Marty Feldman: Comedian

Seeing some of my Multiply pals post some great skits from Monty Python films and television episodes got me to thinking about the first British comedian I saw who struck me as being distinctly "off-the-wall".  That honor belongs to Marty Feldman (1934-1982) and the show I remember was a half-hour sketch comedy on called The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine" (1971) which was on for one season in America in 1972-3.  

It was clear after watching this program that, for me,  Feldman was not only funny but truly bizarre and more than a little subversive by American standards of television comedy.   I didn't know anything about Surrealism and such as twelve-year old, but it was clear this guy was coming on as if he had landed from another planet.    Actually, his "alien in a strange land" persona did have an American precedent; Feldman was a big fan of the work of Buster Keaton.  In a very real way, although he had other influences, Keaton was almost reborn in Feldman's capacity to mix imaginative situations on film with extreme physical risk.   

 

Keaton was a major hero for Feldman.  According to writer David Waddle in a "Sight and Sound" magazine article, he kept a photo of Keaton in his dressing room wherever he went.  "To remind me of my roots," he said.  One of the sad things is that he had been working on a script for a film about Buster, but it was never produced due to Marty's death from a heart attack down in Mexico while finishing up a role as a pirate in "Yellowbeard".

 

   It was much later, after reading about "Monty Python Flying Circus" that I discovered how much Feldman's format on his earlier shows in America and the UK had influenced the Python group (John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, et al)  most of whom had worked with and were mentored by Feldman as young writers him during the 1960's on shows like "The Frost Report" and "At Last the 1948 Show". 

Marty had become a comedian in front of the camera in Britain for several years by the time 'The Comedy  Machine" appeared.  My defining memories of the show included was the bizarre animation material that opened and closed the show (done by yet another Python, Terry Gilliam ).  and also the funny and socially daring skits--the funniest as I remember being something called  "Stalking the British Aristocracy".  The sketch was filmed in what looked like a park and showed a bunch of working-class city people driving around in cars and shooting at men and women--presumably titled gentry--dressed from feet to neck in giant grouse costumes and making weird bird noises.   (Marty was one of the hapless and earth-bound birds, primed to be shot!) 

 

What could have been simply cold-blooded was made actually quite silly--on the surface--by  those bird costumes. I wish I had that skit to play, but this other one gives an idea of how unusual and inventive he could be:

      

 

Most non-British film-goers probably remember Marty as Igor in "Young Frankenstein"(1934), a film generally recognized to be the best of Mel Brooks' cycle of film parodies. Here he channels another famous American comedian from the past:

In the first movie Feldman both directed and co-wrote, "The Last Remake of Beau Geste" (1977) he assembled an excellent cast of comedic and dramatic actors to make a quite funny film. Some of it was in the vein of his work with Mel Brooks, but many scenes were far beyond what Brooks could come up with as far as surrealism and drawing from older films to make not just a spoof, but a homage to great films (and tired action-movie cliches) of the past.  Here is a Keatonesque scene from the film, where Marty (as one of the Geste brothers) is helped to escape from prison so the villains can get a hold of a diamond they believe he might have stolen.