Acting
Jan 27, 1921
Holborn, London, England, UK
Alfred Marks
Acting
Biography
Alfred Edward Marks OBE (28 January 1921 - 1 July 1996) was a comic actor and comedian. Marks was born as Ruchel Kutchinsky in Holborn, London. He left Bell Lane School at 14 and started in entertainment at the Windmill Theatre. He then served in the RAF as a Flight Sergeant in the Middle East where he arranged concerts for servicemen. He also worked as an auctioneer and engineer. He started in variety at the Kilburn Empire in 1946, and his stage appearances included The Sunshine Boys and Fiddler On The Roof. He was also involved in comedy work with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe which later led to the formation (along with writer Spike Milligan) of The Goon Show, though Marks himself was not to become a member of that comedy group. His films included The Frightened City and Scream and Scream Again. His television show, Alfred Marks Time, ran for 6 years on ITV. He compered Sunday Night at the London Palladium and appeared in numerous other television programmes including Albert and Victoria, The Good Old Days, Blankety Blank, The Marti Caine Show, The Two Ronnies, The Generation Game, Lovejoy, Minder (TV series), Parkinson, The All New Alexei Sayle Show and the Dramarama play The Comeuppance of Captain Katt (a satire on the current state of Doctor Who). In 1967 Marks toured Australia for JC Williamson Theatres in Bill Naughton's Spring & Port Wine. In 1968 he played the lead in The Young Visiters a musical version of the turn of the 20th century Daisy Ashford novel, written when she was six and published as submitted by her with the spelling error, at the Vaudeville Theatre in London. Marks also appeared in the role of Wilfred Shadbolt in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Yeomen of the Guard in 1982. While on tour in Australia, Marks was appointed the second King of Moomba (1968) by the Melbourne Moomba festival committee; when asked what his qualifications were, he quipped (in full Cockney): "When I was eleven there were rival gangs around a fruit market in the East End. And desperately, I always wanted to be a member of the bigger rival gang. One day when I was in my best Easter suit, someone from one of the other gangs said to me 'would you like to be King of the Golden Apples?' 'All right, just sit there on this box and call out Apples, Apples, give me the Golden Apples.' Which innocently I did and they cobbled me with every rotten apple in the market." Description above from the Wikipedia article Alfred Marks, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Feature Films (19)
When Harry and Spike visit Bristol to spend the winnings from Harry's latest Pools win, the boys are soon targeted by a gang of local counterfeiters.
Penny Points to Paradise
A serial killer stalks and drains the blood of women in London, eventually leading police to the countryside, where eccentric Dr Browning harvests body parts and constructs composite artificial humans as part of a twisted experiment to create a superior race.
Scream and Scream Again
Two episodes of the TV series "The Persuaders" joined into a movie. Two playboys investigate crimes along the French Riviera.
Mission: Monte Carlo
Colonel Fairfax has been falsely accused of sorcery by a jealous relative who covets his estates and money. The Colonel is condemned to death for his 'crime' and waits in the Tower of London for his execution. Fate, however, steps in - in the form of Sergeant Meryll (who owes his life to Colonel Fairfax) and Elsie Maynard, a beautiful strolling singer who has just arrived at the Tower to entertain the people in the company of a strolling jester, Jack Point.
The Yeomen of the Guard
A small time thief is recruited by a mobster to help with the racketeering. He doesn't like the job, but with the mob on his back, a femme fatale in his bed and a sick friend to care for, he will have to keep all his wits about him.
The Frightened City
Television & Series (26)
Albert and Victoria is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1970 to 1971. Starring Alfred Marks, it was written by Reuben Ship. It was made for the ITV network by Yorkshire Television. In Albert and Victoria, Marks plays Albert Hackett, a middle-class man in late 19th century England. He and his wife, Victoria, have nine children, and he is used to getting his own way.
Albert and Victoria
Dramarama is the name of a British children's anthology series broadcast on ITV between 1983 and 1989. It tended to feature drama of a science fiction or supernatural bent. The series was created by Anna Home, then head of children's and youth programming at TVS, however production responsibilities were divided amongst most of the regional ITV franchise holders. Thus, each episode was in practice a one-off production with its own cast and crew, up to and including the executive producer. Dramarama was largely a place for new talent to prove themselves and was a launching pad for the likes of Anthony Horowitz, Paul Abbott, Kay Mellor, Janice Hally, Tony Kearney, David Tennant and Ann Marie Di Mambro. It was one of Dennis Spooner's last credits. One of Dramarama's episodes, "Dodger, Bonzo And The Rest", gained so much popularity that it was turned in to its own series the following year. It starred Lee Ross and was based around a large foster home. The episode "Blackbird Singing In The Dead of Night" was developed by Granada into the TV series Children's Ward. It was also repeated for the first time since its original broadcast on 5 January 2013, during CITV's 30th anniversary Old Skool Weekend. The Series 7 episode "Back To Front" – notable for featuring a mirror image of the Yorkshire Television logo card at the end – was repeated on 6 January 2013, again as part of CITV's 30th anniversary Old Skool Weekend.
