George Harrison-Marks

I spent much of last year working trough the films of Ed Lee.  I reviewed 13 but I have watched many, many more than that over the years.  I have to admit that I have mixed feeling about Nu-West films and I decided it was time to move back to my first love, English spanking movies.  My plan had been to explore the Spanking for Pleasure catalogue, and I started to do that, but I became interested in two major figures in the English scene who were something of a mystery to me: Ivor Goldblatt (Red Stripe) and George Harrison Marks (Kane International and Top Marks).  I started with Goldblatt, and I very quickly found a complete list of his movies, several biographical pieces and a company that was still selling some of his movies (Roue).  Harrison proved to be more of a challenge and I love a challenge so I will start with him.

I quickly discovered that George Harrison-Marks (6 August 1926 – 27 June 1997) was a highly regarded English glamour photographer and later a director of both commercial movies and several types pornographic and fetish films.  Marks was not a trained photographer and he begin his career as half of a stand-up comedy act called Harrison and Stuart, a teenage duo that  appeared in music halls in the late Forties but broke up in 1951.  Afterward Marks began a relationship with Pamela Green (28 March 1929 – 7 May 2010), a dancer and model sometimes considered the English equivalent to ‘Bettie Page’.  They opened a photographic studio in London and that grew into Kamera Publications Ltd, a publisher of high-quality photographic magazines and eventually 8 mm nudist films.  This portion of Mark’s career was documented in the 1967 book “The Naked Truth about Harrison Marks” by Franklyn Wood.  In 1960 Green had a small movie role in the successful psychological thriller “Pepping Tom” and the next year Marks and Green made the cult classic “Naked as Nature Intended” which remained in movie theatres in London’s West End for 17 months.  The making of that movie was described in their 1961 book “Naked as Nature Intended: The Epic Tale of a Nudist Picture” which was reprinted in 2013.

Green and Marks separated shortly after 'Naked as Nature Intended' was completed.   By that time Marks had become an alcoholic and he was spending money "as though it was going out of style".  In 1971 he was arrested for dealing in pornography by post and he was eventually forced to declare personal bankruptcy.  He was rescued when British magazine publisher David Sullivan hired him to write and direct “Come Play with Me”, a 1977 sex comedy in the style of the popular British “Carry On” comedies.  The movie starred Mary Millington and featured several of Marks's friends from the music hall circuit.

Shortly after “Come Play with Me” the publishers of “Janus’, the British spanking magazine, decided to begin making movies.  They hired Marks to direct their first film “The Gym Lesson”, a short (6:24) 8 mm silent movie that was probably filmed in 1977 (vidcap at right).  Several more Janus movies would follow including “The Riding Lesson” (1978), “The School Lesson” (1979) and “The Nurse’s Lesson” (1980) .  I’m not certain if Marks directed two other Janus movies that also have ‘Lesson’ in the title (“The Piano Lesson” and “The Spelling Lesson”).  He made the transition from 8 mm film to videotape in 1980 and made several more Janus movies including and “The Prefect’s Lesson” (1981) and "Warden’s End" (1982) along with several movies that he released himself such as "Slaves of Mistress Monique" and “Rear Attack”.

In 1982 Marks left Janus to set up his own magazine, ”Kane”, which first appeared September 1982, at a price of five pounds (about $18 today).  He continued making videos through Imprint Productions starting with “The Cane and Mr. Abel” starring Linzi Drew but the second movie “Mandy Baits” would be the first release.  “Mandy Baits” was featured in an issue of Kane Magazine (Kane 29) and this pattern would be followed for many of the later movies.  About this time, he created 'Kane International' to distribute the videos he promoted through the magazine.  I’ve managed to collect some of the movies Marks made for Janus and Kane and I’m planning to review some of those in the near future.

I found a complete list of the ‘Kane International’ movies on the Internet Wayback Machine that includes 101 titles.  At present there are 76 movies I am certain were made by GHM.  This includes 7 'preview' tapes, 12  filmed versions of Kane International live performances staged in London during the nineties and the femdom movie. called 'Madam Monique' in the Kane International catalogue, that stars Linzi Drew in her domme persona (an ad for this movie under a different name was published in Janus 15 in 1982).  There are another 5 movies that were released shortly after GHM's death and he may have played a role in their creation.  Finally, there are 20 Kane International movies that were clearly made after GHM's death and these include another 14 based on live performances at Kane spanking parties between 1998 and 2001.  But, GHM was also making movies for other companies during this period and I don't have a complete list of those. (The text in italics was updated in March 2019).

On his website, Mark’s wrote that his spanking magazines and movies “kept him in booze and cigarettes and an acceptable degree of comfort for the rest of his life”.  He died of bone cancer on June 27^th, 1997.  His daughter Josie Harrison-Marks and his former editorial assistent continued to produce Kane Magazine and continued Kane International until 2002 after wich they made movies under the “Top Marks” banner.  Another business associate kept his Kane International website and on-line video store active after his death but it eventually disappeared just before 2010 and most of movies are no longer available.

A complete biography of George Harrison-Marks is available at http://gavcrimson.blogspot.com/2008/08/naked-world-of-harrison-marks.html/ and it is reposted on http://pamela-green.com/essays/the-naked-world-of-harrison-marks/.