What We Can Learn From DANGER MAN

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

What We Can Learn from Danger Man

Although the names and numbers change, as is only right in a good spy yarn, we can infer that Patrick McGoohan’s flinty character in Danger Man (Secret Agent in the USA), Ice Station Zebra, and The Prisoner is the same man: John Drake. From these films a young person can learn that in the 1960s:

1. A fake travel agency can function in the center of London for years as a front for the British secret service without Communists, smugglers, crooked millionaires, corrupt members of parliament, or drug cartels figuring that out.

2. The same supporting actor, usually Aubrey Morris, can play a Chinese, an Italian, a Spaniard, and a Haitian, and no one is offended by that.

3. A secret agent travels with one small canvas bag which holds a business suit for the city, a tweed suit for the country, a dinner jacket, a trench coat, a turtleneck sweater, a pair of slacks, a change of shirts, a shaving kit, a large tape recorder, a large two-way radio, binoculars, a hat or two, sneakers for doing the cat burglar thing, and a pair of hiking boots.

4. A distinguished middle-aged man wearing a smoking jacket and holding a brandy snifter is a villain.

5. If there is an elderly colonel, and there usually is, and if he has a sweet, pretty daughter, and he usually does, she is always a traitor.

6. Scientists always wear white laboratory coats and eyeglasses rimmed in black plastic.

7. A computer is the size of a Ford Galaxie 500, clatters like a teletype, and features lots of dials and flashing lights.

8. Sometimes a character must get off the train or stop the car in order to call someone on a pay telephone. The pay telephone is convenient and always in working order, and the character always has the correct change.

9. Any airport terminal is about the size of a kitchen. When it is not an airport terminal it is a hotel lobby or a railway station.

10. A forest in Scotland, a copse in Kent, and jungles in central Africa, Haiti, and South America look exactly alike and feature identical plant life.

11. Almost all women wear dresses or skirts, except for Patricia Driscoll (nee’ Maid Marian) who rather daringly wears slacks.

12. Anyone can walk into any airport and immediately buy a ticket for any destination in the world on a plane that leaves within the hour.

13. Smoking is cool.

14. Coats and ties are required. A man sitting at the breakfast table will put on his sports jacket or suit coat before answering the door. When the police or military intelligence arrest someone they always give him a moment to tie his tie and find his coat before they take him away. Every man (except for Communists and other such low-lifes) removes his hat when entering someone’s home or office, and when dining.

15. In those funny little foreign countries airport staff are invariably surly and suspicious, wear moustaches, search luggage, ask nosy questions, and carry firearms. This would never happen in English, French, German, or American airports, where the staff are polite and helpful, and never snoop through travelers’ things.

16. Pan American is the preferred airline, though sometimes one must make do with BOAC.

17. All cars are English, French, or Italian.

18. The United Nations is a beneficent organization staffed by men (never women) of all nations and cultures. These men are good, wise, and honest.

19. London’s clubland rules the world.

20. Anyone stepping out of a hotel will immediately find a taxi available.

21. Typewriters. Newspapers. Telegrams. Rotary telephones.

22. Danger Man set the standard for complex gadgets hidden in pieces in shavers and pens, and which must be assembled over a period of minutes with much clicking and clacking.

23. When any woman enters a room, all the men present stand up. When greeting a woman a man (except for a Communist) removes his hat or at least touches the brim respectfully.

24. John Drake never carries a firearm. He can disable four or five armed villains with his bare hands, not unlike Walker, Texas Ranger. While one baddie is being subdued all the others jump around harmlessly in the background while waiting their turn to be bashed.

25. Most elderly women are dear, sweet things who serve tea with milk, lemon, sugar, and knockout drops.

This bit of fun shouldn’t suggest that Danger Man / Secret Agent is cartoonish. The series features well-developed plots, characterizations, and settings, and is always predicated on an ethical sense wholly lacking in the James Bond cartoons.

When in one episode Drake realizes that an evil man he has captured has been murdered by his own agency, he angrily confronts his boss. Drake sternly reminds The Colonel that if the English government is going to act like the Soviet government, then there is no moral ground for the country’s existence. This scene may be the impetus for the ongoing theme of The Prisoner: “Why did you resign?”

Danger Man / Secret Agent presents intelligent, ethical, and artistically staged stories that, unlike most twaddle from the Ministry of Truth, respect the viewer. And, in addition to the many other excellent qualities of Danger Man, there are lava lamps.

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