THE GIRL WHO WAS DEATH was silly
Anonymous
Danger Man meets the Averngers pastiche
I thought it had a bit of Get Smart in there too.
BTW what was the convertible he drove?
Not the Lotus KAR120C as usual.
Moor Larkin
If you ever get the chance to watch an old 1967 movie,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061452/ , you'll see where Tomblin got
much of his inspiration from I think, despite the popular notion that
it stemmed from some unused Danger Man script or other.....
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/
John W Kennedy
Not to mention "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", "The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.",
"The Double Life of Henry Phyfe", "Our Man Flint" -- possibly "In Like
Flint" and "The President's Analyst", too; I don't have adequate
timelines.
--
John W Kennedy
"The grand art mastered the thudding hammer of Thor
And the heart of our lord Taliessin determined the war."
-- Charles Williams. "Mount Badon"
Ignis Fatuus
Casino Royale was a pastiche of the 60s spy craze. Woody Allen
contributed to the script and also produced his own pastiche by
redubbing a Japanese production... see What's Up Tiger Lilly.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061177/
Ken Adam's Bond designs, Joseph Losey's 1966 Modesty Blaise, the Dean
Martin 'Matt Helm' series and the James Coburn 'Flint' movies were all
part of the ferment that preceded The Prisoner. Modesty Blaise in
particular is a direct precursor of the Prisoner style.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modesty_Blaise_(1966_film)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060708/
Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) is pretty much part of the same genre.
Moor Larkin
much to do with The Prisoner, outside of this one episode and the
1966/67 Casino Royale has a thematic similarity with that one episode
that seems almost unquestionable.
This imdb reviewer of Casino Royale saves me a lot of typing:
"This is no light hearted comedy. It seems to be obsessed with sex and
death; both physical death and other forms of death. "
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061452/board/thread/134368562?d=134368562&p=1#134368562
It may of course have been Terence Feely who saw the movie, rather
than David Tomblin, but there a long car chase sequence in Casino
Royale, which is cinematically copied by the car chase in The Girl who
was Death, which makes me think that Tomblin had certainly seen the
movie too.
Andrew Benham
> BTW what was the convertible he drove?
> Not the Lotus KAR120C as usual.
Not the usual Lotus 7, but a Lotus Elan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Elan
roger
news:539e224f-8b14-4a5d...@h25g2000vba.googlegroups.com...
> It may of course have been Terence Feely who saw the movie, rather
> than David Tomblin,
Surely it would be Patrick McGoohan who saw the movie, as he claims to have
generated the outline for the script?
Moor Larkin
> Surely it would be Patrick McGoohan who saw the movie, as he claims to have
> generated the outline for the script?
Given that Orson Welles was in "Casino Royale", I wouldn't be
surprised if you are right. However, McGoohan appears to have given
Tomblin the writing credit, so it seems only fair to believe him.
It's
an interesting episode though and actually got me started blogging as
it happens, because there is a lot more in there than pastiche if you
actually pay attention.
Howvever, ultimately I think McGoohan's main interest in that
particular episode was to use it as his method of "breaking down the
fourth wall": http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2009/05/episode-made-to-orde...
Other than that I think he was happy just to have fun with it, but he
ensured such dialogue as this got in there:
"Is your heart pounding? Your hand shaking? That's Love my darling."
Which sort of thing you probably didn't get in the average episode of
Avengers, or maybe you did.......... I'm sure someone will tell me if
I am being overly fatuous and Terence Feely had some influence
too... :-))))
roger
> Given that Orson Welles was in "Casino Royale", I wouldn't be
> surprised if you are right. However, McGoohan appears to have given
> Tomblin the writing credit, so it seems only fair to believe him.
McGoohan: I couldn't conceive of 26 stories, because it would be spreading
it very thin, but we did manage, over a week-end, with my writers, to cook
up ten more outlines, and eventually we did 17, but it should be 7.
Troyer: But you did ten in two days? Ten outlines?
McGoohan: Over a week-end, yes. Outlines, I mean a sort of...7 or 8 page
format. (Troyer chuckles.)
So there you have it, except of course you don't, because the most quoted
and least helpful Patrick McGoohan interview is Warner Troyer's, which
contains more red herrings, garden paths and downright inaccuracies than any
other.
McGoohan demands a more challenging interviewing technique. James Lipton is
probably a softer interviewer even than Troyer but, had Patrick McGoohan
found himself Inside The Actors Studio, and it's a great shame that he never
did, at least the questions would have been more interesting and the answers
thereby more revealing. Peter Falk' session was a gem ("If heaven exists,
what would you like to hear God say when you arrive?"). His close friend's
would have been diamond.
Moor Larkin
> So there you have it, except of course you don't, because the most quoted
> and least helpful Patrick McGoohan interview is Warner Troyer's, which
> contains more red herrings, garden paths and downright inaccuracies than any
> other.
McGoohan's sharply accurate recall about the final seconds of that
show he had made so long before impressed me. Graeme is presumably a
keen fan of sorts, but that important detail seemed to have escaped
his attention, whereas McGoohan had the keenest recall of a detail
that wasn't even especially pertinent to what he was chatting about to
Troyer. It would have been very easy to imagine McGoohan making the
same error of memory that Graeme has made (and many other fans make),
but McGoohan didn't.
McGoohan's story to Troyer about Rover originally being a deformed go-
kart was disbelieved by *fans* unto the early 1990's when someone
finally found some footage/photos of the machine McGoohan had
reminisced about in 1977. Prior to that many fans seem to have
maintained he made the whole thing up.
I can see no especial problem with the business of 10 other outlines.
He wasn't claiming to have written 10 other scripts, just that he
figured out ten other thoughts about subjects/themes for 10 other
episodes. Reading Troyer is a little different to watching it anyhow,
because when McGoohan says that about "outlines" he is clearly trying
to play down what he had actually done to Troyer - making clear he had
not written ten scripts - just ten other ideas. If he was self-
aggrandizing he would probably have said he had figured ten other
scripts and physical history would have proved him to be talking
bunkum. In fact, most things he said stand up to reasonable scrutiny,
even with all the vast amounts of third-party rabbiting by people on
the periphery of his project.
Incidentally, he never explained what the original seven ideas were
either but that doesn't seem to have prevented dozens of *official*
and *expert* books/dvd's naming those episodes over the years. A clear
case of self-aggrandizement on the fans part, to my eyes.
I can agree that McGoohan adapted the detailed plotting of "The Girl
who was Death" from whatever he may have had in mind. Indeed, my point
about it's being influenced by Casino Royale would make that view
inevitable anyhow, but I can see no especial reason that he might not
have planned Episode 15 to be the episode to break through the fourth
wall. Kicking in the fourth wall was a very fashionable dramatic
device in the Sixties anyhow, although McGoohan as usual was very
subtle and didn't so much kick down that wall, as merely render it
visible to any adult viewers watching: "Goodnight Children.
Everywhere."
roger
> McGoohan's sharply accurate recall about the final seconds of that
> show he had made so long before impressed me.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hadn't he just viewed that scene as part of the
presentation to which he refers elsewhere in the Troyer interviewer? So the
detail would be fresh in his mind. After all, he was unable to recall at
another point the title of an episode which he himself had written.
> same error of memory that Graeme has made (and many other fans make),
I think the recall of the end of another episode, 'A, B & C', has given one
of this forum's contributors a problem in the past.
> I can see no especial problem with the business of 10 other outlines.
> He wasn't claiming to have written 10 other scripts, just that he
> figured out ten other thoughts about subjects/themes for 10 other
> episodes.
You can get an awful lot of thoughts into 7 or 8 pages per episode. One
would expect the plot outline, reasonably fleshed characters, several core
dramatic moments, keynote dialogue ...
scoville
No, of course you can't - your worship at the Altar Of McGoohan has
blinded you to the fact that the claim is clearly nonsense.
"We did manage, over a week-end, with my writers, to cook up ten more
outlines"
Firstly, who exactly were these "writers" ? McGoohan famously had
barely any contact with most of the writers on the show (Tomblin and
Markstein obviously excepted). The idea that he had a bunch of them in
the same room barnstorming ideas is absurd.
Secondly, it is extremely unlikely that McGoohan had an initial seven
storylines mapped out before production began on the show and that a
further ten outlines were then developed. It's a story he made up on
the spot during the Troyer interview.
And when exactly was this writing "weekend" ? It had to be very early
in the production process if not before production had actually
started. If so, why do none of the writers on the show recall either
being at this workshop "weekend", or recall being handed the "7 or 8
page" outlines to develop into full-blown scripts ?
I don't buy it for a second.
Of course since it came from the mouth of He Whose Every Utterance Was
Gospel, I'm sure you'll continue to believe it no matter what the
evidence states.
Scoville.
Moor Larkin
>
> - Show quoted text -
Well, I certainly hope you feel better after that scoldy rant... :-)))
Unlike you, I don't seek the *perfect truth* in the utterances of the
obvious auteur of The Prisoner. I can only assume by "writers" he was
referring to David Tomblin, himself and probably George Markstein,
seeing as the latter was supposed to be the script editor. I don't
believe that he literally had seven densely-written pages for ten more
episodes (as Roger seems to visualise so literally). I can certainly
believe he jotted out a few more *concepts* .... Ideas for things like
"lobotomies" or "subliminal learning* - stuff like that. All very
current stuff in those days.
Do you believe he had ten pages for even one? He mentions having forty
pages to present to Grade. I've seen claims that years later Markstein
claimed to have an even bigger portfolio ! Sixty pages !!...... Size
matters in these debates I guess.... :-))))
However the only *guide* that's ever come to public light is a four-
page scrap of paper typed on George's typewriter.... and that seems to
never have been seen by anyone but George. Whatever was or wasn't
produced seems never to have reached the eventual writers employed. As
my most recent blog points out:
Vincent Tilsley wrote Chimes of Big Ben, the fifth episode to enter
production. Tilsey is quoted, "Yes, I gather that there was a writers
guide to this series that I’ve heard about. I myself never saw it. I
just had George telling me his concept of it……….. I didn’t at that
time understand that it was going to be a different Number Two in each
episode. "
Another of the first writers was Anthony Skene, with Dance of the
Dead.
The Prisoner was generally a bastard……. "I saw not one piece of paper.
The show was a cosmic void."
The writer of the seventh episode to enter production (McGoohan having
written the sixth for himself) was Terence Feely, with The Schizoid
Man. "McGoohan sent Markstein around to visit Feely and while the
script-editor could not furnish a writers guide he did explain about
Portmeirion"
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/
What seems eminently proveable is that the script editor was doing a
pretty rubbish job.
But to return to your main point. the issue of Mcgoohan's ten other
script ideas would be easier to wonder about, if anyone even knew what
his *seven* were. I feel certain they were not the seven quoted by the
fan-base over the years, becasue Mcgoiohan denied it; I guess I'm just
such a sucker for his stories though huh? However, if we don't even
know what the seven he liked the best are, how can we imagine he was
wrong about the other ten? Which ten ?
For the record, it is obvious that McGoohan would not have had
explicit outlines of episodes, but rather concepts... ideas upon which
an episode might be based. In the end, several episodes ended up
really just siblings of one another anyhow..... Schizoid and Forsake
are both playing with different angles of the same idea of
personalities and bodies; Returns and Chimes are both playing with
escapes that turned out not to be escapes; Free for All and Funeral
are both tugging at notions of *who* is in charge and why. Fallout
was plainly not written but all along he clearly knew who Number One
had to be ... "ou are Number Six", he lives at house Number One - all
that celver stuff proves that. So I can imagine his outline for
episode 17 being just two words: "Last
episode"......... :-)))))))))))))
You are of course entitled not to believe a word he says, but if you
do believe in the seven, I can see no especial reason not to believe
in the other ten. I think at the end of the day he had a concept and
enough confidence to say to Grade that he could do 17. Certainly if he
*had* to do 13, it would not have been so difficult for him to simply
assume to himself he could find another four in the coming months.
There's a whole universe of possible compromises with *truth* here.
What seems absolutely certain to me is that if he was struggling to
find as many as he did, he would never in a million years have
consented to doing 26 or 39 episodes which I know you like to believe
he started out planning. I find that idea far more preposterous than
that he and his *writers* could scratch out ten more *outlines* over a
weekend. Maybe his wife helped, she is a bright girl.
scoville
So you're now claiming that a weekend meeting took place between
McGoohan, Tomblin and "possibly Markstein" and they managed to write
single word concepts for a further ten shows ? (Hardly a very
productive weekend, was it ?) To use your term, it was quite self
aggrandizing of McGoohan to then claim to have written "7 or 8 pages"
with "his" writers.
You then go on to claim that Markstein was doing a "pretty rubbish
job" by not communicating properly with the scriptwriters (a claim
that would have been laughed at by all the writers concerned,
incidentally).
So what happened to the ten "concepts" that were cooked up ? Wouldn't
McGoohan have been angry that Markstein hadn't passed on the fruits of
the weekend's labours to the writers concerned ?
You can't have it both ways. The meeting never took place.
Here's the scenario which is closest to the "truth" that you're
seeking. McGoohan wasn't much of an ideas man. Minor on-set
adjustments aside, writing-wise he only contributed three fully-
fledged scripts to the show. By his own admission, he even had trouble
coming up with the idea for one of those three. Markstein and his
writers contributed the majority of the ideas with the remainder
coming from Tilsley, Tomblin and Rakoff once Markstein had left the
show. Terence Feely recalls McGoohan saying "I don't know what [The
Prisoner] is about. The writers will decide what it's about when they
start writing".
"Unlike you, I don't seek the *perfect truth* in the utterances of the
obvious auteur of The Prisoner."
Oh really ? In that case why do you invariably give so much weight to
his utterances even when there is plenty of convincing evidence that
he was wrong ? You're taking two obviously nonsensical claims he made
and extrapolating them to infer that McGoohan had a hand in writing
the plot outlines for all seventeen episodes.
Scoville.
Brian Watson
"scoville" <scov...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:d2f17c79-1ca6-4250...@y23g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
> "I can see no especial problem with the business of 10 other
outlines."
> No, of course you can't - your worship at the Altar Of McGoohan has
blinded you to the fact that the claim is clearly nonsense.
> "We did manage, over a week-end, with my writers, to cook up ten more
outlines"
> Firstly, who exactly were these "writers" ? McGoohan famously had
barely any contact with most of the writers on the show (Tomblin and
Markstein obviously excepted). The idea that he had a bunch of them in
the same room barnstorming ideas is absurd.
Not necc in the same room (phones were in quite common use in the 1960s,
believe it or not), and "we" means any of his inner team could have been in
on the prcess.
> Secondly, it is extremely unlikely that McGoohan had an initial seven
storylines mapped out before production began on the show and that a
further ten outlines were then developed. It's a story he made up on
the spot during the Troyer interview.
That is absolute rubbish.
To get a series started (an idea he had been considering for some time,
let's remember) he would have needed AT LEAST 6/7 viable ideas, AND probably
draft scripts too, for his own peace of mind.
I'd bet that at the beginning he was brimfull of ideas for storylines.
> And when exactly was this writing "weekend" ? It had to be very early
in the production process if not before production had actually
started. If so, why do none of the writers on the show recall either
being at this workshop "weekend", or recall being handed the "7 or 8
page" outlines to develop into full-blown scripts ?
I doubt they WERE all in one place, as much as anything because they didn't
need to be.
> I don't buy it for a second.
Your prerogative.
> Of course since it came from the mouth of He Whose Every Utterance Was
Gospel, I'm sure you'll continue to believe it no matter what the
evidence states.
Circumstantially, it is VERY credible.
--
Brian
"Fight like the Devil, die like a gentleman."
www.imagebus.co.uk/shop
roger
news:HMudnf3o1d1VzlXR...@bt.com...
> To get a series started (an idea he had been considering for some time,
> let's remember) he would have needed AT LEAST 6/7 viable ideas, AND
> probably draft scripts too, for his own peace of mind.
We're back to 'the trouble with Troyer' again:
"and he (Lew Grade) says, "When can you start?"
I said Monday, on scripts."
So Troyer is told no scripts at the outset, but, if you're looking for a
middle ground, Jack Shampan, whom you would suppose neutral in the
who-created-The-Prisoner schism, recalls being given three or four scripts
at the start of his exercise.
roger
> I don't believe that he literally had seven densely-written pages for ten
> more episodes (as Roger seems to visualise so literally).
It was Patrick himself who proffered 7 or 8 pages per episode as his
weekend's achievement. As I said before, one would expect the plot outline,
reasonably fleshed characters, several core dramatic moments, and keynote
dialogue to make up some of those 70 or 80 pages.
Troyer: But you did ten in two days? Ten outlines?
McGoohan: Over a week-end, yes. Outlines, I mean a sort of...7 or 8 page
format. (Troyer chuckles.)
The chuckling continues.
:-)
Moor Larkin
> "Moor Larkin" <moorlar...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
I don't know why you've got such a beef about Troyer. McGoohan told
much the same story to you a year or two later. Presumably you cut the
chuckling out for that short space of time?
McGoohan's story stands up, if you choose to believe him. I'm unaware
of a single *fact* that disproves it. To take your earlier point about
Jack Shampan. You say Shampan mentions having three or more complete
scripts? He must have been employed very early on in order to have
created the sets the scripts depended upon. Andrew Pixley's research
book says they only had two complete scripts when they arrived in
Portmeirion in September 1966. Why did some of the very first writers
like Skene and Tilsley say they hadn't the faintest idea what the show
was about, if there were already three or four scripts they could have
been shown? The whole story is muddy. Every *witness* contradicts the
next one.
When you have conflicting *witnesses* one way to pick out the bones is
to consider their general credibility and consistency. McGoohan made
very clear back in 1966/67/68 articles that he was the auteur of the
show. His story never changed, although he quickly tired of telling
it. He was not ever a self-aggrandising character. He dismissed most
of his movies as "junk" and only ever seems to have liked his Disney
stuff and doing Danger Man. He never made any claims about *authoring*
any other show than The Prisoner, even though Peter Falk credited him
as being very influential in the various Columbo episodes he did.
Greifer/Markstein's stories are completely illogical and inconsistent.
Markstein was interviewed back in 1976 by a trade-paper, when he
resigned from ITV himself and makes not a mention of his time on that
196/67 show, which was after all his first job in TV after three
episodes of Danger Man.
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2009/08/mcgoohan-on-my-mind-ladies-and.html
He's been quoted by fan-babble over the years as "thinking up the
prisoner " on the train to or from Waterloo Station. He says McGoohan
*resigned* from doing Danger Man and then promptly wanted to do a John
Drake sequel, which is just a silly thing to say. He claimed to have
worked for newspapers that he never worked for (Stars & Stripes), and
seems to have allowed the gullible to believe that he was even
involved in British Intelligence, which is a complete joke and
certainly untrue because he worked on a USAFstaff newspaper in Ruislip
in the Fifties and early Sixties.
It's noticeable that it is generally the *writers* who seek to big-up
their own and Marksteins' *contribution*, yet a common complaint they
seem to have is that their original scripts are often changed (usually
for the worse in their opinion). Who changed them? Presumably not
their chum Markstein, who by the time of all those interviews in the
Seventies/Eighties was involved on the board of their trades union,
the "Writers Guild", as well as being Lloyd Shirley's Number Two at
Thames, and he had opened a Writers Agecy near the end of his life.
The whole farrago of writers tales stinks of butter being spread on
the right side of the bread quite frankly. They were certainly not
going to get any more work out of McGoohan were
they?....... :-)))))))))
Few of the production staff seem to have any no doubt where the
authorship ideas were coming from. Bernie Williams goes so far as to
say it was "all McGoohan". Ian Rakoff makes plain via John S Smith
that McGoohan was also intensely involved with the editing process.
Many of the episodes are virtual editing creations anyway, with their
mixing of stock footage and later studio work.
One very telling interview McGoohan did was the one on the BBC in
front of the very fans who supposedly were there to fete him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8-cp2yb43c
He opens with the most defensive of statements. I used to puzzle over
why he opened that way.
"I suppose I did a fair amount of things. I was executive producer, I
wrote a number of them, I directed a number of them, and thought it
up........ "
Reading what Scoville has to say, I can perfectly understand now that
he had probably already read some of the junk that was being
disseminated back then by chuckling scholars.
roger
> I don't know why you've got such a beef about Troyer.
Because, as I've said here before, he doesn't pick Patrick up on answers
that need challenging.
> You say Shampan mentions having three or more complete
> scripts? He must have been employed very early on in order to have
> created the sets the scripts depended upon. Andrew Pixley's research
> book says they only had two complete scripts when they arrived in
> Portmeirion in September 1966.
Quote from Jack Shampan in conversation with David Tomblin: "At the time I
was completing a film at Pinewood Studios and just about to go on holiday
when Patrick McGoohan contacted me and said they'd like me to come and have
a chat with them about doing a continuation of Danger Man. They were toying
with the idea of calling it The Prisoner and had some scripts already
completed - about four I should imagine. I took them back with me after the
meeting and, while I was on holiday, I prepared some thumbnail sketches and
came back just a couple of weeks prior to you buzzing off to Portmeirion to
do the location work. I collected an art department around me and we
produced the working drawings of the main sets, such as the living room
(Green Dome), control room and so forth, then came up to Portmeirion to show
you. Then we went back to MGM and had to really get cracking. I don't think
people realise the amount of mechanism in sets such as the control room,
which was in the "tank" underneath the stages. It was like a powerhouse, all
done by remotes on a panel which operated the activators, doors opening,
things coming up through the floor, revolving and so on."
> and then promptly wanted to do a John Drake sequel, which is just a silly
> thing to say.
But Shampan calls it a "continuation of Danger Man" too.
The problem we've all got at this distance from the event is that no one's
memory is perfect many years on. We can all make individual judgments and
assessments on what everyone involved says. Some are more consistent than
others, but we are free to draw our own conclusions.
> Few of the production staff seem to have any no doubt where the
> authorship ideas were coming from.
Sorry, that doesn't make sense as a sentence.
> Bernie Williams goes so far as to say it was "all McGoohan".
Yet as far as David Tomblin is concerned, it's all himself and George
Markstein: "Writing was a bit of a strange area for me, because I'd never
written before. Patrick came in one day and said, "I've seen Lew (Grade),
we've got the money, we've got the series, so write the first story". So I
got hold of George Markstein and we sat in a room for some time and
eventually came up with "Arrival". ... George Markstein is a fount of
information. He knew all the writers, so he'd bring them in and we'd talk,
sort of suggest a theme to them."
> One very telling interview McGoohan did was the one on the BBC in
> front of the very fans who supposedly were there to fete him:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8-cp2yb43c
It was screened on ITV, not BBC, and the fans were there to provide the
atmosphere. For most it was their only moment with McGoohan and is
remembered accordingly.
> He opens with the most defensive of statements. I used to puzzle over
> why he opened that way.
> "I suppose I did a fair amount of things. I was executive producer, I
> wrote a number of them, I directed a number of them, and thought it
> up........ "
He knew he only had a few minutes of screen time, so I'm sure he opened that
way because it was an accurate summary of the situation nearly twenty years
on. He had also been told by Mike Smith what the first question was going to
be, so he had had time to consider it and give a measured reply.
I don't really understand why some people are obsessed with who created The
Prisoner. There are so many factors involved in a tv series that the
"creator" might end up having a back seat. We've all seen shows with "based
on an idea by" in the title sequence. A tv show is a huge team effort. The
Prisoner is an enduring masterpiece because so many talented people were
involved. There's no way Patrick McGoohan could have done it all on his own
and there's no way he would pretend to nor have I ever seen him claim to.
The McGoohan-one-man-band church are entitled to their point of view, like
all beliefs, but tv shows are a joint effort and who created them doesn't
remotely bother me if the final product is brilliant and the participants
are rightly acknowledged in the credits, for example, "story editor" ...
Brian Watson
"roger" <roadN...@prizSPAM.biz> wrote in message
news:kd6dna2EfeQU4VPR...@brightview.co.uk...
> The McGoohan-one-man-band church are entitled to their point of view, like
> all beliefs, but tv shows are a joint effort and who created them doesn't
> remotely bother me if the final product is brilliant and the participants
> are rightly acknowledged in the credits, for example, "story editor" ...
I don't say he did it all, but I DO think he was THE executive decider and
that nothing significant happened without his say-so.
scoville
> On 31 Oct, 18:13, "roger" <roadNOs...@prizSPAM.biz> wrote:
>
>
>
> > "Moor Larkin" <moorlar...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:603d5b38-bcf1-4c10...@t20g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> book says they only had two complete scripts when they arrived in
> Portmeirion in September 1966.
For someone who claims to be interested in "facts", you get them wrong
yourself quite often.
There were five scripts completed before filming in Portmeirion began.
Pixley: "In addition to Arrival [...] and Free For All, two others
emerged which included location material to be shot at Portmeirion
during September; The Queen's Pawn by Gerald Kelsey and Dance of the
Dead by Anthony Skene".
Pixley: "Written over a period of about three weeks, the script [for
The Chimes of Big Ben] was only completed in late August, days before
the crew departed for location shooting in Portmeirion".
> Why did some of the very first writers
> like Skene and Tilsley say they hadn't the faintest idea what the show
> was about, if there were already three or four scripts they could have
> been shown?
Because they were approached early in the production process.
Pixley: "One morning, Vincent Tilsley received a phone call from
George Markstein, who wanted to come over and visit him in his flat in
St. John's Wood [...] This was at a stage in development of The
Prisoner when there was no format document, and all Markstein could
offer the prospective contributor was a script for Arrival".
>
> It's noticeable that it is generally the *writers* who seek to big-up
> their own and Marksteins' *contribution*, yet a common complaint they
> seem to have is that their original scripts are often changed (usually
> for the worse in their opinion).
>
As is obvious from The Prisoner Original Scripts books, changes to the
majority of the scripts were minor; usually involving the cutting of
small scenes and insignificant dialogue changes.
Pixley: "[Markstein] was pleased that none of his commissions had to
be substantially rewritten to enter production".
Scoville.
scoville
> "scoville" <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
>
> news:d2f17c79-1ca6-4250...@y23g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> > Secondly, it is extremely unlikely that McGoohan had an initial seven
>
> storylines mapped out before production began on the show and that a
> further ten outlines were then developed. It's a story he made up on
> the spot during the Troyer interview.
>
> That is absolute rubbish.
>
> To get a series started (an idea he had been considering for some time,
> let's remember) he would have needed AT LEAST 6/7 viable ideas, AND probably
> draft scripts too, for his own peace of mind.
>
> I'd bet that at the beginning he was brimfull of ideas for storylines.
Blimey, there's a rare sight - a Moor Larkin sympathizer ! We should
have you stuffed :o)
If the green lighting of The Prisoner had involved anyone other than
Lew Grade and Patrick McGoohan I'd be inclined to agree with you. But
the evidence suggests that only the broad concepts for the show were
established when McGoohan got the go-ahead. If he had six or seven
viable ideas or draft scripts, what happened to them ?
To reiterate, none of the writers commissioned early in the production
recall being given anything other than the basic concept of the series
to work with. If McGoohan was indeed brimming with ideas for
storylines, why weren't any of them passed on ? And given his
involvement in so many other aspects of the production, why did he
have very little contact with the writers ?
>
> Circumstantially, it is VERY credible.
>
Nope, I still don't buy it !
Scoville.
scoville
> "Moor Larkin" <moorlar...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:561d73b0-655b-460f...@x42g2000yqx.googlegroups.com...
>
>
> I don't really understand why some people are obsessed with who created The
> Prisoner. There are so many factors involved in a tv series that the
> "creator" might end up having a back seat. We've all seen shows with "based
> on an idea by" in the title sequence. A tv show is a huge team effort. The
> Prisoner is an enduring masterpiece because so many talented people were
> involved. There's no way Patrick McGoohan could have done it all on his own
> and there's no way he would pretend to nor have I ever seen him claim to.
> The McGoohan-one-man-band church are entitled to their point of view, like
> all beliefs, but tv shows are a joint effort and who created them doesn't
> remotely bother me if the final product is brilliant and the participants
> are rightly acknowledged in the credits, for example, "story editor" ...
I couldn't agree more. These latest attempts to belittle the
contributions of Markstein and the writers to the success of the show
are not only ridiculous, they just don't stand up to scrutiny.
Scoville.
Moor Larkin
> There were five scripts completed before filming in Portmeirion began. Pixley: "In addition to Arrival [...] and Free For All, two others emerged which included location material to be shot at Portmeirion during September; The Queen's Pawn by Gerald Kelsey and Dance of the Dead by Anthony Skene". Pixley: "Written over a period of about three weeks, the script [for The Chimes of Big Ben] was only completed in late August, days before the crew departed for location shooting in Portmeirion".
I fail to see how your confident assertion of "five scripts completed"
matches your own quote about "two others emerged". I would remind you
that Frank Maher is quoted as saying there were only two *complete*
scripts. These were plainly "Arrival" (with Guy Doleman) and the one
written by Paddy Fitz, "Free for All" (with Eric Portman). If Chimes
was *complete* before they went to Portmeirion, how come Leo McKern
never set foot in the place? Dance of the Dead was mapped out
evidently because that is why Mary Morris was there, but that episode
never really came together until much later in the production process,
having been famously *shelved* by McGoohan himself. The other episode
that evidently had some shape was Checkmate, but the fact that there
was no Number Two physically at Portmeirion, suggests again, that that
script was by no means *complete*.
On Nov 4, 1:44 pm, scoville <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Why did some of the very first writers like Skene and Tilsley say they hadn't the faintest idea what the show was about, if there were already three or four scripts they could have been shown? Because they were approached early in the production process. Pixley: "One morning, Vincent Tilsley received a phone call from George Markstein, who wanted to come over and visit him in his flat in St. John's Wood [...] This was at a stage in development of The Prisoner when there was no format document, and all Markstein could offer the prospective contributor was a script for Arrival".
So they had the script for the first episode but no format document?
This makes no sense and either way demonstrates Markstein as utterly
incompetent.
On Nov 4, 1:44 pm, scoville <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > It's noticeable that it is generally the *writers* who seek to big-up their own and Marksteins' *contribution*, yet a common complaint they seem to have is that their original scripts are often changed (usually for the worse in their opinion). As is obvious from The Prisoner Original Scripts books, changes to the majority of the scripts were minor; usually involving the cutting of small scenes and insignificant dialogue changes.
I assume you understand that the *Original* Scripts are no such thing.
They are the "Shooting Scripts" and as such had been revised many
times until deemed fit to pass to a director and cast. Plainly, there
would be little point in them existing at all if the eventual product
wasn't pretty similar. I'd love to see an "original" script but
plainly never will. The nearets you get to that are probably the ones
that never got made, such as "The Outsider". I would remind you again
that many of the writers complain about their "original" being changed
a lot, albeit they still respected the eventual product.
On Nov 4, 1:44 pm, scoville <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Pixley: "[Markstein] was pleased that none of his commissions had to be substantially rewritten to enter production".
It's also well-known that several scripts, *commissioned* by Markstein
were evidently rejected by McGoohan. There's at least four of them I
believe, possibly five, maybe even six - that would be cool if it were
true... :-)))
Completely unprompted at the time, in 1977, McGoohan said to Troyer:
"The first one I re-wrote. It came out...not the way I wanted"
On Nov 4, 1:44 pm, scoville <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
To reiterate, none of the writers commissioned early in the production
recall being given anything other than the basic concept of the series
to work with.
If the script editor wasn't briefing the writers, no wonder McGoohan
got fed up with him.
On Nov 4, 1:44 pm, scoville <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
If McGoohan was indeed brimming with ideas for storylines, why weren't
any of them passed on ? And given his involvement in so many other
aspects of the production, why did he have very little contact with
the writers ?
I seem to recall that Roger Parkes for one, was told by Markstein to
take his script direct to McGoohan. However that was probably
signifying that by then McGoohan had found he had to talk to the
writers himself, otherwise his show would never get made because the
bloke he'd employed to do the talking for him was hopeless and perhaps
obstructive.
On Nov 4, 1:44 pm, scoville <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
If the green lighting of The Prisoner had involved anyone other than
Lew Grade and Patrick McGoohan I'd be inclined to agree with you. But
the evidence suggests that only the broad concepts for the show were
established when McGoohan got the go-ahead. If he had six or seven
viable ideas or draft scripts, what happened to them ?
I would guess *they* were the glue that held the series together; the
consistent ideas that run throughout the show and make it a unity
rather than just 17 disconnected scripts. McGoohan also directly wrote
at least three scripts himself of course or did you forget
that? ......... ;-)))))))))
On Nov 4, 1:44 pm, scoville <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
These latest attempts to belittle the contributions of Markstein and
the writers to the success of the show are not only ridiculous, they
just don't stand up to scrutiny.
I wouldn't belittle the writers at all. Plainly, without them the show
would never have happened. A couple of them wrote more than one
script so equally plainly they enjoyed the commission too, whatever
they may have said since.
On Nov 4, 1:44 pm, scoville <scovi...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
If the green lighting of The Prisoner had involved anyone other than
Lew Grade and Patrick McGoohan I'd be inclined to agree with you. But
the evidence suggests that only the broad concepts for the show were
established when McGoohan got the go-ahead.
What evidence suggests anyone else was involved then? You seem to
accept that nobody else was involved because the show was agreed on
*broad concepts* only. I'm not quite sure what you are trying to
*prove* in that comment but it is a circularity and seems to *prove*
the opposite to your opinion, much like most of your other points.
Certainly Grade must have been presented with far more than a sequel
to "Danger Man" because in later years his favourite quote about that
meeting was: "It's so crazy it just might work!". I fail to see what
Grade would have found crazy about John Drake getting kidnapped. It
would have made perfect sense at the time.
I'm obliged to be seeing you.
roger
> So they had the script for the first episode but no format document?
> This makes no sense and either way demonstrates Markstein as utterly
> incompetent.
What was Markstein's brief from McGoohan?
> It's also well-known that several scripts, *commissioned* by Markstein
> were evidently rejected by McGoohan. There's at least four of them I
> believe, possibly five, maybe even six - that would be cool if it were
> true... :-)))
Have you any notion how preposterous the above reads. If it's "well-known",
please detail the scripts. You "believe" there's at least 4, "possibly" 5,
"maybe even" 6. Why didn't you add, "wouldn't it be gorgeous if there were
7?" and "it's not beyond the realms of my imagination that there were 8" and
"I've heard a fanclub rumour that there were 9"?
"That would be cool if it were true too"? Ye gods ...
Moor Larkin
> What was Markstein's brief from McGoohan?
Thereby hangs a thread or two. It seems reasonable to assume that both
Grade and McGoohan were not BOTH lying in later years and that
McGoohan did walk into Grades office on that Saturday morning with
SOMETHING on paper. McGoohan stated 40 pages I think.
What was given to Markstein? Markstein was an experienced journalist
and quite likely by then was on the fringes of influence in the
British trade union, Writers Guild, which he later came to be part of
the senior board of. McGoohan always maintained that he brought
Markstein into his operation because Markstein *had access* to
writers. McGoohan knew all about trades-unions and how the TV system
worked. I suspect that because McGoohan left his old friend and
partner to write Arrival with his new script editor, he anticipated
Markstein would absorb the ideas from his Everyman confidant. Then,
when the creative writers came on board Markstein would be capable of
editing those scripts so that they began to take form alongside one
another. If you take Markstein out of the *ceative* loop and treat him
as what he was - an editor of other people's output, then his role
makes perfect sense. As Markstein was a capable journalist, McGoohan
clearly accepted Markstein's talents at assembling words in an ordered
fashion, and with Tomblin's knowledge of the more arcane intricacies
of TV scripting, McGoohan possibly felt he had an ideal pair. McGoohan
indicated in his interview to you that in later years he had come to
accept that *management* was his really his forte so I have no doubt
he had later realised that his management process in 1966 had been
less than perfect.
It's important to remember that McGoohan was slightly *paranoid* about
his ideas for "The Prisoner" being pinched by other producers, and
cloaked his whole operation in as much secrecy as he could muster. I
don't think it was any coincidence that the two contemporaneous
productions "The Prisoner" and "Man in a Suitcase" both involved a
secret agent who suddenly was no agent anymore - however different
their riffs turned out to be. The walls of ITC were as porous as any
other. I daresay McGoohan didn't brief Markstein that much at all,
other than to ask him to find writers capable of writing tangents and
developments of Arrival, which would explain why several of them saw
this script but no brief. The way McGoohan casually replaced a
mechanical Rover machine with a *mythical* balloon (with no reference
to his scriopt editor that I've ever read mentioned) shows much about
McGoohan as not regarding Markstein as part of his creative process.
Clearly if Markstein was given no brief to give to the writers he
cannot be blamed for that, but then he shouldn't have bigged himself
up so much in later years as some kind of creative guru who gave those
writers *complex briefs* (Time Out - 1982) when he patently did
nothing of the sort.
On Nov 6, 10:47 am, "roger" <roadNOs...@prizSPAM.biz> wrote:
> Have you any notion how preposterous the above reads. If it's "well-known",
> please detail the scripts. You "believe" there's at least 4, "possibly" 5,
> "maybe even" 6. Why didn't you add, "wouldn't it be gorgeous if there were
> 7?" and "it's not beyond the realms of my imagination that there were 8" and
> "I've heard a fanclub rumour that there were 9"?
>
> "That would be cool if it were true too"? Ye gods ...
Oh for goodness sake, don't be such a pedant It is the various fan
club rumours and *discoveries* that confuse the issue so much. The two
*concrete* ones are by Kelsey and Farhi. However, John Kruse (of Hell
Drivers fame) claimed to have written a script for Markstein. Lewis
Greifer says he wrote one for the continuing adventures of the
prisoner. According to Andrew Pixley's book, Eric Mival wrote "story
treatments"; and in the same book it is recorded that Markstein said
someone called David Whittaker wrote him one about table tennis and
someone else called Donald Tosh wrote scenes for another about French
fliers. Incidentally, the Farhi account in Pixley's book has Markstein
phoning the writer asking him to produce a script in a week and that
the same script would be filmed a week later, if that account is true
it demonstrates again how out of his depth Markstein was.
6iao
roger
On Nov 6, 10:47 am, "roger" <roadNOs...@prizSPAM.biz> wrote:
>> What was Markstein's brief from McGoohan?
> Thereby hangs a thread or two. It seems reasonable to assume
<three paragraphs of assumption, speculation, claim, suspicion, possibility,
guesswork and speculation snipped>
So you don't actually know. Ok, but why describe Markstein as "utterly
incompetent", when you wouldn't know the definition of competence in this
case?
> with Tomblin's knowledge of the more arcane intricacies
> of TV scripting,
David Tomblin: "Writing was a bit of a strange area for me, because I'd
never written before."
Well, either you or Tomblin has got it completely wrong.
:-)
> Oh for goodness sake, don't be such a pedant.
"The term pedant is obviously a relative one: my pedantry is your
scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education
and someone else's ignorance."-H. W. Fowler.
In your case I think it's also unsupported argument, as you can only refer
accurately to the two actual scripts, which you've seen. The rest is hearsay
and speculation and certainly doesn't represent the four that you claim nor
any evidence that they were commissioned, so important to your argument.
> it is recorded that Markstein said someone called David Whittaker wrote
> him one about table tennis and someone else called Donald Tosh wrote
> scenes for another about French fliers
We can only eternally regret that they were never filmed. Treatments of
table tennis and French fliers were absolute musts for the Prisoner canon.
Whatever was McGoohan thinking, letting those gems slip through his fingers?
Ignis Fatuus
<moorl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>On Nov 6, 10:47�am, "roger" <roadNOs...@prizSPAM.biz> wrote:
>> What was Markstein's brief from McGoohan?
>
>
>
>It's important to remember that McGoohan was slightly *paranoid* about
>his ideas for "The Prisoner" being pinched by other producers, and
>cloaked his whole operation in as much secrecy as he could muster. I
>don't think it was any coincidence that the two contemporaneous
>productions "The Prisoner" and "Man in a Suitcase" both involved a
>secret agent who suddenly was no agent anymore - however different
>their riffs turned out to be.
The term 'former CIA' was as much of a cliche in the 60s as it is
today. The notion that McGoohan came up with an 'original' idea that
somehow worked it's way into another ITC series is bizarre and
preposterous. Dennis Spooner and Richard Harris who devised the series
for ITC, had both previously worked on the first series of The
Avengers, along with Brian Clemens, who was an early contributor to
Danger Man (including View From The Villa, which introduced McGoohan
to Portmeirion). Producer Sidney Cole had previously worked on Danger
Man. Philip Broadley contributed 13 scripts to Danger Man and 3
scripts to Man In A Suitcase.
>
>
>Oh for goodness sake, don't be such a pedant
> According to Andrew Pixley's book, Eric Mival wrote "story
>treatments"; and in the same book it is recorded that Markstein said
>someone called David Whittaker wrote him one about table tennis and
>someone else called Donald Tosh wrote scenes for another about French
>fliers.
Try doing some research (if it's not too much trouble).
David Whitaker (one 't') was the original script editor on Doctor Who.
He commissioned Terry Nation to create the Daleks, on the
recommendation of Dennis Spooner.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0924256/
Spooner became the second script editor on Doctor Who when Whitaker
left to become a freelance writer, and left to work with Nation (as
script editor) on The Baron, (1965-66) for ITC. This concerned the
exploits of a former US intelligence officer turned rancher and
antique dealer, working for Special Branch as a freelance operative.
Writers were Spooner, Nation, and Brian Clemens (of The Avengers). The
series was freely adapted from a series of novels by John Creasey
featuring the exploits of a British former jewel thief turned antique
dealer. (too similar to The Saint). To assist the export drive,
Americans were prominently featured in many ITC shows.
Spooner had previously contributed to Fireball XL5, Stingray and
Thunderbirds. He subsequently created Man In A Suitcase (with Richard
Harris) and worked on, The Champions, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased),
Department-S, Jason King and The Professionals.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0819388/
Spooner's successor as script editor on Doctor Who, was Donald Tosh.
His career as a writer was less successful than that of his
predecessors, but his links with Spooner and Nation would explain his
submissions to Markstein for The Prisoner.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0869162/
Neither Spooner nor Nation worked on The Prisoner, but they were
senior writers for ITC at the time Markstein came on board Danger Man.
Both had worked with Brian Clemens, a major contributor to Danger Man,
and senior writer on The Avengers.
Follow the links between Danger Man, The Avengers, The Saint, and
Doctor Who (the big four shows of the early 60s) and you discover a
core of relatively prolific writers (directors designers etc.) who
regularly collaborated on a wide range of shows. Through them you can
trace the origins of all the ideas that were incorporated into The
Prisoner.
Ian Fleming inspired the popularity of the 'cold war' spy genre,
introducing elements of brainwashing, interrogation centres, and
technology through 'dossiers' read by Bond in the prelude to a
mission, that were subsequently incorporated into the plot.
Danger Man introduced these themes to the television audience, well
before Bond hit the screens. Brian Clemens was influential in the
development of Danger Man, and subsequently The Avengers.
DM took a 'realistic' and cynical view of a world in which spies were
often used and betrayed by the governments they worked to protect. The
Avengers was a more lighthearted show which dealt with 'topical'
science subjects, like transplants, biological warfare, computers, and
military installations.
Len Deighton popularised scientific brainwashing techniques in his
1962 novel The Ipcress File (Induction of Psycho-neuroses by
Conditioned Reflex under strESS), and subsequent novels, and Fleming
incorporated them, less overtly, in later Bond novels, On Her
Majesty's Secret Service (1963), You Only Live Twice (1964), and The
Man With The Golden Gun (1965), which make up a 'brainwashing
trilogy'.
But as well as introducing Portmeirion in View from the Villa (1960),
Danger Man introduced prototypes of the Village in The Relaxed
Informer (1961) and Colony Three (1964). The Relaxed Informer deals
with an interrogation and brainwashing centre in a Village type
community on an island.
The Avengers is particularly notable for it's use of archaic settings
and detail alongside hi-tech concepts, that later became a trademark
of The Prisoner. The Nutshell (1963) deals with a brainwashing and
interrogation centre. The Man With Two Shadows (1963) deals with a
Holiday Camp where 'top men' are being replaced with doppelgangers.
The use of bizarre contrasts for humorous effect and suspense
developed further Clemens took over as Story Editor and Associate
Producer in 1965. Brainwashing centres popped up in a boarding school
( The Master Minds) and the missing floor of a luxury hotel (The
Thirteenth Floor). The lift shaft of a department store became the
trigger for a nuclear weapon (Death At bargain Prices), and a
miniature railway became the focus of a missile jamming centre (The
Gravediggers). Most bizarre of all was the deserted mansion with the
computerised maze (The House That Jack built) which bears an uncanny
resemblance to some of the Village interiors (and Raymond Cusick's
Dalek City (1963).
A later episode (Who's Who (1967) has Steed and Emma swapping bodies
with their counterparts.
It would take a book to catalogue all the similarities between The
Prisoner and it's predecessors. The Psychology, the isolation, and the
blend of styles all have precedents in the ferment of 60s popular
culture. Your continued claims that McGoohan was somehow unique speak
more of an ignorance of that culture, than an insight into The
Prisoner.
As I've said before, even the trademarks of The Prisoner, have their
origins in other shows. 'Be Seeing You' was used more than once by
John Drake. The DM US Theme Song encapsulates The Prisoner ('they've
given you a number and they've taken away your name'). And the archaic
symbols of village life were yoked together in the visual style of The
Avengers.
Moor Larkin
> Follow the links between Danger Man, The Avengers, The Saint, and
> Doctor Who (the big four shows of the early 60s) and you discover a
> core of relatively prolific writers (directors designers etc.) who
> regularly collaborated on a wide range of shows. Through them you can
> trace the origins of all the ideas that were incorporated into The
> Prisoner.
As McGoohan himself remarked, his show was a speck of sand in the
desert.
On Nov 8, 1:21 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> But as well as introducing Portmeirion in View from the Villa (1960),
> Danger Man introduced prototypes of the Village in The Relaxed
> Informer (1961) and Colony Three (1964). The Relaxed Informer deals
> with an interrogation and brainwashing centre in a Village type
> community on an island.
Yes, dear heart, I had noticed....... :-)))))))))
I think that last one was even set in bonnie Scotland !!! .... In the
lair almost.... ;-)))))))))))))
You missed quite a few other resemblances out though. Read my blogs,
they're full of the obvious connections between Danger Man and The
Prisoner. This one even has a Number Two watching him on cctv:
"There are many small asides in many different episodes of Danger Man
that reflect ideas or *gimmicks* within The Prisoner. Within the
prisoner cult there has been a long and slightly foolish debate about
whether or not Number Six was or wasn't John Drake. I debunked the
silliest parts of their notions in one of my first Blogs. However,
whilst they delved into their own *back-story* fantasies about what
were completely fictitious characters anyhow, they completely missed
the point that of course Patrick McGoohan's ideas were hugely
influenced by his experiences of the scripts and themes that the
Danger Man series had explored over several years. McGoohan was no
passive performer in Danger Man however and he shared in the
formulation of those ideas and themes, as well as their eventual
exposition in the many episodes of Ralph Smart's creation. His lack of
passivity is often remarked upon and indeed his increasing frustration
at the limits laid upon his creativity probably led him to approaching
Lew Grade with his proposal for his own original series. Sidney Cole
possibly deserves a little credit in fact for The Prisoner project
ever happening. In one interview the distinguished producer recalled
his having something of a dispute with the star of his show. He
recalled that when Patrick McGoohan complained to him (Sidney Cole)
about why it was that he (Sidney Cole) always had the final word;
Sidney Cole explained to his recalcitrant star that the reason he
(Sidney Cole) had the final say was because he (Sidney Cole) was the
producer. That was WHY..... "
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2009/09/mcgoohan-on-my-mind-time-has-come.html
On Nov 8, 1:21 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:>
> It would take a book to catalogue all the similarities between The
> Prisoner and it's predecessors. The Psychology, the isolation, and the
> blend of styles all have precedents in the ferment of 60s popular
> culture. Your continued claims that McGoohan was somehow unique speak
> more of an ignorance of that culture, than an insight into The
> Prisoner.
I don't *claim* that McGoohan was unique because he obviously was. He
was a person. I merely point out that his claim to have "thought it
up" is the only credible claim that fit all the facts. However, he
obviously "thought it up" from his mind, and his mind was filled by
his life and his career. He was an experienced theatre, film and TV
actor when many of the others you mention were only beginning their
careers. The fact that you fail to even mention Ralph Smart, who was
akey figure in creating the TV world that gave most of the people you
do mention, their careers seems a little remiss of you. Perhaps you
should do more research (if it's not too much trouble).
Just to show how much we are living in harmony, here's one more
snippet from one of my many blogs (I was going to stop at 17 but
lacked the will):
"The cross-fertilisation between Danger Man, UNCLE and back to The
Prisoner is apparent but has been little recognised due to the vast
bulk of Prisoner *research* emanating from the UK by those too young
to remember the ubiquitous popularity of The Man from Uncle at the
time The Prisoner was made. Strangely, for such an enormously popular
show UNCLE was not released into video in the years since, nor re-run
on TV very often and so has remained unseen and mostly un-remembered
since. The episode of The Prisoner called "The Girl Who Was Death" was
not dissimilar to the tone of Uncle (a show which increasingly adopted
a *tongue-in-cheek approach in it's later seasons). "
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2010/06/from-mind-of-mcgoohan-john-drake-of.html
"The Village" obviously came from Colony-3, they even called the
bloody colony "the village" for gods sake. What McGoohan did was tease
all these notions into his own different formula. Everything comes
from somewhere. That McGoohan's village came from an amalgam of
Portmeirion, Danger Man and the Cold War and his views on the culture
of his times is obvious. He didn't invent those, he lived in those
times and places. This is so obvious, it seems almost fatuous to state
it, but then when I read *official* books saying it all derived from a
World War 2 cottage in the Highlands, I realise nothing is obvious to
fat minds who, unlike you and I, are not exercised by all this arcane
stuff.
I vaguely recall there was one eisode of the Avengers where Steed goes
to a village for disabled secret agents or something. What a lark. I
think that came out after the prisoner however......... :-)))))
On Nov 8, 1:21 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> As I've said before, even the trademarks of The Prisoner, have their
> origins in other shows. 'Be Seeing You' was used more than once by
> John Drake.
Abbysinnia was a short form, fashionable in American pulp. There were
even songs such as "I'll be seeing You, in all the old familiar
places" ....... :-)))) And your point is what?
Do you think that McGoohan stopped doing Danger Man and then went to
Lew Grade and said "I've got this great idea Lew! I'll be Danger Man
again but kidnapped" ?? You seek to debase McGoohan, but what do you
see in his place? Some nebulous collective bubble ? I know the British
cannot stand for any one individual to be better than the group, but
the national desire to sublimate everyone into the amorphous group is
exactly what the prisoner was ranting about.
It's noticeable that as McGoohan's generation left the field, the
secret agents started becoming collective. It was The Protectors, the
Champions, The Persuaders.... One person alone was no longer enough.
Even the yanks fell for it, with their Mission Impossible team and of
course the new Avengers had to become a team of three, rather two
disparate individuals. There's a cultural essay in there somewhere, if
you'd like to write it.
ITCing you
Moor Larkin
> <three paragraphs of assumption, speculation, claim, suspicion, possibility,
> guesswork and speculation snipped>
>
> So you don't actually know. Ok, but why describe Markstein as "utterly
> incompetent", when you wouldn't know the definition of competence in this
> case?
The paragraphs you snipped made the points. Markstein had never worked
in TV until he became *associated* with the last three episodes of
Danger Man - an operation which probably ran itself by then. He didn't
supply any brief to any of the first script-writers of the prisoner,
which should have been his job. I only know this because those script-
writers said he gave them no brief. However, in the 1980's he claimed
to have issued "complex briefs" to them. Why does he say things that
plainly were not true like this? He was incompetent not because he was
a bad person but because he was wholly inexperienced and I also
suspect he tried to be something he was not qualified to be at that
point - a *story editor*. This would have put him in his employers way
and we all know that once you do that - your number is up. (unless
you work for the government of course)
On Nov 7, 6:38 pm, "roger" <roadNOs...@prizSPAM.biz> wrote:
> > with Tomblin's knowledge of the more arcane intricacies
> > of TV scripting,
> David Tomblin: "Writing was a bit of a strange area for me, because I'd
> never written before."
>
> Well, either you or Tomblin has got it completely wrong.
> :-)
>
Que senor? Tomblin said "writing"... as in creative writing obviously.
Or are you claiming that Tomblin did not know how a script was
structured by then? Of course he did; he'd been handling them for
years and years, unlike Markstein who had probably not seen a TV
script until a few months before. Markstein however was used to
writing articles for newspapers. He even found time to write one for
the TV Times in 1967. I guess he had plenty of time on his
hands... :-))))))))
http://www.danger-man.co.uk/docs/magazines/tvtimes/02Sept1967/pdf.pdf
On Nov 7, 6:38 pm, "roger" <roadNOs...@prizSPAM.biz> wrote:
> In your case I think it's also unsupported argument, as you can only refer
> accurately to the two actual scripts, which you've seen. The rest is hearsay
> and speculation and certainly doesn't represent the four that you claim nor
> any evidence that they were commissioned, so important to your argument.
What? Stop obfuscating. Markstein way overstated his prisoner
credentials in the years after 1979. I'm only quoting the archival
evidence printed in the book issued with much-lauded dvd sets recently
about all these various scripts/treatments and so forth. If you think
they are telling porkies, I'd be fascinated to hear moor. I certainly
agree with you about the table tennis though. What a great tableau
that would have made. But there we are - another opportunity missed by
the script editor. I don't suppose McGoohan ever got to see it. It
sounds exactly the thing that he would have liked, but Markstein
probably thought, "What has this to do with John Drake?"
Ping...........
roger
> The paragraphs you snipped made the points.
The whole of it was speculation and didn't answer my original question, as
you admitted at the end. The only point it made was that you're indulging in
a cross between speculation and dodgy backfitting to suit your own pet
McGoohan-centric theories, which is interesting as the process of an
over-exercised imagination, but please don't pass it off as "points" or,
even worse, fact.
Ignis Fatuus
<moorl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>On Nov 8, 1:21 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
>> Follow the links between Danger Man, The Avengers, The Saint, and
>> Doctor Who (the big four shows of the early 60s) and you discover a
>> core of relatively prolific writers (directors designers etc.) who
>> regularly collaborated on a wide range of shows. Through them you can
>> trace the origins of all the ideas that were incorporated into The
>> Prisoner.
>
>As McGoohan himself remarked, his show was a speck of sand in the
>desert.
>
>
>On Nov 8, 1:21 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
>> But as well as introducing Portmeirion in View from the Villa (1960),
>> Danger Man introduced prototypes of the Village in The Relaxed
>> Informer (1961) and Colony Three (1964). The Relaxed Informer deals
>> with an interrogation and brainwashing centre in a Village type
>> community on an island.
>
>
>Yes, dear heart, I had noticed....... :-)))))))))
>I think that last one was even set in bonnie Scotland !!! .... In the
>lair almost.... ;-)))))))))))))
Bonnie Bavaria; but I guess you're close enough.
>You missed quite a few other resemblances out though.
No; I just didn't include them. I covered them in some detail in
earlier threads, when you were fighting tooth and claw to dismiss
their relevance.
>Read my blogs,
No thanks. Life's too short.
> McGoohan was no
>passive performer in Danger Man however and he shared in the
>formulation of those ideas and themes, as well as their eventual
>exposition in the many episodes of Ralph Smart's creation. His lack of
>passivity is often remarked upon and indeed his increasing frustration
>at the limits laid upon his creativity probably led him to approaching
>Lew Grade with his proposal for his own original series.
> Sidney Cole
>possibly deserves a little credit in fact for The Prisoner project
>ever happening. In one interview the distinguished producer recalled
>his having something of a dispute with the star of his show. He
>recalled that when Patrick McGoohan complained to him (Sidney Cole)
>about why it was that he (Sidney Cole) always had the final word;
>Sidney Cole explained to his recalcitrant star that the reason he
>(Sidney Cole) had the final say was because he (Sidney Cole) was the
>producer. That was WHY..... "
>http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2009/09/mcgoohan-on-my-mind-time-has-come.html
>
>
>
>On Nov 8, 1:21 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:>
>> It would take a book to catalogue all the similarities between The
>> Prisoner and it's predecessors. The Psychology, the isolation, and the
>> blend of styles all have precedents in the ferment of 60s popular
>> culture. Your continued claims that McGoohan was somehow unique speak
>> more of an ignorance of that culture, than an insight into The
>> Prisoner.
>
>The fact that you fail to even mention Ralph Smart, who was
>akey figure in creating the TV world that gave most of the people you
>do mention, their careers seems a little remiss of you.
Having given you a detailed account of Smart's career and credits in a
previous thread, I felt it was time to fill some of the gaps in your
knowledge of other players.
> Perhaps you
>should do more research (if it's not too much trouble).
I appear to have done so in some detail, an on your behalf:
Newsgroups: alt.tv.prisoner
Subject: Re: The Lew Grade Puzzle
Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:01:09 +0100
Message-ID: <s7cur59dv5gpq8v9j...@4ax.com>
QUOTE
Robin Hood (143 Episodes 1955-1960) (Sapphire Films for ITC) with
Richard Greene, Produced By Sidney Cole. 19 Episodes directed by Ralph
Smart (Music by Edwin Astley, Albert Elms). This was the first of a
number of popular historical romps commissioned by Lew Grade, which
included:
Sir Lancelot (30 Episodes 1956) (Sapphire Films for ITC) with William
(Dr Who) Russell ; the first UK TV series to be filmed (partly) in
colour, as a result of it's success in the US.. McGoohan had a guest
role. Produced by Dallas Bower, Bernard Knowles, Sidney Cole (Music by
Edwin Astley, Albert Elms). US broadcasts on NBC and ABC. Directors
included Ralph Smart (3 episodes).
The Buccaneers (39 episodes 1956) (Sapphire Films for ITC) with Robert
Shaw. Produced by Sidney Cole, Ralph Smart, CM Pennington-Richards.
(music by Albert Elms, Edwin Astley). Smart directed 4 episodes.
William Tell (39 Episodes 1958) (Sapphire Films for ITC) with Conrad
Philips. Produced by Ralph Smart, Leslie Arliss. Smart directed 1
episode. Cinematography Brendan J Stafford (12 episodes)
>
The Weinstein-Grade association effectively ended with Weinstein's
return to America, in 1962; having produced some of ITC's most
successful output of the 50s.
Smart moved on to produce The Invisible Man (1958) and Danger Man
(1960) for ITC.
Sidney Cole also produced The Highwayman (1957), and The Four Just Men
(1959) for Sapphire-ITC.
UNQUOTE
>Just to show how much we are living in harmony, here's one more
>snippet from one of my many blogs (I was going to stop at 17 but
>lacked the will):
>"The cross-fertilisation between Danger Man, UNCLE and back to The
>Prisoner is apparent but has been little recognised due to the vast
>bulk of Prisoner *research* emanating from the UK by those too young
>to remember the ubiquitous popularity of The Man from Uncle at the
>time
I missed a lot of it because Danger Man was broadcast at the same time
in my region. It made it's UK debut on Thursday July 1st 1965, on BBC1
> The Prisoner was made. Strangely, for such an enormously popular
>show UNCLE was not released into video in the years since, nor re-run
>on TV very often and so has remained unseen and mostly un-remembered
>since. The episode of The Prisoner called "The Girl Who Was Death" was
>not dissimilar to the tone of Uncle (a show which increasingly adopted
>a *tongue-in-cheek approach in it's later seasons). "
>http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2010/06/from-mind-of-mcgoohan-john-drake-of.html
>
>"The Village" obviously came from Colony-3, they even called the
>bloody colony "the village" for gods sake. What McGoohan did was tease
>all these notions into his own different formula.
I think that's the point I was making; but thanks for making it for me
anyway.
> Everything comes
>from somewhere. That McGoohan's village came from an amalgam of
>Portmeirion, Danger Man and the Cold War and his views on the culture
>of his times is obvious. He didn't invent those, he lived in those
>times and places. This is so obvious, it seems almost fatuous to state
>it, but then when I read *official* books saying it all derived from a
>World War 2 cottage in the Highlands, I realise nothing is obvious to
>fat minds who, unlike you and I, are not exercised by all this arcane
>stuff.
>
>I vaguely recall there was one eisode of the Avengers where Steed goes
>to a village for disabled secret agents or something. What a lark. I
>think that came out after the prisoner however......... :-)))))
>
>
>On Nov 8, 1:21 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
>> As I've said before, even the trademarks of The Prisoner, have their
>> origins in other shows. 'Be Seeing You' was used more than once by
>> John Drake.
>
>
>Abbysinnia was a short form, fashionable in American pulp. There were
>even songs such as "I'll be seeing You, in all the old familiar
>places" ....... :-)))) And your point is what?
>
You'll find it in the bit you snipped.
>Do you think that McGoohan stopped doing Danger Man and then went to
>Lew Grade and said "I've got this great idea Lew! I'll be Danger Man
>again but kidnapped" ??
Not quite so blunt; but effectively Yes. That's the way it was
perceived when it was broadcast.
> You seek to debase McGoohan,
Not at all. I just seek to remove him from the shrine of mythology
that's been created around the prisoner, and see him in the context
that led to The Prisoner. That's not unreasonable, surely?
> but what do you
>see in his place? Some nebulous collective bubble ? I know the British
>cannot stand for any one individual to be better than the group, but
>the national desire to sublimate everyone into the amorphous group is
>exactly what the prisoner was ranting about.
>
>It's noticeable that as McGoohan's generation left the field, the
>secret agents started becoming collective.
Not really. Apart from Danger Man, The Saint, Man In A Suitcase, and
The Prisoner, most ITC series involved 'collectives' (although
Department-S devolved into Jason King).
See the above list plus
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Four Just Men
Man Of The World
The Sentimental Agent
Gideon's Way
Court Martial
Moor Larkin
> Bonnie Bavaria; but I guess you're close enough.
Moira Redmond obviously confused me and my head is not yet pointy
enough........ :-)))
On Nov 9, 7:43 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> >"The Village" obviously came from Colony-3, they even called the
> >bloody colony "the village" for gods sake. What McGoohan did was tease
> >all these notions into his own different formula.
>
> I think that's the point I was making; but thanks for making it for me
> anyway.
You'd be surprised how many books say it all started in Scotland, or
do I mean Bavaria?...:-))))
On Nov 9, 7:43 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> >Do you think that McGoohan stopped doing Danger Man and then went to
> >Lew Grade and said "I've got this great idea Lew! I'll be Danger Man
> >again but kidnapped" ??
>
> Not quite so blunt; but effectively Yes. That's the way it was
> perceived when it was broadcast.
That's the way it was meant to be *percieved* initially. It's called
"taking your audience with you".
McGoohan was an entertainer first. Also he had had experience of tying
to do something totally different from when he had finished his first
stint as John Drake, playing a mousy Postal Clerk in "Two Living One
Dead". When he made that his first movie after his big succes as John
Drake in 1960....... the movie never even got released in Britain.
This is called "Learning from experience"
However to say that is how it started behind the scenes just seems to
make no sense. Why not simply have had John Drake kidnapped ? And
carried on with Secret Prisoner ? Lew Grade would have been delighted
I should imagine. The British Fugitive by gad !! I think you should
remember that people in creative TV used to like to manipulate their
audience rather than pander to focus-groups as they do nowadays.
On Nov 9, 7:43 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> > You seek to debase McGoohan,
>
> Not at all. I just seek to remove him from the shrine of mythology
> that's been created around the prisoner, and see him in the context
> that led to The Prisoner. That's not unreasonable, surely?
We totally agree and that's mostly what my blogs are about - not that
you will ever know because you have no time to read them because your
life is your own. I'm a little argumentative for the sake of it in
here because that's the sort of place it is, but clearly you have
noticed that too... :-))))))))))
I assume you've noticed that the "established story of this Board is
almost the exact opposite of what you say? McGoohan didn't invent the
prisoner and he wasn't in control of it or himself most of the time.
I'm not really into *mythology*. That's why I like to grind away at
the Markstein Myth especially. It almost no merits, whereas the
McGoohan Legend actually has quite a basis in fact.
That's not an unreasonable thing to discuss against suely? Especially
when there is copious cut and dried evidence that McGoohan was by some
miles the most influential person behind the show, bringing with him a
huge wealth of experience and knowedge and of course he carried the
influences of many of the people you have mentioned. But amorphous
bubbles of zeitgeist in a Studio do not make successful TV shows,
people do. And there is always a number one, just as there is always a
number six. In some ways they are the same people, ideas leaping from
mind to mind.
On Nov 9, 7:43 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> >It's noticeable that as McGoohan's generation left the field, the
> >secret agents started becoming collective.
>
> Not really. Apart from Danger Man, The Saint, Man In A Suitcase, and
> The Prisoner, most ITC series involved 'collectives' (although
> Department-S devolved into Jason King).
>
> See the above list plus
> The Scarlet Pimpernel
> The Four Just Men
> Man Of The World
> The Sentimental Agent
> Gideon's Way
> Court Martial
Best not mention The Invisible MAN .......... :-))))))))))
A number of plots of that are skewed into Danger Man I think. One
contributor to this Board once suggested that Ralph Smart created The
Prisoner. He was last seen being covered in tar and feathers by the
harmonious bunch in here... :-))) I'd watch your back if I were
you......... ;o)))
The Sentimental Agent.... ?? suspiciously non-plural methinks.. :-)))
Not....... MEN od the world then?............ :-)))))))))))
The Four Just Men was actually a show where a single one of them
featured every week. A single man show really, just very costly to
produce with four international stars. It seems to have broken Hannah
Fisher's company anyhow.
Gideon spent much of his time smoking a pipe and wearing his slippers
but technically he was Gideon and did things his way....:-)))))
The Scarlet Pimpernel? They seek HIM here, they seek HIM
there....:-))))) It's pretty dull anyhow, that's all I remember.
In the same way, John Drake usually co-operated or worked on behalf of
somebody each episode, so everything can be interpreted. I seem to
recall
The Baron bombed but that might just be down to Gene Barry I guess,
rather than his upper-class title and emotional singularity.
Enough lists already.......
http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2009/01/spy-shows-of-sixties-part-one.html
http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2009/01/spy-shows-of-sixties-part-two.html
http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2009/01/spy-shows-of-sixties-part-three.html
http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2009/01/spy-shows-of-sixties-part-four.html
http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2009/01/spy-shows-of-sixties-part-five.html
6iao
Moor Larkin
> The whole of it was speculation and didn't answer my original question, as
> you admitted at the end. The only point it made was that you're indulging in
> a cross between speculation and dodgy backfitting to suit your own pet
> McGoohan-centric theories, which is interesting as the process of an
> over-exercised imagination, but please don't pass it off as "points" or,
> even worse, fact.
Much like many books then?
I called Markstein "utterly incompetent" for the reasons I gave at the
time. Most of the things he has been recorded as sayng about himself
and his connections with The Prisoner are provably untrue.
Much of his beefed-up CV is in fact completely false. Because his
claims are no longer credible (if they ever were) then he must have
had a reason for lying and in the context of The Prisoner, he plainly
hadn't the faintest idea what it was really all about. That makes him
incompetent on that project.
"Once again it was fairly simple for me to find out that Markstein was
basically a jobbing journalist, learning his trade throughout the
1950's. He worked in the 1950's writing for a staff magazine serving
the US Third Airforce base, in Ruislip on the outskirts of London. Why
would the fans have believed Markstein was a spy or worked in Europe
with the Allies, dismantling the apparatus of the Third Reich? Mr.
Markstein patently never did any of this. Did he tell them he had done
these things? I have no idea but he had managed to write a book by the
time he was 45, so he had learned to tell a good story I guess. If the
gullible fans who have since created these legends about him had done
the slightest research, they would quickly have realised their stories
were nonsense. In the world of the cult however the orsonwellian truth
is that: We see what we want to see. We ignore the rest ."
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2009/08/mcgoohan-on-my-mind-ladies-and.html
6iao
Ignis Fatuus
<moorl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>Best not mention The Invisible MAN .......... :-))))))))))
>A number of plots of that are skewed into Danger Man I think. One
>contributor to this Board once suggested that Ralph Smart created The
>Prisoner. He was last seen being covered in tar and feathers by the
>harmonious bunch in here... :-))) I'd watch your back if I were
>you......... ;o)))
Gawain, Lancelot, Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, The Scarlet Pimpernel,
Richard Hannay, Simon Templar, James Bond... I'd say that ITC was
focused on tapping into a rich vein of 'crusading adventurer' stories
with a long tradition in British fiction. Smart brought the emerging
'cold war espionage' thriller to the television audience, just as
Fleming, Maclean, Deighton etc were hitting the bestseller lists and
the cinema screens. The focus was switching from crime to
international espionage and intrigue. Extensive libraries of 'stock
footage' helped establish locations, and a highly efficient production
system assembled a highly polished package for the audience.
Sidney Newman's 'reality' based drama, Police Surgeon, underwent a
metamorphosis and emerged as The Avengers, with the same star, Ian
Hendry, still playing a doctor; and Patrick Macnee as a shadowy
'Pimpernel' figure handling the dirty tricks and undercover work.
The point is that Smart got there first, drawing on numerous
established blueprints, and personal experience of previous attempts
that didn't catch the 'mood of the times' as readily as this new
format. ABC lacked access to the stock footage, and although The
Avengers dabbled in foreign locations at the outset, these had been
dropped by season 3 in favour of quintessentially domestic scenarios
that were refined into a deliberately anachronistic style by the new
production team, led by Julian Wintle and Brian Clemens, which took
the show to the American market in 1964.
The key elements of The Prisoner can all be found in Danger Man, but
the style of the show has it's roots in The Avengers, and the emerging
'spy-fi' genre drawn from the growing popularity of science fiction
shows. Perhaps Smart and Clemens should be credited as the progenitors
of The Prisoner. McGoohan couldn't have done it without them.
>
>The Sentimental Agent.... ?? suspiciously non-plural methinks.. :-)))
>Not....... MEN od the world then?............ :-)))))))))))
>The Four Just Men was actually a show where a single one of them
>featured every week.
True, but each individual had a regular group of associates. Honor
Blackman was Dan Dailey's assistant.
> A single man show really, just very costly to
>produce with four international stars. It seems to have broken Hannah
>Fisher's company anyhow.
>Gideon spent much of his time smoking a pipe and wearing his slippers
>but technically he was Gideon and did things his way....:-)))))
You're thinking of Maigret (BBC). Gideon was a Commander, with a bunch
of co-stars to do the actual investigating.
>The Scarlet Pimpernel? They seek HIM here, they seek HIM
>there....:-))))) It's pretty dull anyhow, that's all I remember.
>
But all of these shows featured a regular cast, and not just a
solitary individual.
>In the same way, John Drake usually co-operated or worked on behalf of
>somebody each episode, so everything can be interpreted. I seem to
>recall
Drake never had a regular associate, although there were some
recurring superiors. There were recurring characters in The Saint (and
in The Prisoner), but no regular associates.
>
>The Baron bombed but that might just be down to Gene Barry I guess,
>rather than his upper-class title and emotional singularity.
>
Burke's Law (another show that hit the spy circuit after a couple of
seasons) had nothing to do with The Baron... but Steve Forrest
(brother of Dana Andrews) made it popular enough in the UK to become a
regular on the repeat circuit for a number of years.
Ignis Fatuus
Royalties. Smart had left Danger Man but he still owned the copyright
on the character. A 3 way deal would have incurred more complexity and
expense (or scuppered it entirely if Smart objected). Danger man was
McGoohan's primary source of inspiration, but I'd guess that Grade
wanted to keep the new show in line with the previous hit.
The formula was at the height of it's popularity, although a
succession of 'imitations', currently in development, were going to
prove less and less successful. The Avengers hit the rocks in 68, and
trend was towards more 'realistic' subjects. Markstein became involved
in Callan, and Special Branch (a precursor to The Sweeney) for Thames
TV (successor to ATV).
Moor Larkin
> Royalties. Smart had left Danger Man but he still owned the copyright
> on the character. A 3 way deal would have incurred more complexity and
> expense (or scuppered it entirely if Smart objected). Danger man was
> McGoohan's primary source of inspiration, but I'd guess that Grade
> wanted to keep the new show in line with the previous hit.
I have little to argue with there, but elsewhere I have been told that
Ralph Smart had *cashed in his chips* so far as any copyrights he may
have held were concerned and had settled up with Lew Grade. Another
apparently knowledegable person elsewhere told me that Smart would
have had no *rights* anyhow - in that the terms of his arrangements
with ITC as a producer were not of that personally-possessive nature.
I confess that I cannot know how this would or would not work,
categorically. However, given that Lew Grade would have been the
fulcrum of this, I cannot see why any difficulties would not have been
easily ironed out. Ralph had nothing to do with the Koroshi/Shinda
Shima movie and yet John Drake lived on.
I also think that this theory about *Royalties*, which was largely
made up by prisoner fans hanging onto the words of George Markstein
many years ago, takes no account of why - if Lew and Patrick were up
to some skullduggery - the first person Number Six meets in the film
is Ralph's sister, as the waitress. Personally spekaing, I believe
that coincidence to be the first of McGoohan's little in-jokes (of
which he became so fond) and actually, rather than swindling Smart,
McGoohan was covertly acknowledging the original elder lone wolf's
contribution to McGoohan's own train of thought.
On the other hand, many Posters in here would have it that all these
amazing facts merely represent random events and that they hold no
more meaning than any other car crash TV.
Thanks for your previous erudite Post, which concurs with my own view
of the badly underrated, late and very great Ralph Smart.
I'm Obliged.
Moor Larkin.
Ignis Fatuus
<moorl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>On Nov 10, 4:17 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
>> Royalties. Smart had left Danger Man but he still owned the copyright
>> on the character. A 3 way deal would have incurred more complexity and
>> expense (or scuppered it entirely if Smart objected). Danger man was
>> McGoohan's primary source of inspiration, but I'd guess that Grade
>> wanted to keep the new show in line with the previous hit.
>
>
>
>I have little to argue with there, but elsewhere I have been told that
>Ralph Smart had *cashed in his chips* so far as any copyrights he may
>have held were concerned and had settled up with Lew Grade. Another
>apparently knowledegable person elsewhere told me that Smart would
>have had no *rights* anyhow - in that the terms of his arrangements
>with ITC as a producer were not of that personally-possessive nature.
>
There's no evidence to support either view; but the case of Sydney
Newman might hold a clue. He was employed as Head of Drama, first at
the ITV company ABC, and then at the BBC. He created Armchair Theatre,
Police Surgeon, and The Avengers for ABC, but his contract assigned
the rights in his creative output to the company... and he received no
on screen credit for his input. He created Doctor Who and Adam Adamant
Lives for the BBC, under a similar arrangement, and received no on
screen credit for his work.
Terry Nation was contracted as a freelance writer for Doctor Who, and
retained a share of the copyright on the Daleks. He made a fortune
from merchandising, although they were designed by Raymond Cusick
(after Ridley Scott turned the job down). As a BBC employee, Cusick
received no royalties from the highly lucrative merchandising of his
design. He protested and was awarded a derisory amount as a bonus.
The freelance writers of other DW serials retained 'rights' to the
characters and 'monsters' that they created. The release of internal
BBC memos shows that these rights had to be cleared with the original
authors if the producers wanted a character to return. The Tin Dog K9
is a case in point. It was recently 'spun off' into a separate series,
and the BBC paid royalties for it's return to DW.
Newman has not to this day been given an on screen credit for his
contributions to TV drama. There's no evidence to suggest that he ever
received any royalties.
Without evidence of his contract, it's impossible to say whether Smart
would have retained an interest in Drake, or received royalties for
the use of his character in another series. It was not unusual for
this to happen, and it seems to depend on whether the individual was
'staff' or 'freelance'. The question could probably be answered by the
current copyright holders.
>I confess that I cannot know how this would or would not work,
>categorically. However, given that Lew Grade would have been the
>fulcrum of this, I cannot see why any difficulties would not have been
>easily ironed out. Ralph had nothing to do with the Koroshi/Shinda
>Shima movie and yet John Drake lived on.
>
>I also think that this theory about *Royalties*, which was largely
>made up by prisoner fans hanging onto the words of George Markstein
>many years ago, takes no account of why - if Lew and Patrick were up
>to some skullduggery
Skulduggery needn't come into it.I'm not suggesting that McGoohan
ripped off Smart, anymore that Smart ripped off Fleming etc. That's
part and parcel of the creative process... which doesn't take place in
a vacuum. The Prisoner has it's roots in it's predecessors, but it
stands out as a unique and distinctive concept in it's own right.
Overtly identifying Six as Drake would have diminished it's impact as
the story of a man robbed of his identity. If anything, the confusion
helped the contemporary audience to share that bewildering experience.
Moor Larkin
Skulduggery needn't come into it. I'm not suggesting that McGoohan
ripped off Smart, anymore that Smart ripped off Fleming etc.
You *fell* for the Royalties line because it has been written into the
*Official Histories* that you have read. However, seeing as nobody
even appears to know for sure if Smart even had any *copyright*, it's
been pathetically unresearched despite the reams of paper written on
the subject of this show. Plus, even if Smart had had copyright, the
fact that McGoohan took Smart's sister on the first location shoot is
common sense proof that McGoohan was attempting nothing in this regard
anyway. However, this is a quote from a highly *respectable* book on
the subject: "If he had admitted it, his old Danger Man boss, producer
Ralph Smart, might have sued, seeing that he and he alone owned the
rights to the character."
On Nov 10, 7:21 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
That's part and parcel of the creative process... which doesn't take
place in a vacuum. The Prisoner has it's roots in it's predecessors,
but it stands out as a unique and distinctive concept in it's own
right. Overtly identifying Six as Drake would have diminished it's
impact as the story of a man robbed of his identity. If anything, the
confusion helped the contemporary audience to share that bewildering
experience.
As McGoohan expressed it in an interview with Robert Musel, published
in July 1966, "John Drake of Secret Agent is gone, but we're not
foolish enough to try to change the image we have established with TV
audiences."
As McGoohan commented in that same July 1966 interview: "The trouble
with television is that it takes an idea and milks it to death. They
keep it going until they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for
plots - we did 86 "Secret Agents" and we went through the bottom of
the barrel. But 'The Prisoner' will be different."
This is the same man by the way, that *official* histories will have
you believe wanted to make season after endless season of "The
Prisoner" and was only stopped because Lew Grade became concerned that
the show had become "increasingly more expensive and bewildering". In
the real world of provable fact, McGoohan is quoted in American
newspapers as working on the final episodes of his *new* TV show,
whilst filming Ice Station Zebra, the decision to end it was long
taken by McGoohan and had nothing to do with Lew Grade. The fact that
McGoohan and Grade had an ongoing relationship is emphasised by an
interview with Terence Feely who recalls McGoohan being offered
£900,000 after The Prisoner for future projects, more than was spent
on The Prisoner itself.
ML
Ignis Fatuus
<moorl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>On Nov 10, 7:21�pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
>Skulduggery needn't come into it. I'm not suggesting that McGoohan
>ripped off Smart, anymore that Smart ripped off Fleming etc.
>
>You *fell* for the Royalties line because it has been written into the
>*Official Histories* that you have read. However, seeing as nobody
>even appears to know for sure if Smart even had any *copyright*, it's
>been pathetically unresearched despite the reams of paper written on
>the subject of this show. Plus, even if Smart had had copyright, the
>fact that McGoohan took Smart's sister on the first location shoot is
>common sense proof that McGoohan was attempting nothing in this regard
>anyway. However, this is a quote from a highly *respectable* book on
>the subject: "If he had admitted it, his old Danger Man boss, producer
>Ralph Smart, might have sued, seeing that he and he alone owned the
>rights to the character."
>
>
I haven't fallen for any line, as Drake isn't mentioned in The
prisoner. If you read the bit's you've snipped, you'll see that I have
passed comment on other copyright issues.
You try to assert, without Any evidence that Smart had No copyright
claims on the John Drake character. I'm simply suggesting, by
reference to documented copyright issues from the time, that he
probably did. The screen credit 'Created By' is often a clue; but as
it never turned into an issue, we'll probably never know, unless
contract documents come to light.
As I also said; the current copyright holders will certainly know, as
the Smart 'estate' will be entitled to royalties from the DVD releases
if he did own the character. Whether or not they'd be willing to make
the information public is anybody's guess, although it's possible that
the information is already available in public archives. Time will
tell. If I discover anything I'll be sure to let you know.
>On Nov 10, 7:21 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
>That's part and parcel of the creative process... which doesn't take
>place in a vacuum. The Prisoner has it's roots in it's predecessors,
>but it stands out as a unique and distinctive concept in it's own
>right. Overtly identifying Six as Drake would have diminished it's
>impact as the story of a man robbed of his identity. If anything, the
>confusion helped the contemporary audience to share that bewildering
>experience.
>
>As McGoohan expressed it in an interview with Robert Musel, published
>in July 1966, "John Drake of Secret Agent is gone, but we're not
>foolish enough to try to change the image we have established with TV
>audiences."
>
>As McGoohan commented in that same July 1966 interview: "The trouble
>with television is that it takes an idea and milks it to death. They
>keep it going until they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for
>plots - we did 86 "Secret Agents" and we went through the bottom of
>the barrel. But 'The Prisoner' will be different."
>
I think the comments would carry more weight if McGoohan had made a
conspicuous effort to distance Six from Drake. A different profession
might have helped. Scientist, Politician, Banker, Industrialist,
Antiques Dealer...
The format devised for The Prisoner is too similar to Danger man and
The Avengers to convince anyone that McGoohan wasn't playing the same
character in a different setting. Chimes of Big Ben, A,B&C, Many Happy
Returns, and Do Not Forsake Me, could be unused scripts from one of
these shows, with a few simple modifications.
McGoohan took an existing and well established formula, and gave it a
different spin. You can say the same about The Champions, which
followed up The Invisible man, taking the spy cycle into fantasy
territory.
Brian Watson
> I have little to argue with there, but elsewhere I have been told that
Ralph Smart had *cashed in his chips* so far as any copyrights he may
have held were concerned and had settled up with Lew Grade. Another
apparently knowledegable person elsewhere told me that Smart would
have had no *rights* anyhow - in that the terms of his arrangements
with ITC as a producer were not of that personally-possessive nature.
If he were JUST a producer, that would be true. But if he had pitched the
idea for Danger Man, as McGoohan had pitched The Prisoner, Smart would have
had rights to its use.
Can I ask who has suggested there was some deal done between Smart and Grade
over the Danger Man rights?
It's never been mentioned before as far as I know.
> I confess that I cannot know how this would or would not work,
categorically. However, given that Lew Grade would have been the
fulcrum of this, I cannot see why any difficulties would not have been
easily ironed out. Ralph had nothing to do with the Koroshi/Shinda
Shima movie and yet John Drake lived on.
> I also think that this theory about *Royalties*, which was largely
made up by prisoner fans hanging onto the words of George Markstein
many years ago, takes no account of why - if Lew and Patrick were up
to some skullduggery - the first person Number Six meets in the film
is Ralph's sister, as the waitress. Personally spekaing, I believe
that coincidence to be the first of McGoohan's little in-jokes (of
which he became so fond) and actually, rather than swindling Smart,
McGoohan was covertly acknowledging the original elder lone wolf's
contribution to McGoohan's own train of thought.
I don't suggest skullduggery. McGoohan's Number Six was inevitably
influenced by John Drake because the implied background of Six was in John
Drake's line of work and McGoohan had played Drake, but it was sufficiently
a different character that Everyman could assert creative rights.
To undermine that by linking the characters explicitly would have been silly
and WOULD have opened Everyman open to the possibility of court action.
Brian Watson
On Nov 10, 7:21 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
Skulduggery needn't come into it. I'm not suggesting that McGoohan
ripped off Smart, anymore that Smart ripped off Fleming etc.
> You *fell* for the Royalties line because it has been written into the
*Official Histories* that you have read. However, seeing as nobody
even appears to know for sure if Smart even had any *copyright*, it's
been pathetically unresearched despite the reams of paper written on
the subject of this show. Plus, even if Smart had had copyright, the
fact that McGoohan took Smart's sister on the first location shoot is
common sense proof that McGoohan was attempting nothing in this regard
anyway. However, this is a quote from a highly *respectable* book on
the subject: "If he had admitted it, his old Danger Man boss, producer
Ralph Smart, might have sued, seeing that he and he alone owned the
rights to the character."
Which book is that, please?
> As McGoohan expressed it in an interview with Robert Musel, published
in July 1966, "John Drake of Secret Agent is gone, but we're not
foolish enough to try to change the image we have established with TV
audiences."
> As McGoohan commented in that same July 1966 interview: "The trouble
with television is that it takes an idea and milks it to death. They
keep it going until they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for
plots - we did 86 "Secret Agents" and we went through the bottom of
the barrel. But 'The Prisoner' will be different."
Both statements seem to be clear in terms of recognising the heritage AND
wanting something new.
Moor Larkin
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
It's not my intention to *snip* any of what you said other than to try
to focus on the point I am trying to make. That Smart would be due
payments from the repeating of Danger Man would not have to be because
of his owning any copyright. I'm sure Patrick McGoohan would have
been due residuals too, if his old contracts dictated such. This is
also all miles away from owning the copyright to a nominal character
named "John Drake".
You complain that I am claiming that Mr. Smart did NOT own copyright
on the name/character with no evidence......... All I am actually
pointing out is that nobody has any evidence that he DID own such a
copyright !!
But all the wild conclusions about McGoohan and Tomblin's company
being deliberately duplicitous about this are nevertheless written
about, without qualification about their basis. As I pointed out
earlier, this story emanated from statements made by the aggrieved
script editor back in the early 1980's and has just been promoted....
instead of checked.
As my quotes from McGoohan in 1966 prove, McGoohan was quite open
about using his fame as a TV secret agent to provide a hook for his
audience who associated him with that image. He also explicitly raised
the issue of John Drake - hardly logical if he was simultaneously
seeking to plagiarise but deny.
That McGoohan was riffing upon his old secret agent persona is
undeniable. Despite much blather by earnest writers since, it is self-
evident that Number Six was a secret agent. BUT - that McGoohan wanted
it to BE John Drake but was too mean to pay, is just a mean-minded
slur. As I pointed out earlier, I also can see no problem if that was
what he had wanted. Lew Grade would have happily paid whatever Ralph
Smart had asked for. Lew would have been delighted if McGoohan had
gone on playing John Drake forever.......... :-))))))))
ML
Moor Larkin
Which book is that, please?
I think they were echoing the original source of this tale in the
published medium:
http://www.danger-man.co.uk/docs/magazines/timeout/July1982/pdf.pdf
Top of the second page of the article:
"However the name of John Drake was the property of... creator Ralph
Smart. Rather than pay royalties a change was suggested."
You'll find this article is probably at the root of all this sort of
stuff. Once there is a published source writers will quote it till
kingdom come, even if it was never especially referenced in the first
place. The same sort of thing has happened about Living in Harmony
being *banned* by CBS. It's an utter bollix but believed to be true
because people have read it in book after book since the fable was
first made up.
ML
Ignis Fatuus
<moorl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
>It's not my intention to *snip* any of what you said other than to try
>to focus on the point I am trying to make. That Smart would be due
>payments from the repeating of Danger Man would not have to be because
>of his owning any copyright. I'm sure Patrick McGoohan would have
>been due residuals too, if his old contracts dictated such. This is
>also all miles away from owning the copyright to a nominal character
>named "John Drake".
>
>You complain that I am claiming that Mr. Smart did NOT own copyright
>on the name/character with no evidence......... All I am actually
>pointing out is that nobody has any evidence that he DID own such a
>copyright !!
And yet I've quoted documented examples of writers contributing to
(not creating) a contemporary series (Doctor Who), and retaining an
interest in the copyrights pertaining to their contribution. My point
being that it is reasonable, from standard practice, to infer that
Smart retained an interest in the rights to his creation.
>
>But all the wild conclusions about McGoohan and Tomblin's company
>being deliberately duplicitous about this are nevertheless written
>about, without qualification about their basis.
You keep introducing duplicity into the discussion, but I've made no
such claim. I have suggested that if John Drake had been introduced as
the main character in The Prisoner, then Smart could reasonably expect
a payment of royalties for the use of that character; and might even
have exercised a right of veto over the use of that character. It's
such a commonplace arrangement in the world of publication and
screenwriting that I'm surprised that you're so vehement in your
denial.
Copyright legislation protects the rights of authors, unless they
deliberately assign those rights under the terms of a contract. It
also follows standards established by international agreement. A
famous case was that of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster who
sold the rights to Superman for a pittance, and spent years in
litigation for a share of the profits. In spite of that contract, they
(and their 'estates') were successful in claiming the rights to the
'spinoff' Superboy, a younger incarnation of the same character,
published without the consent of the authors.
So even if Smart had assigned the rights to DM, in their totality, it
doesn't follow that Grade and McGoohan would have the right to
incorporate Drake into another show. And if they Had used Drake, it's
not just a matter of payment. Any such arrangement would have
compromised McGoohan's 'artistic control' over the development of the
character.
As for using a character that's substantially similar to Smart's
creation; well that's just part an parcel of the 'creative process'.
John Drake wasn't uniquely original. UK copyright on the works of
Conan Doyle expired in 2000 (he died in 1930), but that didn't
discourage a flood of Holmes and Watson imitations (most prominently
Poirot and Hastings). The world was less litigious then. If DM had
continued, I'm sure that Smart would have continued to receive
royalties.
>As I pointed out
>earlier, this story emanated from statements made by the aggrieved
>script editor back in the early 1980's and has just been promoted....
>instead of checked.
>
Perhaps the 'aggrieved script editor' was simply passing comment based
on his own experience of copyright issues. The well documented case of
Doctor Who shows that handling such issues, and seeking appropriate
permissions, was part and parcel of the script editor's job. Cybermen
Yeti, and a host of other creations all returned by permission of the
original authors, who had first call on writing the scripts. Terry
Nation passed on the writing duties when he was busy with other
projects, but even the 2005 'revival' had to negotiate with the Nation
estate for a return of the Daleks.
Moor Larkin
point being that it is reasonable, from standard practice, to infer
that Smart retained an interest in the rights to his creation.
And my point being that the paying of any Royalties would have been no
problem. Lew Grade would have loved McGoohan to stay identified as
John Drake.
On Nov 16, 1:07 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: You
keep introducing duplicity into the discussion, but I've made no such
claim. I have suggested that if John Drake had been introduced as the
main character in The Prisoner, then Smart could reasonably expect a
payment of royalties for the use of that character; and might even
have exercised a right of veto over the use of that character. It's
such a commonplace arrangement in the world of publication and
screenwriting that I'm surprised that you're so vehement in your
denial.
Well, you have introduced duplicity I'm afraid because you said,
"Royalties. Smart had left Danger Man but he still owned the copyright
on the character. A 3 way deal would have incurred more complexity and
expense (or scuppered it entirely if Smart objected)." So you directly
imply that McGoohan and Grade knew it WAS John Drake but chose to
pretend it was not. I don't think either of them would do such a thing
because they were honourable men, but even more important, Grade would
have willingly paid anyhow. How many times do I need to remind you
that Grade would have wanted nothing more than for McGoohan to keep
being John Drake ?
Your point about *scuppering* the show is worthwhile, but I fail to
see any reason why they would think Smart would have done such a
thing. He had already walked away when Koroshi/Shinda Shima was made
and why would he turn money down anyhow? He was obviously never asked
because the show was never pitched as being any such thing in the
first place. Grade's famous comment about McGoohan's pitch was "it's
so crazy it just might work". What would seem so crazy about more John
Drake? I keep asking this question but nobody in here ever
answers..... :-)))))))
On Nov 16, 1:07 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: even
if Smart had assigned the rights to DM, in their totality, it doesn't
follow that Grade and McGoohan would have the right to incorporate
Drake into another show. And if they Had used Drake, it's not just a
matter of payment. Any such arrangement would have compromised
McGoohan's 'artistic control' over the development of the character.
As for using a character that's substantially similar to Smart's
creation; well that's just part an parcel of the 'creative process'.
I imagine that McGoohan's use of the old Drake still's in Arrival /
Free for All etc were seen by McGoohan as not being Drake at all, but
himself, just as Number Six was born the same day as he himself was.
It would be an interesting court that would clarify whether he had the
rights to use his own face...... :-))))))
On Nov 16, 1:07 am, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
Perhaps the 'aggrieved script editor' was simply passing comment based
on his own experience of copyright issues. The well documented case of
Doctor Who shows that handling such issues, and seeking appropriate
permissions, was part and parcel of the script editor's job.
If so, any such comment was made from his experiences of other people
years after the events he comments upon because Markstein was no
script editor before The Prisoner, apart from that brief stint on
Koroshi/Shinda Shima. The aggrieved script editor's story is
completely illogical anyway. He claims that McGoohan precipitously
*resigned* from being John Drake and then claims that the same man
immediately wanted to make a new show about John Drake. Something
about this claimed chain of events makes no sense and I put little
credence in anything he says about the show. He couldn't even remember
what newspaper he used to work for.
"Because the cult stories and versions of history were never based on
verifiable facts or even documented evidence the errors about George
Markstein have significantly influenced the muddle about the series'
production history. Many accounts even suggest that this man (who was
born in 1929 making him 15 in 1945) had been involved with WW2
espionage! Unquestioning acceptance of this sort of legend have added
unwarranted credence to the influence he had upon the TV series. As
mentioned, the page of The Overseas Weekly I have scanned is from
1963. George Markstein did not even have a job in television three
years prior to the inception of The Prisoner. It is worth remembering
that he did not originate a single episode of The Prisoner, whilst
McGoohan wrote at least three single-handed. Markstein finally wrote
his first novel, but not until 1974, seven years after The Prisoner.
His creative credentials simply do not justify the claims made on his
behalf by the cult of The Prisoner.."
http://numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2009/12/mcgoohan-on-peoples-minds-not-so-great.html
ML
Ignis Fatuus
Which he did in all but name. They just took the secret agent out of
one context, and placed him in another, using a scenario already
outlined in Danger Man. McGoohan gets his own show, with all the
benefits of 'artistic control'; and Grade gets his spy show.
It's not unheard of. As I've said before; you can imitate an
established genre by inventing a pair of detectives called Poirot and
Hastings (or Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin...) You can give them a
secretary called Miss Lemon, or a chef called Fritz Brenner; you can
chuck in a police inspector called Japp, or Cramer, and give them an
apartment in Whitehaven Mansions, or a brownstone on West 35th Street.
It's plagiarism of a sort, but so long as you don't call them Holmes
and Watson, with rooms at 221b Baker Street, a housekeeper called Mrs.
Hudson, and a Scotland Yard 'colleague' called Lestrade, you're pretty
safe from the copyright lawyers.
The precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined
in law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
McGoohan and Grade Could have agreed to make Six a politician, or a
Banker, or a Scientist, or an Accountant, or even a Clergyman... They
Chose to make him a Spy; almost indistinguishable from McGoohan's
previous character. Under the circumstances it's quite reasonable (in
spite of protests to the contrary) to assume that Six was devised as a
continuation of Drake.
There's nothing 'dishonourable' about the process. It's part and
parcel of the entertainment industry, and industry in general.
Moor Larkin
precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined in
law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
McGoohan and Grade Could have agreed to make Six a politician, or a
Banker, or a Scientist, or an Accountant, or even a Clergyman... They
Chose to make him a Spy; almost indistinguishable from McGoohan's
previous character. Under the circumstances it's quite reasonable (in
spite of protests to the contrary) to assume that Six was devised as a
continuation of Drake. There's nothing 'dishonourable' about the
process. It's part and parcel of the entertainment industry, and
industry in general.
The dishonourable bit is the historical agenda that they only did this
to avoid "Royalty payments". This last might seem just a detail but
that is often where the devil lies.
I daresay that any actor pursuing a career by following his
typecasting means that an actor is playing the same character all the
time. I guess many movie critics might say that John Wayne made a
career of the continuing adventures of the Ringo
Kid........... :-))))))))
roger
> McGoohan wrote at least three single-handed.
Moor Sharkin jumps the lark.
Ignis Fatuus
<moorl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>On Nov 16, 2:46 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: The
>precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined in
>law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
>McGoohan and Grade Could have agreed to make Six a politician, or a
>Banker, or a Scientist, or an Accountant, or even a Clergyman... They
>Chose to make him a Spy; almost indistinguishable from McGoohan's
>previous character. Under the circumstances it's quite reasonable (in
>spite of protests to the contrary) to assume that Six was devised as a
>continuation of Drake. There's nothing 'dishonourable' about the
>process. It's part and parcel of the entertainment industry, and
>industry in general.
>
>
>The dishonourable bit is the historical agenda that they only did this
>to avoid "Royalty payments". This last might seem just a detail but
>that is often where the devil lies.
>
You can call it dishonourable if you like; but I just see it as part
of everyday commerce. Smart could have called his character (Bond),
James Bond... and paid royalties to Ian Fleming (if Fleming
consented). Instead he let Drake establish his own identity.
Six is about loss of identity, and distinctions blur; but more
important than Royalties is the freedom to pursue a fresh agenda
without the need to consult or seek permissions.
John W Kennedy
> On Nov 16, 2:46 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: The
> precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined in
> law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
"Intellectual Property" /has/ no meaning. It's simply a collective term
for several distinct legal concepts, such as patents and copyrights,
which have entirely different statutes and case law behind them.
--
John W Kennedy
"The grand art mastered the thudding hammer of Thor
And the heart of our lord Taliessin determined the war."
-- Charles Williams. "Mount Badon"
Ignis Fatuus
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>On 2010-11-16 12:49:49 -0500, Moor Larkin said:
>
>> On Nov 16, 2:46 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: The
>> precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined in
>> law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
>
>"Intellectual Property" /has/ no meaning. It's simply a collective term
>for several distinct legal concepts, such as patents and copyrights,
>which have entirely different statutes and case law behind them.
You claim that a term has no meaning by defining it. You're not
posting from The Village by any chance, are you?
Ignis Fatuus
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>On 2010-11-16 12:49:49 -0500, Moor Larkin said:
>
>> On Nov 16, 2:46 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: The
>> precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined in
>> law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
>
>"Intellectual Property" /has/ no meaning. It's simply a collective term
>for several distinct legal concepts, such as patents and copyrights,
>which have entirely different statutes and case law behind them.
Incidentally, you 'might' want to attempt some basic research before
adopting such a dismissive posture. Words are just noise, until
they're given meaning by a process of mutual consent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
Albert Einstein worked for the Swiss organisation.
Moor Larkin
is about loss of identity, and distinctions blur; but more important
than Royalties is the freedom to pursue a fresh agenda without the
need to consult or seek permissions.
Fully in agreement there too.
The notion of Royalties has been introduced into the whole contorted
history of the genesis of The Prisoner because the idea that McGoohan
peremptorily packed in being Drake and then promptly grabbed at being
Drake again has a very apparent wtf? flaw in it's logic.
Therefore the fans of George had to have a reason to explain WHY
McGoohan *resigned* in the first place and why he did did not simply
go to Lew Grade and say,"Hey Lew, I've got a great idea for the next
series of Danger Man - we'll have Johnny get kidnapped." The reason to
explain why McGoohan would take such a roundabout route to the same
end......... was..... to avoid paying royalties. It's quite obvious
why this story has been promoted. It is to make the blather of the
aggrieved script editor appear to make a little sense.
You also have chosen to believe that McGoohan *resigned* from Danger
Man suddenly (as we have discussed on other threads in here) and
appear to believe that this was so that he could then do a Danger Man
sequel. Now you seek to wriggle away from the question of Royalties by
speaking of artistic freedom..... but you yourself clearly thought
*Royalties* were a big issue barely half a dozen posts ago. Now you
cry Freedom.
McGoohan's story is so much simpler. He got fed up with being John
bloody Drake. He had a neat idea for another secret agent based
series, which he knew he would get viewers for because of his own
current type-casting. He got Lew on board, mainly because Lew knew
McGoohan would at that time garner an audience no matter what he did.
McGoohan told everyone upfront that Drake was gone, just in case they
got confused at first, because it was not his intention to play any
continuation con-trick, and off he went. He never changed his story
once in nearly fifty years.
As I've said elsewhere in here, part of the knack of picking out the
truth about the past is to go figure the credible from the merely
credulous.
Ignis Fatuus
It's you that's making the song and dance about royalties. As far as
I'm concerned it's so obvious that it's scarcely worth commenting on,
let alone getting involved in realms of discussion about. It's an
issue that hits most authors sooner or later, as they recycle the
ideas that form the basis of their 'inspiration'. you don't establish
your own Sherlock Holmes variant (and earn an income for your efforts)
by running foul of copyright laws. even in the incestuous little world
of Television, it's not 'the done thing' to lift another author's
'creation' and transpose it into your own production. And the Screen
Writers Guild exists to ensure that this doesn't happen.
Your notion that there's something dishonourable or underhanded about
giving consideration to Copyright and Royalties issues is
preposterous. It's a daily occurrence for any production company.
Perhaps it's You that's troubled by the idea of Drake being carried
over into The Prisoner without payment of royalties to Smart. Does
this somehow sully your idealised view of McGoohan as a paragon of
creative genius and artistic integrity? Much better to deny that Smart
had any 'rights' to the Drake character; or deny any links between
Drake and Six.
Your persistence in snipping away my arguments, rather than addressing
them directly, shows that you're on very shaky ground with such an
approach. The fact that McGoohan 'said' something, and even 'believed'
it, does not carry the force of Holy Writ.
>McGoohan's story is so much simpler. He got fed up with being John
>bloody Drake.
So fed up that his next two roles were Drake 'clones', played in
exactly the same manner as the original. You 'might' try suggesting
that McGoohan was a 'one note' performer who projected every character
he played in exactly the same way; but his other performances, and his
'role playing' in Danger Man suggest otherwise.
> He had a neat idea for another secret agent based
>series, which he knew he would get viewers for because of his own
>current type-casting. He got Lew on board, mainly because Lew knew
>McGoohan would at that time garner an audience no matter what he did.
>McGoohan told everyone upfront that Drake was gone, just in case they
>got confused at first, because it was not his intention to play any
>continuation con-trick, and off he went. He never changed his story
>once in nearly fifty years.
And why should he? He was an Irishman; and we never let fact get in
the way of a good yarn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF445-zEHWs
It doesn't seem to have fooled many, however. Even the crew (with one
notable exception) saw Six as a continuation of Drake. The
(contemporary) audience never doubted it for a minute. Perhaps the
retrospective audience are more credulous.
>
>As I've said elsewhere in here, part of the knack of picking out the
>truth about the past is to go figure the credible from the merely
>credulous.
I think you might want to think about that and then rephrase it.
John W Kennedy
It is what biologists call paraphyletic. I can coin a word, and say
that it has the definition, "prime numbers and frozen desserts", but it
would be a silly word. The same applies to "intellectual property";
it's an arbitrary association of unrelated things.
John W Kennedy
And the US has a common office for patents and trademarks. That doesn't
mean that, in law, the two concepts have anything to do with one
another.
Ignis Fatuus
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>On 2010-11-17 03:52:22 -0500, Ignis Fatuus said:
>
>> On Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:24:15 -0500, John W Kennedy
>> <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2010-11-16 12:49:49 -0500, Moor Larkin said:
>>>
>>>> On Nov 16, 2:46 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: The
>>>> precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined in
>>>> law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
>>>
>>> "Intellectual Property" /has/ no meaning. It's simply a collective term
>>> for several distinct legal concepts, such as patents and copyrights,
>>> which have entirely different statutes and case law behind them.
>>
>> Incidentally, you 'might' want to attempt some basic research before
>> adopting such a dismissive posture. Words are just noise, until
>> they're given meaning by a process of mutual consent.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
>>
>> Albert Einstein worked for the Swiss organisation.
>
>And the US has a common office for patents and trademarks. That doesn't
>mean that, in law, the two concepts have anything to do with one
>another.
How precisely does this opinion support your assertion that
"Intellectual Property" /has/ no meaning?
The UK has the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 which seems
to imply that they do. As all designs, industrial and artistic, are
products of the intellect, it's asinine to argue that they're
unrelated, as it is to argue that the term 'Intellectual Property' in
common practice or in law.
The Berne Convention of 1886 formally adopted the term 'Intellectual
Property' in order to create a common framework for the protection of
artistic works, industrial designs, patents, and trademarks, This led
to the establishment of The United International Bureaux for the
Protection of Intellectual Property in 1893, and the World
Intellectual Property Organization (in 1967), which became a United
Nations organisation in 1974.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Organization
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 incorporates WIPO
treaties into US Law.
Seems to me that there's a lot of people (and legislation) out there
that Do recognise the term Intellectual Property'.
Ignis Fatuus
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>On 2010-11-17 03:37:57 -0500, Ignis Fatuus said:
>
>> On Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:24:15 -0500, John W Kennedy
>> <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2010-11-16 12:49:49 -0500, Moor Larkin said:
>>>
>>>> On Nov 16, 2:46 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: The
>>>> precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined in
>>>> law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
>>>
>>> "Intellectual Property" /has/ no meaning. It's simply a collective term
>>> for several distinct legal concepts, such as patents and copyrights,
>>> which have entirely different statutes and case law behind them.
>>
>> You claim that a term has no meaning by defining it. You're not
>> posting from The Village by any chance, are you?
>
>It is what biologists call paraphyletic. I can coin a word, and say
>that it has the definition, "prime numbers and frozen desserts", but it
>would be a silly word. The same applies to "intellectual property";
>it's an arbitrary association of unrelated things.
Not according to the United Nations (amongst others).
John W Kennedy
Are you claiming that, within a territorial limits of a
postage-stamp-sized enclave in New York City, patent law is governed
under the Berne Convention?
Ignis Fatuus
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>On 2010-11-17 15:50:55 -0500, Ignis Fatuus said:
>
>> On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 14:30:50 -0500, John W Kennedy
>> <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2010-11-17 03:37:57 -0500, Ignis Fatuus said:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:24:15 -0500, John W Kennedy
>>>> <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2010-11-16 12:49:49 -0500, Moor Larkin said:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Nov 16, 2:46 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote: The
>>>>>> precise meaning of the term 'intellectual property' isn't Defined in
>>>>>> law; it's only Outlined and supported by precedents in case law.
>>>>>
>>>>> "Intellectual Property" /has/ no meaning. It's simply a collective term
>>>>> for several distinct legal concepts, such as patents and copyrights,
>>>>> which have entirely different statutes and case law behind them.
>>>>
>>>> You claim that a term has no meaning by defining it. You're not
>>>> posting from The Village by any chance, are you?
>>>
>>> It is what biologists call paraphyletic. I can coin a word, and say
>>> that it has the definition, "prime numbers and frozen desserts", but it
>>> would be a silly word. The same applies to "intellectual property";
>>> it's an arbitrary association of unrelated things.
>>
>> Not according to the United Nations (amongst others).
>
>Are you claiming that, within a territorial limits of a
>postage-stamp-sized enclave in New York City, patent law is governed
>under the Berne Convention?
No. I'm claiming that the term Intellectual Property has meaning in
common usage, international agreement, and law. If the postage stamp
enclave has signed up to those agreement (or their successors) then
the terms of those agreements will be incorporated into the laws of
that enclave.
As New York City is incorporated into the larger enclave, known as the
United States of America, which has (belatedly) signed up to the terms
of the Berne Convention (and it's successors), and incorporated those
terms into laws passed by act of Congress, then it's reasonable to
suppose that the answer is Yes.
However, the status of the Berne Convention in US law is immaterial to
the question of whether or not the term Intellectual Property is
meaningless. The term was given meaning, in common usage, treaty, and
international law, by the Berne Convention. It probably originates
from the French writer Victor Hugo, who was prominent in the
establishment of the Berne Convention.
It seems hardly necessary to add, that laws pertaining to the city of
New York and it's enclaves are irrelevant to a discussion of material
produced in the UK.
John W Kennedy
So now you're claiming outright that the Berne Convention governs US
patent law? Fascinating!
Ignis Fatuus
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
Not at all. I'm claiming that you are wrong in suggesting that the
expression 'Intellectual Property' is meaningless, silly, or even
paraphyletic. Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks, and Industrial Designs,
all represent products of the 'intellect' (thereby sharing a common
ancestry), grouped together under an expression that has it's origins
in the Berne Convention (which covered copyright), and it's meaning
enshrined in common usage, international treaty, domestic law
(including the (US) Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988), and
the World Intellectual Property Organization, of which the US is a
member.
The WIPO provides it's own definition
http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/
Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind:
inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images,
and designs used in commerce.
IP is divided into two categories: Industrial property, which
includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and
geographic indications of source; and Copyright, which includes
literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films,
musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs
and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to
copyright include those of performing artists in their performances,
producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters
in their radio and television programs.
Brian Watson
"John W Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:4ce5a58d$0$20173$607e...@cv.net...
> So now you're claiming outright that the Berne Convention governs US
> patent law? Fascinating!
When Charles Dickens was touring the US about a hundred years ago, he made a
point of speaking out about American companies bootlegging writers' work.
Ironic that the US is now SO jealous of its own creators' work.
By the way, the US is a signatory of the Berne Convention because it
protects US creators' interests.
Moor Larkin
> Your notion that there's something dishonourable or underhanded about
> giving consideration to Copyright and Royalties issues is
> preposterous.
That is not the point at issue.The point at issue is that their
Liability lies at the REASON why Six was not Drake. Obviously, if
McGoohan felt that his new character was not *Drake* then he would not
call him Drake. He knew of course that it was inevitable people might
want to think it was Drake so he had press releases saying it wasn't
and every interview he did at the time, he negated it too..
You of course say that he looks like Drake (well he would wouldn't he)
he acted like Drake (most of the time he didn't) and he was a secret
agent (but you don't explain why he was not Napoleon Solo except I
guess you will say he looked like John Drake so round we go
again...:-))) ) . This is just your opinion and has no bearing on the
facts at the time. If Smart HAD copyrights then I accept royalties may
be worth a discussion, but nobody seems to know if this was even the
case.
I guess this is quite apt in the world of the prisoner because if
somebody is accused and nobody even knows whether the crime they have
been accused of has even been committed............. this
sounds........ ALTOGETHER NOW..... Kafkaesque!! YaY !!
On Nov 17, 1:52 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> It's a daily occurrence for any production company.
> Perhaps it's You that's troubled by the idea of Drake being carried
> over into The Prisoner without payment of royalties to Smart. Does
> this somehow sully your idealised view of McGoohan as a paragon of
> creative genius and artistic integrity? Much better to deny that Smart
> had any 'rights' to the Drake character; or deny any links between
> Drake and Six.
I'm not denying that Smart MAY have had rights, but I would remind you
that another wise old owl elsewhere said he understood that Smart had
*settled up* with Lew Grade about any interests of his with ITC.
Another wise old owl told me that Smart never had any such copyrights
under the terms of his agreements with ITC in the first place. You
don't know the answer any more than I do, but I'm the only one
prepared to admit I don't and then to ask the question..... :-))))
Smart certainly had residuals of some sort due because when Granada/
Carlton were reshowing Danger Man, his sister, Patsy Smart alerted him
and he received whatever was his due, after Patsy contacted the
companies involved. Tthey apologised and said that they had thought
Ralph was dead. Caring sharing ITV for you huh?..... :-)))))))
On Nov 17, 1:52 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> Your persistence in snipping away my arguments,
Seeing you now on this board putting an American straight about the
American Copyright Laws explains more than any reply I could
snip.............. :-)))))))
On Nov 17, 1:52 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> rather than addressing
> them directly, shows that you're on very shaky ground with such an
> approach. The fact that McGoohan 'said' something, and even 'believed'
> it, does not carry the force of Holy Writ.
If no copyright to Smart existed, then it wouldn't make any difference
what he believed would it? If the rights to *John Drake* were Lew
Grade's or belonged to ITC then it would make any difference what he
believed would it.
There were German pulp magazines being printed right from 1962 or so
and through until 1970 and they carried a picture of McGoohan and were
titled John Drake. I have one or two and although my German is not
that hot, I can see no indication anywhere of an acknowledgment about
any copyright whatsoever. Therefore I actually have a little evidence
that there was no such copyright. So far as I can tell, all you know
is what you have read other people write in their books and you have
your Drake obsession too of course.
In the later years those magazines dropped the picture of McGoohan and
just carry the title John Drake. Maybe McGoohan invoked his image
rights.......... :-)))))))))))
On Nov 17, 1:52 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> So fed up that his next two roles were Drake 'clones', played in
> exactly the same manner as the original. You 'might' try suggesting
> that McGoohan was a 'one note' performer who projected every character
> he played in exactly the same way; but his other performances, and his
> 'role playing' in Danger Man suggest otherwise.
I once read some knobhead on the internet claiming Lyle Rumford was
John Drake. I'm all for Nelson Brenner though..... ;-)))
On Nov 17, 1:52 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> It doesn't seem to have fooled many, however. Even the crew (with one
> notable exception) saw Six as a continuation of Drake. The
> (contemporary) audience never doubted it for a minute. Perhaps the
> retrospective audience are more credulous.
They should have read the company press releases at the time then I
guess......... :-))))))))
Part of the reason for that was that McGoohan was very closed-mouthed
about his new series because he was worried his idea would get ripped
off by all those other creatives milling obout asyou have suggested
exoist in all the parts o ypour post that I have snipped. McGoohan
only told them what they needed to know and if they thought it was
Drake, little did he care. He had a job to do. Not the best people
manager I guess, but then he admitted that himself in at least one
interview.
On Nov 17, 1:52 pm, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@fatuusisland.com> wrote:
> >As I've said elsewhere in here, part of the knack of picking out the
> >truth about the past is to go figure the credible from the merely
> >credulous.
>
> I think you might want to think about that and then rephrase it.
Ermmmmmmm......... No....... :-)))))))
You might lie in bed dreaming about John Drake springing out of your
wardrobe, but to me Johnny was just another overcoat that Patrick
McGoohan wore when he was at work.
<>snip snip<> :-))))))))
Ignis Fatuus
I've never claimed to have the answer; and in presenting the
alternatives I've consistently quoted Terry Nation - who retained a
substantial interest in the Daleks - and Sydney Newman, who created
the Avengers and Doctor Who, without retaining any rights to either.
Newman's remuneration for his creative input was included with his
senior position as head of Drama for ATV and BBC. Independently
contracted writers and producers weren't contractually bound to
relinquish their legal rights to their creative input. Copyright law
acknowledged the right's of every 'author' to ownership of their
material, and the Screen Writer's Guild enforced basic standards for
enforcing the incorporation of these rights into contractual
agreements throughout the industry.
In effect, there was a rigid minimal level of protection and
remuneration for every author, with more flexibility at the top
levels.
Smart was contracted as an independent producer; suggesting that he
retained more control and ownership of his product, than a salaried
employee might have expected. The clue is in the 'created by' credit,
which was not granted normally to salaried employees.
>Smart certainly had residuals of some sort due because when Granada/
>Carlton were reshowing Danger Man, his sister, Patsy Smart alerted him
>and he received whatever was his due, after Patsy contacted the
>companies involved. Tthey apologised and said that they had thought
>Ralph was dead. Caring sharing ITV for you huh?..... :-)))))))
>
Which rather supports my point. The legal 'rights' granted to
'authors' were not dependent on any form of registration. The
contractual terms that were standardised between the 'industry' and
the Screen Writers Guild, were based on the provisions of the Berne
Convention. The law automatically acknowledged the author's copyright,
and Smart would have relinquished this only by assigning it in
totality to ITC, rather than licensing it to ITC as a condition of his
contract. The payment of 'residuals' suggests that Smart retained a
copyright interest in his creation. Of course any lawsuit would have
considered only the value of his contribution in terms of television
broadcasts, rather than the home entertainment market that wasn't
envisaged at the time. From that POV there was little incentive to
pursue the incorporation of Drake into Six. Newman's contracts left
him with no 'residual' rights to his creations (although it's not
certain that a court would have given precedence to a contract over
his statutory entitlements).
Of course, as you've suggested, Grade was quite ready to spend. And
there's no evidence to suggest that Smart hadn't given some form of
consent for the Prisoner project to incorporate Drake...
I was thinking more about your pairing of an adjective and a noun.
Moor Larkin
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
I'm inclined to think that the only thing between us might be that one
of us sees the glass as half-full and the other sees the glass as half-
empty. But at least we are both willing to share the glass.
Cheers... ;-)
Watch out for those nouns and adjectives scratched at the
bottom......... :-))))
wer ist Nr. eine?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11417707@N04/2316484656/in/set-72157602069536647/
Dick Spanner
> I just read an episode review, which said
>
> Danger Man meets the Averngers pastiche
>
> I thought it had a bit of Get Smart in there too.
>
>
> BTW what was the convertible he drove?
> Not the Lotus KAR120C as usual.