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I watched this 90 minute documentary about AP Films / Century 21 this evening. I downloaded it from the catch-up facility on Sky Arts.

All the usual reminiscences, and a few that might easily have been forgotten, on the television series "Twizzle", "Torchy", "Supercar", "Fireball XL5", "Thunderbirds", "Captain Scarlett" and "The Secret Service".

There were extracts from the 1966 movie "Thunderbirds Are Go!", including well-known still photos of the Shadows with their counterpart puppets, but what intrigued me was a short sequence describing how and why the character of Lady Penelope came about. Whilst it was progressing, the record of Lady Penelope was playing as an underscore. At least, I thought it was. When it was faded up, it clearly wasn't the record as released and might not have even been The Shadows. No DeArmond pedal and a very round sound from lead guitar, suggesting a Gibson Super 400 rather than a Burns Marvin.

Anyone else seen it?

Absolutely right. The version of the Thunderbirds theme in the film itself is not the Shads. I think it is officially referred to as 'Slow Version'. I have a huge amount of Barry Gray's Gerry Anderson prods music on CD somewhere and I'm sure it's among them. I wonder if the Shads based their version on it or vice versa - this I am not sure of. I can ask Ralph Titterton who is the official archivist of all the Barry Gray film and TV music. Hopefully you will have seen the footage of the Shads miming to Lady Penelope for reference for the puppeteers. This is included on a recent Blu-ray release of the film.

I suspect that as they wrote it, The Shads version was later recorded by Barry Gray and his orchestra and must be available or in existence somewhere. However, I am sure that I have only ever heard the Shadows own version.

If I am being honest, I think the Filmed in Supermarionation documentary, whilst being good, is a bit overlong and doesn't do as good a job as some shorter ones that I have seen. I think Stephen La Riviere is behind the new Lady Penelope and Parker Halifax TV ad.

F.A.B.

Getting a bit tired, so the above may not entirely make sense...

It was Lady Penelope rather than the Thunderbirds Theme which I mentioned.

Lady Penelope is credited to composers Welch/Bennett/Rostill.

On your point about whether The Shadows based their version of the Thunderbirds Theme on Barry Gray's "slow version" of it, I would suggest not.

Once you get over the key (Eb) and the general finger-twisting nature of the melody, The Shadows' version of the theme is actually quite easy to play in the swung rhythm they chose.

But Barry Gray's own military band version (as per the movie and the TV series) is quite a bit faster and way harder to play on guitar in that straight-four marching beat!

Yeah, I suspect that 'Lady Penelope' was the only original composition in any Supermarionation production that was NOT composed by Barry Gray.

In retrospect it seems obvious that Barry based his 'slow version' of the Thunderbirds theme on the Shadows version. It's this version that can be heard briefly in the film. Similarly I can see that it makes sense that Barry also went into the studio with his own orchestra and, at the same time, recorded his own version of Lady Penelope - I can only assume that this must have been so that it could have been released commercially. Thus we end up with the Shadows being heard twice in the film - Shooting Star and Lady Penelope - but not on the Thunderbirds theme itself, which although heard in the background of the nightclub sequence, is obviously not them. This last point surprises me as I can't see any reason for not using their version here. Maybe it was just cheaper to use Barry's - although, again, this I find strange as this was a major feature film and not a TV episode.

P.S. Barry Gray did write a 'song' called 'Lady Penelope' which is 'sung' by David Graham in the voice of Parker. It was released on the Century 21 mini album 'Lady Penelope Themes' around 1966/1967. It bears no relation to the Welch/Bennett/Rostill composition and is actually quite excruciating to listen to!

Always wondered what happened to the Shadows puppets????

Alexis Lambert wrote:Always wondered what happened to the Shadows puppets????

I have read that Brian asked if he could keep the puppet with his likeness, but that wasn't possible as the puppets would be reused for other characters.

Yes a lot of recycling went on in those days, both of characters and models such as vehicles/aircraft/spaceships etc. Then when they were no longer useable they were just chucked away! After all nobody realised in those days that they would later be of historical importance.

Rumour has it that Captain Scarlet was rescued from a skip!