Information And Observations
A friend of mine recently wrote that in ‘Fall Out’ Patrick McGoohan might have been more original. But really, I don't think that there was anywhere else McGoohan could have taken the Prisoner. My friend also wrote at one time that he thought that Fall Out is the logical ending to the surreal series. I wish he'd make up his mind!
Patrick McGoohan is on record as saying he doesn't like private jokes in the Prisoner, and wouldn't have them. So what about that address on the envelope in ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling’ - Saltzman, 20 Portmeirion Road
The handwriting of that address and that written in a diary by the Colonel, both belongs to Patrick McGoohan. So is it Seltzman, or Saltzman? Because having studied that envelope more closely, It can be seen that McGoohan has written Saltzman!
But it is not only the word Saltzman which is the curiosity about the envelope, what about that stamp and frank mark? There's something not quite right there!
Checkmate sees the searchlight crew in the tower attacked by No.6 and his conspirators. One of the crew is punched from the tower and lands with a splash of water. yet there isn't any such water anywhere around the tower. Mind you the average viewer who had not been to Portmeirion would not know that!
The lighthouse at Beachy Head was actually manned at the time of the Prisoner. Today its an automatic lighthouse, and much nearer to the coast due to cliff erosion.
Apart from trying to extract the reason behind No.6's resignation, each episode of The prisoner has some kind of a sub plot. Such as education, the question of identity. Freedom and servility are such examples which automatically come to mind.
The following is an extract from a transcript of an interview carried out with Christopher Benjamin in April of 1994.
Christopher Benjamin: I had been watching Danger Man so it was quite exciting for me to meet Patrick McGoohan. And he was actually delightful and charm itself. And I was then pleased when I got the call to go and do ‘the Prisoner.’ I thought "That's nice, he must have liked me. And must have been pleased with what I did." But you have this theory about the character, I don't know, but in the Prisoner what was I? I was Number 2's assistant in one; and then I was the Labour Exchange Manager; then I was the chap called Potter in ‘The Girl Who Was Death,’ but it wasn't the same character as Number 2's assistant was it?
Q: It was rumoured it was the same character as you played in Danger Man.
C.B: I don't know that, I mean if it was that I wished somebody had told me, because I played them as two completely different characters. I mean in Danger Man he's a rather simpering man with a moustache and smooth hair and was a sort of public school type and Potter was a much crasser, rather more stupid sort of fellow. A sort of Robert Morley, but a very different one from Potter in Danger Man.So if I had known I could have put on my little moustache on and been a different character. It would have been quite interesting. But nobody told me that, so I don't know if it was intended or not
Be seeing you
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