George Markstein - Life and Work

Life and Work

Markstein was born in Berlin, Germany, but emigrated with his family to England with the rise of Nazism. It is likely that he lived in the United States during his youth,then moved to Britain. Markstein worked as a newspaper reporter for the Southport Guardian of Southport England in 1947. Markstein later became a journalist for the American military tabloid, The Overseas Weekly. Due to its scandal-driven content, the paper's U.S. G.I. readership referred to the paper as The Over Sexed Weekly. The masthead of the newspaper lists Markstein as head of the London desk.

He moved into television, first on the factual series This Week, before acting as story consultant and contributing to multiple episodes of ITC's Court Martial (1966), and then joining Danger Man as story consultant for the last black-and-white episode (1966), then story editor for the two episodes which were made in colour (1967). Around this time he also wrote four episodes for Rediffusion's children's drama series Send Foster (1967), and worked on the script for Peter Yates's Robbery (1967), a fictionalised feature film based on the 1963 Great Train Robbery.