Tim Frazer
Tim Frazer is a six-part television game based on a template by the British author Francis Durbridge , which WDR produced in 1962 and broadcast for the first time on German television in January 1963.
After the first two Durbridge six-part series Der Andere and Es ist so far had already been very successful, they were by far surpassed in 1962 by the multi-part series Das Halstuch . He has become legendary as the biggest street sweeper on German television. When Tim Frazer was broadcast on German television a year later , this series also achieved great success with television audiences.
action
Tim Frazer has been waiting in vain for his friend and former business partner Harry Denston, who called him there by letter, for over a week at the inn "The Three Bells" in the small fishing village of Henton. Denston, who still has considerable debts with Frazer, disappeared without a trace for a few days. Both had an engineering office in London that had to go into liquidation because of Denston's recklessness . Even his fiancée Helen Baker has no idea where he is.
A few days earlier, a Soviet freighter was stranded near Henton during a very severe storm. One of the rescued sailors, named Anstrow, had to be accommodated in Norman Gibson's inn because of his life-threatening injuries, as there was no more space in the small local hospital. Despite the efforts of the local doctor Dr. Killick, the man dies from serious injuries. Before his death he often called the name Anja.
When Frazer helps to sort out the sailor's belongings, he takes a London garage license, which obviously could only have got into the matter by mistake, which the captain of the stranded ship, Nikijan, suspects.
Back in London, Charles Ross asks him, the head of an unspecified government agency. Ross and his colleague Crombie ask Frazer to find Harry Denston for them, who apparently wanted to meet with Anstrow in Henton.
The first clue is the garage license that was issued for Denston's car. In the glove compartment he discovers a glasses case with an address that belongs to Ruth Edwards. During his visit to Mrs. Edwards, he was somewhat astonished to discover that she and her husband Donald have a foster daughter named Anja.
The seemingly harmless Donald Edwards builds ship models that he demonstrates to Frazer. However , he is not really satisfied with the replica of the sailing ship “Northstar” because he considers the template for his work to be flawed.
Edgar Tupper, a gas station owner, is noticeably interested in Denston's car, a used Hillman Minx . Frazer sells the vehicle to him at a significantly inflated price. Before handing over the vehicle, he makes an appointment with Arthur Crombie in his apartment. But there he finds the dying Crombie with a knife in his back. His last words are: “ The Northstar, Frazer, the Northstar. “When Frazer discovers the model of this ship on the mantelpiece, he immediately leaves the apartment and rushes to Charles Ross, with whom he later returns. But now the Northstar's body and model are gone.
The next day Ross secretly has Tupper's gas station monitored. On a film, Frazer identifies the man Tupper bought Hillman for as Captain Nikijan.
Helen Baker and Frazer discover a framed picture of Northstar in Denston's suitcase. With that he goes to Edwards again, who compares the picture with his own model and finds a complete match between the two engravings . Frazer loaned the picture to Edwards and bought the Northstar model. When he took the ship out of the packaging at home, he discovered a slip of paper that said “Anstrow is not dead”.
Tim meets with Dr. Killick sets up a date in Henton to interview Anstrow's death. While talking at the inn, he unexpectedly receives a call from Harry Denston. After some hesitation, he agreed to visit Frazer in his apartment next Sunday.
But instead of Denston, Helen Baker appears, who claims to have met her fiancé two days earlier in a truck bar and is said to have received £ 5,000 for Frazer. When she believes she is unobserved, she photographs the model of the Northstar.
During a visit to Ma Dodsworth's trucking bar, Frazer meets a man named Lester who warns of further interference in the matter.
When he meets Ruth Edwards, he learns that the dead sailor in Henton was not an Anstrow. At a shop that sells model ships, Frazer receives the Northstar photo taken by Helen Baker in his apartment.
Before a scheduled meeting with Tim Frazer, Mrs. Edwards had a serious accident with her car. Before she passes out, she can tell Frazer, who happens to be present, that Helen has not met her fiancé Denston, but knows exactly where he is now.
Frazer poses as a Scotland Yard detective to Ma Dodsworth , who owns the bar, and learns that Helen Baker and Harry Denston have never been with her. You yourself only acted on behalf of Edgar Tupper. After Tupper sold an important piece of information leading to Helen Baker to Frazer for 200 pounds, he was shot by Lester in his gas station.
Frazer succeeds in setting a trap for Helen. She admits Denston has been in Henton the whole time. She herself had been put under pressure by Lester because of Denston and only played for his safety.
Ross, who is present at the confession, now clarifies the background to Frazer. Then, on behalf of a man who had not yet been identified, Denston stole an important formula for a new type of metal from a well-known scientist, which is on a microfilm, but did not give it to his client. Instead, he tried to negotiate on his own with two different Eastern European groups. Then Mister X had Denston kidnapped to force him to hand over the formula and do the deal himself.
When Frazer is back in Henton at Norman Gibson's inn, he receives a call from Harry Denston, who forcibly calls him to an old ship's bell on the pier . Frazer suspects the trap, and so he succeeds in overpowering the attacker Lester and rendering harmless.
In the harbor Frazer discovers the old sloop "Anja", on which Denston was made by the painter Walters and Dr. Killick is being held. When Frazer arrives there, he finds his friend, who makes himself heard loudly. When Killick tries to escape, he and Walters are arrested by the approaching police.
When Donald Edwards visits Frazer in his apartment, he soon realizes that he has been exposed because his half-brother Dr. Killick has already confessed everything. Denston had revealed to his kidnappers that the microfilm was on the Northstar. However, this was not in the model that Denston got earlier from Edwards and also not in the second model from Frazer. Frazer shows him the picture of the Northstar that he had lent Edwards. This was where the microfilm was located all along. When Edwards points a gun at Frazer, he is shot by Caxton, an employee of Charles Ross.
Now that the case is closed and Ruth Edwards is on the mend, Charles Ross offers Tim Frazer the post of the murdered Arthur Crombie. The person asked gladly accepts the offer.
Dates of the first broadcast
- Part 1: Monday, January 14, 1963 at 9:05 p.m. - Length: 38:00 minutes
- Part 2: Wednesday, January 16, 1963 at 8:20 p.m. - Length: 33:23 minutes
- Part 3: Friday, January 18, 1963 at 9:00 p.m. - Length: 32:44 minutes
- 4th part: Monday, January 21, 1963 at 9:45 p.m. - length: 40:00 minutes
- Part 5: Wednesday, January 23, 1963 at 9:00 p.m. - Length: 36:52 minutes
- Part 6: Friday, January 25, 1963 at 8:20 p.m. - Length: 41:41 minutes
The start of broadcasting at 8:20 p.m. (2nd and 6th part) results from the fact that the 8 p.m. edition of the Tagesschau was still 20 minutes long at the time.
The six-part series was repeated in the morning program in April of the same year, but it could only be received in the border areas and in the greater Berlin area , as it was broadcast primarily for citizens in the GDR .
It was later repeated several times in the first and third television programs , Eins Plus and Eins Festival .
backgrounds
The script was pretty much based on the novel. One of the few deviations is that Tim Frazer kills the gangster Lester in the novel while he is attacking him, while in the film he is saved alive from the harbor basin. Also, only in the novel does Frazer and Donald Edwards meet surprisingly at Norman Gibson's inn in Henton.
The film was divided into six parts that were between 33 and 42 minutes long. Episodes 1–5 ended with a cliffhanger , an exciting or surprising scene. At the end of the first episode, Frazer asks a girl playing in front of the Edwards house for her name. The answer is: "Anja". The second episode ends when Frazer, who has just come home, finds dying Arthur Crombie in his apartment, who draws his attention to a Northstar ship model on his mantelpiece. When Frazer and Dr. Killick in the "Three Bells" talk to each other, the landlord Gibson receives a phone call for Tim from his long-sought friend Harry Denston. The third part ends with this scene. At the end of episode 4, Tim Frazer identifies Ruth Edwards as a victim of a serious traffic accident. When Helen Baker, put under pressure by Frazer, confesses that Denston is in Henton, the penultimate part ends.
The popular actress Lotti Krekel appeared in a supporting role. At that time she was mainly known from performances in the Millowitsch Theater and later also as a singer of carnival songs. She played the role of the landlord's daughter Madge Gibson.
The director Hans Quest also took on a small but very important supporting role in the film, namely that of Harry Denston, who had been missing for so long. It was after time has come and the neckerchief his third directorial effort in a Durbridge film.
Because of the great success of this multi-part series, the WDR decided to produce another series around the person of Tim Frazer. In May 1963, the exteriors began in London and Amsterdam to Tim Frazer: The case Salinger . Here, too, Hans Quest directed for the fourth and final time. Max Eckard and Konrad Georg played Tim Frazer and Charles Ross again. Ingrid Ernest played the main female role this time . The first broadcast took place in January 1964.
A planned third part, based on the novel Tim Frazer gets the message (German title Tim Frazer Weiß Bescheid ), was not broadcast until 1971, under the title Das Messer and with a changed role name.
An Austrian fictional film made in 1964 under the title Tim Frazer chasing the mysterious Mister X has nothing to do with the character invented by Durbridge except for the name of the title hero, played by Adrian Hoven . The script came from Anton van Casteren and Ernst Hofbauer , who also directed.
Effects
As he did a year earlier with the bandana broadcast, Francis Durbridge kept German TV viewers in suspense. There just seemed to be one question: "Who is the mysterious Mister X?"
A boxing match between the popular German heavyweight boxer Karl Mildenberger and the American Archie McBride was postponed as a precaution by the organizers from January 25, the broadcast date of the last episode, to the following day, as it had to be assumed that the fight in the Berlin Sports Palace would be without an audience could have taken place. How much that was true could be seen from the audience rating : It was 93% that evening. For the first five episodes, audience participation fluctuated between 80 and 89%.
The second program , a forerunner of the later third television programs , found hardly any viewers on the six evenings broadcast; Theaters and cinemas remained empty. Those who did not have a television at the time would visit neighbors, friends or relatives equipped with the equipment or go to a pub with a television set.
The first name Tim , which was rarely used in the German-speaking area until then, enjoyed great popularity in naming male descendants after the six-part was first broadcast. One reason was the sympathetic charisma of the main actor Max Eckard.
Further films
- 1960: The World of Tim Frazer ( Great Britain ) with Jack Hedley as Frazer
Web links
- Tim Frazer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The crime thriller homepage - further information on the film