George Harrison Marks

George Harrison Marks was a British glamour photographer active in the sex industry from the mid 1950s till his death in the late 1990s. As a photographer he founded the Kamera group of magazines with his then 'supposed' wife, the model and actress Pamela Green, although they were never actually married.In 1958, as an offshoot of his magazines, Marks began making short films for the 8mm market of his models undressing and posing topless, popularly known as "glamour home movies". A recent episode of BBC's Balderdash and Piffle program attributed the earliest use of the word "glamour" as a euphemism for nude modeling/photography to Marks' 1958 publicity materials. One of Marks' most popular 8mm glamour films was The Window Dresser (1961), starring Pamela Green as a cat-burglar who hides from the law by posing as a lingerie shop dummy. Marks does a character turn as the shop's exaggeratedly gay owner, but the short's obvious raison d'etre remained Pam's show stopping shop window striptease. After a judge threw out an obscenity charge against The Window Dresser (according to legend remarking "I'll buy a copy for my son, case dismissed"), Marks continued to make more 8mm glamour films throughout the 1960s. Marks' background as a music hall performer is evident in the "little stories" he would devise for his 8mm glamour films, as well as the occasional bit parts he would write for himself and his onetime comedy partner Stuart Samuels (a.k.a. Sam Stuart).Of the more notable 8mm glamour films, "Witches Brew" (1960) features Pamela Green as a Witch casting spells and a brief appearance by Marks as her hunchback assistant. "Model Entry" (1965) sees a cat burglar breaking into Marks' studio, then stripping and leaving him her address. While "Danger Girl" stars June Palmer as a stripping secret agent who is put into bondage by a Russian Spy, only for her to break free and throw him onto a circular saw in the grisly finale. In an even more macabre vein is "Perchance to Scream" (1967) in which Marks model Jane Paul is transported to a medieval torture chamber where Stuart Samuels plays an evil inquisitor who sentences topless women to be whipped and beheaded by a masked executioner.After directing The Nine Ages of Nakedness, Marks endured a particularly turbulent time in the early seventies when he was made bankrupt (in 1970), was the subject of an obscenity trial at the Old Bailey (in 1971) and his drinking began to become more heavy. Ironically a segment of The Nine Ages of Nakedness had ended with Marks' alter-ego 'The Great Marko' being brought up before a crooked Judge (Cardew Robinson) on obscenity charges. Marks made ends meet during this period by continuing to shoot short films for the 8mm market and releasing them via his Maximus films company.While his earlier 8mm films largely consisted of nothing more explicit than the models posing topless, late sixties titles like Apartment 69 and The Amorous Masseur were generally soft core sex affairs. One Maximus short 'The Ecstasy of Oral Love', even adopts a pseudo-sex education front, showing a couple frantically licking each other, ending with some relatively graphic oral sex scenes which are inter-cut with supposedly socially redeeming title cards issuing advice to 'young married couples'.The Maximus films also provided some notable discoveries. Sue Bond, later in sitcoms and The Benny Hill Show, began her career in Marks soft core sex shorts of this period like 'First You See It', 'Hot Teddy' and 'Coitus-An Experiece in Motion and Emotion', today Mrs. Bond claims never to have met Marks and refuses to acknowledge the existence of these films. Marks' short 'The Naked Face' (late 60's/early 70s) gave some early exposure to Nicola Austine, a ubiquitous nude model/actress in the 1970s thanks to regular appearances in films, Titbits magazine and Top of the Pops record covers. While the Collinson Twins (Mary Collinson and Madeleine Collinson) had appeared as saucy maids in the period dress Maximus short 'Halfway Inn', prior to starring in Hammer's Twins of Evil.Unbeknownst to the actors/actresses who appeared in the Maximus films, Marks would also publish stills taken during their making in short lived magazines like Impact 70, under the guise of the film stills being 'romantic photo stories' without getting their permission or issuing further payment. The editorial notes of Impact 70- which features the Collinsons in stills taken from Halfway Inn and Sue Bond in stills taken from First You See It- ironically state "neither said photos nor words used to describe them are meant to depict the actual conduct or personality of the models". This sideline only came to light when a "malicious" person connected to the Top of the Pops music program was reading a Marks magazine and recognized two people (in stills taken from Maximus shorts) in it, as being part of the TOTP crew and had them fired from their long standing jobs as crowd controllers and musical stand-ins.In the mid seventies Marks had begun selling explicit photo sets to porn publisher David Sullivan's top shelf magazines, such as "Latent Lesbian Fantasy" featuring Cosey Fanni Tutti, which appeared in the first issue of Sullivan's Ladybirds magazine in August 1976. Evidently Marks had also sold Sullivan the rights to some of his 8mm sex films as well, as adverts by Kelerfern (a Sullivan mail order company) carried Marks directed sex shorts like ''Hole in One'', ''Nymphomania'', ''King Muff'' and ''Doctor Sex'' for sale around this period. Sullivan is also believed to have been behind a mysterious company calling itself the "Ultimate Film Club", who advertised in the back pages of magazines like Cinema Blue and Sullivan's own Playbirds, and sold several of Marks' late 60s/early 70s Maximus films. The Ultimate Film Club was based out of an Essex P.O. Box, but claimed to have bases in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Hamburg. The descriptions of the Marks films they were selling left little to the imagination, Santa's Coming stars "the biggest Father Christmas you have ever seen", Anna's Manor is a "tale of rape and lust", The Danish Maid "features a 9 ½" male- interesting point for the ladies", while the blurb for Goodnight Nurse claims "see the girls in complete nurses uniform sexually arouse their patient- and his response. His 8" weapon soon whips into action". The Danish Maid was in fact a remake of an older Marks 8mm film called The French Maid (1961), in which a chap orders a maid from a newspaper, falls asleep and dreams of a sexy girl, only to be woken up by a maid who turns out to be anything but. The Danish Maid adds soft core sex to the proceedings and a variation on the joke punch line; in The French Maid the real maid turns out to be a old, unattractive woman, while in The Danish Maid it turns out to be a man in drag who arrives at the luckless protagonists door. As well as mail order, The Ultimate Film Club claimed these films could be also be purchased at the porn shop of their "London Agents", G&B Books based at 130 Godwin Road in London, which was in fact yet another company run by David Sullivan. Sullivan also used the same address for his companies "Subdean Publishing" (in 1972) and "K.G Imports" which advertised in the same magazines and claimed to offer "Hard Scandinavian" magazines.A further Kelerfern Advert for Marks films available on super 8mm, that appeared in Rustler Vol. 3 No 3 (circa 1978), also listed for sale the titles; ''Inferno'', ''Lesson For Lolita'', ''Blow Job'', ''Pussy Lovers'', ''Sex Crazy'', ''Morning Lust'', ''Any Way You Like'', ''Cum Lay with Me'', ''Hot Ass'', ''Gym Slip Rampage'' and ''Bottoms Up!''. A more historically important Marks film, that was shot for his Maximus company circa 1974, but later sold by Kelerfern was Sex is My Business (a.k.a. Sex Shop), notable for starring a pre-fame Mary Millington. Sex is My Business was shot late on a Saturday night at a sex shop, located on London's Coventry Street. The storyline concerns a powerful aphrodisiac being dropped by a customer, whose potency renders the shops' staff and customers sex crazy. Millington is the films main focus of attention, playing a member of staff who drags a customer into the back room for some multi-position sex, thoughtfully turning on the shops CCTV camera so others can watch. Marks' wife Toni, also has a small, non-sex role in the film. Harrison Marks' involvement in the film was not well known, and was only discovered when a super 8mm print of the film was privately transferred to DVD in 2008. Curiously Marks claimed never to have worked with Millington prior to making Come Play With Me in 1977, and he would appear to have forgotten about making the film.While the Marks films offered in UK porn magazines throughout the 1970s appear to have been softcore, and their pornographic nature greatly exaggerated by the Ads (a familiar trait of David Sullivan's), since the early 1970s onwards Marks had begun dabbling in more explicit material, the extent of which has rarely been acknowledged. He made short films for a British hardcore pornographer known only as "Charlie Brown", and began making hardcore versions of his own Maximus short films which were released overseas on the Color Climax and Tabu labels. "Unaccustomed as I Am", a black and white Maximus short starring Marks 1970s discovery Clyda Rosen, for instance, was also filmed in a colour hardcore version called Die Lollos (a.k.a The Customs). The two versions of these films were generally filmed on alternate weeks, with the hardcore version usually shot a week before the soft one. Marks had a peculiar repertory company for his hardcore films, which included big bust models like Clyda Rosen and Nicky Stanton for the female leads. Ex-bodybuilder Howard "Vanderhorn" Nelson in non-sex character parts, usually wearing elaborate disguises so people wouldn't recognize him. A diminutive man with long ginger hair, who played one of the hippies in Die Lollos and other bit parts, who was the boyfriend of one of Marks' models and like Howard only ever did non-sex roles. The regular male lead in Marks hardcore films was a well endowed actor who later had a legit role in the BBC's TV adaptation of [[The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy]]. In later years Marks was reluctant to discuss these hardcore short films and claimed 'not to remember' their names, some titles are however now known including Dolly Mixture (1973) a horror themed short sex film in which a Frankenstein like mad doctor puts together a female creation (Clyda Rosen), who ends up having a threesome with a passing insurance investigator and the doctor's hunchback assistant. Dolly Mixture was shot in a hardcore version and then a soft one during which Clyda and the male lead got "carried away" and inconveniently began to have real sex on camera.Other hardcore Marks shorts include, ''Autograph Hunter'', ''Tea and Crumpet'', ''The Tunnel of Love'', ''Duty Free'', ''Big N' Busty'', ''Bistro Bordello'' (1973) starring Ava Cadell, ''Arabian Knights'' and ''Busty Baller'' (1979). The latter, a Color Climax production, was shot in an apartment overlooking Bond Street Station in Oxford Street, and features Nicky Stanton seducing a passing Window Cleaner, who ends up filling more than just his bucket. A soft version of the film called ''Busty Ravers'' was also made as a free gift for the porn magazine 'Peaches'.Arabian Knights' (filmed for Color Climax in 1979) was shot at the Hotel Julius Caesar in Queens Gardens in Bayswater and is notable for featuring the only known hardcore performance of Jada Smith (later known as Rosemary England) and for starring mainstream actor Milton Reid in a non-sex role. Arabian Knights was shot during the winter months, a cast member later recalled the surreal experience of acting out the film's middle eastern slave auction scenario, then in-between takes staring out of one of the Julius Caesar's windows to discover it had began snowing. During filming several of the actresses trashed their rooms and abused a member of the hotel staff, who went on to tip the press off about a blue movie being filmed on the premises. As a result an undercover journalist hid on the Julius Caesar Hotel's roof observing the filming of Arabian Knights through a spy hole, and the story was subsequently reported in The Sunday People the following weekend. The bad publicity caused by the Sunday People's piece meant ''Arabian Knights'' would turn out to be Milton Reid's last film, ostracized by the film community, he never acted again.In the late 1970's Marks was hired as photographer for Janus magazine- which specialized in spanking material- even managing to get his bodybuilder friend Howard Nelson on the front cover of issue two (as a "spanking milkman"). Marks also began making short films on the subject for the 8mm market. Two of the earliest appear to have been ''Rawhide'', sold by Kelerfern circa 1977, in which according to the ad "the ageing headmaster really gives two naughty schoolgirls some punishment", and Late for School copyrighted 'Janus Publications 1977'. These shorts featured actresses recognizable from soft core films of the period like Come Play With Me's Lisa Taylor and Sonia Svenberger.In 1982 Marks left the Janus stable to set up his own magazine Kane on the same subject. Corporal punishment would now become Marks' big theme for the final act of his career. Making the transition from 8mm to videotape, Marks made around 80 videos of this nature with titles like The Prefect's Lesion (1981), Five of the Best (1988), The Spanking Academy of Dr. Blunt (1992), Schoolgirl Fannies on Fire (1994), Spanked Senseless (1995) and Stinging Stewardesses (1996). As with the 8mm striptease films and ''Naked As Nature Intended'', the spanking videos clearly existed solely for the purpose of titillation yet at the same time adopted an asexual stance, bringing Marks career curiously full circle. Marks died of bone cancer on the 27th June 1997. Show less «