“I could have my eyes fixed and my nose straightened, but I think it would be a mistake. Comedians too often try to turn themselves into leading men. They force the thin man inside the fat man out into the open naturally and lose touch with their real talents.” – Marty Feldman

Martin Alan “Marty” Feldman was born in Canning Town in London’s East End and left school at 15 to pursue a variety of dead-end jobs including kitchen hand, messenger boy for an advertising agency, greyhound racetrack tipster, and an assistant to an Indian fakir in his side-show acts. In his late teens he drifted around Soho and Paris indulging in a life of petty crime and getting his kicks on Benzedrine and heroin. He joined jazz musician tubby Hayes first band but realised he was, in his own assessment, “the world’s worst trumpet player.”

At the age of 20 Marty Feldman became part of a comedy act—Morris, Marty and Mitch. He had always desperately wanted to perform and this meant, ultimately, exploiting the look of his eyes, which he said were “the product of a thyroid condition (Graves Disease) caused by an accident when somebody stuck a pencil in my eye when I was a boy”. According to rumour a car accident at the age of 30 and subsequent corrective plastic surgery made Feldman’s eyes appear even more unusual. His nose was reportedly broken while boxing as a youth.

Marty Feldman’searly years as a performer were not particularly successful but he found a niche in comedy as a writer, initially with Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney on the radio ventriloquist show Educating Archie and then in partnership with Barry Took, whom he had first met in 1954 when both men were working in variety.

Feldman and Took became a household name in Britain beginning on the radio in 1959, and in 1960 for television with some episodes of popular sitcom The Army Game (ITV, 1957-61) and, most famously with the non-stop barrage of double entendres and risqué jokes of radio’s Round the Horne (BBC, 1965-68).

Feldman also worked as a solo writer and became chief writer for The Frost Report (BBC, 1966-67), for which he co-wrote the celebrated ‘class’ sketch featuring John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.

John Cleese and Graham Chapman urged him to perform with them on At Last The 1948 Show (1967) for which he was the co-writer with Cleese and Chapman, pre-Monty Python, and Tim Brooke-Taylor, later one-third of The Goodies. One episode of the show featured the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, later performed by the Pythons.

The BBC then gave him his own series, It’s Marty (1968-69) The series won awards for its scripts (largely written by Feldman and Took) from both the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and the Society of Film and Television Arts in 1969, with Feldman also winning a Society of Film and Television Arts award for his performance. It was followed by two comedy specials, Marty Amok (BBC, tx. 30/3/1970) and Marty Abroad (BBC, tx. 1/1/1971), and the series The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine (ITV, 1971-72), the latter winning the Golden Rose at Montreux in 1972.

In 1969 Marty Feldman had made his film debut as Nurse Arthur in an absurdist, post-apocalyptic, satirical black comedy, The Bed Sitting Room (1969) written byfellow trumpeter-comedian Spike Milligan and John Antrobus. It starred an ensemble cast of British comic actors,

He then starred in Every Home Should Have One (1970) in which an advertising man (Feldman) is assigned by his boss to come up with a sexy new image for porridge. While his wife (Judy Cornwell) runs a clean-up TV movement organized by the local vicar (Dinsdale Landen), he has an affair with the au-pair girl (Julie Ege who received an “introducing” credit). The film had titles and animated sequences provided by Richard Williams Studio. It was released in North America re-titled Think Dirty.

In the 1971 comedy, The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins each of the sins is written by a different solo writer or team. Marty Feldman appeared in the captioned black-and-white silent sequence Sloth written by and starring Spike Milligan. With his ambitions for film stardom, Feldman became convinced his future lay in America. Consequently, his next series, Marty Back Together Again (BBC, 1974), proved to be both his last for British television and his final collaborative work with Took.

After several box office failures (which included now-cult classics The Producers (1967) and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory(1971)), Gene Wilder finally hit box office success with a pivotal role in the 1972 Woody Allen film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). Wilder, who had been an unsuccessful scriptwriter previously, began toying around with an idea for an original story involving the grandson of Victor Frankenstein inheriting his grandfather’s mansion and his research. His agent, Mike Medavoy, suggested that a new client of his, Marty Feldman, would be ideal for the proposed film, Young Frankenstein (1974). Medavoy later suggested Mel Brooks as director. Gene Wilder had seen Marty Feldman in 1972 on his The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine so was familiar with his work. He wrote the part of Igor with Feldman in mind.

On Young Frankenstein, director Mel Brooks was working with Feldman for the first time. “Marty had a condition that was opposite of cross

eyes. His eyes would be on the outer edge. So, in order to hide from Marty Feldman you had to go right up to his face. His peripheral vision was acute, but he couldn’t see you if you were right in front of him, because he couldn’t cross his eyes.”

The shifting hump on Igor’s back was an ad-libbed gag. Marty Feldman had been surreptitiously shifting the humpback and forth for several days when cast members finally noticed. It was then added to the script. The line “What hump?” was nominated for the American Film Institute’s 100 Years … 100 Movie Quotes. Feldman also perpetrated one of the oldest gags in the book when he reacted to the “Walk this way … ” line. Mel Brooks thought that the gag was just too corny and wanted it cut from the film until he saw the audience’s reaction to it one night at a test screening, It remained and subsequently reappeared in Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I (1981) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).

Feldman worked again with Gene Wilder and Madeline Khan in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975) with a script again written by Wilder who also directed for the first time in his career. Dom DeLuise and character actors Roy Kinnear and Leo McKern appeared with British actors Douglas Wilmer and Thorley Waters playing the roles of Holmes and Watson which they had both done in previous film and TV productions. Feldman was the Scotland Yard records clerk Orville Sacker (Marty Feldman), a man with an auditory eidetic memory, who happens to be a fan of Holmes’ younger brother Sigerson’s (Gene Wilder) work. The film received moderate praise from the critics and grossed seven times its modest 2.8 million budget.

Having won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor and buoyed by his first two films’ success Marty Feldman stayed in America. He was cast in Brook’s next film, Silent Movie (1976). He was particularly suited to a film with spoken words as much of his British TV comedy had involved visual jokes. Feldman played Marty Eggs and, together with (Dom DeLuise as Dom Bell, they were the sidekicks of Mel Brook’s character, Mel Funn, a once great film director, who is recovering from a drinking problem and down on his luck who intends to shoot Hollywood’s first silent movie for forty years. Marty Feldman received a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Golden Globes for his contribution

Marty Feldman had appeared in three successful Hollywood features. He now struck out on his own. Universal offered him a five-year contract to write, direct and star in his own films.

“We see Marty as a triple threat artist. Marty is like a throwback to the old silent comics who could do it all. It doesn’t matter that he’s British because physical gags travel. That’s why he has a major future ahead of him and why we’ve made a major, major investment in Marty at Universal.” – A spokesman for Universal Studios

Feldman decided to make a satire loosely based on the novel Beau Geste, a frequently-filmed story of brothers and their adventures in the French Foreign Legion and started work on the screenplay of The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977) while filming The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother.

“There’s the whole idea of dying nobly, a bullshit idea. The film will poke fun at the way people think about war, dying for flags instead of people, heroism. There is a serious element in all comedy… the two overlap and merge. I see life as absurd and there’s dignity in the absurd. Keaton had it. Chaplin had it. Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce. What we’re saying about life is laugh.” – Marty Feldman

The film was shot in Spain and Ireland and went behind schedule due to unexpected Spanish rain, Feldman fell ill with chicken pox. It also went over budget. After he had cut the film Universal sent Feldman on a two week working vacation. When he returned the film had been recut. One cut showed the action in a linear form, one with surreal, Monty Python-like images and twits was told in flashback. The latter version, Feldman’s cut, got better audience test scores. Universal, however, released their cut to theatres. It was this version that received lukewarm reviews.

Everybody has a five-picture deal. Until the first picture bombs. Then they have a no picture deal.” – Marty Feldman, Joan Levine interview, LA Times, May 23, 1976

The Last Remake of Beau Geste hadn’t bombed but it failed to set the box office alight. Universal allowed him a second try to make his directorial mark. !n God We Tru$t (1980) is a comedy film starring Marty Feldman, Andy Kaufman, Louise Lasser and Peter Boyle. A biting religious satire, it was also produced, directed, and co-written by Marty Feldman. It attracted negative reviews; Roger Ebert criticised the film for apparently believing Feldman himself is inherently funny, and for failing to have the necessary material to build on. Peter Ackroyd of The Spectator described the film as “an agreeable, under-stated little comedy which, like all such affairs, runs out of steam before the close.”

1984 saw the American release of Slapstick of Another Kind, a film that had taken the plot but little of the humanity, serious content or humour of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slapstick (1976). Jerry Lewis and Madeline Khan are the leads as “the most beautiful of all the beautiful people” who become parents to twins (played as adults by Lewis and Khan). The twins aren’t expected to live more than a few months so they are sent to live in a mansion staffed with servants, including Sylvester (Marty Feldman). the European release was in 1982, the recut American release attracted toxic reviews. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert panned the film in their show At the Movies. Siskel described it as “the single worst movie of 1984”, saying it was shockingly bad, insensitive, cruel, boring, unfunny and cheaply made. He summed up by proposing that film encyclopedias “ought to have an entry called Bad Movie and the illustration ought to be a still photo from Slapstick of Another Kind… The best thing that could ever happen to this film is that it never be shown anywhere.” Ebert concurred, describing the film as offensive, unsavoury and painful.

Yellowbeard is a 1983 British comedy film directed by Mel Damski and written by Graham Chapman, Peter Cook, Bernard McKenna and David Sherlock, with an ensemble cast featuring Chapman, Cook, Peter Boyle, Cheech & Chong, Martin Hewitt, Michael Hordern, Eric Idle, Madeline Kahn, James Mason and John Cleese, Marty Feldman and Peter Bull.

“It all started when Keith Moon, Sam Peckinpah, Graham Chapman and myself were dining at Trader Vic’s. Keith suggested doing a movie about pirates and we were all discussing it and being enthusiastic, when I saw Sam, who was too tired to actually go to the lavatory, relieving himself in the artificial palm tree by the table. It was then that I thought the whole thing was rather unlikely to get off the ground.” – Peter Cook

Moon was in failing health and died several years before filming began. He had claimed the lead role of Yellowbeard. Finding Yeallowbeard’s son, Dan proved a problem with Adam Ant cast in the role but he quit, frustrated with the delays. Sting wanted the role but the Hollywood producers thought the film was becoming too British and cast an American, Martin Hewitt as Dan. Marty Feldman plays Gilbert, a former crewman turned prison trusty and gravedigger, turned bosun under “Captain” Moon. Gilbert tries to cajole Yellowbeard into revealing the location of the treasure, but the salty pirate won’t be caught out with mere trick questions.

Feldman died during filming. His recent failures had increased his consumption of cigarettes and the intake of alcohol. He was drinking a great deal of coffee and, as a lacto-vegetarian, compensated for the lack of meat in his diet by eating large amounts of eggs and dairy products on a daily basis which may have clogged his arteries. Filming in Mexico City at 7,000 feet above sea level put stress on his lungs. He and a friend, filmmaker Michael Mileham came down with virulent food poisoning, it is believed that Feldman’s general state of bad health caused the massive heart attack that killed him. Feldman had completed virtually all his scenes except, ironically, for his character’s death scene, filmed a few days later using a stunt double. Chapman said about Feldman’s death: “I try to look at the positive side… I take pleasure knowing that Marty was back on form for his last role.” He was 48.

“I didn’t look like this as a kid. “Nervous exhaustion, brought on by writing 39 TV shows a year for 3 years, plus 2 radio shows a week, triggered a chronic hyperthyroid condition. When they operated, they said my eyes would go back to normal. It has been 14 years. I’m still waiting. Now I look at the world obliquely – not back in anger, but sideways in suspicion. Actually, each eye is perfect, but they function separately… But you make use of whatever has happened to you. What I have is what I am, and what I’m good at is landing on my feet.” – Marty Feldman

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