The Naked Truth About Harrison Marks (1967)

[argoman]

GHM interviewed by Verve magazine in October 1973,


he tends to distance himself from pornography in the interview, yet there are a number of his h/c productions from this period that have since resurfaced so he clearly was making them and his official website mentions that he was filming more explicit material as early as 1967 “for a German businessman”. To put this interview into historical context though, it was hardly socially acceptable to be making blue films back in the 70s, and given Marks had been prosecuted for sending ‘obscene material’ through the post in 1971 and the same year this interview took place he would be kicked out of his studio after the landlord objected to 8mm sex films being made on the premises, it would have been inviting trouble to admit to shooting more explicit material.

(The same issue of Verve also ran an interview with a John Lindsay actress called Pauline Whooley about her appearances in his blue films and The Pornbrokers- that I’ll try and get round to scanning and then post on the John Lindsay thread.)

[argoman]

Sad to discover that Harrison Marks’ regular Howard “Vanderhorn” Nelson was reported as a missing person to the police on Tuesday 3rd February 2009, Nelson was one of those quirky character types that popped up in a lot of GHM’s 8mm and feature films, as well as acting in other films like Zapper’s Blade of Vengeance and Carry on Emmanuelle, heres hoping “The Horn” turns up safe and sound.


http://www.missing-you.net/people/ho...son-115744.php

Howard with Mary Millington in Come Play With Me

[argoman]

From ‘Practical Photography’ Magazine, August 1961

[argoman]

More Harrison Marks malarkey….

A newspaper clipping from the Empire News and Sunday Chronicle (January 1960), I have it on good authority that Marks and Pamela Green were never actually married, but for reasons unknown pretended to be husband and wife throughout their relationship




Next up:


The cover of a little known second incarnation of Marks’ Kamera magazine. The first version of the magazine ceased publication in 1968 , but this second version appeared about a year later, although Marks appears to have devised the 2nd Kamera, its credited to Roydock Books LTD, and printed by Litho Productions, two companies whose other stable of publications included X-Films, swingers’ magazines Open and Intro Natural News, and Eros (‘the most, frank, daring, lesbian type magazine yet produced’) and well as Marks’ Impact 70 magazine. The 2nd version of Kamera actually has more in common with Impact 70, and consists mainly of stills taken from GHM’s more recent 8mm sex films (the still on the cover is from “A Hit for Two Misses”) as well as photos of 9 Ages of Nakedness starlets Monique Deveraux and Eve Davis. There are a few nods to the original Kamera however, in the form of old, now un-retouched, photos of Marie Deveraux and June Palmer, as well as “Liz” a piece of erotic fiction about a runaway who ends up as a glamour model in London and working for nudie photographer “Mr.Wilkins” whose description bears an uncanny resemblance to GHM himself (“a big bloke with fuzz on his face, he wasn’t bad looking, a bit old, but not bad”). Despite a frosty first meeting where Wilkins annoys her by telling her she’ll have to shave her pubic hair in order to appear in his magazine, Wilkins eventually finds favour when he makes Liz the focus of a western themed photo shoot and even invites her for a night on the town, it all sounds suspiciously like a real life anecdote from the original Kamera’s heyday in the late 50s, since as the all new Kamera proved, models no longer had to shave in order to get into “Mr.Wilkin’s” magazines.

There are several recognizable models/actress in the magazine, but rather than post the pictures here I’ll post them in their own threads:

Sue Bond
http://www.vintage-erotica-forum.com...6&postcount=49
Maria Frost
http://www.vintage-erotica-forum.com...87&postcount=3
One of the Collinson Twins
http://www.vintage-erotica-forum.com...2&postcount=32
Monique Devereaux
http://www.vintage-erotica-forum.com...9&postcount=10


Lastly heres an advert from a David Sullivan magazine circa 1978, for several big bust 8mm films Marks must have sold onto Sullivan, the actress referred to as “Vivetta” in the films' synopsis is better known as Clyda Rosen

[jimxx]

Does anyone know a rapidshare link for "The Small World of Sammy Lee" 1962?

[argoman]

Screenshots from “Dolly Mixture” (1973), which yours truly has recently had transferred from 8mm. Followed by a write-up I did for another website, I’m sure no one reading this here needs explaining who Clyda Rosen is, but the write-up might be of interest to those into the history side of these things.





























Dolly Mixture (Harrison Marks, 1973)

I first became aware of this vintage slice of Harrison Marks directed smut several years ago after reading a brief account of the film by its lead actor -who goes by the internet pseudonym of “Short Jack Gold”- which immediately caught my attention with his description of the film’s outlandish, horror themed, plot and some of the saucy goings-on that happened on set (more about that later on), all of which convinced me that Dolly Mixture must be something quite special in the Harrison Marks pantheon.

Dolly Mixture hails from Marks’ years in the wilderness, in-between directing the feature films The Nine Ages of Nakedness in 1969 and Come Play With Me in 1976. Marks made ends meet during this, what might be called his “blue” period, by shooting short sex films for the 8mm market, that were initially available through his Maximus Film Club company. Like many of the Maximus shorts, Dolly Mixture was filmed in two different versions, a full colour hardcore version for the overseas market, and -shot a week later- a black and white softcore version for the British market. The colour hardcore version, known in Germany as Vor Geilheit Kochen, which I’m lead to believe, roughly translates as “Boiling from Hornyness”, is by far the easiest of the two versions to see, having surfaced in Australia, and then been widely bootlegged on DVD and over the internet. The soft version, on the other hand, hadn’t been seen since its release on the now antiquated 8mm format in the 1970s, and was considered something of a “lost” film. So when an 8mm copy surfaced about a year ago, I immediately snatched it up, despite not really having a clue what I was going to do with it, and having no means of actually watching it, my family’s 8mm projector having melodramatically burst into flames when we last tried to get it to work, more than a decade ago.

The initial plan was to send it to my silent, partner-in-crime in this scheme and have him run it on his 8mm projector and film the image with a camcorder, an el cheapo way of doing it, but after he expressed concerns about his projector’s ability to work, and not wishing to risk destroying the film and possibly sending him to the burns department, we knocked that idea on the head in favour of Plan B; having the film professionally transferred to DVD. The search was then on to find a company that would be prepared to turn a blind eye to transferring “adults only” material, as luck would have it a fellow collector had recently used an internet based company to have the Harrison Marks/Mary Millington film “Sex is My Business” transferred from Super 8mm to DVD, so as they clearly didn’t have a problem with that kind of thing we went with the same company on Dolly Mixture. Given that their business seems to mostly involve the tedious task of transferring people’s moldy old holiday films to DVD, arguably they should have paid us for giving them something far more titillating to transfer, but there you go.

Short Jack Gold first met Harrison Marks in January 1972, after answering an advert Marks had placed in Time Out Magazine. His initial interview would prove a memorable introduction into the World of Harrison Marks, with Short Jack Gold turning up at Marks’ studio in Faulkner`s Alley just off Cowcross St in Farringdon, and being greeted by the sight of two gigging, mini skirted dolly birds leaving Marks’ studio, followed by the great man himself drunkenly calling after them "lovely darlings.. see you next week". Marks cited too much competition in the soft core/ glamour photography realm as the reason he was now making more explicit material, and preferred to shoot his clandestine hardcore films in his studio, which at that moment was being transformed into a French Bistro set by Tony Roberts, who had been Marks’ set designer since the late 1950s. On the set of his first Marks film -entitled “Bistro Bordello”- Short Jack Gold soon encountered the often mundane reality of porno filmmaking with lots of doing nothing moments, waiting around for Marks to reload the film and set up the next scene, mixed in with the immediate pressure on the male actors to get it up and go into sex the moment Marks yelled for “action”. Several of the other actors, despite being veterans of London’s insular hardcore scene, were having problems maintaining their erections, and just to add to the chaos Roberts’ set also included several crates of wine which started to disappear as the shoot went on, “god knows how much booze they (the crew) drank” Marks later recalled, although in all likelyhood he probably polished off a few bottles himself.

Bistro Bordello, sometimes referred to as “A Night at the Bistro Bordello”, evolved around an innocuous British couple -one half of which was played by Marks’ bodybuilder friend Howard “Vanderhorn” Nelson - dining out at a French Bistro, and somehow remaining unaware that the other customers are indulging in a 15 person orgy around them. Present in the female cast were the two dolly birds Short Jack Gold had encountered leaving Marks studio, as well as a shapely Hungarian model who is now a world famous sexologist. Marks had many tall tales to tell about the making of Bistro Bordello including a story about him hiring a professional accordionist to sit around the set and play music to get the cast in the mood, which, funny as it sounds is all nonsense, since Short Jack Gold -who appeared in both hard and soft versions of that film- remembers the cast were simply fucking to a backing tape. Still Marks was very proud of Bistro Bordello, especially his attempts at evoking a 1930s period setting, claiming “when I saw the rushes, I thought, fucking hell, this looks like it was shot in 1938” and went on to compare the film to the works of Rene Clair. The behind-the-scenes snapshot Short Jack Gold provided me with, which depicts Marks shooting a threesome with his Bolex camera and Mr. Gold with his head between a woman’s legs, doesn’t exactly scream a Rene Clair influence to me, but maybe I should reserve judgment till if/when the film resurfaces.

A year later Short Jack Gold was back reporting for stud duty for Dolly Mixture (which was shot in 73, but is copyrighted 1974). Despite only being required to appear in the soft version of the film, Dolly Mixture would prove to be equally as wild as his Bistro Bordello experience, thanks to the film’s frankly bonkers, Frankenstein inspired plot, and more importantly the exploits of his co-star, the legendary Clyda Rosen, a diminutive, Israeli model who boasted a super-sized chest, and downstairs what was once described as a “very large and lengthy tummy hair trail”. At the time of filming Dolly Mixture, Clyda was just starting to make waves in the British porn scene, appearing as a topless cover girl for magazines like Fiesta and 264 Juicy Jugs as well as starring in several under the counter productions.

Dolly Mixture is mainly set in a Mad Professor’s Laboratory and opens with his longhaired, hunchbacked assistant stumbling about the Lab. Had Marks shot the film with sound, chances are this character would have been called ‘Igor’. There are cutaways to such “every mad professor should have one” items such as a beating heart in a tank and a crawling, severed hand trapped in a glass jar, as well as numerous toy dolls scattered about the laboratory. Toying with the dolls, the Hunchback soon finds something far more interesting to play with in the form of the Professor’s nude female creation (Clyda), who the Prof has put together from various female body parts, hence “Dolly Mixture”. Groping her breasts while making imbecilic faces of delight, the Hunchback is quickly interrupted by the Professor himself, who shoos the horny halfwit away. It seems the professor shares the Hunchback’s odd fixation with dolls and throughout the film is seen carrying a female doll dressed as a bride who he holds one-way conversations with, while out in the hallway the Hunchback throws a tantrum and peeks through the keyhole. Enter Short Jack Gold playing an Insurance Investigator who has turned up to price the Professor’s belongings. Given the guided tour of the place Short Jack is startled -and who wouldn’t be- by the nude, large chested Israeli lady lying lifeless in the middle of the Professor’s lab. While the Insurance Investigator is distracted, the naughty professor switches on his sex-ray machine, which brings to life Ms. Rosen, who is immediately all over the -not entirely resistant- insurance investigator, pulling off his clothes and dragging him to the floor for some frenzied, multi-positioned sex. As well as his sex ray machine, it seems the Professor also has some weird power over his dolls, who are shown bonking away in positions that match up to that of their human counterparts. If Clyda and Short Jack Gold seem to be enjoying themselves a little too much during these scenes there is good reason, as Mr. Gold explains “halfway through our shoot, Clyda got a bit carried away and allowed full sex. She was that hot!". While the pair of them go at it on the laboratory floor, the two actors playing the Hunchback and the Professor seem to be in competition with each other over who can deliver the more hammy performance, with the Professor ranting on to his doll companion and the Hunchback rolling his eyes, playing with Clyda’s hair, and doing what in less politically correct times used to be referred to as “spazzing”. All this not so simulated sex and overacting eventually proves to be too much for the sex ray machine which ends up exploding, causing Clyda and Short Jack Gold to flee, and killing the Professor in the process. After the dust has settled, the film’s surprisingly eerie final shot reveals the bride doll has taken on human characteristics while the dead Professor now has the doll’s features, and sports Pierrot-like make-up. What does it all mean? only Harrison Marks himself knew for sure.

Both Clyda and Tony Roberts really go beyond the call of duty in Dolly Mixture, with Clyda delivering a super sexy turn, displaying the sort of enthusiasm that shows why Ms. Rosen is very, very fondly remembered by her male co-stars. Tony Roberts -a real unsung hero in Marks’ story - also knocked up a sensational set for the film, full of bubbling over test tubes, posters of anatomical drawings, bottles full of potions, human skulls and body parts that really add horror film flavor to the proceedings. Marks may have been known to complain that Roberts’ sets "cost a bleedin packet", but Dolly Mixture stands as a fully realized amalgamation of British horror film and dirty movie because of them. Dolly Mixture also offers a peak at some of the porn stars and oddballs that formed Marks’ acting repertory company in the 1970s. Both Clyda and Short Jack Gold are at the outset of their long careers in porn here, with many more appearances in Marks’ productions to follow that would see Mr. Gold going on to occupy the same cinematic territory in Marks’ under the counter productions as Robin Askwith and Christopher Neil did in soft core comedies. The chap who plays the Hunchback was also something of a regular in Marks’ films -albeit in non-balling roles- having played one of the hippies in Marks’ hardcore customs office farce “Die Lollos” and part of the rock band in the groupie themed “Autograph Hunter”. In real life he was actually the boyfriend of one of Marks’ models, and while she must have given him the go-ahead to drool over and fondle Clyda’s boobs in the softcore version of Dolly Mixture, he required a body double for his character’s more explicit involvement in the hardcore version. Leaving his body double the less than enviable task of having his lower torso, including his dick, covered in green make-up to match up with the Hunchback’s back from the dead complication. The two different actors who play the Professor in the soft and hard versions of the film are both quite a sight as well, the actor in the hard version fits the ID of your generic horror movie crazy old codger down to a tee, sporting a disheveled appearance, unkempt beard and a look of genuine madness in his bleary, bloodshot eyes, for the soft version the role was played by a much younger, and noticeably more agile actor, hidden under a wig, a fake beard and heavy, ghost face make-up, resembling Alan Badel in The Stranger Left No Card. Aside from Clyda, Dolly Mixture also boasts a surprise appearance from another diminutive, furry, much loved character, in the form of Paddington Bear, or rather a doll of Paddington Bear, who makes his unlikely XXX debut here as part of the Hunchback’s extensive doll collection. At one point Paddington is even seen posed in the background of the sex scenes, looking on at Clyda, almost disapprovingly.

While its hard to take Dolly Mixture as anything other than silly, horny fun acted out for your average 1970s 8mm film enthusiast’ s delight, given Marks’ frosty relationship with the Taxman, or as he referred to them “the Tax Bastards”, fuelled even more by his 1970 bankruptcy, its tempting to view the Professor getting one over on the Insurance Investigator by zapping him with the sex ray machine, as Marks’ revenge fantasy against such nosy, paperwork obsessed types. Although whether being stripped bare and shagged senseless by Frank-en-Clyda is really a “punishment” is arguable. At times the goateed mad professor even looks like a horror film caricature of Marks himself, running about his laboratory with the power to have people strip off their clothes and act out any wild, impromptu sex scene at his demand. A comic take on Marks’ position in life and his vendetta against the taxmen then? or just an excuse to film Clyda’s enormous boobs bouncing around a Mad Prof’s lab? Either way Dolly Mixture and its Maximus kin kept its director in booze and cigarettes during a rough period.

By the mid-Seventies Marks had managed to find some regular employment providing photoshoots for David Sullivan’s top shelf magazines, an association that led to Marks being given the chance to direct Come Play With Me, as well as the opportunity to sell the rights to many of his 8mm productions - including Bistro Bordello, Sex is My Business and Santa’s Coming- to Sullivan, who subsequently advertised them for sale through his magazines. Dolly Mixture ended up in a Sullivan Advert along with several other Marks 8mm films featuring top-heavy actresses, billed collectively as “Harrison Marks Home Movies with Whopper Stars” (‘these films have been specially selected to appeal to the man who delights in the big ones’ claimed Sullivan’s spiel). Exactly who owns the rights to Dolly Mixture these days seems something of a mystery, its not one of only a handful of Maximus productions held by his estate “George Harrison Marks Enterprises LTD”. A question mark also hangs over whether Sullivan kept hold of the rights to these films as well, given that he never did anything with these acquisitions after the 8mm market gave way to the video era. The absence of any footage from, or even a mention of, the Mary Millington starring “Sex is My Business” in Sullivan’s numerous print and film tributes to her in the early 1980s, would seem to strongly suggest he no longer held the rights to these 8mm films by then, since Sullivan was actively recycling just about every picture or scrap of film he had of Mary Millington at that point.

So with these films seemingly in unloved and forgotten limbo, and with no equivalent of Something Weird Video or Alpha Blue Archives existing in the UK, it seems its left to the die-hard aficionados to personally save the likes of Sex is My Business and Dolly Mixture from the jaws of extinction and get them known about again, and when the opportunely came my way to preserve a bit of the dirty film legacy of a sweary, heavy drinking, glamour photographer turned pornographer, and his horny, hairy, hebraic honey of a star, well, how could I resist a challenge like that???

[argoman]

Some very early Marks pictures of a barely recognizable Pamela Green (I’m only convinced its her due to the caption and her hairdo matching up to the pics in the first post of her VE thread)





These are from the October 1956 edition of "Fiesta", during a 1955-56 period where the Marks/Green team were supplying photos to girlie magazines, before earning enough cash to start up their own ‘Kamera’ magazine. As the Ad from the magazine shows, they were already taking the first steps to going it alone by selling slides and a booklet through their Gerrard Street Studio.

[argoman]

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





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

[argoman]

About the “Sexy British Adventures” DVD, it consists of 2 Harrison Marks shorts, and 4 Super 8mm versions of 70s’ British soft core comedy films, which were abridged versions of these feature films aimed at the 8mm market, so you get 10-15 minutes of “selected highlights” from Let’s Get Laid and all three of Stanley Long’s “Adventures of a” series.

Of the two GHM films; “Three’s Company” is an early 60s, Kamera era production, Val Jones plays a serving maid/prostitute who makes a deal with Stuart Samuels to get screwed by three men, as the film is from the early 60s all you see is a guy jumping on the bed, then cartoonish title cards proclaiming “wow”, “phew” almost like a soft core version of the 60s Batman series, before we cut back to the guy getting dressed. This continues until her final customer is revealed to be a geriatric old codger, who she tries to shoo away, then hits over the head. The gurning, elderly actor who plays that part was something of a comedic regular in these things, having played a window cleaner in the Kamera film “A Flat Spin” and a caretaker in “Exhibition”. Both those films are from 1960, so I’d imagine Three’s Company dates from around that time. Its all extremely coy today, but I suppose its notable as the earliest Kamera film to even hint at sex, given most simply depict striptease routines.








The second GHM film on the disc is “Academy Adventures”, who the DVD box credits as starring “hot little number Robin Starch”. Nether that title, or the model, is mentioned at the official Harrison Marks site, but its definitely a film by Marks as it uses the same set as his 8mm film Magnificent Monique, and Robin even wears the same lingerie as Monique Deveraux did in that film. It a simple striptease film, probably dating from the late 60s, Robin actually looks a bit like Sue Bond with a bad tan.








The two Marks films seem to be quite rare, but with the majority of the films on the DVD available in full length, much better quality versions elsewhere (Let’s Get Laid is out on UK DVD, and the Adventures films as a Box-Set), its hardly an essential purchase.

[argoman]

screenshots and reviews of three more of Harrison Marks’ short films, recently transferred from 8mm to DVD by yours truly….


The Casting Couch (1970)

The Casting Couch is one of the earliest of Marks’ Maximus productions, which were advertised in Continental Film Review magazine from October 1969, and throughout 1970. The Casting Couch sees Marks’ skinny, anorexic looking male lead from “The Ecstasy of Oral Love” playing a randy photographer who when not using his studio as a love nest is whisking his models away for more of the same at “Ye Olde Halfway Inn”. In the twist ending the photographer is shocked to spot one of his earlier conquests checking into the Halfway Inn for a dirty weekend of her own, with an old codger for company (played in an exaggerated fashion by a young actor wearing a beard and using a cane.) The early Maximus productions are somewhat unique among Marks’ films for having settings and characters reappear from film to film, with Ye Olde Halfway Inn used for more malarkey in Marks’ 8mm film Halfway Inn (starring The Collinson Twins), and the fake old codger and his dolly bird companion making bare-assed return appearances in “Cue for Two” which, in case you were wondering, centers around a nude snooker game.

With full disclosure from the female cast, simulated sex and blowjobs, The Casting Couch illustrates just how far Marks was pushing the boundaries, compared to the simple striptease films he was making a few years earlier, and sees GHM actively playing up the sort of casting couch scenarios he had tried to distance himself from in the mid-sixties. The Maximus adverts in Continental Film Review abruptly ended in October 1970, when Marks got in trouble with the law and was charged with sending obscene materials through the post resulting in an obscenity trial in 1971.














Santa’s Coming (197?)

Undaunted by having his collar felt over his new type of production, Marks continued to turn out Maximus films into the 70s, including this X-rated yuletide story, made circa 1974. Santa’s Coming concerns a lonely housewife, whose Christmas presents from her husband all turn out to be sex aids, including a vibrator and -in a self-referencing touch- a copy of Marks’ 1967 biography “The Naked Truth About Harrison Marks”. Obviously unimpressed by her buzzing new friend and Marks collection of tall tales, she retires to the bedroom to bounce about on her bed in frustration, unaware that her home is being broken into by a burglar (Short Jack Gold), who is conspicuously dressed as Santa Claus!! As you might expect, when this immoral Santa spots a nude woman in bed, thoughts of ransacking the place are all cast aside, as are his clothes and fake beard. In a twist straight out of a Confessions or Adventures film, her husband arrives home drunk, forcing Short Jack Gold to hide under the bed until hubby passes out, before making his escape through the window, minus the loot, but in good enough sprits to offer a wink and a thumbs up to the audience, worthy of any Robin Askwith or Barry Evans character.










Randy Toole - In Person (197?)

From the groovy early 70s, “Randy Toole -in Person” is Marks’ spin on the groupie phenomenon, which had also provided material for the Derek Ford/Stanley Long team with Groupie Girl, and Lindsay Shonteff with Permissive. Randy Toole, played by an actor recognizable from the Clyda Rosen loop “Femmes Cherchent Bon-Baiseurs”, is a famous rock star who, so a newspaper headline tells us, has just received an ovation at the London palladium, and is now hiding out at his townhouse and working on his new album. While his entourage try to keep Randy’s adoring fan base- all two of them- at bay, a pair of groupies manage to break into Randy’s house, while one gets collared in the kitchen by Randy’s West Indian assistant and has to make do with shagging him on the kitchen floor, and other groupie manages to meet her pop idol and ends up receiving more than just his John Hancock!!

In the films comedy punch line the two groupies decide to immortalize the occasion by taking a nude snapshot of a passed out Randy and his assistant, and then send it to a tabloid who publishes it on their cover the next day with the headline “Randy Toole appears naked in the West End”.

Randy Toole in Person, was also filmed in a hardcore version for the German market called “Autograph Hunter”, with a couple of cast changes, including a different Randy Toole in the lead, and Clyda Rosen cast as one of the Groupies. Present in both versions is ex-bodybuilder, Marks regular and current day registered missing person, Howard “Vanderhorn” Nelson, in a non-sex role as Randy’s Roadie. A role Howard plays behind dark glasses in the softcore version, and required a further blond wig to play the part again in the hard version, since generally you find the more explicit the film, the more elaborate Vanderhorn’s disguises become, but as per usual The Horn’s “built like a brick shithouse” physique tends to give the game away.