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| Appreciative
examination: Living In Harmony - Harmony |
| "Why
don't we do a western?" - this, alledgedly, was
David Tomblin's, McGoohan's co-producer with
Everyman Films, reaction to the decison to produce only 17 episodes of THE
PRISONER. And time to hire new scriptwriters was running short. The
script basis of this episode is a story by Ian L. Rakoff.
GUNSMOKE,
YES AND NO, BUT NOT CLINT EASTWOOD IN RAWHIDE - IT'S PATRICK McGOOHAN
in The
idea and the images are just great, this paraphrase on countless westerns
and on THE PRISONER itself: The opening sequence shows a man on
a horseback riding through the plains. Next he is seen front of a Marshall
removing his sheriff's badge from the vest, laying down his gun and holster
on the desk. With the saddle on his shoulders he leaves only to encounter
a couple of rogue gunmen a few hills on waiting
for him with sinister plans. The man is kidnapped and taken to a place
unknown to him, welcome to Harmony. No
credit sequence, just actor McGoohan and some rather neutral indicating
titles, it is only near the end of the film that viewers get the notion
of a PRISONER episode they had been watching.
ALEXIS KANNER: NOT YET THE END OF THE MATTER BETWEEN THE KID AND NUMBER SIX But what Kanner was allowed to display and embody, on the other hand, was denied to Kathy actress Valerie French. Lying on the ground, the mere notion of her breast nipples under her clothes had McGoohan call for more shadow over that part of her body. If Tomblin had written and directed more than one or two epsiodes, who knows what outcome one could have expected with this series. In the USA this episode wasn't aired at first. There are various guessings about the reason for this. Some say it was censorship because of the Vietnam war, others regard legal issues as the reason.
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