Series 2 – Episode 3
|
Frank Marker
Hugh Clayton Jean Clayton Ann Maitland James Birch Mark Hetheridge Bert Carter Peter Jenkinson |
Alfred Burke
Hugh Burden Isabel Dean Ann Bell Edward Harvey William Moore Derek Benfield Harry Littlewood |
Production
Series based on an idea by Roger Marshall and Anthony Marriott
Theme Music composed by Robert Earley Floor Manager: Patrick Kennedy Stage Manager: Mary Lewis |
Production Assistant: Anne Summerton
Designed by William McCrow Edited & Produced by Richard Bates Directed by Basil Coleman |
Rehearsed from 10.30am on Thursday 7 April 1966 at Steadfast Hall, Riverside, Kingston upon Thames
Camera rehearsed from Tuesday 19 April 1966 at Studio 2, ABC Television Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex
Recorded from 4.45pm to 5.45pm on Wednesday 20 April 1966 at Studio 2, Teddington
Camera rehearsed from Tuesday 19 April 1966 at Studio 2, ABC Television Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex
Recorded from 4.45pm to 5.45pm on Wednesday 20 April 1966 at Studio 2, Teddington
TV World Synopsis
Tuesday 2.30: Chairman’s office – Rotunda. Something about a nasty photo of one of his directors. Blackmail?
Click here for detailed synopsis
Click here for detailed synopsis
Transmission
Monday 11 July 1966, 9.30pm (Rediffusion)
Friday 15 July 1966, 8pm (Anglia, Border, Channel, Grampian, Southern, Tyne Tees and Westward)
Saturday 16 July 1966, 9.25pm (ABC Midlands, ABC North and Ulster)
Sunday 17 July 1966, 11.05pm (Scottish)
Wednesday 28 September 1966, 8pm (TWW)
Ratings: 4,400,000 (=19th)
Friday 15 July 1966, 8pm (Anglia, Border, Channel, Grampian, Southern, Tyne Tees and Westward)
Saturday 16 July 1966, 9.25pm (ABC Midlands, ABC North and Ulster)
Sunday 17 July 1966, 11.05pm (Scottish)
Wednesday 28 September 1966, 8pm (TWW)
Ratings: 4,400,000 (=19th)
Archive
Rehearsal script (one page partially missing) – held in the BFI Special Collections
Story Notes
Julian Bond (1930–2012) was already enjoying a prolific television career when he was asked to write this, the first of three episodes of Public Eye. The son of a major general, Bond studied at Oxford and spent his national military service with the Royal Lancers. He entered the entertainment business in 1952, working at film studios – initially Pinewood, where he was hired as a trainee cameraman, and subsequently as a technician in the cutting rooms at Merton Park. Within three years, he was directing commercials and also writing (and occasionally directing) sponsored documentaries. He soon realised that his true strengths lay in scripting, and in 1956 he was commissioned by the Central Office of Information, the British government’s marketing and communications agency, to write Atlantic Link, a documentary about the design and laying of the first transatlantic submarine telephone cable. In late 1957, Bond accepted a job at ATV, where he got to write and edit current affairs programmes. Working on one of these, a dramatised documentary entitled Fear Begins at Forty, convinced him that he really wanted to work in drama. His chance came early the following year, when he had Pillar of Society, a two-part script for the private detective series Shadow Squad, accepted by Granada. Then, in 1959, he was engaged by ATV to develop Probation Officer, a highly successful drama series about the real-life challenges faced by those working in the eponymous occupation. Bond collaborated closely with producer Antony Kearey (with whom he had previously worked on Fear Begins at Forty) and would contribute a total of 29 episodes, while acting as story editor on a further 18. Harbouring an interest in television production, Bond set about developing a series of his own in a similar vein but concerning a different profession. This was Police Surgeon, which would star Ian Hendry as Dr Geoffrey Brent, a general practitioner and part-time medical consultant for the police. The programme was commissioned by ABC’s Head of Drama Sydney Newman for 13 half-hour episodes, with Bond acting as head writer, story editor and – initially – producer. However, finding himself ill-suited to the latter role, and not enjoying the responsibilities of production at all, Bond happily handed the reins to Leonard White after four episodes. When Police Surgeon was cancelled and White was instructed to produce a more action-packed one-hour series so that ABC could retain the services of Ian Hendry, Bond decided to move on. “Sydney Newman wanted a more ‘hoop-la’ show,” he told Jaz Wiseman in July 2009, when interviewed for the featurette Three’s a Crowd, which was included in The Avengers – The Complete Series 2 + Surviving Episodes of Series 1 DVD set from Optimum Releasing. “Leonard White had to turn it into The Avengers. I wouldn’t have initiated it… and wouldn’t have written it very well.” Richard Bates, talking to Andrew Pixley in July 2012, similarly recalled that Bond had found the replacement series not to be “his cup of tea… It wasn’t really his genre.” After leaving Police Surgeon, Bond worked initially for Granada, penning an episode of the off-beat crime drama Knight Errant Limited, before returning to ATV, where he contributed to the ITC film series The Saint, Man of the World and The Sentimental Agent, as well as writing for a large number of ATV videotaped shows, including Ghost Squad, Sergeant Cork and further instalments of Probation Officer. His work for ATV also reunited him with Ian Hendry, whom he had in mind for the role of Harry Barnes when writing 54 Minute Affair, a tale told in real time as part of the Drama ’63 anthology strand. Released from his ATV contract in 1964 and once again freelance, Bond had more opportunities to write for programmes that were close to his heart in terms of subject matter. Among these would be Redcap and Public Eye for ABC – where he worked with Richard Bates – and Court Martial for ITC. In 1968, he collaborated with Bates again, as the latter told Andrew Pixley in July 2012: “We got on very well together and went on to develop a series called A Man of Our Times, which is what I left ABC for Rediffusion to produce.” Bond created the show, which starred George Cole as a middle-aged middle manager facing redundancy, and penned eight of its thirteen episodes. In later years, Bond also wrote for the cinema, contributing screenplays for the historical drama The Shooting Party (1984), the spy thriller The Whistle Blower (1986) and Tangier Cop (1997), based on the Georges Simenon novel Le Policier d’Istanbul. He retired after completing his second adaptation for Meridian’s The Ruth Rendell Mysteries in 1998.
Dialogue in the opening boardroom scene indicates that the fifth day of the following month will be a Tuesday. When deciding the date for the next Board meeting, Chairman James Birch proposes, “The first Tuesday of next month?” “The fifth, I believe,” notes the Company Secretary, Peter Jenkinson. “Tuesday it is,” agrees Bert Carter, the Production Director. This suggests that the events of the story transpire in September 1965 (dialogue in Don’t Forget You’re Mine having placed that episode in summer 1965), March 1966 or June 1966.
Julian Bond’s script specifies that the audience should not actually see the explicit image of Hugh Clayton and Ann Maitland. “We may gather that it’s a photograph,” his directions read, “but we never see what the subject is. From the way in which it is discussed and the way in which people handle and react to it, it is obviously and identifiably ‘compromising’.”
Interestingly, Bond’s directions at the beginning of Act Two predict the layout of Marker’s Eton premises, in which his tea- and coffee-making facilities would be located in the main part of his office, rather than in a separate, curtained-off kitchen area as in the Birmingham episodes. In the script, when Marker empties his teapot, he does so “carefully out of the window”. After he shouts “It’s open” to the person knocking on his door, his visitor – Jean Clayton – is able to immediately join him near the gas ring. When he offers Jean sugar for her tea, Marker takes a jar of it from out of his desk. In the detailed synopsis, the geography of Marker’s office has been adapted to match the visual evidence provided by surviving stills and episodes from Series 2 and 3.
Similarly, the rehearsal script mentions a couple of garments that Marker would not normally wear. After Jean’s visit to his office, he snatches up a hat as well as his coat. In the next scene, he leaves a pair of gloves in Ann Maitland’s bedroom as a pretext for his subsequent return. “I only came back to collect these,” he says in the script. The hat has been omitted from the story summary, while the gloves have been replaced with the envelope containing the incriminating photograph.
Part of the penultimate page of the rehearsal script (page 68) is missing from the surviving copy of the document, due to poor photocopying. The partial page contains just two speeches, with Jean expressing confusion over the abbreviation MDship, and Hugh replying, “Wake up, old girl. The Managing Directorship. Isn’t that pretty splendid?” The final page of the script then begins with Hugh delivering a line that does not quite follow on: “It’s over. Over and done with.” It seems that a small amount of material has been accidentally omitted. This has been extrapolated in the detailed synopsis.
Dialogue in the opening boardroom scene indicates that the fifth day of the following month will be a Tuesday. When deciding the date for the next Board meeting, Chairman James Birch proposes, “The first Tuesday of next month?” “The fifth, I believe,” notes the Company Secretary, Peter Jenkinson. “Tuesday it is,” agrees Bert Carter, the Production Director. This suggests that the events of the story transpire in September 1965 (dialogue in Don’t Forget You’re Mine having placed that episode in summer 1965), March 1966 or June 1966.
Julian Bond’s script specifies that the audience should not actually see the explicit image of Hugh Clayton and Ann Maitland. “We may gather that it’s a photograph,” his directions read, “but we never see what the subject is. From the way in which it is discussed and the way in which people handle and react to it, it is obviously and identifiably ‘compromising’.”
Interestingly, Bond’s directions at the beginning of Act Two predict the layout of Marker’s Eton premises, in which his tea- and coffee-making facilities would be located in the main part of his office, rather than in a separate, curtained-off kitchen area as in the Birmingham episodes. In the script, when Marker empties his teapot, he does so “carefully out of the window”. After he shouts “It’s open” to the person knocking on his door, his visitor – Jean Clayton – is able to immediately join him near the gas ring. When he offers Jean sugar for her tea, Marker takes a jar of it from out of his desk. In the detailed synopsis, the geography of Marker’s office has been adapted to match the visual evidence provided by surviving stills and episodes from Series 2 and 3.
Similarly, the rehearsal script mentions a couple of garments that Marker would not normally wear. After Jean’s visit to his office, he snatches up a hat as well as his coat. In the next scene, he leaves a pair of gloves in Ann Maitland’s bedroom as a pretext for his subsequent return. “I only came back to collect these,” he says in the script. The hat has been omitted from the story summary, while the gloves have been replaced with the envelope containing the incriminating photograph.
Part of the penultimate page of the rehearsal script (page 68) is missing from the surviving copy of the document, due to poor photocopying. The partial page contains just two speeches, with Jean expressing confusion over the abbreviation MDship, and Hugh replying, “Wake up, old girl. The Managing Directorship. Isn’t that pretty splendid?” The final page of the script then begins with Hugh delivering a line that does not quite follow on: “It’s over. Over and done with.” It seems that a small amount of material has been accidentally omitted. This has been extrapolated in the detailed synopsis.
Production Notes
Appropriately enough, given that the story begins with a businessman returning from an international sales trip, I Could Set It to Music is the first of three Series 2 scripts that are known to have been sent to Associated British Picture Corporation’s world distribution arm, Associated British-Pathé. The rehearsal script held in the BFI Special Collections is rubber stamped with the following: “RECEIVED [date unclear] APRIL 1966 FOR OVERSEAS SALES”. The unclear number is a single digit, most likely 1. This predates the read-through and rehearsals at Steadfast Hall (which began on Thursday 7 April) by several days. Though there is no evidence that Public Eye ever actually aired outside the UK, it was certainly offered to foreign broadcasters. This is further confirmed by an advertisement placed by Associated British-Pathé in the 1966 edition of the World Radio TV Handbook, an annual directory listing virtually every radio and television station on the planet. The advertisement (see left) promoted a range of ABC drama series, including The Avengers, Redcap and Public Eye. The fact that episodes of Public Eye were touted for export raises the possibility of film copies some day being found – though not necessarily overseas. The first series of The Avengers was similarly offered for sale but never actually sold abroad, as far as anyone has been able to ascertain. The same is true of the 12-part Doctor Who serial The Daleks’ Master Plan. Nevertheless, multiple episodes from both of these have been recovered as 16mm film recordings.
|
The director of this studio-bound story was Basil Woore Coleman (1916–2013), who was born in Bristol to Sydney James Coleman and Mabel Evans. Shortly after this birth, Basil’s parents returned with him to their home in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). In 1918, five weeks after the birth of Basil’s brother, Kenneth, Mabel died from Spanish flu. When Basil was three years old, his family was joined by his stepmother, Gwen Givern Chambers, a dedicated pacifist, suffragette and vegetarian. She educated Basil, his brother, and later his half-sisters Elizabeth and Naomi, and would prove to be a major influence on him. In 1924, the family moved to Bulawayo, where Gwen fostered Basil’s ambition to become an actor, producing a number of plays and concerts in which the boy and his siblings would perform. In 1931, aged 15, Basil Coleman attended Frensham Heights School in Surrey, along with his brother, then studied at the Central Drama School at the University of London, receiving his Diploma in Dramatic Arts in 1936. He continued his training under actress and theatre director Esme Church at the Old Vic Company, performing in various productions during the 1936–1937 season, and received a letter of recommendation from Church and producer Tyrone Guthrie in 1937. Coleman was a conscientious objector during the Second World War, initially being sent to work on fruit farms in Sussex, before being enlisted by Ruth Spalding’s Pilgrim Players to tour morality plays to village halls and churches. After the war, Coleman began directing productions at the Midland Theatre Company and, in 1948, worked as assistant director to Tyrone Guthrie on composer Benjamin Britten’s realisation of The Beggar’s Opera with the English Opera Group at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge. Thus began a long association and friendship with the composer. In 1954, Coleman began work at the Crest Theatre in Toronto, directing productions such as Orson Welles’s Marching Song and T. S. Eliot’s The Confidential Clerk. While in Canada, he also directed or produced several teleplays for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), including multiple episodes of the sponsored anthology series General Motors Theatre/General Motors Presents. Returning to Britain in the early 1960s, he took a BBC directing course, after which he helmed a string of television plays, including instalments of ABC’s Armchair Theatre and BBC1’s Play of the Month, as well as televised operas such as Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème (1966), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (1967) and Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello (1969). His presentation of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd in 1966 earned Coleman a BAFTA award for Specialised Programme, while his television version of Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve in October 1968 was the first such programme to be broadcast in colour. After working on I Could Set It to Music, Coleman directed one more instalment of Public Eye – the surviving episode Works with Chess, Not with Life. His other television work would include acclaimed miniseries adaptations of Iris Murdoch’s An Unofficial Rose in 1974–1975 and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in 1977, both for BBC2. Meanwhile, he continued to direct for the stage, including productions of the Francis Durbridge thrillers Suddenly at Home (1971) and The Gentle Hook (1975). In his later years, Coleman led masterclasses and directed a number of student productions, including those at the Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Britten–Pears School in Aldeburgh.
The list of sets at the front of the rehearsal script indicates that the set for the boardroom should be composite to (i.e. directly connected to) that of the Chairman’s office.
Despite its musical title, it appears that only one scene in this episode was actually set to music, with the library track Mediterranean Cruise, composed by Anthony Mawer and performed by The Hilversum Radio Orchestra on the 1963 10-inch De Wolfe LP Mood Mediterranean (DWLP 2797), being heard, supposedly issuing from a transistor radio. Conveying panoramic, sweeping and elegant romance, this track was most likely cued in during the Claytons’ date night in Act One.
The Monday transmission of I Could Set It to Music in London on 11 July 1966 was pushed back to 9.30pm to allow for coverage of the FIFA World Cup match between England and Uruguay, placing the show opposite The Defenders (nothing to do with football, but rather an American courtroom drama series) on BBC1. Later in the week, the Friday 15 July broadcast in most other ITV regions saw BBC1 scheduling its own World Cup Grandstand against Marker.
About halfway through its run of Series 2 episodes and aware of the programme’s success, TWW promoted Public Eye to the stronger slot of 8pm on Wednesdays from 28 September. Sister station Teledu Cymru did not follow suit. Its final Series 2 broadcast had been Twenty Pounds of Heart and Muscle at 10.40pm on Thursday 15 September. In the Wednesday 8pm slot from 28 September to 26 October, Teledu Cymru instead favoured the adventures of a female private detective, in the American crime drama Honey West, followed at 8.25pm by Clwb y Llenor (The Poets’ Club), a Welsh-language literary magazine programme.
The list of sets at the front of the rehearsal script indicates that the set for the boardroom should be composite to (i.e. directly connected to) that of the Chairman’s office.
Despite its musical title, it appears that only one scene in this episode was actually set to music, with the library track Mediterranean Cruise, composed by Anthony Mawer and performed by The Hilversum Radio Orchestra on the 1963 10-inch De Wolfe LP Mood Mediterranean (DWLP 2797), being heard, supposedly issuing from a transistor radio. Conveying panoramic, sweeping and elegant romance, this track was most likely cued in during the Claytons’ date night in Act One.
The Monday transmission of I Could Set It to Music in London on 11 July 1966 was pushed back to 9.30pm to allow for coverage of the FIFA World Cup match between England and Uruguay, placing the show opposite The Defenders (nothing to do with football, but rather an American courtroom drama series) on BBC1. Later in the week, the Friday 15 July broadcast in most other ITV regions saw BBC1 scheduling its own World Cup Grandstand against Marker.
About halfway through its run of Series 2 episodes and aware of the programme’s success, TWW promoted Public Eye to the stronger slot of 8pm on Wednesdays from 28 September. Sister station Teledu Cymru did not follow suit. Its final Series 2 broadcast had been Twenty Pounds of Heart and Muscle at 10.40pm on Thursday 15 September. In the Wednesday 8pm slot from 28 September to 26 October, Teledu Cymru instead favoured the adventures of a female private detective, in the American crime drama Honey West, followed at 8.25pm by Clwb y Llenor (The Poets’ Club), a Welsh-language literary magazine programme.
Home and Away
Apart from the generic opening and closing titles, the only piece of exterior footage in this episode was an establishing shot of the Rotunda, a tower block previously seen in Don’t Forget You’re Mine. The 35mm film library shot represented the premises of the refrigerated container company that employed Hugh Clayton and his colleagues at the beginning of Act One.
Who Wants to Be Told Bad News?
“There is no mistaking the level gaze of ABC’s seedy detective, Frank Marker,” said the Coventry Standard on Thursday 14 July 1966, as the newspaper reproduced an image (see below) of the inquiry agent from All the Black Dresses She Wants that had already been seen in the Grimsby Daily Telegraph and Look Westward magazine. As the Coventry Standard looked ahead to Saturday’s episode, its unnamed reporter noted, “For my money, Alfred Burke’s characterisation in Public Eye is the most true-to-life portrayal currently to be seen on the small screen.”
I Could Set It to Music was promoted in TV World (16–22 July 1966) with a photograph of Marker and Jean Clayton (Isabel Dean) alongside the listing, as well as an article about guest actress Ann Bell in the Women column.
On Saturday 16 July, Nottingham’s Evening Post and News also pictured Marker (see above), this time in a promotional still dating back to Series 1.
Having found it impossible over recent weeks to maintain interest in any of the characters in BBC1’s Sunday night mystery thriller anthology Thirteen Against Fate (a series based on 13 unconnected stories by Maigret creator Georges Simenon), reviewer ‘B.S.’ of the Belfast Telegraph had more positive things to say about Public Eye on Monday 18 July. Referring to the Ulster transmission of I Could Set It to Music the previous Saturday, the critic considered it “A less ambitious, but a much more effective series,” whose main character “is the most believable private investigator to grace the television screen. Burke has breathed life into Marker, a tough guy with his heart on his sleeve in the best Bogart tradition, and manages to maintain interest without shooting someone every couple of reels or felling six-foot thugs with transparently phoney Karate chops.” The reviewer was, however, a little dissatisfied with some of the recent episodes’ resolutions, observing that, “The series has been improved by transferring the background from London to Birmingham and could be improved slightly more if some of the Z Cars writers were called in to curb a tendency towards gift-wrapped endings.”
Frank Marker was again among Peter Forth’s recommendations for that evening’s viewing in the TWW region in the Western Daily Press on Wednesday 28 September. This time, it was noted, the private detective was looking into a case of “blackmail and photographs”.
On Saturday 16 July, Nottingham’s Evening Post and News also pictured Marker (see above), this time in a promotional still dating back to Series 1.
Having found it impossible over recent weeks to maintain interest in any of the characters in BBC1’s Sunday night mystery thriller anthology Thirteen Against Fate (a series based on 13 unconnected stories by Maigret creator Georges Simenon), reviewer ‘B.S.’ of the Belfast Telegraph had more positive things to say about Public Eye on Monday 18 July. Referring to the Ulster transmission of I Could Set It to Music the previous Saturday, the critic considered it “A less ambitious, but a much more effective series,” whose main character “is the most believable private investigator to grace the television screen. Burke has breathed life into Marker, a tough guy with his heart on his sleeve in the best Bogart tradition, and manages to maintain interest without shooting someone every couple of reels or felling six-foot thugs with transparently phoney Karate chops.” The reviewer was, however, a little dissatisfied with some of the recent episodes’ resolutions, observing that, “The series has been improved by transferring the background from London to Birmingham and could be improved slightly more if some of the Z Cars writers were called in to curb a tendency towards gift-wrapped endings.”
Frank Marker was again among Peter Forth’s recommendations for that evening’s viewing in the TWW region in the Western Daily Press on Wednesday 28 September. This time, it was noted, the private detective was looking into a case of “blackmail and photographs”.
Nobody Wants to Know
At the Board meeting at the beginning of the episode, Company Secretary Peter Jenkinson declares that a vote has been carried nem con. This is an abbreviation of the Latin nemine contradicente, meaning unanimously; with no one dissenting.
During their romantic evening in Act One, Jean and Hugh Clayton talk about “geishas”, with Jean remarking, “There are a lot of misconceptions about them.” Indeed there are. Geisha, also known as geiko or geigi, are female Japanese entertainers trained in traditional Japanese performing arts, such as dance, music and singing, as well as being proficient hostesses and conversationalists. Their distinctive appearance is characterised by long, trailing kimono, traditional hairstyles and oshiroi (white powder foundation) make-up. The first female geisha appeared in 1751, with geisha prior to that time being male performers who entertained guests. Though historically many geisha have received payment for sex, prostitution is not a defining characteristic of a geisha. Nevertheless, geisha have often been associated with sex work and confused with sex workers, especially by cultures outside of Japan. During the Allied occupation of the country following the end of the Second World War, some prostitutes, almost exclusively working for the occupying forces, began to advertise themselves as ‘geisha girls’, partly because many foreign soldiers could not tell the difference between a geisha and any woman dressed in a kimono. The term ‘geisha girl’ quickly became a byword for a female Japanese prostitute, and its rapid spread to Western culture is believed to be largely responsible for the enduring misapprehension in the West that geisha are widely engaged in prostitution.
In Act Two, when Marker finds himself owing Jean a shilling, the closest thing he can find in his pocket is a florin. A shilling, also known informally as a bob, was a coin valued at one-twentieth of one pound, or 24 pence, in pre-decimal British currency; whereas a florin, or two-shilling piece, was worth twice that amount. The florin was issued between 1849 and 1967. In readiness for the decimalisation of the currency, 1968 saw the introduction of the ten-pence piece, a coin of the same size, weight and metal composition as the florin. The new and old coins circulated side by side as florins prior to Decimal Day (Monday 15 February 1971) and as ten-pence pieces thereafter.
During their romantic evening in Act One, Jean and Hugh Clayton talk about “geishas”, with Jean remarking, “There are a lot of misconceptions about them.” Indeed there are. Geisha, also known as geiko or geigi, are female Japanese entertainers trained in traditional Japanese performing arts, such as dance, music and singing, as well as being proficient hostesses and conversationalists. Their distinctive appearance is characterised by long, trailing kimono, traditional hairstyles and oshiroi (white powder foundation) make-up. The first female geisha appeared in 1751, with geisha prior to that time being male performers who entertained guests. Though historically many geisha have received payment for sex, prostitution is not a defining characteristic of a geisha. Nevertheless, geisha have often been associated with sex work and confused with sex workers, especially by cultures outside of Japan. During the Allied occupation of the country following the end of the Second World War, some prostitutes, almost exclusively working for the occupying forces, began to advertise themselves as ‘geisha girls’, partly because many foreign soldiers could not tell the difference between a geisha and any woman dressed in a kimono. The term ‘geisha girl’ quickly became a byword for a female Japanese prostitute, and its rapid spread to Western culture is believed to be largely responsible for the enduring misapprehension in the West that geisha are widely engaged in prostitution.
In Act Two, when Marker finds himself owing Jean a shilling, the closest thing he can find in his pocket is a florin. A shilling, also known informally as a bob, was a coin valued at one-twentieth of one pound, or 24 pence, in pre-decimal British currency; whereas a florin, or two-shilling piece, was worth twice that amount. The florin was issued between 1849 and 1967. In readiness for the decimalisation of the currency, 1968 saw the introduction of the ten-pence piece, a coin of the same size, weight and metal composition as the florin. The new and old coins circulated side by side as florins prior to Decimal Day (Monday 15 February 1971) and as ten-pence pieces thereafter.
With thanks to Jonny Davies, Alan Hayes, Andrew Pixley, Andrew S. Redding, Barbara Toft, 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.