Harrison Marks

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George Harrison Marks
Born George Harrison Marks
August 6, 1926
Tottenham, London, England
Died 6pm June 27, 1997 (bone cancer)
London, England
Spouse(s) Diana Bugsgang (1951-19??)
“Vivienne” (19??-19??)
Toni Burnett (19??-19??)

George Harrison Marks (6 August 1926 - 27 June 1997) was a British glamour photographer at the height of his productivity from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s.

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[edit] Kamera and Pamela Green

He founded the Kamera group of magazines with his then 'supposed' wife, the model and actress Pamela Green. They were never married, which put her at a disadvantge when they split, financially and regarding copyright and possession of photos, even of herself. Marks was also the photographic consultant for the film Peeping Tom, which also featured Green in a cameo role.

[edit] Models

Besides Pamela Green, his most popular models were probably June Palmer, Paula Page and Vicky Kennedy, who under her birth name of Margaret Nolan, went on to be an actress, in Carry On, James Bond and other films, in the theatre and on TV, notably in Steptoe and Son.

[edit] Films

In 1958, as an offshoot of his magazines, Marks began making short films for the 8mm market of his models undressing and posing topless, popularly known as “glamour home movies”. A recent episode of BBC’s Balderdash and Piffle programme attributed the earliest use of the word “glamour” as a euphemism for nude modeling/photography to Marks’ 1958 publicity materials. One of Marks’ most popular 8mm glamour films was The Window Dresser (1961), starring Pamela Green as a catburglar who hides from the law by posing as a lingerie shop dummy. Marks does a character turn as the shop’s exaggeratedly gay owner, but the short’s obvious raison d’etre remained Pam’s show stopping shop window striptease. Clips from the Window Dresser were used in a 1964 piece on the glamour film scene in the Rediffusion programme “This Week” . These clips showed Pamela Green fully naked, footage possibly broadcast in error, and the ensuing controversy resulted in Green having to defend the 8mm film on Radio’s Woman’s Hour. After a judge threw out an obscenity charge against The Window Dresser (according to legend remarking “I’ll buy a copy for my son, case dismissed”), Marks continued to make more 8mm glamour films throughout the 1960s. Marks’ background as a music hall performer is evident in the “little stories” he would devise for his 8mm glamour films, as well as the occasional bit parts he would write for himself and his onetime comedy partner Stuart Samuels (a.k.a. Sam Stuart).

Of the more notable 8mm glamour films, “Witches Brew” (1960) features Pamela Green as a Witch casting spells and a brief appearance by Marks as her hunchback assistant. “Model Entry” (1965) sees a cat burglar breaking into Marks’ studio, then stripping and leaving him her address. While “Danger Girl” stars June Palmer as a stripping secret agent who is put into bondage by a Russian Spy, only for her to break free and throw him onto a circular saw in the grisly finale. In an even more macabre vein is “Perchance to Scream” (1967) in which Marks model Jane Paul is transported to a medieval torture chamber where Stuart Samuels plays an evil inquisitor who sentences topless women to be whipped and beheaded by a masked executioner.

Marks feature films as a director were Naked as Nature Intended (1961), The Chimney Sweeps (his only non-sex film, 1963), The Naked World of Harrison Marks (1965), Pattern of Evil (1967), The Nine Ages of Nakedness (1969) and Come Play With Me (1977). Pattern of Evil a.k.a. Fornicon, a heavy S&M film written by the American novelist Lawrence Sanders, which features scenes of murder and Monique Devereaux whipping Marks regular Howard 'Vanderhorn' Nelson in a torture chamber[1], was never shown in the UK. Marks implied in several interviews over the years that the film was financed by the criminal element.

After directing The Nine Ages of Nakedness, Marks endured a particularly turbulent time in the early seventies when he was made bankrupt (in 1970), was the subject of an obscenity trial at the Old Bailey (in 1971) and his drinking began to become more heavy. Ironically a segment of The Nine Ages of Nakedness had ended with Marks’ alter-ego ‘The Great Marko’ being brought up before a crooked Judge (Cardew Robinson) on obscenity charges. Marks made ends meet during this period by continuing to shoot short films for the 8mm market and releasing them via his Maximus Films company[2][3] [4]

Based out of Marks’ Farringdon studio, Maximus was run on a ‘film club’ basis, meaning that punters would have to sign up for membership before purchasing the films, mirroring the way membership only sex cinemas were run at the time. While his earlier 8mm films largely consisted of nothing more explicit than the models posing topless, late sixties titles like Apartment 69 and The Amorous Masseur were generally soft core sex affairs. Marks had been eager to shoot soft porn material ever since the Window Dresser case, much to the distain of Pamela Green, who dissolved their business partnership in 1967. “He was fond of good living and a drink or two, and he wanted to go onto soft porn” Green told Titbits magazine in 1995 “there was this one film where he was dressed as a dirty old man and he’s creeping round Piccadilly Circus, then you see him in bed with this girl”. One Maximus short 'The Ecstasy of Oral Love', even adopts a pseudo-sex education front, showing a couple frantically licking each other, ending with some relatively graphic oral sex scenes which are inter-cut with supposedly socially redeeming title cards issuing advice to ‘young married couples’.

The Maximus films also provided some notable discoveries. Sue Bond, later in sitcoms and The Benny Hill Show, began her career in Marks soft core sex shorts of this period like 'First You See It'[5], 'Hot Teddy'[6] and 'Coitus-An Experiece in Motion and Emotion', today Mrs. Bond claims never to have met Marks and refuses to acknowledge the existence of these films. Marks’ short 'The Naked Face' (late 60’s/early 70s) gave some early exposure to Nicola Austine, a ubiquitous nude model/actress in the 1970s thanks to regular appearances in films, Titbits magazine and Top of the Pops record covers. While the Collinson Twins (Mary Collinson and Madeleine Collinson) had appeared as saucy maids in the period dress Maximus short 'Halfway Inn', prior to starring in Hammer’s Twins of Evil.

Unbeknownst to the actors/actresses who appeared in the Maximus films, Marks would also publish stills taken during their making in short lived magazines like Impact 70, under the guise of the film stills being ‘romantic photo stories’ without getting their permission or issuing further payment. The editorial notes of Impact 70- which features the Collinsons in stills taken from Halfway Inn and Sue Bond in stills taken from First You See It- ironically state “neither said photos nor words used to describe them are meant to depict the actual conduct or personality of the models”. This sideline only came to light when a “malicious” person connected to the Top of the Pops music program was reading a Marks magazine and recognized two people (in stills taken from Maximus shorts) in it, as being part of the TOTP crew and had them fired from their long standing jobs as crowd controllers and musical stand-ins.

In the mid seventies Marks had begun selling explicit photo sets to porn publisher David Sullivan’s top shelf magazines, such as “Latent Lesbian Fantasy” featuring Cosey Fanni Tutti, which appeared in the first issue of Sullivan’s Ladybirds magazine in August 1976. Evidently Marks had also sold Sullivan the rights to some of his 8mm sex films as well, as adverts by Kelerfern (a Sullivan mail order company) carried Marks directed sex shorts like Hole in One, Nymphomania, King Muff and Doctor Sex for sale around this period. Sullivan is also believed to have been behind a mysterious company calling itself the “Ultimate Film Club”, who advertised in the back pages of magazines like Cinema Blue and Sullivan's own Playbirds, and sold several of Marks’ late 60s/early 70s Maximus films. The Ultimate Film Club was based out of an Essex P.O. Box, but claimed to have bases in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Hamburg. The descriptions of the Marks films they were selling left little to the imagination, Santa’s Coming stars “the biggest Father Christmas you have ever seen”, Anna’s Manor is a “tale of rape and lust”, The Danish Maid “features a 9 ½” male- interesting point for the ladies”, while the blurb for Goodnight Nurse claims “see the girls in complete nurses uniform sexually arouse their patient- and his response. His 8” weapon soon whips into action”. The Danish Maid was in fact a remake of an older Marks 8mm film called The French Maid (1961), in which a chap orders a maid from a newspaper, falls asleep and dreams of a sexy girl, only to be woken up by a maid who turns out to be anything but. The Danish Maid adds soft core sex to the proceedings and a variation on the joke punch line; in The French Maid the real maid turns out to be a old, unattractive woman, while in The Danish Maid it turns out to be a man in drag who arrives at the luckless protagonists door. As well as mail order, The Ultimate Film Club claimed these films could be also be purchased at the pornshop of their “London Agents”, G&B Books based at 130 Godwin Road in London, which was in fact yet another company run by David Sullivan. Sullivan also used the same address for his companies "Subdean Publishing" (in 1972) and “K.G Imports” which advertised in the same magazines and claimed to offer “Hard Scandinavian” magazines.

A further Kelerfern Advert for Marks films available on super 8mm, that appeared in Rustler Vol. 3 No 3 (circa 1978), also listed for sale the titles; Inferno, Lesson For Lolita, Blow Job, Pussy Lovers, Sex Crazy, Morning Lust, Any Way You Like, Cum Lay with Me, Hot Ass, Gym Slip Rampage and Bottoms Up!.

While the Marks films offered in UK magazines appear to have been softcore, and their pornographic nature greatly exaggerated by the Ads (a familiar trait of David Sullivan’s), since the early 1970s onwards Marks had begun dabbling in more explicit material, the extent of which has rarely been acknowledged. He made short films for a British hardcore pornographer known only as “Charlie Brown”, and began making hardcore versions of his own Maximus short films which were released overseas on the Color Climax and Tabu labels. “Unaccustomed as I Am”, a black and white Maximus short starring Marks 1970s discovery Clyda Rosen, for instance, was also filmed in a colour hardcore version called Die Lollos (a.k.a The Customs). The two versions of these films were generally filmed on alternate weeks, with the hardcore version usually shot a week before the soft one. Marks had a peculiar repertory company for his hardcore films, which included big bust models like Clyda Rosen and Nicky Stanton for the female leads. Ex-bodybuilder Howard “Vanderhorn” Nelson in non-sex character parts, usually wearing elaborate disguises so people wouldn’t recognize him. A diminutive man with long ginger hair, who played one of the hippies in Die Lollos and other bit parts, who was the boyfriend of one of Marks’ models and like Howard only ever did non-sex roles. The regular male lead in Marks hardcore films was a well endowed actor who later had a legit role in the BBC’s TV adaptation of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In later years Marks was reluctant to discuss these hardcore short films and claimed ‘not to remember’ their names, some titles are however now known including Dolly Mixture (1973)[7]- a horror themed short sex film in which a Frankenstein like mad doctor puts together a female creation (Clyda Rosen), who ends up having a threesome with a passing insurance investigator and the doctor’s hunchback assistant. Dolly Mixture was shot in a hardcore version and then a soft one during which Clyda and the male lead got “carried away” and inconveniently began to have real sex on camera.

Other hardcore Marks shorts include, Autograph Hunter, Tea and Crumpet, The Tunnel of Love, Duty Free, Big N' Busty, Cockpit Cunts (aka Aviator), Bistro Bordello (1973) starring Ava Cadell, Arabian Knights and Busty Baller (1979). The latter, a Color Climax production, was shot in an apartment overlooking Bond Street Station in Oxford Street, and features Nicky Stanton seducing a passing Window Cleaner, who ends up filling more than just his bucket. A soft version of the film called Busty Ravers was also made as a free gift for the porn magazine 'Peaches'.

According to Simon Sheridan's book Keeping the British End Up, published in 2007, Arabian Knights (filmed for Color Climax in 1979) was shot at the Hotel Julius Caesar in Queens Gardens in Bayswater and is notable for featuring the only known hardcore performance of Jada Smith (later known as Rosemary England) and for starring mainstream actor Milton Reid in a non-sex role. Arabian Knights was shot during the winter months, a cast member later recalled the surreal experience of acting out the film’s middle eastern slave auction scenario, then inbetween takes staring out of one of the Julius Caesar's windows to discover it had began snowing. During filming several of the actresses trashed their rooms and abused a member of the hotel staff, who went on to tip the press off about a blue movie being filmed on the premises. As a result an undercover journalist hid on the Julius Caesar Hotel’s roof observing the filming of Arabian Knights through a spy hole, and the story was subsequently reported in The Sunday People the following weekend. The bad publicity caused by the Sunday People’s piece meant Arabian Knights would turn out to be Milton Reid’s last film, ostracized by the film community, he never acted again.

[edit] Other works

A lover of animals, in particular felines, in the early stages of his career Marks had a sideline photographing cats, and provided the photographs for the book Cats’s Company (1960). “He was an excellent photographer of nudes,” Tony Tenser remarked to John Hamilton in a 1998 interview, “but he also excelled in photographs of cats, that were much more beautiful than some of his nudes”. Marks cats remained a fixture of his studio and can be spotted scurrying about in several of the 8mm glamour films of the period, occasionally they even received starring roles, most notably in One Track Mind (1962) where Margaret Nolan pouts, poses and strips for an unseen voyeur who in the joke punch line is revealed to be her cat.

In the wake of the success of his early "glamour" films GHM also produced a series of slapstick comedies also sold via the photographic shops and magazines that were the outlet for his adult work. As well as directing these films he also appeared as one of the main actors. Titles like Uncle's Tea Party, Defective Detectives, High Diddle Fiddle, Dizzy Decorators and Musical Maniacs were founded in the music hall and classic silent comedy traditions. Needless to say they were less successful than his girlie films and the competition from the real thing i.e. the Chaplin Keaton Lloyd classics that he paid homage to and which provided most of the package film releases of the day.

In the late 1970’s Marks was hired as photographer for Janus magazine- which specialized in spanking material- even managing to get his bodybuilder friend Howard Nelson on the front cover of issue two (as a “spanking milkman”). Marks also began making short films on the subject for the 8mm market. Two of the earliest appear to have been Rawhide, sold by Kelerfern circa 1977, in which according to the ad “the ageing headmaster really gives two naughty schoolgirls some puishment”, and Late for School copyrighted 'Janus Publications 1977'. These shorts featured actresses recognizable from soft core films of the period like Come Play With Me’s Lisa Taylor and Sonia Svenberger.

In 1982 Marks left the Janus stable to set up his own magazine Kane on the same subject. Corporal punishment would now become Marks’ big theme for the final act of his career. Making the transition from 8mm to videotape, Marks made around 80 videos of this nature with titles like The Prefect’s Lesion (1981), Five of the Best (1988), The Spanking Academy of Dr. Blunt (1992), Schoolgirl Fannies on Fire (1994), Spanked Senseless (1995) and Stinging Stewardesses (1996). According to his official website Marks' spanking material “kept him in booze and cigarettes and an acceptable degree of comfort for the rest of his life". As with the 8mm striptease films and Naked As Nature Intended, the spanking videos clearly existed solely for the purpose of titillation yet at the same time adopted an asexual stance, bringing Marks career curiously full circle.

[edit] The British Russ Meyer

Marks was in many ways the British equivalent of Russ Meyer. While Marks was never the filmmaker that Meyer was, both made their names as photographers, both had an obsession for large breasted women ("big tits sell" was a Marks maxim), and both would eventually become a byword for a certain form of erotica that has since passed into history.

[edit] References

  • Simon Sheridan Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema 2007 (third edition) (Reynolds & Hearn books)
  • Simon Sheridan Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington 1999 (FAB Press, Guildford)
  • George Harrison Marks The Naked Truth About Harrison Marks 1967 (Colonna Press)
  • David Flint “Peeping at Pamela” Titbits magazine 1995.

[edit] See Also

[edit] External links