George Harrison Marks 

 

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One of the larger than life characters on the spanking scene in the 1980s and 1990s was George Harrison Marks. If you click HERE, you will go to the 'official' overview of his life and involvement in the Spanking scene. This article, however, is mainly musings as a result of the times that Moonglow and Kane crossed paths, usually amicably. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he was a lovely man when there was no brandy bottle near his hand.
George was never really interested in spanking, except where he could see profits involved. He was brought into Janus as editor to make it more professional. Now if you bring in an editor to a magazine about mountaineering who has little interest in mountaineering, it is unlikely to be a success. In the same way, George's editorship of Janus was short-lived. He walked out and set up Kane magazine. Now Kane was a success for an unexpected reason. The content might have been unappealing; everything was completely posed and faked, but very professionally. However, quite a bit of it was devoted to "contacts". For the first time, spanking enthusiasts had a vehicle to contact young ladies who had an interest in being spanked. Working class girls tended to resort to prostitution. More middle class girls saw spanking as way to make good money without resorting to full blown sex. Kane was ideal.
 
The big lure for George was film-making, the great love of his life. With the exception of Janus, there were virtually no film producers in this area in the 1990s. So he changed but could not leave all the baggage behind. For instance, one of his great interests was lesbian sex, and he could not resist a lesbian scene if there was an excuse. (See the video of one of his parties below; it starts with a lesbian spanking scene.) So the problems with his films were that they were films with one or two spanking scenes in them. What the customers wanted were spanking films, that is, wall to wall spanking with perhaps a few minutes of introduction. To make matters worse, Oscar, his director, was obsessed with ensuring that the girls were not hurt. If some wretched actor hit a girl's bottom too hard, he stopped the filming and berated the unfortunate man. (He was only a little more liberal with all-girl scenes.) For example, George made one film at the then Moonglow offices. After filming there, he announced that they were off to a church, which he had hired, to film the spanker and spankee getting married! The result was that they were all unbelievably timid. Despite the fact that he charged £50 [nearly £100 at 2025 prices] for a film (on videotape), he found it hard to make a profit given his substantial expenses and rampant pirating.
 
George also launched, using his magazine, what were called Kane Parties, although they were in fact shows as there was no audience participation. However, it was a vehicle for enthusiasts to get together and to meet the girls taking part in the shows. (Thus again, the non-enthusiast became the innovator.) George loved the shows and he lapped up the adulation of his fans. He put them together rather cleverly, essentially a series of skits. In the absense of Oscar, the action was more realistic although never very heavy. Of course, he filmed them all as an extra source of income. He charged £150 to attend, [nearly £300 at 2025 prices]. With up to 60 men in attendance, and paying the ten girls around £200 each, and despite a quite lavish spread, he was probably pocketing around £5,000 for each party. No wonder he held them regularly. Click HERE to watch the film of one of his parties in 1988. It took a few years for the competition to develop and for his parties to fade away.
 
It was in this environment that Moonglow was conceived. George got through women pretty rapidly. Once they were dumped for the next busty front page girl, the ladies involved had a problem. If the latest Queen of Kane considered them a threat, their income virtually dried up. One way to change this back was to produce a serious boyfriend. This was how I met Benji, a one time cover girl, who was struggling with being an ex-girlfriend of George's. With me in tow, she was able to get back into George's good books. That was also when I learnt how careful one had to be around George. We were invited to a small dinner party hosted by George. Dinner went well. After dinner, George put on a videotape of one of his old time friends, Max Miller. Now Max was quite funny but really very dated for the 1980s. As we watched George devoured more and more brandy. Suddenly, he stood up, furious, and switched off the TV. He was offended that we were not rolling around laughing at Max Miller's jokes. The evening soon ended.

That was also the point where Benji, in effect, decided to set up in competition with George. She had by then quite a following of spanking enthusiasts, mainly met at Kane parties, with whom she had had one to one spanking sessions. They complained that George's parties were both expensive and lacked any inter-action with the guests. She asked me to help her run parties, and so Moonglow was born. We started with small parties with some four or five girls and up to a dozen men. They rapidly caught on, and soon we were running a monthly party in London, which required advanced booking. Benji soon moved on, not being the most focused of people, but, for ages, she went around saying she had founded Moonglow.

George's influence, however, did not end there. The parties proved a good source of feedback. From discussions with attendees, it was clear that Harrison-Mark's films were considered expensive and verging on a con. Members did not want a film with spankings. They wanted wall to wall spanking with a short scene to set the context. But most of all they wanted some real action! As Benji faded away from the parties, John Kirwood arrived. John soon picked up the vibes and convinced himself that he could make the world's best spanking and caning videos; modesty he launched Moonglow Videos, and the first title, How Zat, emerged. It may not have been world class - to John's surprise, making films was more difficult than he expected. Nevertheless, the video sold well.

It was only after George's death and Josie Harrison-Marks' take over of the business that Top Marks videos were launched and Kane became a serious player on the video scene. However, that is not to denigrate the contributoion George made to the spanking scene!