Cardew Robinson - the old flasher
Cardew Robinson gives Mary, Pat and Suzy a flash on the set of Come Play With Me
The dirty swine!!!
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