Pamela Green
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Pamela Green (March 28, 1929, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England – May 7, 2010) was an English glamour model and actress, best known at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s. She modeled for Zoltán Glass, Horace Roye, and John Everard.
Peeping Tom
In 1960, she appeared in the psychological thriller Peeping Tom, directed by Michael Powell. When the film was released, the nude shot of Green had to be cut after protests from Local Watch Committees in various towns before its scheduled screening, but in 1979 she was rediscovered by a new generation of fans when it was shown in its original version at the 1979 New York Film Festival, through the efforts of Martin Scorsese.
Career
Born as Phyllis Pamela Green, she started figure modelling to pay for her art school studies and moved on to photographic modelling because it paid more. Early in her career Pamela Green was photographed by Bill Brandt (while still at art college), Zoltán Glass and Angus McBean.
In 1954 Pamela started to supply the bookshops and newsagents of London's Soho with her own postcard sets of glamour photographs, to supplement her work as a photographer's model. The success of this business with her then partner George Harrison Marks , promoted them to set up Kamera Publications Ltd.
With her as Managing Director, they produced several magazines, with Kamera being the most successful. It was the first glamour magazine of any note in the UK, and heralded the top-shelf magazine industry in the country. As their success grew they ventured into 8mm cine film production.
Following her divorce from Guy Hillier, she moved in with Harrison Marks and took his name, but there is doubt over whether they actually married. In 1967 she split with Harrison Marks and eventually the business was wound up; Kamera ceased publication in 1968. He always acknowledged his debt to Pamela Green and said in his biography The Naked Truth, "Pam set me up. She started it all."
She was the first nude in a British feature film when she starred in Michael Powell's psychological thriller Peeping Tom (1960). In 1964 she appeared in an episode of This Week.
Green continued to model for the photographer Douglas Webb, her last husband, a former war hero of the Dambusters raid. She became Webb's camera stills assistant and worked for the major movie companies in London. In 1986 and Webb moved to the Isle of Wight.
Filmography
- Peeping Tom (1960)
- Naked as Nature Intended (1961)
- The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)
- The Chimney Sweeps (1963)
- The Naked World of Harrison Marks (1966)
- Legend of the Werewolf (1975) (uncredited)
