| Marty Feldman (July 8, 1933 - December 2, 1982). English writer, comedian and
film and television actor, famous for his
bulging eyes, which were the result of a thyroid condition.
Like Spike Milligan, Feldman started his show-business career as a
trumpet player, but soon turned to comedy.
He formed a flourishing writing partnership with Barry Took in 1954. For British television they
wrote sitcoms The Army Game, Bootsie and Snudge, and most notably the ground-breaking BBC radio show
Round the Horne, which starred Kenneth Horne and Kenneth Williams. He
was also a writer on The
Frost Report with several future Pythons.
The television sketch comedy series At Last the 1948 Show featured Feldman's first screen
performances. In one memorable sketch, first broadcast on March 1, 1967, Feldman harassed a patient shop assistant (John Cleese) for a series of fictitious books, finally achieving success with
Ethel the Aardvark goes Quantity Surveying. The sketch was revived as part
of the Monty Python stage show repertoire (without Feldman).
Following his success on At Last the 1948 Show, Feldman had a memorable series of his own shows on the BBC, called It's Marty. His performances on American television included The
Dean Martin Show and Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine.
He is remembered for his role as the hunchback Igor (pronounced as eye-gor) in
Young Frankenstein - in which, as usual, many of his
lines were improvised.
Feldman appeared in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother
and several Mel Brooks films, including Silent Movie and
Young Frankenstein. He directed and starred in The Last
Remake of Beau Geste and died from a heart attack
in Mexico filming his last performance in the film Yellowbeard.
He also released one long playing record called I Feel A Song Going Off (1969), re-released as The Crazy World of
Marty Feldman. The songs were written, not by him, but by Dennis King, John
Junkin and Bill Solly (a writer for Max Bygraves and The Two Ronnies).1
Feldman was an active member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
References
1Kettering Magazine (http://www.bodnotbod.org.uk/kettering) Issue #2.
|
