THE GHOST WHO SAVED THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO • REVIEW

THE GHOST WHO SAVED THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO • DECLASSIFIED

• Pre-Titles Teaser... At a casino near Piccadilly, Marty Hopkirk's aunt Clara is testing the gambling system that she has devised. Her fellow gamblers look on in disbelief as she wins at the roulette wheel for the fifth time in a row. Another onlooker called Lawsey, a moustachioed thick set man in a dress suit, is taking a more professional interest in Clara's success rate, noting that she keeps consulting a little red book before laying her bets. He approaches Clara when she leaves the table and asks why she is stopping while on a winning run. She tells him that she wanted to win enough to pay for her flight to Monte Carlo, which she has heard is the best place for casinos. As she leaves, she gives a tip - "14 Red" - to a young female gambler, who takes her advice and wins on the next spin of the wheel. Lawsey realises that this little old lady has devised the perfect system. And he can't let that slip out of his hands...

• Production Brief... The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo was the twenty-third episode to go before the cameras. It was the eighth episode to have been written by Tony Williamson and the sixth to be directed by Jeremy Summers.

• This episode was devised as a cost-saving measure, completely realised on studio sets at ABPC Elstree with stock footage of the Mediterranean doing the heavy lifting.

• Exact filming dates for this episode are unknown, but it is believed to have been filmed in June 1969. A fully edited version of this episode was completed by mid-August 1969.

• On Location... It may seem an odd choice to set The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo, a frugally-budgeted episode, in the mega-expensive Monte Carlo, but it permitted the production team to stick exclusively to studio interiors with all the exteriors being realised using stock footage supplied by World Backgrounds. It looked a million dollars but cost a million lira! More details in Locations: The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo.

• Haunting Melodies... Edwin Astley was not asked to compose any new music cues for The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo, with its score coming entirely from stock. One piece of library music from the Chappell archive was used to accompany a montage of Monte Carlo stock footage, namely Summer Island by Cyril Watters.

• Seeing Things... The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo received its first UK broadcast on Friday 7th November 1969 at 7.05pm when it aired in monochrome in the Channel and Westward ITV regions.

• It was first shown in colour on ITV on Sunday 30th November 1969 at 7.25pm in the London Weekend Television region.

• Trivia... The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo is unique in the whole of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) for three reasons:

  • It is the only episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) to feature no specially shot location footage.

  • It marks the only time in the series that the three main characters venture together beyond the boundaries of the United Kingdom. (Marty would subsequently visit West Germany solo to watch an international football match in Somebody Just Walked Over My Grave.)

  • It features no land-based vehicles at all, just two jet aeroplanes which transport Jeff, Marty, Jean and Aunt Clara to and from Monte Carlo.

• Additionally, this is one of just four episodes in the series which doesn't feature Jeff in a hand-to-hand fight with an adversary. The other episodes that feature this unusual turn of events are All Work and No Pay, Money to Burn and The Ghost Talks.

• We meet Marty's aunt, Clara Faringham, in The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo, and learn that somehow she had not been informed of Marty's death. She finds out about her nephew's passing from Jeff and Jean, when paying a visit to the Randall and Hopkirk office.

• When Marty appears on the wing of the Pan American flight, Jeff sees him, pulls the curtains shut and explains by saying that he thought he "saw a gremlin". Gremlins are fictional creatures invented at the beginning of the 20th century to explain aircraft malfunctions, though Jeff's comment was almost certainly a reference to Richard Matheson's 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone - Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - which starred William Shatner. It remains one of the series best remembered episodes.

• The actors were required to freeze in this scene to allow Kenneth Cope to get from the 'wing' to an empty seat adjacent to Mike Pratt, even though this position was initially out of shot.

• Marty had been on another flight and was halfway to India before he located the correct plane. Perhaps he was taking the hint from the India travel brochure on the wall in the Randall and Hopkirk office?

• When Marty explains why he feels like a fish out of water in Monte Carlo, one reason he gives is that "It's France!" - which of course it isn't. Monte Carlo is in the Principality of Monaco, an independent sovereign state that is in a customs and monetary union with France with surrounds it on its land borders. A further example of Marty's shaky general knowledge comes when he further comments that he would rather not encounter a French ghost like the Laughing Cavalier, and Jeff corrects him - "He's Dutch!"

• Even though Clara doesn't make her fortune in Monte Carlo, she has an idea that she can apply her equation with success to horse racing. Marty is not keen on this as he hates horses.

• Only You, Jeff? Jeff accuses Marty of intevening in the roulette games so that his aunt Clara will win, but he says he had nothing to do with it and couldn't accurately deflect a ball travelling at that speed. He can, however, move the ball when it has come to rest, and this is what he does to save Clara and Jean at the episode's climax.

• Marty manages to activate a soda syphon by focusing his mind upon it, much to Jeff's chagrin as the soda sprays over him and wakes him from his sleep - which of course is what Marty intended to do.

• Ghosts and Ghoulies... Just Marty in this one, but he is concerned what to do should he encounter a French ghost. Jeff recommends that he does what he'd do if he were in London - "Panic!"

• The Vehicles... Appearing in this episode were the following wonders of transport...

	Boeing 707-321C Pan American Aeroplane Registration unknown	Also appeared in: Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) - 'Murder Ain't What It Used To Be!''
	BEA Hawker Siddeley HS.121 Trident 1C Registration unknown

• Seen It All Before? The footage of the water skiers zooming around the bay at Juan-les-Pins, Cap d'Antibes, France, was also used in Department S: A Cellar Full of Silence, while the establishing shots of the Casino de Monte Carlo had featured in The Champions: The Iron Man.

• The stock footage of neon signs for London casinos seen at the start of the episode had previously featured in It's Supposed To Be Thicker Than Water. Likewise, the establishing shot of Regent Street seen behind the episode title caption had served a similar purpose in Could You Recognise the Man Again?, albeit a different part of that shot.

• The aircraft interior set had been built for Department S: Six Days and One of Our Aircraft is Empty, which were produced consecutively in the summer of 1968.

• Number 6's speaker from The Prisoner shows up again in this episode in Jeff's hotel room.

Images © ITV Studios, 1967 / 1969

• Cock-ups... At 24 minutes and 26 seconds, during the fight outside Clara's hotel room, the wall to the camera's left jolts about noticeably with each impact.

• At 26 minutes and 18 seconds, the bearded casino security man brushes heavily against Marty’s right shoulder as he does so. Kenneth Cope instinctively moves slightly in an attempt to avoid the contact.

• Just a few minutes later, and there’s an editing error at 29 minutes and 56 seconds. In the long shot, Jeff arrives on the hotel veranda by the pool and joins Jean and Aunt Clara at their table. Jean leans forward in her recliner, takes her sunglasses off and speaks to him. She then starts to put the sunglasses back on, her left hand at eye height. We then cut to a two-shot of Jean and Clara, the glasses are back on, her hand is at her side, and she’s laying back in the deckchair. A line of dialogue from Clara bridges the two shots, meaning that there was not meant to be a passage of time between them. The two framegrabs below are of consecutive frames.

Images © ITV Studios, 1969

• And Finally... One of the pleasures of watching ITC shows is that many of them afford glimpses of the brilliant and much-missed actor Roger Delgado, without a shadow of doubt Doctor Who's finest ever adversary as The Master. Delgado's life was tragically cut short at just 55 years of age when he was killed in an road accident on 18th June 1973 whilst in Nevşehir, Turkey, to film La Cloche tibétaine (The Tibetan Bell). In addition to his role in The Ghost Who Saved the Bank at Monte Carlo, Delgado had early ITC roles in the historical dramas The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1956), The Buccaneers (3 episodes, 1957), Sword of Freedom (1957), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1958), William Tell (1959) and Sir Francis Drake (as Mendoza, a recurring character, 7 episodes, 1961-62). When ITC moved away from the genre and into modern espionage and the like, Delgado remained in demand for guest roles in their series, often as villains and foreign officials and dignitaries, featuring in O.S.S. (1957), The Four Just Men (as Inspector Rossi, 2 episodes), Danger Man (1961), The Saint (1962 and 1966), Espionage (1963), Ghost Squad (4 episodes, 1961-64), Court Martial (1966), Man in a Suitcase (1968), The Champions (1968), The Persuaders! (1971) and Jason King (1972). Roger's final ITC role as Pedro in The Zoo Gang: The Lion Hunt was shown posthumously in 1974.

Roger Delgado and Mary Merrall: The Ghost Who Saved the Bank in Monte Carlo Image © ITV Studios, 1969

Plotline: Scoton Productions / ITC • UK Transmissions by Simon Coward and Alan Hayes
Review by Alan Hayes • Declassified by Alan Hayes
with thanks to Vince Cox, Alys Hayes, John Holburn,
Anthony McKay and Andrew Pixley

All timings given on this page relate to the Blu-ray editions of this episode