Julie Stevens 1936-2024

I have just discovered that the English actress and singer Julie Stevens (1936-2024) died a few days ago. She played Venus Smith in six episodes of The Avengers, season two.

Her character was a night club singer, and she sang in each episode. Venus Smith was one of two alternative leads, before the series settled on Mrs Catherine Gale as John Steed's regular partner.

Her other TV work was mainly on children's programmes, such as Play School. She was also in the film Carry On Cleo (1964).

Obituary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efd0wO-ALEw

Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Stevens_(English_actress)

Very sad to hear this news. There cannot be many left now from the original version of The Avengers.

Paul Adams from New Zealand

THE AVENGERS ON VIDEO

When domestic Video Cassette Recorders first appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, most of what was available to rent or buy on pre-recorded tapes consisted of normal theatrical movies. 

TV shows were also released. Some programmes were edited (apparently by the villain from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, using his chainsaw) in to movie-length versions, combining parts of two or more TV episodes. Other tapes featured the original TV episodes.

As TV programmes were usually shorter than movies, you usually got two or three episodes per tape. Tapes were large, and expensive, so full TV season sets were rare. If you wanted a set, it had to be built up tape by tape, which was expensive, and only for the dedicated fan. Many shows only had a few selected episodes available.

Since colour programmes were generally thought to be more popular than those in black and white, some shows from the 1960s (when TV production largely changed over from black and white to colour) faced a problem. 

In the case of The Avengers, the early episodes were in black and white, and the later episodes in colour. Video companies feared that the colour episodes would sell more than the black and white episodes, leaving the black and white tapes sitting on shop shelves.

The answer, at least in this case, was to put one of each on a single tape. These Avengers tapes by Lumiere each have two Emma Peel episodes, but from a different season of the show. Season 4 was the first Emma Peel series, and the last to be made in black and white. 

Season 5 was the second and last Emma Peel series, and the first to be made in colour. Clearly an attempt has been made to put together episodes that are linked in some way, usually by theme. The first two appearances of the Cybernaut robots are included on Vol.2 - there was also a Cybernauts episode in The New Avengers.

Vol.1 The Town of No Return/From Venus With Love

Vol.2 The Cybernauts/Return of the Cybernauts

Vol.3 A Touch of Brimstone/The Bird Who Knew Too Much

Vol.4 Death at Bargain Prices/Escape in Time

Vol.5 Too Many Christmas Trees/The Joker

Vol.6 The Gravediggers/The Living Dead

Vol.7 The Danger Makers/The See-Through Man

Vol.8 Small Game For Big Hunters/The Hidden Tiger

These tapes date from the 1990s - some have dated price stickers on the back, giving a date of 20th December 1995. As there was nothing available on tape from The Avengers in NZ, the release of these volumes was a big deal for fans of the show. 

They were $29.95 NZ each, for just two episodes, but I recall them being on special when they came out. There were eight volumes, although there might also have been one for Tara King (all of whose episodes were in colour), which we did not get.

As there were 26 episodes in Season 4, and 24 episodes in Season 5, these releases represent only about a third of the episodes made. As far as I know, these were the only episodes released on videotape in New Zealand. I had to wait a long time for the DVD boxed set to arrive, so I could watch the others.

The tapes have the Australian censorship rating of PG in a square printed on the paper slick that is inserted in to the plastic case. This meant Parental Guidance Recommended for Persons Under 15 Years in Australia.

For the New Zealand market paper stickers were applied, also with the PG classification. This is in two forms, the first three have PG - Parental Guidance Recommended for Persons Under 13 Years; the others have Parental Guidance Recommended for Younger Viewers, but without any age level being mentioned. 

The latter have a silver stripe down the centre (in NZ, video labels have a Silver stripe for Classifications that are not age-restricted, and a Gold stripe for those that have a legally binding age restriction). The classification appears on a coloured dot: green for General (British U); yellow for those with an age recommendation; and red for those with an age restriction.

These tapes are now a piece of history, an attempt to move the less popular black and white episodes of a show by combining them with one of the more desirable colour episodes.

They also illustrate the high price of videos in the 'Good Old Days'. At full retail price, these few tapes would have cost more back in 1995 than my full DVD set of The Avengers (Seasons 1 to 6) did in 2022, and taken up more space.

Paul Adams from New Zealand

STEED KING: THE AVENGERS' STORY 'SPLIT'

I've just watched an episode of The Avengers, Split from 1968. It was introduced by ITV4 as the New Avengers but it was the Linda Thorsen series, along with Patrick McNee of course.

I must say I really enjoyed the episode. I'd forgotten how attractive the whole thing was and Canadian Linda does a sterling job in filling the rather big and handsome shoes left by one Diana Rigg. The cameraman found himself focusing on Linda's legs rather a lot just to be sure!

The other focus in this episode and the whole series in general was setting the stories in sinister Government units and departments, which I always found wonderful and I'm unsure there's anything like it now. It reminded me of the military thread running through Sixties Doctor Who. In this episode of the Avengers the department was called The Ministry of Top Secret Information!

There's a compulsion for radio-electronics as well, which is something that featured in many TV plays and series like the Stone Tape, Quatermass Conclusion and of course Dr. Who.

There's a really smart car in the episode too, an Aston Martin DBS Vantage pictured below. It so sleek and would have not gone amiss in UFO! Here's a nice webpage about the car in that very episode. 

http://www.dbsvantage.com/en/pages/films-and-tv/theavengers.html

I'd forgotten that Steed's bowler was a lethal weapon like Odd Jobs in Dr. No. I have an inkling that the Bowler might have been released as a toy or maybe Steed's umbrella. Is that right?

Do you like the Linda Thorsen/ Tara King era?

imcdb

THE AVENGERS TV INTRO

By way of an epitaph for Dame Diana Rigg's sad death yesterday, I felt it appropriate to show the iconic intro to TV's The Avengers, perhaps her most famous role and the one our generation grew up with.

THE 1969 LARAMI AVENGER TOY PISTOL

Looking further at this Larami toy catalogue from 1969, which I saw on an auction site and kept pics of, I spotted the Avenger among the toy pistols.

The word Avenger and its typeface is clearly a nod to the Angers, the popular British TV programme with Steed and Emma Peel. 

I'm pretty sure that's a Steed-like figure on the backing card.

I wonder if this knockoff is of interest to true Avengers toys fans?

ARTO'S AVENGERS SHOOTING GAME BY MERIT

One of my favourite Merit agent sets, the Avengers Shooting Game, a surprise find here in Finland a couple of summers back. Missing only the correct darts.

If you know anyone with spares, please let me know!

Arto

Helsinki Base

*

Woodsy adds: you can see the missing rubber sucker darts in this set I saw on Vectis. There should be two. I have seen red shafts as well.

TENTH BLOGGIVERSARY SPECIAL AGENT FILE 2: DIANA RIGG'S SIGNATURE

Hello Woodsy

You mentioning Diana Rigg as being from Doncaster near you reminded me of a couple of series of Trading Cards from the early 90's that were printed in the US. 

Even earlier in the late 80's old episodes of The Avengers were being shown on TV and I would VHS tape them and watch them with my daughter. 

The card came back signed but the signature didn't really match any other one of hers that I've seen. 

In 1994 Diana Rigg won Best Actress in a Play at the Tony Awards for her role on Broadway as Medea. My wife and I had been to see the play earlier and this upset my daughter then age nine as we didn't think she was old enough for the play.

Having watched many episodes of The Avengers together in order to give a strong female role model to her, my daughter was pretty mad at not being taken to that show.

Knowing that Diana Rigg was not particularity happy at being reminded of her time as Mrs Peel I was somewhat reluctant to do so but I mailed a note explaining the situation along with a return stamped envelope and an Avengers Trading card to the theatre. 

A short while later the card was returned as seen in the scan. I'm not sure if that is her actual signature as it doesn't match any I have seen on the web for sale, but I do know it was returned from the Theatre she was performing at.

This is the card.

The picture below I saw online and is a dealer's authenticated signature. There are so many versions of Dianna Rigg's it's hard to know what's genuine.

Regards

Terranova47

NYC

USA

MERIT AVENGERS SHOOTING GAME

As Scoop has said so eloquently already its so sad that the great Patrick MacNee has passed away and in a month when we lost Christopher Lee as well. All the stars of the Sixties are slowly fading, which makes it even more important that we keep their memories alive.

Seeing my Merit Special Agent Set yesterday reminded me of one toy which I coveted when I was a "serious" Spy Toy collector. I never got one but I still love the look of it - the Merit Avengers Shooting Game. With Steed and the back of Emma Peel I presume, the tenacious pair are in pursuit of a sleek black Jaguar. The whole thing oozes Sixties Britain!

The above pic is courtesy of Vectis. You can see more detail over at the cool Little Storping Museum here.

Merit also released a SAINT Shooting Game with equally brilliant box art and contents [pic: Mullocks]

As for my own Merit Special Agent Set, I can only assume that they could not afford the rights to a James Bond Licence maybe. They still went ahead and included an Aston Martin on the cover!

The contents in my set are very incomplete but give enough of an idea of what the set might have looked like. Other than the gun I'm unsure what is actually missing!

I struck lucky with the plastic dagger though. I saw a Merit Commando knife and on a hunch bought it and hey presto. it fitted onto the box tray slot perfectly!

Do any of you own any of these or other Merit sets readers?

THE AVENGERS PAPERBACK COVERS

In tribute to the late Patrick Macnee here are some scans of my small, and as yet incomplete collection of Avengers paperbacks.

The first is from Consul Books and is simply titled The Avengers. It was written by Douglas Enefer and was published in 1963.

This is the only original novel based on the partnership of Cathy Gale and John Steed.

This next one is titled Dead Duck and is credited to Patrick Macnee, although inside, author Peter Leslie also gets a namecheck

This book published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1966, features the pairing of Emma Peel and John Steed.  

A second book in this series was released the previous year prior to Dead Duck called Deadline. 

My example is a reprint by Titan Books which was published in 1994.

In 1967 Panther Books released four original novels all written by John Garforth, again featuring the partnership between Emma Peel and John Steed.

These four books were reprinted by Berkley Medallion in 1968  for the American market with a further five original titles not available in the UK. One was another featuring Emma Peel along with four featuring Tara King.  

I only have two so far. The Afrit Affair, written by Keith Laumer which features Emma Peel and John Steed.

 The Magnetic Man , written by Norman Daniels, which features Tara King and John Steed.