Pamela and the Lost World of Soho

 Luxor Press (1955)

We are all born naked; but we are not all born to be naked. For as Nietzsche says: "A naked human being is generally a shameful sight."*

But that's not true of everyone. There are some, like the glamour model and actress Pamela Green, who look fantastic either in or out of their clothes and it's fitting that she made the first full-frontal screen appearance in a British feature film; as Milly, in Michael Powell's pervy psychological thriller, Peeping Tom (1960). 

Born in 1929, and the only child of an English father and a Dutch mother, Pamela spent her first ten years living in the Netherlands. Shorty before the outbreak of war, however, she and her parents moved to England.

Always keen on painting and drawing, in 1947 she was accepted on to a course at St. Martin's, where she also began working as a life model in order to help pay for her studies. Miss Green soon discovered, however, that she could make much better money by posing for photographers who were not particularly interested in art. Her saucy snaps proved so popular with punters that many Soho bookshops and backstreet newsagents stocked postcard sets featuring her and, indeed, supplied by her.

Fans could also see Pamela in the flesh working as a dancer in several West End theatres, including the Hippodrome, or on stage in shows that incorporated static tableaux of the type made famous by the Windmill; i.e., shows in which models were nude, but remained perfectly motionless, like statues, in accordance with the laws of the land.

In 1955, a pictorial monograph was published by Luxor Press entitled Pamela, featuring photographs by her lover and business partner George Harrison Marks, with whom she set up Kamera Publications, responsible for several top shelf magazines. As their success grew, the couple ventured into the world of 8mm striptease films, producing classics such as Naked as Nature Intended (1961), written and directed by Marks and starring Miss Green in a happy state of undress.

Between the the two of them, Marks and Green established a commercial porn business that was as quintessentially British as the retail empire founded by Marks and Spencer and very much rooted in a time and place - i.e. Soho in the 1950s - that is now, regrettably, long vanished; a bohemian utopia where artists, writers, actors, showgirls, prostitutes, pornograpers and other queer fish all gaily lived and rubbed along.

Today, London’s once sleazy yet exhilarating district of pubs, cafes, and clubs, has been transformed by the relentless tide of gentrification and every red light dimmed. I fully support the work being done by Tim Arnold, Stephen Fry, Colin Vaines and others involved with the Save Soho campaign, but, in all honesty, there's very little left to preserve other than memories; for even the spirits of the dead seem to have departed ...  

Notes

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), V. 352, p. 295. 

Readers interested in knowing more about Pamela Green should visit her official website: pamela-green.com

Those interested in the work of Harrison Marks should visit: thekameraclub.co.uk.

Witches' Brew 1: Skyclad with Pamela Green

Pamela Green in Witches' Brew (1960)

There's a kinky connection between Wicca and naturism, in that participants of both these things love to get their kit off at every opportunity and frolic naked (or skyclad, as the witches say). 

It's not suprising, therefore, to discover the existence of an 8mm striptease film, featuring English glamour model and actress Pamela Green, called Witches's Brew (1960). Nor is it surprising to find that the film was directed by George Harrison Marks, a key figure - as photographer and filmmaker - in the British porn industry for over forty years.

(Note: Marks even makes a brief appearance in the above as a hunchback assistant.)   

In 1949, Miss Green joined the Spielplatz Naturist Club, located in the village of Bricket Wood, Herts. Spielplatz had been founded in 1929 as a utopian retreat for nudists by Charles Macaskie and his wife. Among their visitors was Cambridge scholar and poet - and founder of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids - Ross Nichols.

It was whilst staying at Spielplatz that Nichols probably first met Gerald Gardner, who established a coven nearby as part of his development of Wicca as a modern neopagan religion.       

Put these people together - Gardner, Nichols, Macaskie, Harrison Marks and Pamela Green - stir gently and bring to the boil and voila! one produces a veritable witches' brew of sex, magic, nudity and nature worship all set in the pleasant surroundings of the English countryside. 

According to those who knew her, Miss Green not only had a signed first edition of Gardner's The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) on her shelf, but even named her cat Pyewacket, à la Gillian Holroyd in Bell, Book and Candle. So as well as being a favourite amongst the dirty mac brigade, she must surely qualify as a figure of special interest to those who hang round Treadwell's and belong to the spooky community.       

Some of the women at Spielplatz taking part in a 

Miss Venus contest including Pamela Green (centre)

Photo by Stephen Glass (1950)

Notes 

Those interested in knowing more about Pamela Green should visit the excellent website devoted to her: Pamela Green - Never Knowingly Overdressed: click here.      
 
Those interested in reading part two of this post - on Janie Jones - should click here. 

This post is dedicated to Christina (obviously): treadwells-london.com 

Kitchen Sink Kink

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