The Naked Truth About Harrison Marks

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Marks also set up a subsidiary company, Gaffinia LTD, to distribute French glamour magazines, as well as acting as the British distributor of the coffee table books of French publisher Jean Jacques Pauvert, including several volumes of ‘L’Erotisme Au Cinema’, and the original French version of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon. After all, no amount of skilful make-up can give impact to a photographer if the model lacks health and vitality” bitched the editorial. Anyway, here we go again into realms of historical smut with British photographer Harrison Marks and his famed erotic publication Kamera. Pam’s friend, the film critic Peter Noble would help them out by getting Marks’ pictures and Green’s writing printed in the variety of publications that Noble wrote for.

Once Marks got down to business, Practical Photography found him to be one of the fastest photographers they had ever encountered, forever changing his positions and angles, taking photographs from above his head right down to sand level, “often his shooting poses are as interesting as the models” they noted, going on to claim Marks in action resembled a human tripod. Teri Martine: “I remember George taking me to see the preview of The Naked World of Harrison Marks we were no sooner in our seats and George fell asleep and was snoring so loud I had to wake him up! Such was Marks apathy towards the publishing game that he was even selling his work to rival publishers like Russell Gay whose 1967 publication ‘Feline’, and ‘The Fabulous Monique Deveraux’, a one shot magazine from 1969, featured nude photos predominantly taken by Marks. There is also a tiresome burlesque shooting a film and other amateurish episodes that almost entirely counterbalance the star's undoubted talents as a photographer with an eye for colour and design as well as for nudity. Such raids were rare, because the ships had to fly hundreds of miles over French territory to reach their target, making them vulnerable to attack.A few of Marks glamour films had horror themes as well, The Four Poster (1964) sees Marks play a hunchback trying to kill Margaret Nolan during her stay in a spooky hotel, while two decades before A Nightmare on Elm Street, Marks shot “Flesh and Fantasie” (1961) in which June Palmer is menaced in her dreams by bogeyman Stuart Samuels, sporting a nifty Dracula style cape. Further embarrassment awaited when Marks was invited as a guest on the BBC’s Tonight programme, and after running a clip from one of the comedy films, the less than impressed host Kenneth Alsop turned round to Marks and asked “what was funny about that? Macaskie and his wife were elderly and out of shape, but then the difference between those who are the genuine nudists in the film, and those who are especially brought in nude models sticks out as obvious as a hard-on in Spielplatz.

Today she’s landed smack in the middle of America’s poisonous race debate and everyone in the Western world with an internet connection is aware of her. Marks proudest achievement as a theatrical photographer was taking pictures of Bela Lugosi during the actor’s British tour as Dracula in 1951. True to his reputation Tenser devised a fantastic campaign for Naked as Nature Intended billing it as “the greatest nudist film ever”, while capitalizing on the fame of its director and star by billing Green as the “Queen of the Pin-Ups and Marks the “King of the Camera”.After directing The Nine Ages of Nakedness, Marks endured a particularly turbulent time in the early seventies when he was made bankrupt (in 1970), was the subject of an obscenity trial at the Old Bailey (in 1971) and his drinking increased.

That comes as a surprise, since it was owned by the infamous Beta Publications of Spotlite Extra and Close-Up Extra fame. Along with Marks’ music hall influences, Tony’s amazing sets gave Marks product some originality in the fairly limited format of the early glamour film. By this time Marks had relocated his operation from his Gerrard Street studio, to a former territorial army hall turned glamour studio in Saffron Hill; “a grim and grotty mews that lies behind Farringdon Road, near King’s Cross Station” according to Titbits magazine, although they conceded that GHM’s new studio formed “an oasis of glamour in a desert of warehouses and factories with dismal, sooty windows”.

In his biography Harrison Marks describes the music hall life in vivid, but unsentimental terms, as a life of crummy digs, constant traveling, and where younger acts like himself and Norman Wisdom attempted to establish themselves in the business, while sozzled old-timers like Frank Randall and Tod Slaughter appeared drunk on stage nightly, and those sober enough to realize it could see that TV and nudie revues were about to bring the curtain down on this ancient form of entertainment. For all her best efforts, Vivienne, who had been raised in an orphanage, remained a fiercely independent spirit, an attitude that clashed with Marks who’d grown use to getting his own way. Marks made ends meet during this period by continuing to shoot short films for the 8mm market and releasing them via his Maximus Films company. Marks was initially unsure about directing a feature film until Tenser and Klinger took him to their cinema club and showed him a typical example of the sort of tacky sex film they were playing, after which Marks vowed “if I couldn’t make better (films) than those then I would give the whole racket up”. For all of the motley ensemble that GHM had built up around him, Kamera’s most important figure, and indeed its figurehead, remained Pamela Green herself, who managed to increase her popularity by adopting a variety of disguises and alter-egos within the magazine, these included sultry gypsy Princess Sonmar Harriks, a blacked up ‘south sea siren’ and most famous of all the saucy French redhead Rita Landre.