• title card: GIRL ON THE TRAPEZE superimposed, zig-zagging, over a shot of Dr. Keel putting on his jacket
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Series 1 — Episode 6
Girl On The Trapeze

by Dennis Spooner

Production No 3370, VTR/ABC/1123
Production completed: February 11 1961. First transmission: February 11 1961.

Production details

Studio details: Teddington Two
Production No. 3370
Tape No. VTR/ABC/1123 (Rec. off T/X)
Transmission: 11th February 1961, 10.00–11.00 p.m.

Schedule

Friday, 10th February 1961
Camera Rehearsal14.30 — 18.00
Supper Break18.00 — 19.00
Camera Rehearsal19.00 — 21.00
Saturday, 11th February 1961
Camera Rehearsal10.00 — 12.30
Lunch Break12.30 — 13.30
Camera Rehearsal13.30 — 18.15
Supper Break18.15 — 19.15
Normal scan, make-up, line-up19.15 — 20.00
Dress rehearsal20.00 — 21.30
Line-up21.30 — 22.00
TRANSMISSION22.00 — 23.00

Equipment

Cameras: 4 Pedestals
Sound: 3 booms
Telecine: A.B.C. symbol, 35mm mute inserts, Slides

Total running time: 57.10 = Play portion: 52.30 + 2 commercial breaks: 2.05 and 2.35

Regional broadcasts

ITV BroadcasterDateTime
ABC Midlands11/02/196110.00pm
ABC North11/02/196110.00pm
Anglia Television--
ATV--
Southern Television--
Tyne Tees Television--
Television Wales & West--
Ulster Television--
Westward Television--
Scottish Television--
Border Television--
Grampian Television--

TV Times listing

TV Times listing for February 11 1961, 10pm (Northern edition)

10.0 THE AVENGERS
starring
IAN HENDRY
in
GIRL ON THE TRAPEZE
Teleplay by Dennis Spooner
Also starring
PATRICK MACNEE

Cast in order of appearance:

Vera Delena Kidd
Anna Danilov Nadja Regin
Dr. David Keel Ian Hendry
Carol Wilson Ingrid Hafner
Policeman Ian Gardiner
Zibbo Kenneth J. Warren
Supt Lewis Howard Goorney
Stefan Edwin Richfield

“The Avengers” theme composed and
played by Johnny Dankworth
Designed by Paul Bernard
Produced by LEONARD WHITE
Directed by DON LEAVER

A strange mark on a young woman’s body
leads Dr. Keel and Carol to a circus where,
behind the fun and glitter, is an inhuman
plot and a mysteriously bandaged girl

Errata

The cast list above has Nadja Regin playing Anna but she was unavailable when recording took place and Mia Karam played the part, see notes below.

Episode availability

Transport

Marque/type Plate
ambulance

Continuity and trivia

  1. 9:05 onwards (but best seen around 10:40) - Dr. Keel has a reproduction of Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” (1632) in his living room, above the mantelpiece.
  2. 26:35 — you can see a pedestal camera being wheeled away In Zibbo’s dressing room mirror.
  3. 35:25 — one of the extras (playing an acrobat) is late getting to his mark and stumbles about the back of the set for a few moments as Stefan emerges to talk to the superintendent.
  4. 36:20 — Stefan calls the Superintendent “Inspector” then corrects himself.
  5. 41:07 — Dr. Keel offers Carol a cigarette to calm her nerves (this was the Sixties!) and she coughs furiously after taking the first puff. Ian Hendry smiles and ad libs: “You never were very good at that, were you?”
  6. 44:04 — someone peers in the door as Zibbo and Vera are talking, then quickly ducks out of the way.
  7. Ring-side seats to the circus are 16/- each, and the programmes are 1/6. Keel pays £2 2s. and receives change of 10s. - Carol then asks for a programme and Keel purchases one with loose change, ad libbing, “We finally got there”, as the torturous scene finally ends.
  8. Professor Igor Danilov’s history: born 1898 in Tolty, a small town near Radeck, where he went to university. Sought political asylum in 1957 and defected in 1958 to Britain and works for the goverment at Bramstead, presumably on munitions.
  9. This is one of only two episodes of The Avengers that doesn’t have Patrick Macnee make an appearance, the other one is The Far Distant Dead>. Patrick still received second billing in the opening credits.
  10. A memo dated March 30 1962 proposed a replay season for the nine episodes not broadcast by ATV and Anglia and also the first two episodes, which had been seen on ATV but not Anglia. This proves that all live episodes had been recorded any may yet be out there somewhere.
    This episode was proposed to be run second so must have been highly regarded by the producers, it had certainly been popular with viewers, being in the top category of viewer ratings when first broadcast. Perhaps this accounts for it being preserved in the archives of UCLA.
  11. It’s possible that Ian Hendry asked for a telerecording of this for his personal showreel, as the material found at UCLA (this epsidoe and the first act of Hot Snow) stars him but does not feature Patrick Macnee.
  12. The biggest piece of new information from this episode is we see a very young Patricia Haines (sans makeup), straight out of repertory theatre, playing the dying and dead Katrina Sandor. No surprise she gets no credit, she only says one word. She had three billed television performances before this, all of them bit parts. (This is yet to be absolutely confirmed but it seems pretty conclusive from her extreme close-up).
  13. Nadja Regin appears in the TV Times listed for the part of Anna Danilov; many guides claim it is her playing the drowned Katrina Sandor but it seems more likely, as with several other episodes in the first year, that the actor was replaced during rehearsals and, with the two week lead time for TV Times listings, it could not be corrected in time. The TV Times was published on Fridays, and covered the following Sunday-Saturday episodes, so was always on news stands 8 days before the episode went to air.
  14. Ian Gardiner (the policeman) is famous for playing the part of "Reginald Molehusband" in a government public information film about reverse parking, now lost from the archives.
  15. This episode was originally written by Dennis Spooner with the title “The man on the Trapeze” but delays with Patrick Brawn’s adaptation of Fred Edge’s Canadian TV script for The Radioactive Man caused episodes 5–9 to jockey around each other and this episode was moved into sixth spot from it’s original seventh place. As a result of these changes, Don Leaver directed this episode instead of Crescent Moon as had been planned, with John Knight taking over direction for that episode. The memo with the initial episode schedule does not mention who was originally planned to direct this episode.

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