The Saga of John Drake: The TV Theme Music, and Classic Song to a British Patrick McGoohan TV Series, and the Inspiration for a Second Series (music videos and background essay)

By Nicholas Stix

The Saga of John Drake: The TV Theme Music, and Classic Song to a British Patrick McGoohan TV Series, and the Inspiration for a Second Series (music videos)

TV Theme Danger Man (Full Version)

359,607 views Feb 4, 2009
Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake

This was the background/incidental music to Danger Man/Secret Agent (1960-1967), which starred McGoohan playing the same character, John Drake, and which I saw in re-runs many times as a wee lad (late 1960s?), at least the latter episodes (with Nana). Both titles had to be to the same series under different names. (However, I only heard of Danger Man about ten years ago.) If there was a distinction, it was in the snappy theme song at the end of Secret Agent, “Secret Agent Man,” which had the refrain, “They givin’ you a number, and takin’ ‘way your name,” which I believe was the inspiration to McGoohan’s next series, The Prisoner. Also, the early episodes were only 30 minutes long, whereas the show was later expanded to one hour long.

During and after The Prisoner’s brief run (17 episodes in 1967-1968), McGoohan encouraged the spread of a genius cult about him, but I believe the creator and main creative force behind the show was story editor/scriptwriter, George Markstein, who had earlier been the script editor of Danger Man/Secret Agent. Markstein (194 TV and movie credits) specialized in scripts for thrillers, both of the Cold War espionage (The Odessa File, 1974) and criminal (Robbery, 1967) type, though he did much more work in the former than the latter. Unfortunately, Markstein, who knew quite a bit about the world of intelligence, died of renal failure at a mere (1929-1987) 57. (Ten-15 years ago, I read a very intelligent essay on Markstein on line, but could no longer find it.

At McGoohan’s imdb.com page, it says, “Played the same regular character (John Drake) in two different series of Danger Man: Danger Man (1960) and Secret Agent (1964). His The Prisoner (1967) character, Number Six, may also have been intended to be Drake (although McGoohan has always denied this while George Markstein, who co-created the series with McGoohan, continually said he was).”

McGoohan didn’t co-create The Prisoner!

Some mischief-maker at imdb has completely eliminated Markstein as creator of The Prisoner (1967), giving all of the credit to McGoohan.

Oh, and lest I forget, Markstein was a Jew, yet another member of the illustrious procession of brilliant, 19th and 20th century Ashkenazi Jews.

McGoohan: “I’ve made many films, but most of them have been rubbish. I’ve rarely liked anything I’ve done, apart from my work as John Drake and two films I made for Walt Disney, Dr. Syn and The Three Lives of Thomasina.

• “I abhor violence and cheap sex. I believe in romance. Casual sex destroys romance. Besides, it is my view that a hero be a good man.

• “I was shy, gangling and clumsy when I finished school.

• “[on turning down the role of James Bond] I thought there was too much emphasis on sex and violence. It has an insidious and powerful influence on children. Would you like your son to grow up like James Bond? Since I hold these views strongly as an individual and parent I didn’t see how I could contribute to the very things to which I objected.”

• “I’ve married my first wife and my last wife!” [57 years, ending only with his death!]

• “When we started Danger Man the producer wanted me to carry a gun and to have an affair with a different girl each week. I refused. I am not against romance on television, but sex is the antithesis of romance. Television is a gargantuan master that all sorts of people watch at all sorts of time, and it has a moral obligation towards its audience.

• “I’m not a tough guy and I'm not a beast. I’m soft-hearted, gentle, and understanding. I don’t even beat my wife.”

“We’ve seen just about everything. The only thing left is for someone to walk about and urinate through the screen. They’d say this is just life, a documentary on urination!

The maintainer of McGoohan’s imdb.com page, sysop@hal9k.com, is clearly a fanatic from the Pat McGoohan genius cult. However, he did have the decency to cite Markstein’s statement on "John Drake."





Johnny Rivers: “Secret Agent Man” (1966) (Long version)

For a zillion years, I assumed that Johnny Rivers was a black man.





By RM
friday, june 13, 2025 at 10:17:00 p.m. edt

Thanks for writing about one of my favorite series. Some thoughts:

If the video is blurry, that's the youtube uploader's fault. The series was released on dvd over 20 years ago in perfect quality, and has been upgraded to blu-ray since then. There's a box set which I don't own but which has commentaries by some of the participants, so it's worth having if you're a devotee.

Like all actors, one can't take McGoohan's remarks totally seriously; he seems like a bit of a pretentious "griper," from interviews I've read. He was excellent as a villain in some of his early films like Hell Drivers (1957) and The Gypsy and the Gentleman (1958), both of which were superior to the bland Disney titles. (And of course, he was terrific as the evil warden in the Eastwood-Siegel classic Escape from Alcatraz (1979).)

I have an old newspaper clipping about him being nabbed for DUI, so he's not exactly pure as the driven snow! But what a great actor. He seemingly was snubbed by his own country (no knighthood for him, though by now that honor has become a farce, like everything else), possibly because his success was mostly in TV, which was looked down on here and abroad.

Danger Man bears the unique credit "devised and edited by" Ralph Smart, and with that name he had to be a success in life! I just watched an episode that was so tightly assembled and paced, the "edited by" really struck a chord with me. Pure genius! He also wrote (or co-wrote) and directed a number of the shows, in addition to working on many other British series.

The other unsung hero of Danger Man was composer Edwin Astley, whose main theme for the hour series (titled "High Wire"- the Johnny Rivers intro was strictly created for the American version) and incidental music really carried the shows. Astley composed more themes for U.K. shows than anyone else- including Robin Hood, The Saint, The Baron, et al.

The genesis of The Prisoner (close to the greatest TV series ever, in my view) seems to be a Danger Man episode titled "Colony Three," wherein Drake investigates a mysterious "Village," where defecting agents are held and groomed! The writer is a chap named Donald Jonson, who has a few other episodes to his credit and has never been acknowledged for his contribution to The Prisoner, as far as I know.

The series is available at archive.org; here's a link to some of the episodes, including "Colony Three" and a favorite, "The Mirror's View."

https://archive.org/details/dangerman_2_dvd3

-RM