My Top 6 Favorite Pythons
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Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In the political turmoil in the 60's, Gilliam feared he would become a terrorist and decided to leave the USA. He moved to England and landed a job on the children's television show Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967) as an animator. There he met meet his future collaborators in Monty Python: Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Michael Palin. In 2006 he renounced his American citizenship.- Writer
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Michael Palin is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter. He was one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python.
After the Monty Python television series ended in 1974, the Palin/Jones team worked on Ripping Yarns, an intermittent television comedy series broadcast over three years from 1976. In 1980, Palin co-wrote Time Bandits with Terry Gilliam. He also acted in the film. In 1984, he reunited with Terry Gilliam to appear in Brazil. He appeared in the comedy film A Fish Called Wanda (1988), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.- Writer
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Terry Jones was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the son of Dilys Louisa (Newnes), a homemaker, and Alick George Parry Jones, a bank clerk. His older brother is production designer Nigel Jones. His grandparents were involved in the entertainment business, having managed the local Amateur Operatic Society and staged Gilbert and Sullivan concerts. Jones studied at St. Edmund Hall College, Oxford University, read English but graduated with a degree in History. He was variously captain of boxing, captain of the Rugby Team and School Captain. At about this time, he befriended Michael Palin. Both performed comedy together as part of the Oxford Revue. In 1965, he again partnered Palin in The Late Show (1966) and worked in the dual capacity of writer/actor on Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967) with Palin, Eric Idle and David Jason. Another noteworthy television credit was Complete and Utter History of Britain (1969) (again with Palin) in which fun was poked at famous historical personae, Jones essaying Oliver Cromwell, Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry VIII (among others).
Needless to say that Jones found his greatest success as a founding member of the anarchic and irreverent Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), along with Palin, Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam. Jones not only provided much of the written comic input, but also portrayed many of the classic characters: the implausibly obese Mr. Creosote in The Meaning of Life (1983) (who explodes after one more little wafer), the inept Detective Superintendent Harry "Snapper" Organs in the Piranha Brothers sketch (a take on the Kray Twins), the tobacconist in the Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook sketch and numerous assorted shrill-voiced, slovenly 'rat-bag women' (Mrs. Equator comes to mind).
The Pythons were unconventional, controversial, certainly groundbreaking and invariably inspired, at their best in their unrelenting satirical attacks on established British institutions, ruling hierarchies and the class structure. Jones later said "The thing is we never thought Python was a success when it was actually happening, it was only with the benefit of hindsight". In addition to writing and acting, Jones also co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) (with Terry Gilliam) and took solo directing credit for Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life. Post-Python, he rejoined Palin as co-writer for some of the very best episodes of Ripping Yarns (1976), including Whinfrey's Last Case, Tompkinson's Schooldays, Murder at Moorstone Manor, The Curse of the Claw and The Testing of Eric Oldthwaite. Jones later scripted Labyrinth (1986) from a story by Jim Henson and Dennis Lee and wrote, as well as directed, Erik the Viking (1989) and Absolutely Anything (2015), a science fiction comedy with Simon Pegg and Kate Beckinsale.
On a more serious note, Jones sidelined as a newspaper columnist and was an outspoken social and political commentator (a staunch critic of the Iraq War). His lifelong fascination with medieval and ancient history (and Geoffrey Chaucer in particular) led to presenting a series of television documentaries (Medieval Lives (2004) and Barbarians (2006))) as well as publishing several well researched, if sometimes controversial, books including Chaucer's Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary and Who Murdered Chaucer?: A Medieval Mystery.
Jones died at the age of 77 on 21 January 2020 from complications of dementia, at his home in Highgate, North London.- Actor
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Eric Idle is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, playwright, director, and songwriter. co-creator of Monty Python on TV, stage, and five films, including The Life of Brian and The Holy Grail, which he later adapted for the stage with John Du Prez as Monty Python's Spamalot, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2005, a Grammy, a Drama Desk Award, and playing for almost five years on Broadway. They also wrote the comic oratorio Not the Messiah, He's a Very Naughty Boy, in 2007, which played round the world and at The Hollywood Bowl and was filmed live at The Royal Albert Hall, and a musical play What About Dick? available soon on iTunes. He created and directed the first mockumentary The Rutles for NBC, starred as Ko-Ko in the English National Opera version of The Mikado in London and Houston, and appeared last year in The Pirates of Penzance in Central Park and in Not the Messiah at Carnegie Hall. He is also one of the conceivers of the musical Seussical. In 2012 he appeared live in front of a billion people worldwide singing his song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life at the Closing Ceremony of the London Olympics. Last year he created, directed, and appeared in the sold-out final Monty Python reunion show One Down Five to Go at London's O2 Arena for 10 nights, whose final performance was broadcast live round the world.
He has also acted in several movies, including Nuns on the Run, Splitting Heirs, Casper, Shrek the Third, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; and written two novels, The Greedy Bastard Diary and Pass the Butler, a West End play.- Actor
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John Cleese was born on October 27, 1939, in Weston-Super-Mare, England, to Muriel Evelyn (Cross) and Reginald Francis Cleese. He was born into a family of modest means, his father being an insurance salesman; but he was nonetheless sent off to private schools to obtain a good education. Here he was often tormented for his height, having reached a height of six feet by the age of twelve, and eventually discovered that being humorous could deflect aggressive behavior in others. He loved humor in and of itself, collected jokes, and, like many young Britons who would grow up to be comedians, was devoted to the radio comedy show, "The Goon Show," starring the legendary Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Harry Secombe.
Cleese did well in both sports and academics, but his real love was comedy. He attended Cambridge to read (study) Law, but devoted a great deal of time to the university's legendary Footlights group, writing and performing in comedy reviews, often in collaboration with future fellow Python Graham Chapman. Several of these comedy reviews met with great success, including one in particular which toured under the name "Cambridge Circus." When Cleese graduated, he went on to write for the BBC, then rejoined Cambridge Circus in 1964, which toured New Zealand and America. He remained in America after leaving Cambridge Circus, performing and doing a little journalism, and here met Terry Gilliam, another future Python.
Returning to England, he began appearing in a BBC radio series, "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again", based on Cambridge Circus. It ran for several years and also starred future Goodies Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden. He also appeared, briefly, with Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman in At Last the 1948 Show (1967), for television, and a series of collaborations with some of the finest comedy-writing talent in England at the time, some of whom - Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Chapman - eventually joined him in Monty Python. These programs included The Frost Report (1966) and Marty Feldman's program Marty (1968). Eventually, however, the writers were themselves collected to be the talent for their own program, Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), which displayed a strange and completely absorbing blend of low farce and high-concept absurdist humor, and remains influential to this day.
After three seasons of the intensity of Monty Python, Cleese left the show, though he collaborated with one or more of the other Pythons for decades to come, including the Python movies released in the mid-70s to early 80s - Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), and The Meaning of Life (1983). Cleese and then-wife Connie Booth collaborated in the legendary television series Fawlty Towers (1975), as the sharp-tongued, rude, bumbling yet somehow lovable proprietor of an English seaside hotel. Cleese based this character on a proprietor he had met while staying with the other Pythons at a hotel in Torquay, England. Only a dozen episodes were made, but each is truly hilarious, and he is still closely associated with the program to this day.
Meanwhile Cleese had established a production company, Video Arts, for clever business training videos in which he generally starred, which were and continue to be enormously successful in the English-speaking world. He continues to act prolifically in movies, including in the hit comedy A Fish Called Wanda (1988), in the Harry Potter series, and in the James Bond series as the new Q, starting with The World Is Not Enough (1999), in which he began as R before graduating to Q. Cleese also supplies his voice to numerous animated and video projects, and frequently does commercials.
Besides the infamous Basil Fawlty character, Cleese's other well-known trademark is his rendition of an English upper-class toff. He has a daughter with Connie Booth and a daughter with his second wife, Barbara Trentham.
Education and learning are important elements of his life - he was Rector of the University of Saint Andrews from 1973 until 1976, and continues to be a professor-at-large of Cornell University in New York. Cleese lives in Santa Barbara, California.- Writer
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Graham Chapman was born on January 8, 1941 in Leicester, England while a German air raid was in progress. Graham's father was a chief police inspector and probably inspired the constables Graham often portrayed later in comedy sketches. Graham studied medicine in college and earned an M.D., but he practiced medicine for only a few years.
At Cambridge, he took part in a series of comedy revues and shortly after completing his medical studies at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Graham realized what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to perform comedy. In 1969, Graham along with University friends John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and American Terry Gilliam formed their own comedy group called Monty Python. Their BBC TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), which aired a short while later was a an instant hit. Their often self-referential style of humor was delightfully original but completely accessible to most audiences in the UK.
Before the show appeared on public television in the US, many people assumed that Americans would find Monty Python much too British to consider it funny. But PBS never had a larger audience than when stations began to air it during the early 1970s. The classic routines have since become standard college humor.
So enduring was the Python humor that fans know entire sketches such as "The Pet Shop," "Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink," "Argument Clinic," and "Penguin on the Telly." Graham was a standout of the group with his tall, blond profile and his zany characters (one of the more memorable was Colonel Muriel Volestrangler, a vaguely military-type character who would stop a sketch because it was "much too silly").
Graham was openly gay long before it was socially acceptable, and was open about his long-term relationship with writer David Sherlock, who lived with him for 24 years. He even adopted and raised a teenage runaway named John Tomiczek. Graham played the title role in the movie Life of Brian (1979) as well as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). By the late 1970s, most of the Python members were pursuing independent movie projects and the group was slowly fading into obscurity after their last successful effort The Meaning of Life (1983). Also in 1983, Graham co-wrote and starred in the movie Yellowbeard (1983), which received negative reviews.
In 1988, Graham began working on another series when his health began to decline. A longtime alcoholic, who suffered liver damage before he stopped drinking for good in 1977, Graham began to have trouble concentrating at work. In November 1988, a routine visit to a dentist revealed a malignant tumor on one of his tonsils which was surgically removed. A visit to the doctor a few months later revealed another tumor on his spine which had to be removed which confined him to a wheelchair. During most of 1989, he underwent a series of surgical operations and radiation therapy but for every tumor that was found and removed, another would form either along his spine or in his throat. By July 1989, his cancer was declared terminal and that he would not survive the year, yet he continued to pursue treatments which included chemotherapy. In his wheelchair, he attended the September 1989 taping for the Monty Python's 20th anniversary special. But on October 1, he was hospitalized after a massive stroke which turned into a hemorrhage. He died at the Maidstone hospital at age 48 on October 4, 1989 from complications of the stroke as well as throat and spinal cancer.