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#our journalist of the week is played by Lee Patterson‚ a minor film star in british b movies at this point‚ with swooningly handsome Anton
mariocki
·
4 months
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Alfred Burke puts on his best policing face as Parisian detective Inspector Maron, in Overseas Press Club - Exclusive!: The Billion Franc Mystery (1.6, ABPC, 1957)
#fave spotting
#alfred burke
#overseas press club exclusive!
#the billion franc mystery
#1957
#classic tv
#public eye
#abpc
#an obscure series‚ even by the standards of pre 1960s telly. OSPC was a coproduction between Ardleigh Films and Associated British Pathé
#(they of the famous news reels‚ and themselves a subsidiary of Associated British Picture Corporation). a year or two later and this
#would probably have been made in house by ABC themselves‚ but the franchise was only a year old at this point and still finding its feet
#the concept is simple but promising: each week‚ a member of the Overseas Press Club of America (a real and still extant organisation) tells
#a tale from their careers‚ an unusual instance or shocking event that makes for good tv. these tales are true! says the narrator in the
#show's opening moments‚ and these ppl exist! frankly that's something i take with a large grain of salt; whilst some stories certainly have
#direct factual origins (there's an episode about a catholic priest going undercover with a gang of street toughs which ends with footage of
#the actual figure that inspired the ep) but others are highly questionable (the first‚ about a Norwegian resistance fighter who has plastic
#surgery and takes the place of a relatively high ranking nazi officer; i feel like that's something that would be better known‚ yknow??)
#this ep is about a nazi plot to destabilise the French franc just prior to ww2; quite believable and certainly the nazis did dabble in
#producing counterfeit money‚ tho the examples i found online all relate to pound sterling or latterly the us dollar‚ not the franc)
#our journalist of the week is played by Lee Patterson‚ a minor film star in british b movies at this point‚ with swooningly handsome Anton
#Diffring (who had fled nazi persecution himself) as the villain. Alfie's part is pretty small‚ he's just the french cop keeping every one
#in sight and letting events play out (cue some wonderful Alfie cheshire cat grins). Patterson (and maybe Diffring) got to fly out to actual
#real Paris to film some location work and establishing shots (a benefit of making a series about the OSPC was that they arranged flights
#for cast and crew). poor Alf didn't get a holiday tho; his scenes are conspicuously studio based‚ even when he's meant to be on the banks
#of the Seine...
#so yes‚ a fun little series‚ even if (so far) the wide scope of potential stories does seem to favour ww2 stuff. good luck finding a copy
#tho; it took me months of trawling to find a reasonably priced 2nd hand copy (Amazon currently have a copy for £79.99 which.. for 2 discs
#is kind of insane). a victim of the price gouging which seems to have affected some of the lesser known network titles since their
#dissolution. sad times for the fan of painfully obscure old tv.. if I ever learn how to make things be on a computer‚ tho‚ I'll happily
#share
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