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Observations About Wales: From Travel To Business & Politics |
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first published
in |
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Heulwen Vaughan Hatcher is a resident of Porthmadog. Thirty three years ago, in her early twenties, she appeared as quite a glorified extra in several episodes of The Prisoner. Her role as the daringly exposed “bikini girl” in the series still prompts discussion in on-line Prisoner news groups. This was the scene: The giggling girl Heulwen (who received no credit) runs alongside the pool, skirting the very properly dressed and glowering Number 6. Today Heulwen is working in the newly reopened Prisoner Shop in Portmeirion, in North Wales, spiritual home of The Prisoner. Heulwen, I ask, did you know that there was a whole Prisoner discussion thread devoted to the theory that your character was sent in to seduce Number 6? “Oh, don’t I wish it,” replies the charismatic blond, just short of licking her lips, before going on to tell about how the scene was filmed on a frosty February day around Portmeiron’s old swimming pool. The bulk of the series had been shot under much warmer conditions the previous summer, but some filler scenes were still needed. The director that day had also suggested that someone be filmed swimming in the sea, but Patrick McGoohan said no. McGoohan was the creator and star, as Number 6, of the series. “McGoohan was very good to all the actors,” Heulwen continued. “And Eric Portman (who played Number 2 in “Free For All”) was a very nice man. He always had robes and brandy ready for the actors in the swimming pool scene. He was a very nice man, but a very lonely man.” Heulwen was also a stand-in for Justine Lord in “The Girl Who Was Death” and for Mary Morris in “Dance of the Dead”. “I had a profile very much like Mary Morris,” she explains, delicately tracing her nose with her finger. Heulwen was issued a Peter Pan costume for the job. Inside of it she says was a tag that said Sarah Miles. She also wore a Spanish dancer costume in "Dance of the Dead" and can be seen during the carnival announcement sequence of that episode. Many of the costumes were from other productions at the time. I asked whether they had been dry cleaned. Heulwen replied she hoped so. But that for sure Patrick McGoohan’s costumes were dry cleaned over night in Porthmadog. Moreover, the mother of the person who did the dry cleaning sewed the colorful capes that figure so strongly in Prisoner imagery. Further, it was Patrick McGoohan who chose the colors for the capes; he did not want green used in them.
Ms. Vaughan-Hatcher Heulwen, whose name means sunshine in Welsh, but who was known as Sam during the years she lived in the United States, is a fount of Prisoner stories and information. She says that though the series was filmed a long time ago, the experience was so special that she remembers it very clearly. For example, she tells about how the local extras in the funeral scene in “Arrival” did not seem to be laboring under the weight of the coffin they were transporting on their shoulders. So, the coffin was filled with rocks. She tells about how the boat used in “Many Happy Returns” had a cabin too low to allow for good filming. The roof was raised. And while the filming went smoothly, the newly reproportioned boat ended up top heavy in actual use and would rock all too easily on the open water causing its crew to become seasick. She tells how director Don Chaffey once commanded “Get that bloody gardener out of there!” during a take, only to be told that the “bloody gardener” within camera range was Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect and owner of Portmeirion. Dilys Puyal is another Porthmadog native who has been recruited to run the new Prisoner Shop. She lived in France for a while, and married a Frenchman who was once offered the job of chef at the Hotel Portmeirion’s restaurant. Dilys was not an extra herself, but her parents were. In recent weeks there has been an effort to alert the folks who worked in and around the series and invite them to the official opening of the shop. People who own Prisoner props have been asked to loan these treasures to Portmeirion so they can be displayed in a locked cabinet in the shop. It seems that there is not yet an end to the interest in The Prisoner and its collectibles. One of the items in the Prisoner Shop is a teddy bear dressed in a pennyfarthing logo t-shirt. “A man came in and bought a teddy,” said Dilys. “I said to him ‘you don’t look like someone who would buy a teddy’ to which the man replied ‘I have to buy the collectibles in case they become valuable.’ While I was still in the shop another man came in and began strongly scrutinizing a postcard with a scene of the human chess game from “Checkmate”. It turns out he was trying to find his dad, who had played one of the chess kings. He told a story about how he and his family were watching a rerun of The Prisoner on television when he was startled to see his dad, who had already died, on the screen. His sister had pedaled one of the show’s canopied tricycles. His mom was the extra who practiced her line “Lovely day!” around the house, and whose badge numbered 601. Here, perhaps, is another badge for the display cabinet; and another family with fond memories of that long-ago Prisoner filming to join that newly forming, loose knit community of extras and other attendants who were there when it all began.Note: Sadly, Mrs. Vaughan-Hatcher passed away in early 2006. She is very missed. |
