The Naked Truth About Harrison Marks (1967)

[argoman]

Some pics from Marks’ 1967 biography





Marks and comedy partner Stuart Samuels




This picture is of Marks’ “inner circle” set designer and right hand man Tony Roberts, third wife Toni Burnett, Uncle the Cat and his studio staff:


The book itself is a mixture of fact and fiction, best approached with a few more credible sources on Marks life at hand to try and divide the two.

I’d already documented Marks’ later career in an article I did on my ******** page, but the book, at least when its being honest, does offer valuable insights into Marks background, music hall days and eventual success in the glamour industry. I’ve now worked allot of the bio details from the book into the article, so if anyone is interested in the history of these things (and also to put some of those non-glamour pics into context), heres the Marks bio from my ******** page:





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.

A heavy drinker with a vivid imagination, Marks was not always the most reliable of source for information, especially about his own life, later admitting that his 1967 biography “The Naked Truth About Harrison Marks” was a hodge-podge of fact and fiction.
“George Harrison Marks collects women like other men collect porcelain, paintings, cigarette coupons or trading stamps” claimed the book’s blurb.

Marks came into this world at 4:30pm on Friday the 6th of August 1926, in Tottenham North London, his father Moss Marks, nicknamed “Mossy”, had seen action in WW1 suffering a horrific mustard gas attack, after the war Mossy tried to get into show business, eventually finding work as an actor’s agent. Marks’ family were a tight knit Jewish community under the control of a domineering Aunt, a woman dubbed within the family circle “Sergeant Major”. Marks’ most happy childhood memories were the Sunday trips to the local variety club that his father was a member of, and where the young Marks could sit at the feet of passing music hall acts, memorizing their routines religiously in order to later re-enact them for family members. Marks liked to emphasize (and more than likely exaggerate) the fact that his family had a show business background, even claiming in later years to be distantly related to blackface comedian G.H. Elliott, who Marks had seen as a kid and much to his mother’s horror, later tried to emulate by daubing himself in indelible ink.

Tragedy would strike the family in 1930, when Mossy died prematurely as a result of the mustard gas inhalation (Marks rewrites his father’s death in “Naked Truth” claiming he died from pneumonia). Marks was left devastated by his father’s death. School was a chore to be endured, but mostly just avoided, it was during his schooldays however that Marks would form a lifelong friendship with Stuart Samuels, who over the years would play a variety of roles in Mark’s life from music hall co-star, to general manager of Marks’ studio, to helping cover up Marks’ marital infidelities. Marks and Stuart also hung out with other local boys, including future double act Mike and Bernie Winters, although Bernie “became something of a hindrance, and we would contrive numerous ways to lose him if he tagged along with us”.

The teenage Marks and Stuart decided to go into business together, embarking on many farcical get rich quick schemes, the first and surely most unglamorous being stealing shit left behind by horses, and attempting to sell it to the locals as manure. When this failed Marks decided to use the cart that he and Stuart had used for shit shifting, to sell rides to their school friends, an idea that predictably resulted in a queue of angry parents knocking on the Marks family’s door to complain.

When WW2 came, a 13 year old Marks sought escape from the worry of German invasion, and school attendance officers, by working as a projectionist’s assistant at the Regal Cinema, Wembley. From there Marks went on to work as a tea boy at a local film studio, eventually graduating to even more menial jobs like a clapper boy. Marks claimed to have received tuition in filmmaking from George “Percy” Mumford, a near blind cameraman “really, I shouldn’t have been doing half the things I did, but the war was on and staff was short.”

At 17 Marks discovered the opposite sex, and much to his family’s surprise married Diana Bugsgang, a woman several years his senior. It was around this time that Stuart Samuels came back into Marks life, Marks version of how he and Stuart Samuels became a double act has it that the pair were enjoying a night out in their local pub, where their joke telling, banjo playing and lively banter was overheard by an agent who suggested a career on the stage and gave them his card. On a whim, they took him up on the offer and soon made their stage debut at the bottom end of a variety bill at the Granville Theatre in Walham Green. Their hastily put together routine, which aside from a pinch of original material, was mostly stolen from other performers, was something they learned to perfect in the trial by fire experience of appearing in front of a demanding music hall audience “the difference between entertaining a gang of friends at a party and keeping a fee paying audience happy for eighty minutes is the difference between two worlds, and bridging the gap between the two can only be done with a lot of experience and heartache.”

In his biography Marks describes the music hall life in vivid, but unsentimental terms, as a life of crummy digs, constant traveling, and where younger acts like himself and Norman Wisdom attempted to establish themselves in the business, while sozzled old timers like Frank Randall and Tod Slaughter appeared drunk on stage nightly, and those sober enough to realize it could see that TV and nudie revues were about to bring the curtain down on this ancient form of entertainment. Marks and Stuart finally called it a day in Hull in 1951, afterwards Marks went solo attempting to gain work as a theatrical photographer, but was soon skint again.

Marks finally got a job taking portrait shots of Norman Wisdom while Wisdom was appearing at the Prince of Wales theatre in Bernard Delfont’s “Paris to Piccadilly”, a British version of Folies Bergere, and a sort of predecessor to Paul Raymond’s saucy stage farces. At the time Wisdom was perfecting his so-called “Gump” persona, ultimately Paris to Piccadilly would lead him on the road to success after many years on the road as a struggling comedian, for Marks too the production would have life changing effects, when taking pin-up type shots of the Prince of Wales’ showgirls Marks met, and fell deeply in love with a showgirl girl named Pamela Green. At the time Green was in the process of separating from her violent, drunken first husband Guy Hillier, and although Marks could offer her little financially, she soon moved in with him, sharing his bed, at least until Marks fell behind with the payments and the bed shop repossessed it. Marks himself was a free agent, having drifted apart from Diana Bugsgang, and he and Green soon developed a deep bond, Marks described the pair of them as being almost “telepathic”.

Bernard Delfont was impressed by Marks work, and soon more commissions came Marks way, allowing him to photograph some of the biggest names in show business including Jack Benny, Nat King Cole and Laurel and Hardy. There were a few oddballs as well like the crazy drag act who made Marks wait two hours while he got into costume, then emerged wearing gloves, a suspender belt, stockings and little else “he had the sagging breasts of a middle aged woman and below the genitals of a very well developed man”. While Danny Kaye sniped at Marks “you sure must be a stinking lousy photographer” during a second sitting, after Kaye’s cranky demeanor had caused Marks to botch the first. Marks most proudest achievement as a theatrical photographer was taking pictures of Bela Lugosi during the actor’s British tour as Dracula in 1951. Marks admired Lugosi greatly, and sat through matinee and evening performances of Dracula in order to soak up the atmosphere he would later try and capture in photographs “it was an astonishing performance, when he made his entrance through the French windows upstage it was fantastic and dramatic… he really looked as if he had just flown down from his castle”. The Hungarian actor wasn’t without his eccentricities though, which included going into a trance like state before performances, while on another occasion Marks had been speaking to the star for around half an hour when Lugosi suddenly blurted out “vat is dis man sayinck? I don’t oonderstant von word of it”.

By this time Marks and Green had moved into a studio located on Gerrard Street. It was a move that would put Marks and Green right at the heart of 1950s Soho, a pre-Wolfenden Act era where prostitutes walked the streets, and where some of the most vicious gangland fighting London had ever seen would be played out. It was not uncommon for Marks to spot a bloody corpse lying in the gutter on his way to the studio, corpses that would mysterious disappear by the time a policeman came along.
Adding to the carnage was the fact that Marks’ studio was located above a drinking haunt that had been taken over by the mob, and where bottle and fist fights were the order of the day, wisely Marks invested in a steel reinforced door and a sword for his protection.

One of Marks’ most dangerous and out of control acquaintances was a former bouncer Marks only refers to in his biography as “My Slasher Friend”, more than likely My Slasher Friend was a member of Jack Spot’s gang and was a man who lived for violence. Marks’ nickname for him was no exaggeration, “I’ve seen some of the people he had cut up, he really mutilated them in a matter of seconds”. My Slasher Friend was fond of Marks, and would regularly question whether anyone had annoyed or crossed Marks that week, quickly followed by matter of fact offers to murder them. The majority of their conversations would end in goodbyes followed by My Slasher Friend asking “sure there’s no one you need fixing, Mr. George.?” Once Marks and Stuart Samuels were enjoying a drink in a pub when My Slasher Friend turned up with his usual routine, Marks joked that Stuart was starting to annoy him, at which point My Slasher Friend lunged at Stuart without realizing Marks was having a joke, Stuart probably didn’t find it too funny either.

It was in this seedy, violent environment that Marks and Green would effectively birth the glamour industry in Britain. As well as her stint as a showgirl, Green had been modeling nude, for both life classes and photographers, since she was sixteen (at the time needing her fathers written permission for such work), and suggested Marks try his hand at shooting some tasteful nude shots of her, this eventually led to Kamera, a modest pocket sized magazine of nudes, being published in 1957.
Kamera was an overnight sensation selling its print run of 15,000 copies in a matter of days, followed by reprint after reprint “until the arms all but fell off the printing press”. Though history gives much of the credit for Kamera to Marks, a peek into the workings of the magazine suggests Green was its driving force, lending her face and body to the magazine, as well as designing the sets and costumes, retouching the photos, and selecting the other models, some of whom had been sent by Paul Raymond. “Pam set me up, she started it all, in many ways I owe much to her” acknowledged Marks in his biography, in which he also refers to her as his “anchor rock”.

Having previously led a bohemian lifestyle, it was around this time that Marks’ playboy persona started to emerge, he spent the money that was rolling in from Kamera like crazy buying clothes, fast cars and yachts, while lavishing Pam with expensive jewelry and furs. Pam was soon on her way to being recognized as Britain’s most famous nude model, and naturally the sight of the glamorous blonde being driven around in a Cadillac by a goateed, cigar chomping Svengali looking type who took pictures of nude women for a living, turned heads and generated tabloid interest.

Kamera soon developed into a cottage industry of further magazines, postcards and calendars.
Despite Green at one stage changing her name to Pamela Harrison Marks by deed poll, the couple were never married, which ultimately put her at a disadvantage when they split, financially and regarding copyright and possession of photos, even of herself. Besides Pamela Green, Marks most popular models from this period were probably June Palmer, Paula Page and Margaret Nolan, who had originally began modeling for him under her real name then reverted to a glamour name ‘Vicky Kennedy’, then returned to being Margaret Nolan again for more mainstream Carry on and James Bond films as well as theatre and TV work, notably in ''Steptoe and Son''. Perhaps inevitably Marks’ private life became the source of much press and public speculation, amusingly off the mark rumours began circulating that he was in fact a “pansie and a raving queer”, something that forced Marks into admitting to having had affairs with several of his models, though he was quick to equally downplay a seedy casting couch image, claiming that these were “deep emotional affairs” and that “I work with them so closely, its only natural. The conditions we work under are probably ripe for an affair”.

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 even 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 cat burglar 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’ music hall background 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 Stuart Samuels. A forgotten hero in Marks’ early glamour films is Tony Roberts, a talented set designer who stopped by Marks studio one day to fix some sash cords, and ended up staying to design Egyptian Pyramids, Gypsy Camps, Chinese Gardens and Haunted Houses for nude models to cavort around. Along with Marks’ music hall influences, Tony's amazing sets gave Marks product some originality in the fairly limited format of the early glamour film. Tony became Marks’ right hand man and one of the few people Marks completely trusted.

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. “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 by no means had the 8mm glamour film market to himself with other filmmakers like Arthur Howell, Stanley Long and Pete Walker as well as anonymous companies with names like Herald and Windmill films also producing a large amount of glamour films during this period . In retrospect its tempting to view Long and Walker’s 8mm glamour films as a “stopgap” to the mainstream feature films that figured later on in their careers, with the early glamour films hardly being representative of their later work, particularly Walkers. With Marks on the other hand, the glamour films often feel like his own little fantasy world and lay the groundwork for the “girls and gags” nature of his work. Like that other great saucy clown Benny Hill, Marks would rarely stray from the same formula, even it if got more explicit as the years went on.


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).

Naked as Nature Intended was the brainchild of Tony Tenser and Michael Klinger a pair of canny Jewish businessmen from the East End. A master of publicity Tenser had honed his showmanship skills working as head of publicity for Miracle films, a popular distributor, before hooking up with Klinger, a former strip club manager with an ambition on becoming a movie mogul. Between them they had discovered a loophole in the law that allowed them to show uncensored European and American sex films under club conditions, and thus had opened up the Compton Cinema Club, one of the first membership only cinema clubs in Britain.
Tenser and Klinger were keen to get into film production, and the exploitation savvy Tenser had his eye on the burgeoning nudist film genre, which had already spawned Traveling Light, directed by authentic nudist Michael Keating, and other less credible productions like Charles Saunders’ Nudist Paradise and Michael Winner’s Some Like It Cool. Klinger had first met Marks several years earlier when Marks had been hired to photograph several of Klinger’s strippers, and Tenser and Klinger correctly thought that having London’s most notorious photographer and his pin-up girlfriend as director and star would give their production the edge in a crowded nudist market. Marks was initially unsure about directing a feature film until Tenser and Klinger took him to their cinema club and showed him a typical example of the sort of tacky sex film they were playing, after which Marks vowed “if I couldn’t make better (films) than those then I would give the whole racket up”.

For Marks’ core audience Naked as Nature Intended’s big appeal lay in seeing their favourite A5 sized fantasy figures projected as giant sized living, breathing nudes on the silver screen, a famous shot on a beach opens the film with Pamela Green taking a slow walk towards the camera with a towel to protect her modesty. Pam looks every bit the blonde goddess who has just emerged from the sea, an effect undiminished by the obviously breezy British weather. Equally memorable is Marks’ directing credit, which plays over a shot of the debuting feature film director puffing away on a cigarette on the same windy beach. Shot under the title “Cornish Holiday”, the bulk of the film offers up just that, with Pam cast as a Windmill girl, who along with Marks models Petrina Forsyth and Jackie Salt, travel around Cornwall in Petrina’s American Buick. The film gives the impression the crew just filmed whatever attractions they came across as the girls venture around the Minack Open Air Theatre in Porthcurno, Stonehenge, and various seaside towns, with narration that sounds suspiciously like its been quickly transcribed from tourist brochures with a few corny lines from Marks’ music hall days thrown in for good measure “that reminds me of that definition, even a girl who can’t add up can certainly distract”.

To liven things up Stuart Samuels appears in a variety of wigs and funny mustache guises throughout the film playing a series of bumbling authority figures the girls encounter. After around 40 minutes of travelogue and Stuart Samuels falling over, the audience’s patience is finally rewarded when the girls innocently trespass onto a nudist beach and are converted to the cause, soon deciding that “there is nothing shocking about enjoying the feeling of complete physical freedom that nudity brings”, a philosophy they put to the test by sunbathing, gardening and playing table tennis in the nude. To give the film some censor appeasing credibility Marks shot this section of the film in a genuine nudist camp, Spielplatz Sun Club owned by a bearded old codger named Charles Macaskie. Macaskie and his wife even have bit parts in the film, welcoming Pam and the girls into the nudist camp fold. Macaskie and his wife were elderly and out of shape, but then the difference between those who are the genuine nudists in the film, and those who are especially brought in nude models sticks out as obvious as a hard-on in Spielplatz.

Naked as Nature Intended was as badly reviewed as any other nudist film, but was still a massive hit when it opened in November 1961 at the Cameo Moulin cinema in Windmill Street “there were queues along both pavements, one stretching down to Shaftsbury Avenue”. In a curiously mainstream nod the Cameo Moulin’s marquee for the film can be spotted in the opening credits of The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963), a reference explained by the fact that that film’s star Anthony Newley was a friend of Marks, while its director Kenneth Hughes had been photographed by Marks, back when Marks was making his living as a theatrical photographer, and Hughes was a budding actor.
True to his reputation Tenser devised a fantastic campaign for Naked as Nature Intended billing it as “the greatest nudist film ever”, while capitalizing on the fame of its director and star by billing Green as the “Queen of the Pin-Ups and Marks the “King of the Camera”. The publicity seems to have gone to Marks’ head a bit “they came because my name is so well established in this field- and for no other reason.” he claimed.

By the time of Naked as Nature Intended’s release Green and Marks’ romance had come to an end. In his biography Marks sites a plethora of reasons for the break up, was it Pam’s jealously of the other models?, was it the money that came between them? was it that Pam didn’t want children?, or was it his difficulties with having the same woman in both his private and professional life?, Marks doesn’t seem so sure himself. Other sources suggests she left because of his drinking, either way their telepathic link had been broken, although as a business partner in Kamera, Green continued to model and supervise the magazine as well as appearing in Marks films, and Marks resisted My Slasher Friend’s offers to have her killed.

1963’s The Chimney Sweeps which Marks produced and starred in, was devised as a comedy vehicle for himself and Stuart Samuels as well as a chance to put their old routine on screen. Several other characters from Marks’ musical hall past were also cast in the film, which sees two chimney sweeps (Marks and Samuels under heavy theatrical make-up) foil the plans of two comic gangsters, even Pamela Green did a cameo in the film, which required her to be buried under around eight sacks of soot, and blown up along with a piano. The lack of any nudity however, meant The Chimney Sweeps was hardly going to equal the success of Naked as Nature Intended, and it remains one of the least seen of Marks films, though recently unearthed evidence suggests the film played as far a field as Turkey where it popped up as the bottom half of a double bill with an old Laurel and Hardy film, a pairing Marks would no doubt have approved of. One rumour has it that the film was specially shot as a second feature in order to con money out of the Eady tax fund of the time, which gave a percentage of the box office takings back to the filmmakers if one half of a cinema programme was British.

Free of Green’s influence, Marks drank, womanized and partied hard during this period. A private joke between himself and Stuart Samuels was that the more Marks partied the older Stuart, who in contrast led a sober existence, appeared to get. Stuart suggested that like the picture in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, he was aging on Marks behalf, indeed captured on film during this period Samuels looks more like a reanimated cadaver than a one-time music hall comic.

The second Mrs. Harrison Marks blew into his life sometime in 1964, Vivienne Warren remains perhaps the most complex, fascinating character in Marks’ story, even if she only puts in the briefest of appearances. She’d been recommended to him by a model agent friend, and insisted on being paid to come to his studio, whether he wanted to use her or not. Things got off to a shaky start when she arrived on one of Marks’ so-called “Hangover Days”, when he’d arrive in his office still recovering from the night before and ask his secretary not to forward on any visitors or phone calls. Still Vivienne demanded to be seen, intrigued by her attitude, Marks finally stumbled bleary eyed out of his office and was immediately taken by her beauty. Sobering up on the spot, soon he’d be snapping nude shots of her in his office, completely enraptured by her.

Vivienne was cool, analytical, and had an other worldly quality about her, to the degree that one of Marks’ friends compared her to a Midwich Cuckoo, a reference to John Wyndham’s novel about “children of a village who were created by beings from outer space”, later adapted for the screen as Village of the Damned. They married in November of that year, in an age twist on Marks’ first marriage to an older woman, she was 17 at the time and he 35. Despite her tender age Vivienne did her best to play the domestic housewife, insisting on Marks investing in a virtual library of cook books. For all her best efforts, Vivienne, who had been raised in an orphanage, remained a fiercely independent spirit, an attitude that clashed with Marks who’d grown use to getting his own way. Theirs was, as he described it, “a devastating, traumatic and searing love”, only a few months into the marriage both parties were heading for a nervous breakdown. After a brief reconciliation Vivienne could take no more and coolly and calmly walked away from the marriage. Later Marks admitted his dictatorial streak had been a major problem in the marriage, a lesion he’d learn from, but too late to save that relationship.
After his split with Vivienne, Marks drowned his sorrows drinking heavily while holidaying on the continent before returning to London and devoting all his energy into making his next film.

Purporting to lift the lid on Marks life and business, 1965's The Naked World of Harrison Marks opens with Marks starting the day in a typical fashion, waking up and immediately getting on the blower to various big breasted models to arrange photo shoots. Probably at the height of his success here, Marks isn’t afraid to be flash, picking up June Palmer in his Rolls Royce in the opening credits, while at the same modeling a bespectacled, bohemian appearance. “It would be wrong to think of Harrison Marks as a man who spends his days focusing on beautiful women” argues Valentine Dyall’s narrator, somewhat unconvincingly given amount of time the film dedicates to Marks snapping away at nudes either in his studio or on location (until rain stops play). Just to show there is more to the man than boobs however we get to see Marks judging a beauty contest and making an 8mm children’s film, with himself and Stuart Samuels as pirates. There are also “fantasy” scenes in which members of the public imagine what Marks’ life must be like, which also provides a good excuse for Marks to dress up as a playboy, a gangster, Toulouse-Lautrec and a camp film director, whatever the situation though, naked women rarely seem to be far away. Some of Marks’ best remembered models from the era, Pamela Green, Cleo Simmons and the aforementioned June Palmer all contribute cameos. Also putting in a brief appearance in the film was a young actress/model called Toni Burnett, who caught Marks’ eye, by the end of the film Toni and Marks were very much in love “she puts up with my lunatic ways and my day dreams” he wrote “she makes me happy, and I make her happy. Really for the first time in my life I am as happy as an ordinary, average person”. They’d go onto have a child, a daughter, Josephine Deborah Harrison Marks born the 15th of November 1967 and Toni would belatedly become the third Mrs. Harrison Marks in September 1973.

Naked World ends on a surprisingly sinister note with Marks having a nightmare, where he meets a hooded ghoul in a graveyard, sees himself (quite literally) digging his own grave and finds himself in a dungeon surrounded by chained-up nude women, their crime? modeling for Harrison Marks. Marks is then put on trial for leading a “worthless life” before being dragged away by the nude women to be drowned.

The Naked World of Harrison Marks disposed of the need to justify nudity by pretending to be nudist propaganda, and as a result the film was initially banned by the censor but swiftly passed by numerous local councils (the BBFC eventually passed the film with cuts in 1968).

After making The Naked World of Harrison Marks, Marks hooked up with Robert Hartford-Davies, the director of exploitation wonders like Corruption and The Yellow Teddybears. Between them they came up with a plan to move to Hollywood where Hartford-Davies would direct films and Marks would star in and produce them. Their first Hollywood film was going to be a Mondo Cane variant entitled “A Climate of Lunacy”, but while Hartford-Davies would finally end up directing films in Hollywood in the early Seventies, A Climate of Lunacy never materialized and Marks imagined future as the toast of Hollywood couldn’t have been more wrong.

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 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.
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, Worker’s Playtime, Touch Tongue, The Girl Upstairs, The Wrong Habit 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. Getting in on the action himself, Marks played the male lead in his own soft core short “Amour” made in November 1966, which apparently featured the great man bonking away on top of a model/actress called Caroline Coon. “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. These films included the bizarre "Hot Teddy" in which Sue has sex with a large cuddly teddy bear; "First You See It", features Sue as a naked fantasy woman who appears and disappears in the hero's bathroom, bedroom, dining room etc, while "Coitus - An Experience in Motion and Emotion", a sort of sequel to The Ecstasy of Oral Love adopts a Pseudo sex education approach in order to show Sue and a male partner indulging in a variety of sexual positions.

Today Mrs. Bond, who suffers from selective amnesia when it comes to the more saucier aspects of her career, 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.
Someone who also encountered Marks around this time was actor/musician Emmett Hennessy, who played the lead in two of Marks’ 8mm films, the first one being Aphrodisia (a.k.a. Man of Many Parts) which “was actually filmed in his house , probably early 70's, but could be late 60's. It had a crime theme, I was the hero, a sort of James Bond character, it must have had dialogue because I remember my adversaries character was named Baron Von Vanderhorn. He ( Harrison) lived in a plush home in a very posh part of London, maybe Swiss Cottage or St Johns Wood. I remember he had a coloured maid who wore a white maids outfit, quite unusual for England in that era. He was obviously quite well off. I believe there was a wife and maybe kids in the home. He smoked the mandatory cigar and drove a fancy car, maybe a Jaguar.”
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. “What he used to do, the sly old dog, was click away with his camera while we were doing those small movies and then publish, without any further payment or permission.” remembers Emmett “That activity actually cost me a good job, as I had a weekly gig for years on top of the pops as a stand in during the day for rehearsals and a crowd controller during the show. Saw all the great stars of the time up close. Then apparently, unbeknownst to us, Harrison put out one of those booklets, with some shots of me and one or two other stand in's who had been involved, and some malicious person saw it and drew it to the attention of the producers who promptly fired us, a great loss at the time.” Emmett is pictured on the cover of Impact 70, getting to grips with a Marks model, but up until recently had no idea about being the magazine’s coverboy “I guess the shot on the cover was maybe one of the photos back then, God knows how many more are inside the book.” 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”. “The next time I worked for him I believe I was either late '74 or early '75” Emmett recalls “This time we went on location out in the country and he drove me and my "co star" out in his sports car. I was all tanned and my hair was long and sun bleached totally blonde and I had grown a beard, so I was just right for his needs. I played a truck driver, who I suppose picks up a sexy hitchhiker and I seem to remember all the action takes place in the back of the truck. I actually saw (the film ) on sale in a shop window at the time. I remember the cover had a shot of me, probably shirtless in the back of the truck with the girl in my arms, I think we were standing up. I wish now I had bought it, it would be good for a laugh. I do remember him as being a regular down to earth guy, although he obviously knew his market”

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!''. A more historically important Marks film, that was shot for his Maximus company circa 1974, but later sold by Kelerfern was Sex is My Business (a.k.a. Sex Shop), notable for starring a pre-fame Mary Millington. Sex is My Business was shot late on a Saturday night at a sex shop, located on London’s Coventry Street. The storyline concerns a powerful aphrodisiac being dropped by a customer, whose potency renders the shops’ staff and customers sex crazy. Millington is the films main focus of attention, playing a member of staff who drags a customer into the back room for some multi-position sex, thoughtfully turning on the shops CCTV camera so others can watch. Marks’ third wife Toni, also has a small, non-sex role in the film. Harrison Marks’ involvement in the film was not well known, and was only discovered when a super 8mm print of the film was privately transferred to DVD in 2008. Curiously Marks claimed never to have worked with Millington prior to making Come Play With Me in 1977, and he would appear to have forgotten about making the film.

While the Marks films offered in UK porn magazines throughout the 1970s appear to have been softcore, and their pornographic nature greatly exaggerated by the Ads (a familiar trait of David Sullivan), Marks had begun dabbling in more explicit material, the extent of which has rarely been acknowledged. Now how much can we acknowledge here, hmmm, it is possible that Marks filmed hardcore very earlier on in cloak and dagger circumstances, and that these films involved one of his more “famous” models. Marks’ estate claim he first directed porn in the summer of 1967 “for a German businessman”, however the earliest hardcore films of his that have managed to resurface date from the early seventies, when he 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’ buxom Israeli 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 colour version usually shot a week before the soft black and white 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. “From what he said by the 70's he was mainly making films for other people ie the hardcore stuff for Color Climax and the stuff he made for people like KTC” explains filmmaker Peter Mason “he downplayed his involvement with hardcore when I spoke to him and wasn't proud of his conviction”. While Marks later claimed in interviews ‘not to remember’ the names of his hardcore films, some titles are however now known including Dolly Mixture (1973) a horror themed short sex film featuring a Frankenstein like mad professor.

Dolly Mixture begins with the professors’ assistant creeping around the prof’s lab and contemplating his collection of dolls, you suspect had this character been given a name you suspect it would probably be ‘Igor’. A hunchback, he sports ghost face make-up, glue on facial scars and long hair, and looks not unlike a zombified Ginger Baker. The lab is also home to a reanimated severed hand which is trapped inside a glass jar (that old hand from under the table gag) as well as the Professors’ lifeless female creation (Clyda Rosen) who is stark naked on a slab. The Professor walks in on the hunchback fondling her breasts (the actor inadvertently smearing Clyda’s boobs with his white make-up!!!), so shoos him away. It transpires the Prof also shares the hunchback’s doll fetish, and is rarely seen without a doll made up as a bride who he confides in and kisses. Enter a young insurance clerk, who turns up to provide the professor with an assessment and gets a guided tour of his house. Strangely the clerk doesn’t seem phased by all the dolls, including a huge doll house in the professors’ front room, or the nude, large breasted Israeli woman in his lab. While the clerk goes about ‘assessing’ Clyda the professor creeps over to some electronic device, turns a switch which brings Clyda to life, pretty soon she’s bouncing all over the bewildered clerk. It seems that the Professor has some kind of mental hold over both Clyda and the Clerk via the dolls, at least thats what you can gather by the shots of wind-up dolls whose sexual actions match their human counterparts. Dolly Mixture is all hot stuff, with Clyda and the Clerk going through a karma sutra amount of positions on the professors orders with even the hunchback joining in at one point. At the end, directing all this good sex proves too much for the Professor who accidentally blows himself up in a puff of smoke and Clyda and the Clerk run away. The intriguing final shot reveals the dead professor has turned into a doll, complete with clown’s make-up, while his beloved bride doll takes on human characteristics before vanishing. Dolly Mixture more than lives up to expectations as a amalgamation of British horror and blue movie. The big surprise here, given Marks’ music hall comedy background, is that we’re not just talking sub-Carry on Screaming comedy horror here, but attempts at a genuinely unsettling atmosphere with the final doll/professor twist and some of the creepiest use of stuffed toys since The Sinful Dwarf. The fairly elaborate plot and imaginative mad professor set are also unusual touches for a blue movie.
Dolly Mixture was shot in a hardcore version (known in Germany as “Vor Geilheit Kochen”, roughly translated “Boiling from Hornyness”) and then a softcore one. The male lead in the soft version of Dolly Mixture was “Short Jack Gold” (*pseudonym) who had begun acting for Marks in 1972 after answering an advert Marks had placed in Time Out magazine "it was shot in Black & White and was a "soft" version of a H/C version shot a couple of weeks earlier. I wasn't in the H/C shoot, but halfway through our shoot, Clyda got a bit carried away and allowed full sex. She was that hot!".
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), ''Arabian Knights'' and ''Busty Baller'' (1979). Autograph Hunter is Marks’ hardcore spin on Groupie Girl/Permissive type films in which Clyda Rosen and a blonde friend break into the house of rock star Randy Tool in pursuit of more than just his John Hancock. Howard Nelson once again does a non-sex part as Randy’s roadie, wearing huge Elton John glasses and a blonde wig so people wouldn’t realize it was him. A particularly hilarious moment comes when Howard, who was built like a brick shithouse, has to feign putting some effort into holding back the extremely non-threatening 4’11 Clyda from the famous rockstar. In the joke punch line Clyda and her friend take a snapshot of a shagged out Randy and send it to a newspaper who somewhat unlikely publish the full frontal shot the next day. Busty Baller, 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'.
The infamous ''Arabian Knights'' (also filmed for Color Climax in 1979) 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.

Short Jack Gold recalls “It was shot in winter 1979, 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. 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..…". Unfortunately the bad publicity caused by the Sunday People’s expose on the film meant Arabian Knights would turn out to be Milton Reid’s last film, ostracized by the film community, he never acted again.

COME PLAY WITH ME

In between all this blue movie malarkey came Marks’ final feature film, and his most successful and famous. Marks had written Come Play With Me’s script in 1970 not long after The Nine Ages of Nakedness, but it was to remain on the shelf in the ensuing years of bankruptcy, obscenity trials and heavy drinking. It was ironically a late night drinking session with a certain David Sullivan that caused the script to be dusted off.
“George was a great entertainer he was a bit of a drunk really, but he was good fun” David Sullivan remarked in the 2005 documentary ''Oo-Err Missus'', “he said to me: "I’ve got this old script I’ve had for years", I said: "give us a look George" and within three weeks we were shooting it”.
Sullivan saw Come Play With Me as a chance to turn his then-girlfriend and magazine cover girl Mary Millington into a film star, as well as an opportunity for some cross-media marketing. Sullivan’s magazines like Playbirds and Whitehouse are seen/referenced throughout the film, but it was with promoting the film through his magazines that Sullivan really came into his own. Months before the film's release Sullivan’s readers were promised Come Play with Me would be ‘the British Deep Throat''’ and would ‘make Linda Lovelace look like Noddy. To add credibility to these claims, photo shoots that were only a few shades away from hardcore were published in Sullivan’s magazines and claimed to be stills from the upcoming film, whereas in fact they bare little resemblance to anything in Come Play With Me. A fixture in these photo shoots was hardcore actor Timothy Blackstone, sometimes billed in the articles as “Randy Buck, Esquire”. In spite of this exposure Blackstone does not appear in the actual film.


The hype for Come Play with Me also spread to the letter pages of Sullivan’s magazine, a fan letter of dubious authenticity (as it refers to scenes that don’t appear in the film) from “Bert U” to Mary Millington in Whitehouse, no.27 claims “Dear Mary, I must congratulate you on your film Come Play with Me, I found it screamingly funny and very sexy as well…I loved every randy moment… everyone was so natural, and Henry McGhee (sic) as the PM was superb.”

The letter also goes on to falsely claim that the actor Roy Kinnear appears in the film and that “(Roy) looked like a Roman Emperor in the swimming pool scene. I‘ll bet it took him all his time to keep his towel on during rehearsals for the film… it looked to me, Mary, as though you were fucked rigid during the film”.
While Millington’s popularity and Sullivan’s relentless publicity campaign are without doubt what made the film a success, Come Play with Me remains a peculiarly Harrison Marks concoction, with Marks’ background as a photographer of nudes, his love of old-style British music hall comedy, and his heavy drinking adding much to the film's overall character. As comic counterfeiters Cornelius Clapworthy and his sidekick Maurice Kelly, Marks and Alfie Bass resemble a baggy pants comedy double act from the music hall days, the pair even sleep together in the same bed à la'' Morecambe and Wise. Marks also throws in a song-and-dance routine “It’s Great to be Here”, performed by Marks, Bass, and a group of sexy nurses. “George was in a bit of a time warp, he forgot at times that it was a sex film he was making,” commented Sullivan, “he thought he was making some vaudeville comedy… I thought it was a weird old film”.
Much of the glamour in the film was provided by nude models popular in Sullivan’s top-shelf magazines at the time (Millington, Pat Astley, Penny Chisholm), as well as more mainstream comedy actresses like Ingmar Bergman’s daughter Anna Bergman, Sue Longhurst and Suzy Mandel from the Benny Hill Show. Lower down the cast list, actresses like Lisa Taylor, Sonia Svenburger, Suzette Sangalo Bond, all had blue movie backgrounds.


Come Play With Me was filmed during the winter months of 1976. The main setting Bovington Manor was in reality the Weston Manor Hotel near Oxford (Their website perhaps unsurprisingly makes no reference to it being the location of one of the most famous British sex comedies of the 1970s.) Due to work commitments Suzy Mandel was absent from the scene that introduces the girls traveling to Bovington Manor onboard a coach (she was in fact taping a Benny Hill episode at the time).

After seeing a rough cut of the film Sullivan and representatives of the distributor Tigon thought the film needed more nudity as well as more Mary Millington so several additional scenes - including Mary’s big scene with Howard Nelson - were filmed. The ‘add on’ nature of these scenes to the narrative is sometimes apparent.
Several hardcore porn scenes were also shot for Come Play With Me. These would have appeared towards the end of the film, however in the event all traces of actual hardcore sex were cut from these scenes in the pre-release stage and the explicit footage went AWOL soon after. “For real” were the lesbian scene between Mary Millington and Penny Chisholm, as well as the heterosexual sex scenes between Lisa Taylor and Derek Aylward, Suzette Sangalo Bond and an unknown male, and Sonia Svenberger and Gordon Hickman. These scenes do remain in the film, albeit heavily cut down to soft core, with only Penny Chisholm’s “flushed” beetroot colored expression during her sex scene with Mary, giving a hint of these scenes’ explicit origins.

Other works (or rather comedy, pussies and spanking)

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.

“They think I spend most of my life photographing women” Marks complains in The Naked World of Harrison Marks “doesn’t anyone believe I like photographing cats”. Naked World illustrates this side of his operation by having a ‘typical’ cat lover (played a man in drag sporting a fake big nose and even faker big breasts) fawning over Marks’ cat calendars, and a slapstick comedy scene with Marks attempting to photograph a troublesome moggy, only to end up destroying his front room in the process.

In the wake of the success of his early 60s glamour films Marks 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 but were less successful than his girlie films and suffered from 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 a photographer for Janus magazine- which specialized in spanking material- before taking a more editorial position. According to Peter Mason “he got the job at Janus because he had run mags before and was doing some work for them. He relaunched it as "New" Janus.” Marks even managed to get his bodybuilder friend Howard Nelson on the front cover of New Janus issue two (as a “spanking milkman”) and also began making short films on the subject for the 8mm market. Two of the earliest appear to have been ''Rawhide'', starring Come Play with Me’s Lisa Taylor and Sonia Svenberger and sold by Kelerfern circa 1977, in which according to the ad “the ageing headmaster really gives two naughty schoolgirls some punishment”, and ''Late for School'' copyrighted 'Janus Publications 1977' which was also the subject of a photo article in Janus (Vol.7, No.9) and Spanking Special (No.2, Martinet publications). Marks then made a series of 8mm spanking films, all of which feature the word ‘lesson’ in the title. These were ''The Nurses’ Lesson'', ''The School Lesson'', ''The Gym Lesson'', ''The Prefect’s Lesson'' and ''The Riding Lesson''. The Nurses Lesson stars porn actor Gordon Hickman as a sickly patient, who overpowers and spanks two nurses. While The School Lesson, features veteran film and television actor Ken Parry as a headmaster who canes two schoolgirls after catching them in a compromising position. The film was also the subject of a photo article in Janus (Vol.8, No.12) which featured a still of Parry spanking a girl on the cover. One critic later remarked that during the caning scenes Parry appeared “to be in grave danger of a heart attack”.


Parry’s involvement in Marks’ spanking material is somewhat perplexing given that he had a ‘legit’ TV career at the time, something that could easily have been compromised should a newspaper journalist have picked up on the films and decided to do a tabloid expose on him (a fate that befell Milton Reid). Parry was also gay, which would seem to rule out these appearances being sexually motivated. Curiously when the “Lesson” films were re-released on video in the 1990s, the publicity material erroneously credited actor Willoughby Goddard, best known for the 1950’s ITC Show ‘The Adventures of William Tell’, as playing Parry’s role in The School Lesson.

By 1979 Marks had been made full time editor of Janus, and continued to make 8mm spanking films including ‘Rear Attack’, released by himself, and ‘Warden’s End’ and ‘Slaves of Mistress Monique’ for the Janus people. Warden’s End is a self-referencing piece, with Marks name-checked in the dialogue and the Janus shop used as a filming location. Linzi Drew plays a traffic warden attempting to give the blokish, Janus shop assistant a ticket. Following him into the shop she is initially intrigued by all the spanking magazines on display, and persuaded to do an audition for him with predictably bottom smacking results. At the end of the audition Linzi decides however that she’d prefer to continue slapping tickets on cars, than being slapped herself; “I’ve had enough of this, and I’ve had enough of you” she complains to the shop assistant “I’d rather be a traffic warden”.

Seeing the revenue being generated by his spanking films and photo-shoots, in 1982 Marks jumped ship 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 in 1984, Marks first video production was “The Cane and Mr. Abel” starring Linzi Drew. With friend and business associate Peter B. Fairbrass handling the camerawork and the editing, Marks would go onto make around 80 videos of this nature with titles like ''Five of the Best'' (1988), 'The Spanking Academy of Dr. Blunt'' (1992), ''Schoolgirl Fannies on Fire'' (1994), "A Wacking in a Winter Wonderland (19??)", ''Spanked Senseless'' (1995) and ''Stinging Stewardesses'' (1996). “When Kane got going he got involved in running spanking parties which made most of his money apparently” remarks Peter Mason “the early issues of Kane have some pictures from those events. I asked GHM how he got away with putting out uncertificated videos in the days when the BBFC wouldn’t pass that sort of thing, he implied that the numerous Judges that subscribed to Kane might have something to do with his immunity but I think thats a bit dubious. I don't know how reliable his memory was and he was often pissed. In fact his interview for the doing rude things shoot (the 1995 BBC documentary on British sex films) had to be done twice as he was too far gone first time round.” Models who Marks photographed for Kane over the years included the aforementioned Linzi Drew (in the photo story “Meter Maid” that appeared in Kane No.9) and Vicki Scott. While Vida Garman and Liz Leather (of “Sexy Secrets of the Kissogram Girls”) had the dubious honor of being spanked by Marks himself in the pages of Kane. Marks took a similarly “hands on” approach for Teresa May’s appearance in Kane no.61, with Marks pictured groping the glamour model’s breasts, appearing visibly intoxicated and even donning his old Come Play With Me wig for several of the photos (Teresa’s sole memory of Marks “He was a creep!”). 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.

After decades of heavy drinking, chain smoking, romancing and photographing beautiful women, Marks finally passed away at 6pm, on the 27th of June 1997, officially it was cancer that got him in the end, although his daughter Josie later remarked “it was a bit of a toss up between bone cancer and liver cirrhosis, really it was whichever got him first, he wanted to go as Errol Flynn with liver cirrhosis”. After his death what photographic and film work of Marks that he still owned was inherited by business associate Peter B. Fairbrass who currently runs the official Harrison Marks website, while Josie Harrison Marks took over the editing of Kane. Marks’ ashes were (unofficially) scattered throughout St. Paul’s Cathedral.

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.

[p.o.duggan]

great stuff, thanks for sharing this. i'd love to see more of the book if you get chance.

[alvaro50250]

A few set

[argoman]

Originally Posted by p.o.duggan

great stuff, thanks for sharing this. i'd love to see more of the book if you get chance.

There are a few more pics from the book that I’ll try and upload here the next time I do some scanning.

[Xxphd]

Lots of moiré in your scans!

Try to scan at a very high resolution (like 600 dpi) and resize ->% later or use the descreen
preset in your scanning program.

http://www.scantips.com/basics6b.html

[Mushashi7]

Originally Posted by Xxphd

Lots of moiré in your scans!

Try to scan at a very high resolution (like 600 dpi) and resize ->% later or use the descreen
preset in your scanning program.

http://www.scantips.com/basics6b.html

Yes. Lots of moiré.

I think on the contrary you should try to scan the pages in a lower resolution + use the descreen function (if your scanner have one - else use 'Gaussian Blur' in Photoshop later).
You are scanning the pictures in a too high resolution. That is why you see every single pixel in the picture.
Normal resolution is 300 dpi.
But if the pictures on the pages have been printed with larger rasterization (dpi is called 'rasters' in the printing language) you might try what PhD suggests. Maybe try 1200 dpi + descreen and then use 'Gaussian Blur' in Photoshop.
with 1200 dpi you will get a very large file, but also big enough to use 'Gaussian Blur' on without loosing the main picture structure.
I just suggest you don't use 'Gaussian Blur' at a high level. It is better using it at a small level and do this several times until the desired quality has been obtained.

'Gaussian Blur' works very simple.
If you set the amount to 2,5 it will basically blur every pixel in every direction in a radius of 2,5 pixels.
Using 5,5 will do it in a radius of 5,5 for every pixel.

Using too high an amount will spread the information too wide and you will just end up with a very blurred picture.
Using a low amount several times will control the spreading of information to a minimum. If you do this several times the information will stay more at the starting point than if you use a large amount.
It's just like 'blowing on sand'. Blow hard and the sand will spread everywhere.

[argoman]

8mm box of Marks’ The Tunnel of Love. Don’t have the film but the women in the pictures is possibly Lisa Taylor? This would have definitely been filmed in Marks’ own house as the first pic on the back cover features the ‘famous’ Harrison Marks bookshelf which turns up in many of his photoshoots/8mm films.

[zushiomaru]

wow, just read your whole article or is that book!?
That's some quality research, damn..
Do you got any other hobbies or is collecting GHM material your lifework...

Just got on this innocent-looking film review here, from John Lindsay,Mary Millington associations to some soft loops w Pamela Green i never much cared for..
Now i am intrigued to say the least!

Didn't knew Harrison Marks did all those classic UK loops with Clyda Rosen & all for Tabu,Ekstase Film.
Did the softcore version of Dolly Mixture turn up?
Any of his rarer spanking loops surfaced on vhs/super 8 yet??
(may be a reason nobody noticed the actor u mention, those loops were hard to find in Europe anyway,nobody looked at those small ads back then, with big breasts & hairy muffs on every page!!)

Do u have this Sex is my business loop?
thanx Argoman, for all the invaluable information, am saving this page now..

zushiomaru,
"the meek shall inherit the earth"

[argoman]

Sex is My Business was up on rapidshare at one point, there should be a link to it somewhere on the Mary Millington thread. I have the soft b/w version of Dolly Mixture on 8mm, and am looking into getting it transferred to DVD some time soon, fingers crossed.

While browsing on Amazon the other day I noticed this (soon to be released?) book on Marks, but their details on it are rather sketchy.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Naked-World-...6583707&sr=8-2

[argoman]

“The Reluctant Pornographer” interviewed in 1984


Article from April/May 1997, probably the last interview he ever did (he died in June of that year)