McGoohan on my Mind: Harmonising the Disharmonious - The Filler Episode that took longest to make and cost more than any other -Conundrum.

My very first Blog was on the subject of that arch *Filler Episode*, The Girl Who Was Death. Alternately vilified or dismissed by many observers as cheap none sense or amusing kitsch, I explained my viewpoint of how this (in effect) penultimate episode was used by McGoohan to strip away the fourth wall of reality, in a theatrical sense and launch his viewers into the final two-part epsiode, that ran the gamut of the purest stage-surreal theatre to the glitziest filmed special-effects trickery of the television medium.

For my 21st Blog, I would like to try to make amends for not stopping at 17 by focussing on the arguably archest of Filler episodes, Living in Harmony. This is of course the infamous Cowboy episode, whose original title of Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling, was transferred to an episode carrying the pedestrian title up to that point of Face Unknown. Thus the title-song of one of the greatest Individualistic Westerns of the 1950's, High Noon, found itself primarily referring to the lost and previously forgotten fiancee of the hero, Number Six, whilst the Western resume of the adventures of our hero so far, was named after the town in which he now found himself, Harmony. Living in Harmony was shown as Episode 14, immediately before The Girl Who Was Death and one of its small aside roles could have been to introduce the notion that children were present in the village.

Curiously enough, one of the criticisms I've read of the episode The Girl Who Was Death is that it uses children as a plot device and yet children had never been seen in the Village up to that point - yet another Fan Myth, as you can see. Did McGoohan introduce them in Living in Harmony for precisely the purpose of utilising the device of children in the very next episode? Who knows? You decide for yourself, but bear in mind that children were specifically requested for Living in Harmony, according to Frank Maher, who provided his own as two of them.

The genesis of Living in Harmony has been chronicled in some aspects by the evident initiator of the concept and to some degree, the actual script-writer: Ian Rakoff. Writing in his effective autobiography, Rakoff describes his arrival in the world of The Prisoner sometime around the latter weeks of 1966 or early weeks of 1967, depending on how you read his memoir, which is infuriatingly date-unspecific. His script passed through the filter of David Tomblin to Patrick McGoohan, who, Rakoff tells us, had personally comissioned the story and seemed to have taken a great interest and enthusiasm in it, not withstanding his later comments in interviews congratulating interviewers on their perspicacity of noting the episode's *filler* nature. Ian Rakoff's background story, and a current interview (at 2010) is included here:
http://electricsheepmagazine.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/electric-sheep-podcast-living-in-harmony-with-ian-rakoff/
His story is an interesting and informative one but of course, as he admits himself, he had relatively little contact with McGoohan and just like most other of those closely associated with the Prisoner Project, seems not to have been privy to the close-knit producing/directing team of McGoohan and Tomblin. Reflecting on the mirrored images he presents might benefit from considering what Living in Harmony was actually seeking to add to the 17 episode run of The Prisoner.

In the course of his descriptions of his version of Living in Harmony, Ian Rakoff does not really explain to the reader what it was about the final form of the episode that he found so alien, or as he writes in his memoir, "Watching the episode was like having my insides torn out. For a moment I couldn't believe I'd written any of what i was seeing. It seemed familiar but from somewhere far away and long ago. Dialogues struck chords." Could it be that the big difference that he discerned was that the Cowboy episode was no longer an episode? Like The Girl Who was Death. Living in Harmony was no longer seeking to progress the story of The Prisoner. Instead it served as a resume of the entire concept of the series itself, to date; but by translating The Prisoner into a cowboy fable McGoohan was making the viewer find the universal nature of the story he had been crafting. The Cowboy Western was an apocraphylic format. High Noon, from 1952 was vilified by some elements of the Hollywood. It has been cited as an allegory itself "This film was intended as an allegory in Hollywood for the failure of Hollywood people to stand up to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Sen. Joseph McCarthy Red-baiting era." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044706/trivia

However, it should also be remembered that High Noon received four Oscars, so Hollywood certainly gave the movie its full blessing, with John Wayne collecting the award on behalf of Gary Cooper. Another movie from the same era also has echoes of Living in Harmony: "In the old West, a small frontier town is being controlled by ruthless mob boss Decker (Lyle Bettger) and his cronies. After the local sheriff dies under mysterious circumstances, Decker arranges to have the town drunk (Thomas Mitchell) appointed sheriff, thinking he will be ineffectual. But the new sheriff sends for Tom Destry, son of a famous two-fisted lawman, to be his deputy. When Tom (Audie Murphy) arrives, he isn't exactly the swaggering he-man the sheriff had in mind. In fact, Destry doesn't even carry a gun. But the new deputy's mild exterior masks a fierce determination to see justice done, as Decker and the other locals soon discover." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046906/plotsummary

Interestingly, the first movie incarnation of Destry was in a 1930's movie starring James Stewart who McGoohan is known to have personally admired.

Whatever its antecedents and whatever Ian Rakoff's original script's unique elements may have been, what Living in Harmony did was to tell the story of The Prisoner all over again, but this time in a Western town. This is almost certainly not what Rakoff might have intended, especially as he seemed to be under the impression that his script was to be just one of several more, leading into a further season of shows.

It is a remarkable fact that High Noon is said to have taken four weeks to shoot, whereas Living in Harmony is believed to have taken five weeks, at least so it is reported in the 2009 book that accompanied the network dvd releases. Many of my earler blogs have challenged some of the long-repeated but frequently incorrect, misleading or downright deceitful myths about the production history of the remarkable series that is McGoohan's Prisoner. Some consideration of the circumstances surrounding the making of Living in Harmony are worthy of logical analysis. Much of the production history has been concoted by interviewing cast and crew over the several decades since 1967. Many of the testimonies are completely contradictory and Living in Harmony is a real case in point. It is regarded as a filler episode and yet it appears to have had the longest shoot of any episode. It is termed a filler episode and yet it appears to have been the most expensive single episode produced, the spent budget estimated at around £75,000.

The long-held view of The Prisoner production by its self-appointed experts has been that as Spring 1967 ended, with 13 episodes pretty much *in the can*, a second season of 13 were planned. This claim is made despite the unambiguous denial of the owner of the Production company, Patrick McGoohan. One version of the myth that attempts to contradict McGoohan is that the cast and crew were asked to introduce ideas - this is indeed how Ian Rakoff came to submit his original ideas for Living in Harmony - However, so far as is recorded there were at least four other unused ideas or script outlines that were never used, despite the fact that yet another idea was concoted between McGoohan and Tomblin, to make what became The Girl Who was Death. Despite still not having written his final script, McGoohan happily spent five weeks shooting one episode, when the cult historians would have you believe he was desperately seeking to scrape together as many as six more episodes. He was also happily spending nearly 30% more on this one episode than he had spent on any other, and these same historians will have you believe his budgets were being breached and Lew Grade's accountants were on the warpath. Clearly the real history Patrick McGoohan was living was a very different history to the one now frequently shoe-horned against these plain facts.

Most of the history writers will then attempt to explain this bizarre contradiction of the circumstance of real life against their concocted history-making by implying McGoohan was wilting under all the pressure and losing control of the whole project. What could be further from the truth? Consider that the Producer, Star, erstwhile Director and Script-writer was simultaneously making a Hollywood movie, and juggling his TV project, and when he had finally completed 16 episodes, was still able to write what is acknowledged by most as one of the most brilliant hours of imaginative TV (even if some find the imagination too surreal and full of avoidance). If the historian contends that his intention was to make 26 epsiodes in total, as all the *Official* historians seem to, then this behaviour does seem wild and illogical.

However consider what McGoohan says actually happened. He said it in 1967 and he said it in 1977 and he said it any other time he had the patience to answer the question over the ensuing decades. He said he only ever intended to make 17 episodes. Once a person is prepared to actually believe what the man tells them, then his behaviour in 1967 suddenly makes almost perfect sense.

By the end of Spring 1967 he had 13 episodes *in the can*, albeit some editing of the material no doubt remained to be done. From his perspective, he only had four more episodes to make. He could safely leave David Tomblin to tinker over the summer, making the one that didn't need him anyway - Do Not forsake me Oh My Darling - a script that he had had for some time. He had determined to make a Cowboy episode because he loved the cowboy hero (he once described John Drake as being like a Western hero). David Tomblin was going to concoct a segue from *reality* into a story-book in The Girl Who Was Death, McGoohan already had his overtly theatrical and penultimate episode Once Upon A Time in the can too, so all he had to do was write the final, 17th episode, and he had nearly eight months to do that. Suddenly, by simply believing Patrick McGoohan, you have the hugest contrast in the story. Suddenly, rather than a production in crisis and a man teetering on the verge of a breakdown, which is what all the *Official* histories will tend to make you believe, you have instread, a very professional, experienced actor/producer/director/writer giving himself a perfectly easy schedule to wrap up his 17 episode show - the 17 episodes that as early as February 1967 was publicly noted in the American press as having been contracted to and by Mike Dann, the CBS Vice-president.

Sometimes a story is complicated because nobody wants to believe the simple answers. As Patrick McGoohan once remarked,

"I think that some people do have a fondness for enigmas.......... but as well, they like something of a mystery, you know?"

History is not always what other people tell you it was. Sometimes by studying what people do and say themselves rather than what other people say they did and said, you can see exactly what really happened.

McGoohan on My Mind: Six, Sex, Romance and Chivalry

One webituary I read, back in January, of Patrick McGoohan, carried comments, and I had a grin amidst my feelings of regret, when I read this one:

"Sex on feet"? Haven't heard that one before, but a

lot of women seem to react to Patrick McGoohan that way.

In one interview once, Patrick McGoohan remarked that for Number Six to have a romantic relationship in the village would be impossible for without trust how could there be any romance? I'm probably paraphrasing him, but that was the tone of his comment. Notwithstanding such a perfectly logical statement, many fans have commentated on Number Six's *difficulties* with women and this has led to frequent suggestions of misogyny and even for one or two extremists, notions of closet homosexuality! A Serious Charge indeed, but one that the actor would be amused by especially, perhaps.

Personally I have always been baffled by the idea that Six didn't like women. He seems to be involved with at least one almost every episode, sometimes more than one !! He also seems to have the softest of hearts for what used to be called "Ladies in Distress". However he also had more reason than most of us men to be wary of any woman who *seemed* to find him attractive. I thought it would be fun to meet some of them. As I don't subscribe to any of the cock-eyed episode-shuffling theories, I can start at the beginning and Six's relationships even show a steady progression throughout the series run.

The first female prisoner Six gets to touch is the tragic woman with no number. To his certain knowledge she has been implicated in the death of a personal friend of his, but he still is willing to believe her and accepts her offer to help him escape. There is no romance of course. There was neither time nor opportunity. No doubt her tears helped. As Six's romantic adventures continue, tears often play a role.

In Episode Two, Number Six befriends a new prisoner. She at least has a name: Nadia. Six doesn't exactly trust her, but he is not averse to playing along with the village, and puts on a good show of romancing her in the moonlight. A crucial piece of information does get provided to the viewer too. As Nadia seeks to elicit information from Six in her flirtation in the shipping crate, he relaxes enough to confirm that whilst he is not married, he is actually engaged to somebody. After the adventures and apparent success of their escape together, Six has come to trust this woman and in a terse exchange with his superior, he endeavours to secure her safety: Political Asylum for the girl!.......... That depends.......... It depends NOTHING! It's GUARANTEED!.......... Alright, so long as you keep your side of the bargain

The village's initial attempt to use the female seductress technique to get Six to open up illustrates that they deemed him as vulnerable to romantic love as any other man. Perhaps they did not bargain for his taking his *engagement* so seriously, or at least that was at the back of the script-writers minds....

By Episode Three we even see that Six dreams of women and they dream of him

Madame Engedine reminds Six, "Remember! You're mine! Be horrible to other women"

By the time the village attempt their doppelganger trick on Six, he has been in the village long enough to even find an intimate relationship, with another woman, who has a name.

The resolution of this episode plot relies upon the mind-reading Alison keeping silent when her friend almost escapes, after his mental abuse by the village. Their mental bond is sufficient that Six clearly believes her when she assures him that, "If I had a second chance, I want you to know that I wouldn't do it again." She is speaking of course, of her treachery of him. Nonetheless Six evidently accepts her apology and once again trusts this woman, so deep is his instinct to do so.

When Six finally escapes back to London he is of course met by the an arch-seductress of yore: the happy widow, who also is a woman with a name!

Whilst not entirely convinced perhaps, Six feels comfortable in her company and secure enough of her friendliness to not only accept her sandwiches, but also her dead husband's clothes.

It is important to notice that Six's attitude to the feminine side is not limited to flirtation or possibilities of romantic attachment. Before he met Mrs. Butterworth he had cause to put aside his anger and frustration to offer compassion to a bereaved widow, in a simple, but poignant scene, following his demolition of her husband's computer and the professor's consequent death.

He is a man of depth and is not afraid to offer the hand of comfort to the female sex and even brave enough to face the reponsibility of what he has done to her personally.

And so we come to roughly halfway in the series narrative and perhaps the most sophisticated sexual/romantic relationship we see in the story. Six is at the younger end of middle-age and is confronted by a woman, who plainly finds him attractive and is not afraid to show it. What is a man to do?

The sexual tension throbbing throughout this particular episode, never better exemplified than in this scene, should be watched, rather than written about. I guess you will either get it, or you won't................ just like real life, perhaps.

The village rarely lets up on the pressure upon Six's emotional side and the next episode sees them force a woman to love him, and he has to deal with her infatuation. At first he thinks it is a joke, then he feels sorry for the woman; later he gets angry. How annoying must it be for a woman to pledge her undying love to you, when you care not a fig for her? Yet, at the end of his anger at the Queen, and her genuine tears of sadness, Six cannot help himself and offers some small words of comfort.

Her gratitude is both touching and a little awkward, since they are both ready for bed.

The next episode shows the depth of Six's ethics when it comes to the *weaker* sex. Peter Pan certainly left us with no doubt that Six knows that women can be even stronger than men, but when he finds a young woman driven to suicide by a bullying No2, the savage side of Six is revealed and he becomes an implacable foe.

Six turns the principles of mind-control right back onto the current leader of the village, and driven by righteous vengeance for the young woman's needless death, Six is merciless, until the very end, when he seems mildly regretful as the anvil shatters. The significance of course is that Six had seen several men die or be tortured by this time, but he was only shaken by those, not stirred to retribution, as he became following the effective murder of No. 73 - a female of the species.

The next episode continues the serious times for Six as he opposes the assasination of a No2, notwithstanding his so recent willing demolition of one. I will not labour his dalliance with the watchmakers daughter. I'm sure the viewer can see what makes Six tick. However I would like to stop awhile to see how a woman can have a change of mind.

Poor, drugged-up No86 is yet another example of lovely female prisoners seking to bewitch Six. He remains physically kind to her though, even after drugging her with her own potion. He seeks no advantage despite an interesting aside between the Supervisor who asks No2 if the young woman is

looking after Number 6?

The supervisor is referring to surveillance, but the No2 injects the charged rejoinder

Physically?

A reply that perhaps hits a little too close to home for the embarrasssed voyeur and procurer who is the Supervisor. No.86's physical beauty is of course plain to see, but Six has a good eye for soul, and never falls for her, as he did for some others as I have described. He is also learning of course. He has been bewitched befuddled and betrayed so many times already in this village. He is not a fool is he. Once bitten.............

And so the sexual journey of Number Six takes it's cruellest turn. The village sends him to meet his fiancee. The woman he loves, or at least the woman he loved. How can he know anything anymore? He barely even knows what he looks like and Janet, his lover, does not even recognise him.

How heart-breaking must that be? But to expose himself to her would put her in mortal danger - but even the discipline of Six cannot resist a moment of love as he says to her,

When I arrived, they were playing a waltz. The first I danced with my love, my dear love, in Kitzbühel

For a moment, Janet sees him, perhaps. Perhaps that moment is enough for Six. Who knows? Not I.

The journey of Six's heart ends in the 14th episode. This whole episode is an allegory of an allegory of course, a delusion built in a village of illusion. But is love any the less for being only in the mind?

Prisoner cult fans love this Western of course, with all the stories they have made up about Vietnam and suchlike nonsense - see earlier blogs - and especially because Alexis Kanner told them a story once about how the crew had to cover up Valerie French's decollette because *Puritan Pat* wouldn't like it. Looking at the above screenshot I'm wondering exactly how naked Alexis thought Valerie had to get! Perhaps the next picture gives us an idea of what was on Alexis' mind!

Anyhow, Six takes a good old beating right through this episode and still refuses to buckle on a gun; until the saloon girl is foully murdered, largely because she was going to leave town with him! Number Six, the man with no sex.

When Six finds out, he knows that a man has gotta do what a man has gotta do, so he straps on his gun and BANG the Kid is dead. Of course none of this really happened, like love itself, it was all in the mind.

Or was it? The village operative who was Cathy died in the real Number Six's arms sighing,

"I wish it had been real"

So next time you read someplace that The Prisoner had misogynist tendencies, remember that that is all in some cult's mind......... It is not reality ........

So that's religion and sex ticked off my list. Be blogging you some moor politics next time.......