Chris Markwart

@RodneyMarshall1 He was great in The Persuaders! Episode The Man in the Middle. Loved it great comedy and in the end he gets the girl instead of Danny and Brett getting her lol

Remembering actor, comedian and impersonator Terry-Thomas (Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens), BOTD 1911. A rollercoaster of a career in variety, cabaret, radio, theatre, television and cinema. A unique performer who changed his stage name several times and created an entire persona. 1/

@RodneyMarshall1 And the interaction works well between the two leads

Jaz Wiseman: The chemistry in this show is down to Tony Curtis being a bit ‘offish’, a bit wild, like his character’s name. A ‘wild card’. And Roger Moore being able to match him and sometimes rein him in.

@RodneyMarshall1 I liked his performances as Dr Jackson in several episodes of UFO

Polish actor Vladek Sheybal (Władysław Rudolf Zbigniew). A POW at just sixteen, he escaped twice from a Nazi concentration camp; recaptured and tortured on both occasions. Left communist Poland for Paris, Vienna and finally London, in the quest of fulfilling his acting dream.

@RodneyMarshall1 Liked him as taxi driver Marco De Chesari in the early Saint episodes

Warren Mitchell, an Embassy official undercover as a fortune teller in Danger Man. McGoohan adored him, hence Mitchell appearing six times in a wide variety of roles, from fellow spies to larger-than-life villains. TV & film commitments meant he was unavailable for The Prisoner.

@RodneyMarshall1 @Dene71 I found the first video in a video shop on Tottenham Court Road Mission Monte Carlo it was called and I paid £41 for it, VHS, a lot of money in 1982!

@Dene71 Those 80s repeats introduced a whole new generation to 60s action-adventure and even became part of the 80s pop culture.

That 'Best of British' series -- repeats of archive telly from ITV -- was FANTASTIC, and the first time I saw #ThePrisoner. "The Girl Who Was Death" was shown Fri 2nd Jun '82 around midnight. To say I loved it is an understatement. 😊

@RodneyMarshall1 @Dene71 It inspired me to remember how good The Persuaders! was when they screened the episode Greensleeves on an early Saturday evening in 1982. My research found that a company called Precision Video had released four films containing eight episodes of The Persuaders!

@RodneyMarshall1 @BelinaLiz @SewellGActor I liked George Sewell. He was good as Col Alec Freeman in UFO!

@BelinaLiz @SewellGActor George and Richard Bradford having fun on location at the Syon House Grand Conservatory. The two actors instantly bonded on their Man in a Suitcase episode. George was a very generous actor, heaping praise on the Texan.

Happy Father’s Day. Here with my Father @SewellGActor at the publicity shoot for Special Branch spring 1973.

@RodneyMarshall1 Excellent in Persuaders episode The Old,The New, The Deadly along with Patrick Troughton Kenneth J Warren

A belated 91st birthday wish to Derren Nesbitt (Derren Michael Horwitz). The ultimate ITC assassin/villain, and a far better actor than he is often given credit for.

@RodneyMarshall1 Yes it was a good introduction to the format of The Persuaders! but in my dreams I would have loved a one off film of The Saint and The Baron working together in some adventure. Queen Moona of Jordan was very lucky to meet The Saint and The Baron at Elstree in 1966!

Bob Baker: “We wanted to have a friendly antagonism, a buddy movie. It is an unusual story for The Saint because he shares it entirely with his co-partner. This was the try-out and it seemed to work very well.”

Stuart Damon guest stars as Texan adventurer and oil baron Rod Huston in The Ex-King of Diamonds (The Saint) which producer Bob Baker saw as a trial run for a buddy mini-movies series...which eventually became The Persuaders! 1/

@RodneyMarshall1 I must have watched this episode a hundred times and never grow tired of it! Brilliant entertainment!

Remembering Tony Curtis (Bernard Schwartz), BOTD 1925. Seen here playing Danny Wilde - undercover as a Hungarian butler - in Greensleeves (The Persuaders!) In real life, his parents were Hungarian and it was the only language TC spoke until the age of six.

@RogerMooreFan Brilliant, my hero growing up in the sixties!

Roger as The Saint.

@RodneyMarshall1 Two of his ITC acting roles come to mind namely in The Baron as a nasty bit of work in the episode You can’t win them all and in Return of The Saint episode Dragonseed. I enjoyed his performances very much.

ITC took full advantage of the McCarthy 'witch hunts' which saw writers, directors and actors blacklisted in the US. To get actors of the calibre of Sam Wanamaker for TV guest appearances was a major coup and, in return, Lew Grade gave Sam his first opportunity to direct.

@RodneyMarshall1 Yes indeed. By the way I have just started watching The Gentle Touch on ITVX something I haven’t seen since its original release in 1980. Some of your father’s scripts were very good and gritty in series 2. I met Jil Gascoine a couple of times when she popped into my pharmacy

@ChrisMarkwart He was just unlucky with the timing. Most writers recycle...

Something in Terry Nation's Baron script has amused actor Steve Forrest. Nation wrote almost identical scripts for episodes of two ITC action-adventure series. This duplication or recycling went entirely unnoticed...until they were broadcast in the US on the exact same weekend.

@RodneyMarshall1 I loved the Baron. This two parter had a super supporting cast with John Carson Kenneth J Warren and Bernard Lee!

The Baron became ITC's first live-action series made exclusively in colour and Terry Nation wrote (or co-wrote) 17 out of the 30 episodes. Few better than the cleverly plotted doppelgänger two-parter Masquerade/The Killing, released as a feature film: The Man in a Looking Glass.

Terry Nation photoshoot for a 1964 Radio Times article. Despite his background in comedy, it was dystopian sci-fi and action-adventure TV which the prolific writer is best remembered for. A short thread featuring some of my favourite Nation stories... 1/

@RodneyMarshall1 Went to LA with Bob Baker and Roger Moore to sell the idea of The Persuaders! To Tony Curtis. All three were heavy smokers apparently!

Nation played three key roles on The Persuaders! as associate producer, story consultant and the main script writer, penning seven of the episodes including Chain of Events which perfectly melds comedy and drama with a clever twist in the tale.

@RogerMooreFan From the episode Greensleeves

The Persuaders! (1971).

@RodneyMarshall1 Also reunited in The Persuaders episode Someone Waiting although her character actually interacted with Tony Curtis on screen!

Having first met at RADA where Roger Moore played "a dashing Darcy" opposite Lois Maxwell's Elizabeth, the actors are reunited in The Saint's Interlude in Venice, many years before Moore joined her Miss Moneypenny in the film world of 007.

@BraxM @RadioTimes Shame most episodes are lost

All Gas and Gaiters is 60 years old today. This pilot in the Comedy Playhouse slot, starring Robertson Hare, William Mervyn and Derek Nimmo, aired on 17 May 1966, and was followed by five series. Photo @RadioTimes.

@RodneyMarshall1 And Milton Gelman was another consultant I believe

It is often forgotten that Terry Nation - usually associated with dystopian sci-fi- was the main script writer, associate producer and story consultant on action-comedy The Persuaders! Which made sense as his background was in comedy, working for Tony Hancock amongst others.