McGoohan is Prisoner of his own imagination
WHO is No.6? Why IS he a prisoner? what's the significance of a penny-farthing bicycle? Who controls the giant balloons? Where's the village? What nationality is No.1?
If these questions meant nothing you are obviously not one of the 12 million switched on to the most intriguing, baffling detergent opera in the history of pop entertainment.
Now after 16 weeks of "what the hell's it all about?" Patrick McGoohan gives the answers in the final instalment of the Prisoner.
And such is the curiosity of the public that a real TV fruit and nut case I know is driving to friends in Birmingham tomorrow night to get the final solution at 7:30 on Midlands TV. He can't wait until nexy Sunday.
Talking to Patrick Mcgoohan I told him that I had my own theory why he stopped doing Danger Man.
My theory was that he was getting annoyed because people told him "I liked Danger Man, I just can't understand this bewildering nonsense about a bloke in a blazer and some crazy village."
"I'm not at all annoyed". Declared Mr McGoohan. "I love people. They are entitled to their views."
As Danger Man, I put it to him, are you the Prisoner of the public. Everything was simple. You had everything. Everybody wanted you to continue...
"That's true. Honestly I'm frightened to tell how much I was offered. But money and dear God this makes me sound like Getty sounding off, is not the main consideration, one has to have one's own individuality...."
Or freedom Pat! You could have been brainwashed into acceptance by the Big Brother Public. So is not the "prisoner" you, McGoohan trapped in the samll screen?
Or even myself, hooked like an idiot watching on TV? Isn't every man his own prisoner? Isn't it all an allegory for....
"Ah there, Fergus, the word is near you now, It's not TV. But I agree with you the box is a monster."
"Everything is forced fed in one direction, beans, religion, the scar on the Presidents belly, fingers on the button, Alf. No.6, No.10."
"Somebody needs to yell a warning. I hope I'm giving some kind of warning. "My village is not 1984, but 1968."
"People disappear into camps. It's not imagination, it's fact." "These camps are actual physical map references."
"At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves."
"The inquisition of the mind by psychiatrists is far worse than the assault on the body by tortures."
"We read of crashed spy planes and captured spy boats. And we take it for granted then the patriotic pilots and commanders are paraded in public by their captors as grey, blank-faced old puppets who, without any sort of outward damage, spit in their country and beliefs. It's not fiction. It's Chinese newsreel. It's real as headlines."
"MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE I BELIEVE PASSIONATELY IN THE FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL."
"I WANT TO YELL BACK: "THAT'S OUR RIGHT. THE LOSS OF ONE 'S OWN INDIVIDUALITY IS A NIGHTMARE."
"And if I haven't made my 'yell back' clear in the Prisoner, the individual viewer has the right to shout "Nuts to you Paddy boy."
All this has been gained on this own terms, he is comfortable with proof of his own belief in freedom.
Off-screen, more so than on screen, this 38 year old American-born Irish rebel charmer goes on his way, stubbornly refusing to conform and hot on the well-oiled conveyor belt of dear-heart stardom.
As he says {pushing back his flat cap and undoing the top button of his peasent's shirt} "Sure dem fellows make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck."
Over a beer, when talk had shifted to this and that and rugby and the kids {he is married to actress Joan Drummond and has three daughters}, Pat scotched the rumours that he had had a breakdown in health.
In betwen his comments for CBS he hopes to produce and start in his own movie "Brand" in Norway {possibly thi year} and is considering a massive historical epic for MGM plus a comedy and a Western.
Articles from Woman's Journal and TV Times 1967-1968
Be seeing you
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