Series 1 – Episode 4
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Marker
‘Jay’ Walker Anne Barry Inspector Ted Barry Gwen Barry Ludo Paul Brooks Sue Holmes Jane Tindall Sergeant Lander Adams Noble |
Alfred Burke
David Andrews Julia Foster Glynn Edwards Betty Baskcomb Errol John Alan Browning Jacqueline Clarke Patricia Denys Louida Vaughan John Crocker Ray Browne |
Uncredited cast:
The rehearsal script also included several patrons and staff members at the Flip-Side discotheque, including a heavy called Georgie; a client of Marker named Mr Gordon; staff members at Ludo’s billiard hall; and two porters at the greenhouse, none of whom were credited in TV listings
The rehearsal script also included several patrons and staff members at the Flip-Side discotheque, including a heavy called Georgie; a client of Marker named Mr Gordon; staff members at Ludo’s billiard hall; and two porters at the greenhouse, none of whom were credited in TV listings
Production
Series based on an idea by Roger Marshall & Anthony Marriott
Theme Music composed by Robert Earley Story Editor: Richard Bates Floor Manager: Denver Thornton |
Stage Manager: Mary Lewis
Production Assistant: Eileen Hughes Designed by Anne Spavin Producer: Don Leaver Directed by Kim Mills |
Rehearsed from Thursday 1 October 1964 at Steadfast Hall, Riverside, Kingston upon Thames
Camera rehearsed from Tuesday 13 October 1964 at Studio 2, ABC Television Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex
Recorded on Wednesday 14 October 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
Camera rehearsed from Tuesday 13 October 1964 at Studio 2, ABC Television Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex
Recorded on Wednesday 14 October 1964 at Studio 2, Teddington
TV World Synopsis
Thursday: Missing: Anne Barry, 5’1”, blonde, telephonist. Last seen, breakfast Tuesday. “No cops – by request. Start at office. Then what?”
Click here for detailed synopsis
Click here for detailed synopsis
Transmission
Saturday 13 February 1965, 9.10pm (ABC Midlands, ABC North, Southern and Ulster)
Saturday 29 May 1965, 10.10pm (ATV London, Border, Channel and Westward)
Tuesday 20 July 1965, 10.35pm (Grampian)
Sunday 1 August 1965, 11pm (Scottish)
Saturday 28 August 1965, 10.10pm (TWW)
Saturday 25 September 1965, 10.15pm (Tyne Tees)
Saturday 29 May 1965, 10.10pm (ATV London, Border, Channel and Westward)
Tuesday 20 July 1965, 10.35pm (Grampian)
Sunday 1 August 1965, 11pm (Scottish)
Saturday 28 August 1965, 10.10pm (TWW)
Saturday 25 September 1965, 10.15pm (Tyne Tees)
Archive
Rehearsal script – held in the BFI Special Collections
Story Notes
ABC promotional material indicates that this episode was written by Roger Marshall from a story by Roger Marshall and Anthony Marriott.
The script was first used as the basis for an unbroadcast pilot episode entitled The Public Eye: Dig You Later, which was recorded in June 1964. In this, Alfred Burke’s character was called Frank Marvin, a name the actor didn’t much care for. “Marvin … sounded a bit American,” he recalled when interviewed in January 1995, “and since the series was not American and there was no American element, I thought up the name Marker.” When Public Eye was commissioned as a full series, the episode was remounted, this time credited solely to Roger Marshall and with the main character now called Frank Marker. One instance of the old name was accidentally left uncorrected in the revised rehearsal script – in Act One, a direction reads, “Marvin looks at them [two photographs of Anne Barry] and nods.”
No actor is credited in ABC publicity material or TV listings as having played the character of Mr Gordon, a client of Marker whose wife has gone missing and who appears in the rehearsal script near the end of Act Two. This is odd, as Gordon is a speaking character who has more lines of dialogue in the script than either the mortuary attendant Adams (a role credited to John Crocker) or Ludo’s henchman Noble (a role credited to Ray Browne). It is therefore possible that Gordon’s scene was either cut or rewritten to exclude him.
When one of Ludo’s men rabbit punches Jay in Act Three, the writer takes care not to show too much violence on screen. His script specifies that “All we see is the flat of the hand descending in a vicious chop.”
The script was first used as the basis for an unbroadcast pilot episode entitled The Public Eye: Dig You Later, which was recorded in June 1964. In this, Alfred Burke’s character was called Frank Marvin, a name the actor didn’t much care for. “Marvin … sounded a bit American,” he recalled when interviewed in January 1995, “and since the series was not American and there was no American element, I thought up the name Marker.” When Public Eye was commissioned as a full series, the episode was remounted, this time credited solely to Roger Marshall and with the main character now called Frank Marker. One instance of the old name was accidentally left uncorrected in the revised rehearsal script – in Act One, a direction reads, “Marvin looks at them [two photographs of Anne Barry] and nods.”
No actor is credited in ABC publicity material or TV listings as having played the character of Mr Gordon, a client of Marker whose wife has gone missing and who appears in the rehearsal script near the end of Act Two. This is odd, as Gordon is a speaking character who has more lines of dialogue in the script than either the mortuary attendant Adams (a role credited to John Crocker) or Ludo’s henchman Noble (a role credited to Ray Browne). It is therefore possible that Gordon’s scene was either cut or rewritten to exclude him.
When one of Ludo’s men rabbit punches Jay in Act Three, the writer takes care not to show too much violence on screen. His script specifies that “All we see is the flat of the hand descending in a vicious chop.”
Production Notes
The pilot version of Dig You Later was recorded at ABC’s Northern facility in Didsbury, Manchester in June 1964. The cast list for this recording is unknown, with the exception of Alfred Burke as Frank Marvin. The story editor was Richard Bates, while Don Leaver doubled as producer and director. “Together with Don, we made a pilot episode at ABC’s studios in Didsbury,” Richard Bates told Andrew Pixley in July 2012. “This was really an OB base, but had been used by Armchair Theatre for live performances in the early days of [Sydney Newman’s] reign [as Head of Drama]. The pilot was well received and we made a first series. [The pilot] was remade during the series. That [first] version was destroyed.”
The remake was referred to as Episode 4, its number in the production sequence for the full series.
To conserve studio space, the rehearsal script indicated that the Barrys’ double bed, the PBX switchboard at William Marston Limited, and the mortuary should be built as small corners only, rather than full sets.
On a couple of occasions when Inspector Barry appears in consecutive scenes, Roger Marshall’s script allows for continuous recording as if the production were live. The bedroom scene in Act One (which follows the opening sequence in the Flip-Side discotheque) begins with a close-up of an alarm clock, before cutting to a wider shot of Barry looking at the clock. This could, at a push, have allowed actor Glynn Edwards time to perform a quick costume change, move to the bedroom set and get under the covers. Similarly, at the end of the bedroom scene, the camera pans to the window and the next scene opens on the window of the Barrys’ breakfast room. Barry’s voice is heard initially as a voice-over as the camera pans from the window to the breakfast table, before finally showing Barry, Gwen and Anne sitting at it. Such techniques would have been second nature to experienced television writers in the mid-1960s, when many drama productions went out live and those that were pre-recorded were done so with as few breaks as possible. The director may still have chosen to have a recording break at either or both of these two points.
Tyne Tees Television concluded its run of Series 1 episodes with Dig You Later on Saturday 25 September 1965, after which the slot was given over to feature films. The broadcaster had allocated only 13 transmission slots to the series, omitting A Harsh World for Zealots and You Should Hear Me Eat Soup.
The remake was referred to as Episode 4, its number in the production sequence for the full series.
To conserve studio space, the rehearsal script indicated that the Barrys’ double bed, the PBX switchboard at William Marston Limited, and the mortuary should be built as small corners only, rather than full sets.
On a couple of occasions when Inspector Barry appears in consecutive scenes, Roger Marshall’s script allows for continuous recording as if the production were live. The bedroom scene in Act One (which follows the opening sequence in the Flip-Side discotheque) begins with a close-up of an alarm clock, before cutting to a wider shot of Barry looking at the clock. This could, at a push, have allowed actor Glynn Edwards time to perform a quick costume change, move to the bedroom set and get under the covers. Similarly, at the end of the bedroom scene, the camera pans to the window and the next scene opens on the window of the Barrys’ breakfast room. Barry’s voice is heard initially as a voice-over as the camera pans from the window to the breakfast table, before finally showing Barry, Gwen and Anne sitting at it. Such techniques would have been second nature to experienced television writers in the mid-1960s, when many drama productions went out live and those that were pre-recorded were done so with as few breaks as possible. The director may still have chosen to have a recording break at either or both of these two points.
Tyne Tees Television concluded its run of Series 1 episodes with Dig You Later on Saturday 25 September 1965, after which the slot was given over to feature films. The broadcaster had allocated only 13 transmission slots to the series, omitting A Harsh World for Zealots and You Should Hear Me Eat Soup.
Home and Away
The rehearsal script for this episode contains no exterior scenes. Even when Marker gives bread to the pigeons during his introductory scene, this takes place at the beginning of what is denoted as an interior scene set in Marker’s office. This may indicate that the writer had envisaged Marker feeding the creatures through an open window, or even in a coop, while he remained indoors (interestingly, the birds are described in the script as “his pigeons”, perhaps suggesting that Marker keeps them as pets). However, in Nobody Kills Santa Claus, Marker ventures out on to his balcony (also part of the studio set) to feed crumbs to feral pigeons.
Who Wants to Be Told Bad News?
“Julia Foster, at the ripe old age of 21, is a young lady going places very fast,” declared the ABC press release about Dig You Later and the guest actress playing Anne Barry. It went on to list Foster’s recent appearances in three ITV plays – They Throw It At You, the first in a trilogy of Blackpool-based Armchair Theatre plays written by Allan Prior; a feature-length Rediffusion adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1866 novel Crime and Punishment; and The Image, a Rediffusion Play of the Week broadcast just a few weeks before Dig You Later – as well as the comedy film One Way Pendulum, which was currently showing in cinemas. The piece mentioned that the actress had flown to film festivals in Beirut and Acapulco in connection with her roles in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (a 1962 coming-of-age film written by Alan Sillitoe from his own 1959 short story and starring Tom Courtenay) and The System (a 1964 drama film directed by Michael Winner and starring Oliver Reed), before adding that in 1963 Foster had been nominated for the Actress of the Year award for her first major year’s work in television, in plays such as The Wedding of Smith Seven-Nine, an episode of the ATV anthology series Love Story. The release concluded by stating that “Julia Foster was born at Lewes in Sussex, trained at a Brighton drama school and joined Brighton Rep when she was 15. She has a London flat, enjoys dancing, swimming, tennis and water skiing, and has a wire-haired terrier called Andy.”
On Thursday 11 February 1965, Television Today promoted the upcoming transmission of Dig You Later on ABC, Southern and Ulster with a photograph of Alfred Burke as Marker talking to Glynn Edwards as Inspector Barry.
The presence of Julia Foster as Anne Barry earned her a full-colour interior cover photograph in that week’s edition of TV World (13–19 February 1965), while in the People column of the magazine were short features on both her and fellow actress Valerie Bell (who would appear as a barmaid in the next episode to be broadcast, I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found). “I guess I must look innocent,” said Foster of her latest role, “because producers seem to sort me out for their wide-eyed, naive parts.”
The programme billing for Dig You Later in the Southern edition of TV Times was accompanied by a photograph of Julia Foster and another of Alfred Burke and Glynn Edwards.
On Thursday 11 February 1965, Television Today promoted the upcoming transmission of Dig You Later on ABC, Southern and Ulster with a photograph of Alfred Burke as Marker talking to Glynn Edwards as Inspector Barry.
The presence of Julia Foster as Anne Barry earned her a full-colour interior cover photograph in that week’s edition of TV World (13–19 February 1965), while in the People column of the magazine were short features on both her and fellow actress Valerie Bell (who would appear as a barmaid in the next episode to be broadcast, I Went to Borrow a Pencil and Look What I Found). “I guess I must look innocent,” said Foster of her latest role, “because producers seem to sort me out for their wide-eyed, naive parts.”
The programme billing for Dig You Later in the Southern edition of TV Times was accompanied by a photograph of Julia Foster and another of Alfred Burke and Glynn Edwards.
Foster was also pictured on the listings pages of the Liverpool Echo and Evening Express and Nottingham’s The Guardian Journal (see above left) on Saturday 13 February. Both newspapers used the same close-up image of the actress and the same description of her character as “a policeman’s daughter who runs away with a crook.” Meanwhile, The Coventry Evening Telegraph chose to publish a photograph of David Andrews as “crook’s accomplice” ‘Jay’ Walker (see above right).
That same day, Public Eye was the Liverpool Daily Post’s Pick of the Week for Saturday for a third time, sharing the spotlight on this occasion with the BBC light entertainment programme The Black and White Minstrel Show.
“Vice victorious!” exclaimed Alan Stewart, in the TV Comment column of Glasgow newspaper The Sunday Post on 8 August, after watching Dig You Later on Scottish Television the previous Sunday. “Dope, drugs, call-girls, beatings, extortion, protection rackets. You name it, they’ve got it. They certainly made Sunday sin-day.”
That same day, Public Eye was the Liverpool Daily Post’s Pick of the Week for Saturday for a third time, sharing the spotlight on this occasion with the BBC light entertainment programme The Black and White Minstrel Show.
“Vice victorious!” exclaimed Alan Stewart, in the TV Comment column of Glasgow newspaper The Sunday Post on 8 August, after watching Dig You Later on Scottish Television the previous Sunday. “Dope, drugs, call-girls, beatings, extortion, protection rackets. You name it, they’ve got it. They certainly made Sunday sin-day.”
Nobody Wants to Know
In Act One, when introducing the photographic blow-ups of young women’s faces that line the walls of the Flip-Side discotheque (see top of page), Roger Marshall’s script says there are “shades of Christine Keeler.” Christine Keeler (1942–2017) was an English model and showgirl who, in 1961, became sexually involved with a married Cabinet minister, John Profumo, as well as with a Soviet naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov. A shooting incident involving a third lover, jazz promoter Johnny Edgecombe, caused the press to investigate her, revealing that her affairs could be a threat to national security. In the House of Commons, Profumo denied any improper conduct, but later admitted that he had lied. The incident caused considerable embarrassment to the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan in 1963, in what became known as the Profumo affair. At the height of the scandal, Keeler famously posed for a photograph by Lewis Morley, in which she sat, apparently nude, astride a plywood chair.
When asking Inspector Barry whether his daughter uses drugs, Marker mentions purple hearts and reefers. Purple hearts, or blues, were Drinamyl tablets (known as Dexamyl in the USA), a branded drug combining amphetamine and barbiturate, which gained their nicknames due to their triangular shape and blue colour. Introduced on to the market by Smith, Kline & French (SKF) in 1950, the drug was intended as a stimulant, but excessive use led to addiction. It was widely abused by youths during the 1960s and was discontinued by SKF in 1982. “Reefer” is an informal term for a cigarette containing cannabis, or marijuana. The term may have its origin in the Mexican Spanish word “grifa”, meaning cannabis, or the nautical verb “to reef”, meaning to roll up a sail – rather as one might roll up a cigarette.
In the rehearsal script, Marker describes his rates to Inspector Barry as “Six quid a day and expenses after the first pound.” In the pilot script, Marvin had phrased this slightly differently: “Six pounds a day plus expenses after the first pound.”
Inspector Ted Barry may be seen as something of a precursor to Detective Inspector Percy Firbank, a semi-regular character played by Ray Smith in 14 episodes of Public Eye during Series 5 to 7. Like Firbank, Barry is a plain-clothes policeman who has an uneasy alliance with Marker. In this episode, Marker turns down Barry’s offer of a drink, but the inquiry agent would often be seen in the pub with Firbank later in the show’s run. Barry would be heard from again (though not seen) later in Series 1, when Marker telephones him in Have It on the House. Glynn Edwards, the actor who played Barry, would himself return to Public Eye, as Alfred Bain in Series 5’s Who Wants to Be Told Bad News?
In Act Three, Roger Marshall describes Anne’s imitation of an upper-class voice as “A touch of the Dame Ediths.” He appears to be referring to Dame Edith Evans (1888–1976), an English actress who became widely known for portraying haughty, aristocratic women. Arguably her most famous role was as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, a role she essayed on stage as well as in the 1952 film adaptation. Her delivery of the line “A handbag?!” (exclaimed when Lady Bracknell learns that her daughter’s suitor was found abandoned in one when he was a baby) became synonymous with the Oscar Wilde play.
When asking Inspector Barry whether his daughter uses drugs, Marker mentions purple hearts and reefers. Purple hearts, or blues, were Drinamyl tablets (known as Dexamyl in the USA), a branded drug combining amphetamine and barbiturate, which gained their nicknames due to their triangular shape and blue colour. Introduced on to the market by Smith, Kline & French (SKF) in 1950, the drug was intended as a stimulant, but excessive use led to addiction. It was widely abused by youths during the 1960s and was discontinued by SKF in 1982. “Reefer” is an informal term for a cigarette containing cannabis, or marijuana. The term may have its origin in the Mexican Spanish word “grifa”, meaning cannabis, or the nautical verb “to reef”, meaning to roll up a sail – rather as one might roll up a cigarette.
In the rehearsal script, Marker describes his rates to Inspector Barry as “Six quid a day and expenses after the first pound.” In the pilot script, Marvin had phrased this slightly differently: “Six pounds a day plus expenses after the first pound.”
Inspector Ted Barry may be seen as something of a precursor to Detective Inspector Percy Firbank, a semi-regular character played by Ray Smith in 14 episodes of Public Eye during Series 5 to 7. Like Firbank, Barry is a plain-clothes policeman who has an uneasy alliance with Marker. In this episode, Marker turns down Barry’s offer of a drink, but the inquiry agent would often be seen in the pub with Firbank later in the show’s run. Barry would be heard from again (though not seen) later in Series 1, when Marker telephones him in Have It on the House. Glynn Edwards, the actor who played Barry, would himself return to Public Eye, as Alfred Bain in Series 5’s Who Wants to Be Told Bad News?
In Act Three, Roger Marshall describes Anne’s imitation of an upper-class voice as “A touch of the Dame Ediths.” He appears to be referring to Dame Edith Evans (1888–1976), an English actress who became widely known for portraying haughty, aristocratic women. Arguably her most famous role was as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, a role she essayed on stage as well as in the 1952 film adaptation. Her delivery of the line “A handbag?!” (exclaimed when Lady Bracknell learns that her daughter’s suitor was found abandoned in one when he was a baby) became synonymous with the Oscar Wilde play.
With thanks to Simon Coward, Jonny Davies, Andrew Pixley, the BFI Special Collections, the British Newspaper Archive and Network Distributing.
The Missing Markers is a not-for-profit fan website written and edited by and copyright © Richard McGinlay. All rights reserved.
Public Eye (the ABC years) is copyright © StudioCanal. No attempt to infringe this copyright is intended.
The Missing Markers is a not-for-profit fan website written and edited by and copyright © Richard McGinlay. All rights reserved.
Public Eye (the ABC years) is copyright © StudioCanal. No attempt to infringe this copyright is intended.