MONTY PYTHON
VS
THE WORLD
Jim Yoakum
US Curator, The Graham Chapman Archives
Monty Python VS The World
By Jim Yoakum
Copyright © 2012 by Jim Yoakum
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
First edition: February 2012
ISBN 978-1-4660-4845-4 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-4700-0820-8 (pbk)
What’s So Funny About Bleedin’ Lord Hill?
This is not a fan’s book (although I am a fan), nor is this a stoic dissertation on Monty Python humor and its influence upon late 20th-century man. Those books and articles have already been written many times. This is a book about a social and cultural revolution as important in its impact as the storming of the Bastille. This is the story of “a revolution in the head” that came to us disguised as a humorous television series called Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a show that, in its way, forever changed not only television, but also the world. Accidentally.
When I first saw the series in the 1970s I, like many others, secretly congratulated myself on how hip I was to “get it all”- and then one day I came to the realization that I was missing half the jokes. Sure, I laughed along with the best of them whenever a Python Pepperpot character would talk about “bleedin’ Lord Hill” - but it was a hollow chuckle. The truth was, as an American, I had absolutely no idea who Lord Hill was or what made him so funny. That’s when I decided some serious investigation was in order, and I set out to discover more about people like Reginald Maudling, Lord Hill and Mary Whitehouse – cultural references continually ticked off in Monty Python and names that never failed to produce gales of laughter from the studio audience. The more I learned about the workings of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the prevailing British social attitudes of the times, and even the backgrounds of the group themselves, the more I realized that to truly enjoy the Monty Python television shows one needs to have more than just a well-developed sense of the absurd, one needs to understand (or at least be aware) of the times and circumstances in which the shows were written, produced and viewed. That is why this book was born. How it is that I came to write it is a different matter.
You never know where life will lead and so it was with no small surprise to find that, during the course of working on this book, I went from being a Python fan to becoming a friend of Graham Chapman’s. I got to know the man and his family personally, even working some with Graham and then, after his death, his longtime companion, David Sherlock, put me in charge of Graham’s papers and I became US Curator of the Graham Chapman Archives. It is a position I’ve held with humility, honor and pride since the 1990’s. After years of reading, collating and archiving Graham’s papers, notes, letters, scripts - even partially-written sketches on the back of an unpaid bill - I’ve been allowed a unique insight into the creative mind and methods of Graham Chapman and, to some degree, the other Python’s. I’ve also been privy to much inside information about Python, not only from the Archives, but also from my association through the decades with many key players both in and outside of the team.
Consequently, this book is not only the story of how their groundbreaking television series came to be but, in some ways “an insider’s take” on it - albeit one from an insider who was taken from planet earth in 1989. It is my sincere belief that, after you read this book, you’ll be able to laugh – and laugh much heartier - the next time you watch the Python series, secure in the knowledge that you know full well “what’s so funny about bleedin’ Lord Hill.”
Jim Yoakum
US Curator, the Graham Chapman Archives
NOTE: Except for the end section, this book deals strictly with the 5-year period (1969-1974) in which the Monty Python Flying Circus series was conceived, written and performed.
A Legal Foreword
By Graham Chapman
What can one possibly say about Monty Python that has not already been the product of a major lawsuit? Evidently quite a lot, which is why you now hold this book in your hands. And quite a nice book it is too. I dare say that there are things in here that even I did not know, and I was there at the beginning, back when Monty Python was a mere niggling legal matter, and not the full-fledged lawsuit that it would eventually become.
Having said all that, I must admit that I have not, in a strict and legally binding sense, actually read this book. However I have read the brief, and I feel certain that it will make a splendid lawsuit and live on in the courts for many years to come.
Graham Chapman
July 1988
About The BBC
To try and explain the inner-workings of any large corporation is a daunting task, but to try and explain the inner-workings of a large, government controlled, corporation is perhaps an impossible one. Still, to better understand some of the motives behind the actions of people like Lord Hill, it is best to know a little something about the British Broadcasting Corporation.
At least true circa 1969-70s, the BBC (or the Beeb, or “Auntie Beeb” as it is sometimes referred) is a major public institution, and one of the country’s only means of communicating with its people. It is commercial free, and in that way it can be compared to Public Broadcasting in America, but the difference lies in that PBS is privately funded for the most part and, consequently, is not subject to the same intense pressures from “interested parties” as is the BBC. The “interested parties” with the most clout are, of course, the political ones. And while they don’t like to appear (while in office) to be manipulating the BBC, they do have one rather crude weapon that they swing over its head to ensure that Broadcasting House doesn’t go too far: the license fee.
Now we come to one of the fundamental differences between American and British television: the British viewing audience is charged an annual fee to watch TV (radio is free). This fee is set by the government and administered by the Post Office, and is the only form of revenue the BBC has apart from syndication and merchandising sales. While it is one of the cheapest services in Europe, a rise in the fee (essentially a tax) is always an unpopular political move; yet it is one that the politicians in power are willing to make – as long as the BBC behaves itself. If it doesn’t, well, you get the picture (Then again, maybe you won’t get the picture. Literally.)
During most of the 1960s the BBC was expanding. People were buying TV sets at a steady pace and, along with the introduction of color TV; this meant that it was relatively free of economic pressure. But by the late ‘60s this expansion was over. Inflation was rising, causing the BBC’s cost to rise, and they were finding it increasingly difficult to survive on their current revenue. Clearly something had to be done.
The BBC is controlled by a group of individuals known as the BBC Board of Governors. These are highly distinguished private individuals who are appointed to the post by the government. It is their job to oversee the activities of the Director-General and the Board of Management. The Chairman, who is, in turn, appointed directly by the Prime Minister, heads the BBC Board of Governors. The BBC as a whole comes under the jurisdiction of the Home Secretary, who during this time was Reginald Maudling.
Just as the BBC is under pressure from politicians, they in turn are subject to pressures from other “interested parties” – lobby groups. The most celebrated of these special interest groups was the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association headed by a middle-aged ex-school-teacher from Shropshire1 named Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, the original “Hell’s Granny.”
Mary Whitehouse first became concerned about the influence of broadcasting on public morality in the early 1960s. She was a committed Christian and a former supporter of Moral Rearmament (an early, British, equivalent of the Moral Majority). Whitehouse was in an uproar about the secular attitude towards the family in schools, and their morally neutral stance towards sex education. These declining moral values she attributed to the changed moral attitudes portrayed on television.
On May 5th, 1964, Whitehouse and a like-minded woman, Mrs. Norah Buckland, held a rally at Birmingham Town Hall on the subject of declining moral values on television and, with virtually no organization, they managed to fill the hall to capacity. Their simple message was Clean Up TV. On March 16th, 1965, a more formal organization, the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association2 was launched with Mary Whitehouse as Secretary. In May 1967 NVLA staged their first convention and, with the support of Malcolm Muggeridge (the host of the religious discussion program bumped to make room for Python), they formed a spin-off group called the Nationwide Festival of Light.
Mary Whitehouse presented herself as the plucky “Everywoman” who was standing up to the morally-depraved elite, however her critics claim that she was actually a theocratic bully who was driven by the Christian fundamentalist belief that women should be submissive and that homosexuality was a disease that could be cured (“Homosexuality is caused by abnormal parental sex during pregnancy, or just after,” she is quoted as saying. “Being gay was like having acne: Psychiatric literature proves that 60 percent of homosexuals who go for treatment get completely cured”). To the great swathes of people who disagreed with her (and whom she tarred as “anti-Christ’s”) she said that they should be thrown into prison.
Her critics have said that Whitehouse (who died in 2001) was a humorless woman who couldn’t distinguish between gratuitous sex and violence and sex and violence used to make a point. Whitehouse: “I never had any hang-ups about sex. As for being sexually repressed, nothing could be further from the truth. There are more hang-ups now than ever there were when I was growing up.”
Whitehouse wanted (among other things) to have the Chuck Berry song “My Ding-a-Ling” be criminalized because it “encouraged self-abuse.” She claimed that genial old Dr. Who contained some of the sickest, most horrible material (“upbraided scenes of ‘strangulation - by hand, by claw, by obscene vegetable matter’) and was nothing more than “teatime brutality for tots.”
She urged the BBC to be broadcast shows that “encourage and sustain faith in God and bring Him back to the heart of our family and national life.” She wanted Darwin to be expunged from the school curriculum; she demanded a ban on Dennis Potter, Benny Hill, Dave Allen, Till Death Us Do Part, the Beatles and, of course, Monty Python. “The way the Lord is using me,” she is quoted as saying, “is quite incredible.” Ironically, far from reigning in or taming British culture, Whitehouse instead fanned the flames and goaded writers, comedians and producers toward new levels of excessiveness, explicitly and candor.
Earning a complaint from Mary Whitehouse came to be seen the same as earning a badge of honor, while an endorsement from her was the equivalent of the kiss of death. The fact that Whitehouse - a woman who seemed to be totally devoid of humor, compassion or any personal insight - didn’t understand any of this only made it funnier - yet more dangerous.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
On the Sunday evening of October 5th 1969, England was once again attacked from the air by the Flying Circus. Only, this time around it wasn’t Baron Von Richthofen’s, but Monty Python’s Flying Circus that was inflicting all the damage. This flying circus dropped jokes instead of munitions, and there wasn’t a single bomb in the bunch. To some viewers, being confronted by Monty Python’s Flying Circus that evening was probably a bit of a shock – they’d been expecting to see a religious discussion program. No doubt they were also confused by the fact that not one person on the program appeared to be named Monty Python.
From the first frame of the opening titles it was clear that they were (to borrow a soon to be familiar phrase) in “for something completely different.” Cartoon violence, killer jokes… this wasn’t the hip British satire of Beyond the Fringe, nor was it the comfortably corny vaudeville of Morcambe and Wise – this was… subversive. This was absurd. Silly. Something completely different.
Consequently, the BBC who buried it with irregular late night transmissions and virtually no publicity relegated it to cult status.
The program’s format was a puzzler too. Gone were the conventions of normal sketch comedy with their mundane premises and punch lines, and in their place was a show that seemed not so much structured as strung-together. Ideas and in-jokes spilled one on top of another in the crazy-quilting style of a daydream. Sketches could (and did) end unexpectedly, or without a punch line altogether, and lush, pretentious build-ups could lead to nothing more than the introduction of the next sketch.
One episode contained enough ideas to sustain a hundred series, yet they were being burped out here at a rate of 20 per second. The Python’s were pushing at the boundaries of conventional comedy and were finding that they weren’t the insurmountable mountains they’d expected, but mere molehills.
Like The Beatles before them, Monty Python was a phenomenon (SNL’s Loren Michaels dubbed the {Python’s “The Beatles of comedy”) and their series was a landmark in the history of television. As Bob Hope was to comedy in the ‘40s and Lenny Bruce in the ‘60s, Monty Python was a line of demarcation of a generation. They were the harbingers of a new set of laugh lines that declared: “from now on, this is what’s funny.” The Python’s would deny this of course. They have said that they didn’t set out to shatter the conventions of comedy; that their only goal was to be funny. But the Python’s were a product of their times, and their times (the late 1960s) were calling for humor that, as John Cleese has said, did more than “make jokes about the price of fish” (Although they could, and did once did, make jokes about the price of an albatross).
Often misunderstood, and never far out of the spotlight of controversy, Python spearheaded what they called the “silly school” of humor, modeled more on the absurdities of The Goon Show rather than the satiric bite of Beyond the Fringe (their immediate predecessors), and it’s for this reason that Python humor survives today. Silly, it seems, knows no era.
Not for them the heavy-handed lampooning of That Was The Week That Was, which mocked and satirized the current atmosphere of the time, rather Python “sent-up” and mocked current modes of thought. Monty Python was funny all right, but it was funny about ideas. Perhaps it was this very style of humor which led to many of their troubles, for it goes far beyond poking fun at the price of fish and attacks the very core of why we laugh, and what we laugh at.
By avoiding the temptation to be topical (like That Was The Week That Was and, in America, The Smothers Brothers) their shows withstand repeated viewings and are as fresh today as they were when first broadcast. Monty Python’s Flying Circus set a new standard for humor, the reverberations of which can still be felt today in the style and attitudes of shows like Saturday Night Live, The Young Ones, Kids in the Hall, SCTV, Mr. Show, Flight of the Conchords, South Park, Wonder Showzen, The Mighty Boosh, Look Around You, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Onion; as well as in the humor of subversive comedians like Popper and Serafinowicz, The Yes Men, Steven Wright, Emo Phillips, Clarke and Dawe, Will Ferrell (to some degree) and, of course, the late and lamented Andy Kaufman.
For better or worse (depending upon your point-of-view) it is mainly due to Monty Python (both the troupe and the series) that what was once considered shocking or insurrectionary is now regular prime time fare.
“What Python learnt most from the Absurdists (Eugène Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, the Theatre of the Absurd, etc.),” says Terry Jones, “was the importance of doing something completely different. The Absurdists were trying to do something that would shock, to stir their audience up to think in a different kind of way. In Python we were always very nervous. It was just a struggle, quite honestly, because we never knew whether it was going to make people laugh or not. I remember in the dressing room before the first sketch we did, which was Graham Chapman leaning over a fence talking about a flying sheep, John Cleese said to Mike Palin, ‘Do you realize, Mikey, that we might be doing the first comedy that nobody ever laughs at?’ It was always like that. As I recall the first showing of Holy Grail was a total disaster. Python seems funnier to people now than it did then.”
The story of Monty Python’s Flying Circus is one of accidents, calculations, inertia, bullying, apathy, enthusiasm, ignorance, intelligence, censorship and unbridled imagination. It’s the story of one television series and six men who, if not for varying degrees of all of the above, would have become doctors, lawyers, historians, advertising executives, English professors and, perhaps, politicians. (For several years Cleese was quite vocal for the Social Democratic Party, and in 2003 there were rumors he might run for mayor of Santa Barbara, California. He didn’t.)
This is the story of six extremely individual individuals whose only common bond appeared to be the desire to make people laugh (and to hopefully make a few dollars while doing it) and who came together to create the most influential and exciting comedy series of all time. It’s the story of youth versus authority, the new way versus the old, popular culture versus counter-culture, the absurd versus the accepted, the tried versus the true and of Monty Python versus the world.
The Python’s
Graham Chapman
Born Graham Chapman (no middle name, despite persistent rumors that it was Arthur) on January 8th, 1941in Leicester, England. He was the youngest son of a police constable. He gained his initial taste for performing while a student at Melton Mowbray Grammar School, and joined the legendary Footlights Dramatic Club - the school’s famed theatre group - whilst studying medicine at Cambridge University’s Emmanuel College. It was there that he became acquainted with fellow member and future writing partner John Cleese. Chapman left Cambridge in 1962 to continue his medical studies at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, In 1963 he was asked to join The Footlights’ revue “Cambridge Circus” which was then appearing in London’s West End. Afterward he, along with John Cleese, began writing for television, including That Was The Week That Was and The Frost Report where he and Cleese met future Python’s Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones. After the Frost Report, Chapman and Cleese moved on to be writers and performers in At Last The 1948 Show. Then a man called Barry Took came along, assembled six comedy writers and comedy history was made.
Graham Chapman died on October 4th, 1989 (one day shy of Python’s 20th anniversary) of throat cancer (and not from AIDS as is commonly believed and often reported). Also, not as commonly believed and reported: his ashes were not shot into space in 1999; they were not sprinkled over the audience at a Python anniversary celebration in Los Angeles in 1994 (that was crumbled dried toast, and I know that because it was a trick that David Sherlock and I concocted especially for the occasion). Also, they were not vacuumed-up by Terry Gilliam at a Python reunion in Aspen, Colorado at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in 1998 (that was their version of the same joke that David and I had played on them four years earlier), and they were also not spread in North Wales in 2005. In reality, Graham Chapman’s ashes reside inside a ceramic urn, safely in the possession of his longtime companion David Sherlock. However a truth: in 1993, an asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was named in Chapman’s honor (9617 Grahamchapman (provisional designation: 1993 FA5).
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese (his last name was originally Cheese, his father changed it in 1915 before joining the army) was born on October 27th, 1939 in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England. Cleese was raised an only child of Reginald, an insurance salesman, and Muriel, who not was not an acrobat as some have said. According to Graham Chapman, Cleese lead a somewhat sheltered childhood - he did not learn to ride a bicycle until he was in his late ‘20’s – and formed a keen, subversive sense of humor at an early age, which served him well at school where he had trouble fitting-in because of his significant height. After attending St Peter’s Preparatory School as a boy, Cleese went to Clifton College, where he was an accomplished student, and then he attended the University of Cambridge to study law. He also joined The Footlights where he met future Monty Python member Graham Chapman on the first day, in line at the Footlights booth. Fellow future Python, Eric Idle, also attended Cambridge but was a year behind Cleese and Chapman. Other notable members of Footlights included future collaborator and infamous interviewer David Frost, future director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Trevor Nunn, and future National Lampoon editor, Tony Hendra. In 1963 Cleese traveled the Footlights revue, “Cambridge Circus”, with Chapman to New Zealand and a disastrous run on Broadway. He later joined The Frost Report as a writer and performer, which lead to teaming with Chapman, Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Taylor on At Last The 1948 Show, the immediate precursor to the Monty Python series.
Terry Gilliam
Born on November 22nd, 1940 in Medicine Lake, MN. Gilliam and family moved to Los Angeles when he was 11. He graduated Birmingham High School in Lake Balboa, CA. He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles on scholarship, where he switched majors from physics to fine arts to political science. All the while he worked as the editor and cartoonist of Fang, the college humor publication. Gilliam earned his bachelor’s in 1962 and promptly moved to New York where he worked as an associate editor for Harvey Kurtzman’s Help! magazine. It was there that Gilliam first met John Cleese, who was doing a short stint on Broadway (post-“Cambridge Circus”) in Half A Sixpence. Gilliam left the United States in 1967 and eventually arrived in London, where he again encountered Cleese who, in turn, referred him to producer Humphrey Barclay. Gilliam contributed animated sequences for such British television shows as We Have Ways of Making You Laugh (ITV, 1968) and Do Not Adjust Your Set (ITV, 1967-69) where he met future-Python members Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle.
Eric Idle
Eric Idle was born March 29th, 1943 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear, England. Eric’s father, who served in the Royal Air Force, died in a car crash on Christmas Eve when he was two years old. An only child, he was sent to boarding school. He attended Cambridge University, studying English. In 1963, he was admitted into the Cambridge Footlights where he became president a year later. One of his first acts was to open the membership up to women and feminist/writer Germaine Greer was one of the first to join. In 1967, Idle joined Oxford graduates Terry Jones and Michael Palin in a children’s program called Do Not Adjust Your Set. The show lasted for about two years. In 1968 he also worked on a show called We Have Ways of Making You Laugh with Terry Gilliam. After Do Not Adjust Your Set finished in early 1969, he teamed-up with Gilliam, fellow former Cambridge students John Cleese and Graham Chapman and Do Not Adjust Your Set co-stars Jones and Palin in what would become Monty Python.
Terry Jones
Born Terence Graham Parry Jones on February 1st, 1942, in Colwyn Bay, Wales. He lived there until after World War II, when his father, having returned from services with the Royal Air Force in India, relocated the family to Surrey. Jones developed an interest in writing and performing at an early age and was an avid fan of The Goon Show on the radio and Danny Kaye in feature films. Jones applied to both Cambridge and Oxford for his college education, but accepted the invitation to Oxford where he met future Python (and writing partner for decades) Michael Palin. The pair would perform together for the first time at Oxford as part of the Oxford Revue. After college, Jones took a job as a copywriter at Anglia Television before accepting a call from the BBC to work in their Light Entertainment division. Later, with Palin, Jones contributed to many of the better television comedies series on UK television in the late 1960s, including The Frost Report (BBC, 1966), where he eventually met Cleese and Chapman and Eric Idle.
Michael Palin
Born Michael Edward Palin on May 5th, 1943, in the Broomhill ward of Sheffield, England, he was one of two children born to Edward Moreton Palin, a steel engineer, and Mary Lockhart Ovey. Palin developed an interest in acting after appearing as Martha Cratchit in a production of A Christmas Carol at Birkdale Preparatory School. His fascination for performing continued into his college days at Oxford, where he earned his first laughs from original material he co-wrote and performed with friend, author Robert Hewison, at a Christmas party. Among the attendees at the party was fellow Oxford student Terry Jones, who would become one of his most loyal friends and longest-running collaborators. After graduating from Oxford in 1965, Palin found work as a television presenter (the first being a pop music program titled Now!) and, later in collaboration with Terry Jones, found steady work on a variety of television comedies. The most notable of these was The Frost Report (BBC, 1966-67), which introduced Palin and Jones to John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle.
THE FIRST SERIES
Oct. 5, 1969 - Jan. 11, 1970
In 1969 one of the most popular television shows in America was Green Acres. In an era when Charlie Manson stalked the Hollywood hills and Charlie Company hacked their way along the Ho Chi Minh trail every night on the national news; was it any wonder that we followed the Dadaesque exploits of Oliver and Lisa Douglas and a talking pig named Arnold? America needed a good laugh. We were ready for Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Too bad we had to wait five more years to get it.
In 1974 America was still in need of a good laugh. We were standing in line for gasoline, inflation was running rampant and the only bright spot on the tube seemed to be Nixon’s eminent resignation speech. Ron Devillier, a young Program Director for KERA-TV, a Dallas, Texas PBS station, was also looking for a good laugh. He was also looking for new programming. That’s when a friend at Time-Life archives (the BBC distributor in America) sent him some videotapes. Devillier: “The tapes were shipped to me by Wynn Nathan, Vice President of Time-Life Films which was headquartered in New York. It was in the summer of 1974 and Wynn called to say he was sending videos of a British comedy series that they had been unable to sell in America. As the Vice-President of Programming at KERA-TV I had frequently bought British shows from Time-Life, so it wasn’t unusual for Wynn to call about an available program. What was unusual about this call was the urgency. He claimed the BBC had given up selling the Python’s in America and was prepared to remove the tapes from circulation and discard them if something didn’t happen soon. I promised to screen the tapes and give him a quick response and I did.”
Ron decided to screen the tapes early on a Saturday morning so that he wouldn’t be interrupted by the day-to-day work distractions. At around 8 o’clock that evening he took a call from his worried fiancé. “I told her I hadn’t left the screening room all day,” says Devillier, “but that I had just spent the entire day with six of the wackiest guys, doing the funniest, most outrageous things I had ever seen on television. I didn’t have a clue if anybody else in the world would want to see these shows. I wasn’t sure anyone in Dallas would. But I was certain that they had to be given a chance. ” But before he could put the show on-air Ron had to first get the okay from station General Manager Bob Wilson. However, this was good news. While Bob Wilson3 was an Irish-Catholic Bostonian, he also had an enormous sense of humor and that turned-out to be an amazing piece of good luck for the Python’s. Devillier: “First thing Monday, I asked Bob to join me in the screening of something special. I had chosen two excerpts that I thought would be the best test cases: “The Dead Parrot Sketch” and “The Lumberjack” bit. In less than a heartbeat Wilson roared. The deal was sealed.”
KERA purchased the series and scheduled it on weekends at 10p.m. - however, there was a lesser-known chapter in the station reaction. Before the first broadcast, Wilson had decided he would preview an excerpt for the Station Board of Directors. Both Ron and Bob were aware that while there could be some negative, as well as political, fallout that showing the board a sketch or two in advance of the first broadcast seemed prudent.
The same two excerpts were shown to the board, which was made-up of a broad spectrum of Dallas leadership. Nobody laughed. So, while there were at least two people at KERA-TV who loved the series, now it was up to Dallas. Devillier: “We did not get audience ratings except during sweep weeks, and that was the only way to know if anybody was watching. The series was launched in a sweeps month. But we had to wait until the end of the month to get the audience ratings and discover if anyone had watched the Python’s. KERA’s average audience on a normal evening was a 1 rating, meaning that 1% of the total television population in the Dallas area was watching. Some nights a KERA program would get as high as a 3-rating, there were even shows that drew 4% of the television audience.
When the ratings for the sweeps arrived, we went straight for the Python results. At first we thought there was a mistake – a 5-rating the first week followed by a 6-rating the second week, and the numbers continued to rise each week and hold. Python’s were delivering an audience 4 to 5 times the size of KERA’s normal rating. Dallas had spoken.” And other stations were listening: “As soon as the word was out about the Dallas success, it seemed the entire PBS network was carrying the shows within three months,” says Devillier. “And every major market had the show in their schedule by the spring of ‘75.”
And now for something completely different… In much the same way that The Beatles first US TV appearance was not, as commonly believed, in 1964 on The Ed Sullivan Show (it was actually on The Jack Parr Show in 1963), Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ first US primetime appearance was not on September 22nd, 1974 on KERA. Technically, it was in the late summer of 1974 on NBC-TV’s The Dean Martin Comedy World.
Comedy World, which acted as a summer replacement series for The Dean Martin Show, was a variety program produced by Martin and Greg Garrison, and hosted by comedian Nipsey Russell, Jackie Cooper and Barbara (Get Smart) Feldon. The point of the program was to air comedy clips from around the world and, on the last program of the season, Comedy World showed a few sketches from Monty Python (including “Bicycle Repairman” and “The Dull Life of a Stockbroker”) along with some Gilliam animations.
While Monty Python’s appearance on Comedy World didn’t make much of an impact on US television audiences (it was aired in the summer, after all) it did serve a vital role in helping to bring Python to America, for it was Garrison’s purchase of the rights to air the Python clips that paid for the conversion of the series from the PAL system to NTSC, thus allowing the series to be screened by Ron Devillier and Bob Wilson, and then broadcast on KERA. And, because these clips had to first be cleared with the network censors, the Python’s also received their first taste of American censorship: the topless news -agent from the “Dull Life of a City Stockbroker” sketch was cut out.
So, in essence, a 1950’s crooner, the father of Owen and Luke Wilson and the Program Director of a Dallas, Texas PBS station brought Britain’s quintessentially silly comedy series to America’s shores - and changed the world. And they call Monty Python absurd.
********************
Britain in the latter half of the 1960s could be a dismal place. The glittery trappings of the “Swinging London” set had long since rotted away like the cheap but flashy suits that had been hawked on Carnaby Street, revealing the bandy-kneed spotty-bummed body of a country fast heading for the grim realities of major industrial reform. It was almost as if the “glory years” (actually little more than a year) of the mid-sixties had all been a dream; the incessant American tourists, the working class pop stars, the unblinking spotlight of the world’s press – it was all but gone. Had England really won the World Cup? For the tiny island previously thought of as merely quaint and dowdy, it was a dream come true.
Suddenly Britain was Quant4, not quaint, as its eccentricities were elevated into High Style. England basked in it’s new-found prominence as a fashion mecca, and in the abnormally bright summer that accompanied it - but no sooner had it learned to cope with its new identity than its 15 minutes of fame were whisked away – leaving a gaping hole in both its spirit and its economy.
It was now 1969. The pound, which had been devalued two years previously, was at low ebb. Inflation was galloping across the continent and British troops had just been sent that April to quell a weekend of street fighting among Catholics, Protestants and the police in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Britain needed a good laugh.
Early in May of that year six young rebels gathered together at the Light of Kashmir, an Indian restaurant in Fleet Road, London, and discussed secret plans over a curry. It had all the earmarks of a clandestine operation, only these anarchists weren’t mad IRA bombers, rather British comedians – although ultimately the goals were the same: they planned to blitz England (with a non-stop barrage of humor) and bring her begging to her knees. The six young men (all between the ages of 25 and 30) were the six member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.
At the start of 1969 there had been no group. Graham Chapman and John Cleese, who had been writing partners since their early Cambridge days, were busy scripting a myriad of projects, among which was The Frost Report and the odd episode of Doctor In The House, a medical comedy based on the popular books by Richard Gordon5. They were also starring along side Marty Feldman in At Last The 1948 Show.
Meanwhile, Michael Palin and Terry Jones (who were also partners), along with Eric Idle, were pre-occupied with writing and performing in Do Not Adjust Your Set, a children’s television show that was also quite popular with adults because of its freewheeling comedy style and the mad musical contributions of the brilliant Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band (led by future Rutle, Neil Innes.) Cleese and Chapman would often wind-down their day by watching it and, after a viewing one afternoon, they decided “that it was time to do more telly.”
Although Palin and Jones had already been made an offer to do a program for Thames Television. Michael Palin agreed to meet with John Cleese and discuss the possibility of working together. Although they all had a passing acquaintance of each other as writers on The Frost Report, and respected one another’s work, they didn’t really know each other all that well. But Cleese and Palin hit it off and Palin soon brought in Jones, who then brought in Idle, who then brought in American animator Terry Gilliam.
Gilliam also worked on Do Not Adjust Your Set and had long ago featured Cleese in a fumetti-style comic strip called “Christopher’s Punctured Romance’ when he’d worked as Associate Editor for Harvey (Mad) Kurtzman’s short-lived comic magazine, Help!, in New York (The strip involves Cleese’s obsession with a Barbie doll).
The group discussed the current state of comedy and the type of comedy program that they would like to do. Together, they approached Barry Took, a writer and producer at the BBC, about doing such a show and he, in turn, sold the idea to the executives at the Light Entertainment Department. Took had been acting as a sort of talent scout for the BBC, and had been eyeing various writer/performers. Took: “In my mind’s eye I put together a team of four (later to become six) which were John Cleese and Graham Chapman and Michael Palin and Terry Jones. They used to meet, and argue, at my house, and then they’d all go home and call me up throughout the evening, asking if I thought they were ruining their careers by joining in with this ‘new thing.’”
On May 23, 1969, all six Python’s, along with directors Ian MacNaughton and John Howard Davies, met with Michael Mills, the BBC’s Head of Comedy. He promptly commissioned them to write and perform a 13-part series, without so much as demanding a pilot, and left the room. It was only the second time the six Python’s had all sat together in the same room. “That’s how it was in those days,” recalls Jones. “‘Right, thirteen shows then!’ It’s all terribly changed now.” John Cleese: “When you look back, it really was an amazing act of courage on the part of the BBC to go straight to series without demanding a pilot. I mean I really was the only one who had been on much, as a performer. I will always thank the BBC for that.”
It’s virtually unknown outside of closed-knit Python circles but there almost wasn’t a Monty Python series. Soon after their meeting with Michael Mills, Michael Palin received a telephone call from a very irate David Frost. He told Palin that if he (Palin) went ahead with the Python program then he could no longer work for Paradine Productions (Frost’s company). He further insinuated that Python might not even happen after all, as he said that he had John Cleese under exclusive contract to perform in any future series. After a flurry of telephone calls, the facts began to emerge. David Frost indeed had Cleese under exclusive contract, but Frost was willing to “lend him out” if he (Frost) was allowed, in turn, to “somehow be involved” in Python, perhaps as a host or linkman.
The other Python’s balked, as this was exactly the sort of format - the straight man and the crew of ‘zany performers’ - that they desperately wanted to get away from (what was suggested would have essentially been The Frost Report Mach II). Negotiations and allegations dragged on for several weeks and, at one point legal action was even threatened - then resolution came from a somewhat surprising person: Graham Chapman. Chapman: “I pointed out to David (Frost) that if he wanted to force John to perform - poorly - in a series of 13 programs then that was his business, but you can’t make people do something that they just don’t want to do.” Reason won the day, the issue was resolved, and Python went ahead as planned.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus happened-along during the close of a rather unusual time at the BBC, a period of unrestrained freedom and creative carte blanche. It was a period when “Auntie Beeb” really kicked up her heels and let her hair down; she became “with it” and relevant and quite, quite outspoken. Gone was the stodgy image and narcoleptic programming, and in their place sat gritty police dramas like Z Cars and realistically drawn human shows like Cathy Come Home, programs that painted a grimmer portrait of Wilson’s Britain than the one he chose to exhibit. The man responsible for this “new attitude for ‘Auntie’” was a rather amazing individual named Sir Hugh Carlton-Greene.
Sir Hugh (brother of novelist Graham Greene) was Director-General of the BBC, and that rarest of all animals – an executive with common sense. He believed that the “best ideas come from below, not from above”, and allowed an unprecedented nine year period of creativity to exist and develop at the BBC simply leaving people alone to “get on with it.” Unfortunately for the Python’s, they were just beginning to “get on with it” when Sir Hugh retired (was pushed out, some contend) on March 31, 1969. And while the group was to enjoy a brief period of creative expansion after Sir Hugh’s exodus, the BBC was fast entering an era of creative contraction.
This contraction was due to many factors, chief among them being the appointment of Lord Hill (formerly Dr. Charles Hill M.P.) to the position of Chairman for the BBC Board of Governors. Lord Hill (famous as The Radio Doctor in the 1940s) had previously been Chairman of the Independent Television Authority.6 The ITA supervised the activities of Britain’s commercial television companies. While there is no hard evidence that Lord Hill had been appointed by Prime Minister Wilson to do “a hatchet job” on the BBC for any real or imagined slights (Hill denied that he was), it was no secret that there was little love lost between the BBC and Independent Television.
There was also little love lost between Lord Hill and Sir Hugh Carlton-Greene. Upon his arrival at Broadcasting House, Hill immediately began to isolate and compartmentalize. Perhaps it’s mere coincidence, but it was only months after Hill’s appointment that Carlton-Greene retired. “Sir Hugh Greene is the man I hold most responsible for the state of our country today,” said the ex-Shropshire schoolteacher, Mary Whitehouse. “For 11 years hardly a week went by without a sniping reference to me. And he gave access to anyone who was prepared to say anything morally subversive.”
Greene’s
vacancy left Hill (hardly a pioneering liberal) free to cast a more
discerning eye over the BBC’s more “problematic” programs,
Monty Python
being chief among them. Hill had been a “hands on” chairman at
ITA, a tradition he intended to uphold at the BBC. There was also
pressure from Whitehouse and her National Viewers’ and Listeners’
Association (or National VALA as she like to refer to it, preferring
to play on the acronym). National VALA was a media watchdog
organization formed in 1964 in an effort to keep an eye on
broadcasting’s influence on public morality. Her “Clean Up TV”
campaign was gaining support throughout the nation, and she was fast
becoming a voice to be reckoned with. Lord Hill received a
delegation from National VALA (unlike Greene, who would not give them
the time of day), and so it was with a self-satisfied feeling of
accomplishment that she wrote: “With Lord Hill at the BBC, sharper
eyes will be focused on the scripts.”
It was against this backdrop of creative implosion/explosion that the first series of Monty Python got underway, the first order of business being to decide what to name the new series. Graham Chapman: “We were all busy trying to write the first 13 episodes of the series, and weren’t desperately keen on spending a lot of time arguing about titles: there’d already been suggestions, things like Owl Stretching Time, The Toad Elevating Moment, Sex and Violence… and Terry Jones came up with a nice one which was A Horse, A Bucket and a Spoon. I must say I rather liked – never understood – but rather liked that one.” Their first impulse was to have the show go out under a different title each week, but cooler heads at the BBC prevailed (Actually they were trying to avoid the headache involved with such an idea as costumes would be logged under one title, makeup under another and so on).
Chapman: “Eventually the Head of Comedy (Michael Mills) came into our shed and told us that he wouldn’t let us leave until we’d given him a title, and that it had to have the word ‘circus’ in it as it had appeared on various contracts and interdepartmental memos. See, the BBC had loosely referred to the six of us wandering around the building as ‘a circus’ – a kind of BBC joke, tee hee – and so we added ‘flying’ to it to make it sound less like a real circus, and more like something to do with the First World War, then added ‘Monty Python” because he sounded like a really bad theatrical agent – just the sort of guy who might have got us together. None of us liked it, but none us hated it, so it was a typical committee decision, really.”
Terry Jones remembers it (of course) differently. Terry Jones: “It wasn’t A Horse A Bucket and a Spoon, it was A Horse, A Spoon, and A Basin. Well, that’s what I remember, and anyway, I’m sure it was Graham who came up with it and not me. But things do get a bit misty. The Toad Elevating Moment was Graham’s, and was a favorite of mine - although it never stood a chance.” Ian MacNaughton remembered it this way: “We chose the title for three carefully considered reasons: because as far as we knew there was no one named Monty Python, because it had nothing to do with flying and because it was not a circus.”
According to Jones, the name ‘Monty Python’ actually sat with them for several weeks before finally being decided upon, thus leaving such titles as BB Circus, Gwen Dibley’s Flying Circus, Arthur Megapode’s Cheap Show, The Atomic Circus, Vaseline Review and even Wodge Wodge Boodley Oodle Poo to the dustbin of history. (Although a lot of abandoned titles like The Ant: An Introduction, and Sex and Violence appeared at the end of first series episodes as subtitles.)
The group has an admitted difficulty in deciding on what to name things. A similar situation arose when trying to find a title for their film, Monty Python’s Life of Brian (an early draft was titled Monty Python’s Life of Christ and in it Brian/Christ becomes a bit of a rock star). Also foremost in the minds of the group (Palin and Jones especially) was the overall feel and format of the show.
Jones had been inspired by Spike (The Goon Show) Milligan’s Q series which had a tendency to abandon punch lines, stop sketches in the middle and had an ever-expanding line of lateral-thinking where characters from one sketch could spill over into another until the whole mess became so muddled that Milligan would wander off the set mumbling “Who wrote this?” Jones: “Milligan just ripped out all form and shape. He’d start a sketch that turned into another sketch that turned again into something else. I thought ‘shit, he’s done it!’