Pamela Green
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Pamela Green (28 March 1929 – 7 May 2010) was an English glamour model and actress, best known at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s. She modeled for Zoltán Glass, Horace Roye, and John Everard.
Pamela Green | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Phyllis Pamela Green 28 March 1929 |
| Died | 7 May 2010 (aged 81) Isle of Wight, England, UK |
| Other names | Rita Landre, Princess Sonmar Harricks |
| Spouse(s) |
(1951) George Harrison Marks (partner, 1953-1961) Douglas Webb (partner, 1986-1996) |
Early life
Born Phyllis Pamela Green in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England on 28 March 1929,[1] Green started figure modelling to pay for her art school studies and moved on to photographic modelling because it paid more. Early in her career, while still at art college, Pamela Green was photographed by Bill Brandt, Zoltán Glass and Angus McBean.
In 1954 Pamela started to supply the bookshops and newsagents of London's Soho with her own postcard sets of glamour photographs, to supplement her work as a photographer's model. In 1955 Luxor Press published a pictorial monograph on Pamela featuring the photographs of George Harrison Marks, entitled Pamela.
Career
Her rising profile prompted her to set up Kamera Publications Ltd with Marks. With Green as Managing Director, they produced several magazines, with Kamera being the most successful. It was the first glamour magazine of any note in the UK, and heralded the top-shelf magazine industry in the country. As their success grew they ventured into 8mm cine film production, which was the format commonly used for home viewing.
Her first film appearance was in 1960, when she starred in Michael Powell's psychological thriller Peeping Tom, which included her in a nude scene. In the scene, a model (Green) lays naked on a bed to be photographed. In one scene one of her breasts is exposed very briefly. The scene is regarded as the first female nude scene in a postwar English language mainstream feature film. The film was panned by the critics at the time and it destroyed Powell's career in the United Kingdom. In 1961, Green appeared in a nudist film Naked as Nature Intended, written and directed by Marks. She appeared in other sex and nude films produced by Kamera.
In 1961, Green's personal relationship with Marks ended, but they continued their business relationship. By the mid-sixties Harrison Marks was increasingly preoccupied by film making. Kamera ceased publication in 1968. He always acknowledged his debt to Pamela Green and said in his biography The Naked Truth, "Pam set me up. She started it all."
In 1964 she appeared in an episode of This Week.
Green continued to model for her then partner the photographer Douglas Webb. She became Webb's camera stills assistant and worked for the major movie companies in London.
Personal life
In 1951, Green married stagehand Guy Hillier. The marriage lasted only a month. From 1953 to 1961 she lived with George Harrison Marks and took his name. Her third partner was the photographer Douglas Webb, a former war hero of the Dambusters raid, with whom Green lived from 1986 until his death in December 1996. At first they lived in a Victorian villa on the Isle of Wight and in 1993 they moved to Yarmouth, where Green was a member of the Yarmouth Women's Institute.
Pamela Green died from leukaemia, aged 81, on the Isle of Wight on 7 May 2010.[2]
Filmography
- Peeping Tom (1960)
- Art for Art’s Sake (1960)
- Xcitement (1960)
- Witches Brew (1960)
- Cover Girl" (196?)
- The Window Dresser (1961)
- Gypsy Fire" (1961)
- Naked as Nature Intended (1961)
- The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)
- The Chimney Sweeps (1963)
- The Naked World of Harrison Marks (1966)
- Legend of the Werewolf (1975) (uncredited)
References
- ^ Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. Original data: General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office.
- ^ Vallance, Tom (12 June 2010). "Pamela Green: Actress and model best known for her role in Peeping Tom who also helped start the 'top-shelf' tradition". The Independent. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
Further reading
- Pine, T. H. "Art of the Nude". Pamela-Green.co.uk. T. H. Pine. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
- Sheridan, Simon. Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema. London: Titan Publishing, 2011.
- Stanborough, Denise (September 2005). "Fetish: Interviews: Pamela Green". Bizarre. Dennis Publishing Limited. Retrieved 23 February 2012.