Marty Feldman "It's Marty" 1969

[Spiny Norman]

Both quotes are from Robert Ross's biography of Feldman. He took Palin's quote from the Six Degrees documentary.

Aside from the numerous Pete and Dud sketches (Bloody Greta Garbo, the Art Gallery, Heaven), there's Superthunderwhatever, Teaching Ravens to Fly Underwater, the Frog and Peach, Tramponuns, A Bit of a Chat, Bo Duddley, and Emma Bargo. By contrast, I can't think of any sketches from Goodbye Again as memorable as those.

Yes, but then I wonder: says who? Neither two have been repeated. (Ravens underwater doesn't really do it for me. Now, the great train robbery on the other hand...)

Goodbye Again highlights may not be found in episode 4, but might include Aversion Therapy, Father & Son, Sherlock Holmes.

[Glebe]

I just watched the Frog and Peach sketch again on YouTube yesterday (The Secret Policeman's Ball, 1989). Also reading John Cleese's So Anyway... but not got as far as At Last the 1948 Show yet.

[Jake Thingray]

https://youtu.be/zaPm-wjv6dw

Tempted to say, keep watching after the sketch finishes for the series' theme tune, an absolutely wonderful example of BBC Light Entertainmentness from Ken Jones -- with my usual crap sense of timing, I set a copy of it from another ep (without the BBC Arena continuity announcer talking over it) as my ringtone just when Jones died last year.

Afraid that the reliability of the Robert Ross biog Revelatorquotes from can be indicated by its declaration that while the play Ignatius S linked to the existing, monochrome version of is wiped, all eps from both series of It's Marty/Marty were preserved. If only that were true, as can be seen from the YouTube channel Revelator also linked to.

All concerned agreed that this died the death on the night it was performed, and it's another rehashed sketch from At Last The 1948 Show, but if you sit through the whole show, after the sneering at the younger liberal generation by Max Bygraves, and to a lesser extent Leslie Crowther, this at times proto-Bottom comes as a relief.....

https://youtu.be/1z13QDmbz0U?t=2315

[Spiny Norman]

Afraid that the reliability of the Robert Ross biog Revelatorquotes from can be indicated by its declaration that while the play Ignatius S linked to the existing, monochrome version of is wiped, all eps from both series of It's Marty/Marty were preserved. If only that were true, as can be seen from the YouTube channel Revelator also linked to.

It seems as if (It's) Marty fared better than was feared: a lot survived through compilations and inserts.

[Lfbarfe]

Tempted to say, keep watching after the sketch finishes for the series' theme tune, an absolutely wonderful example of BBC Light Entertainmentness from Ken Jones -- with my usual crap sense of timing, I set a copy of it from another ep (without the BBC Arena continuity announcer talking over it) as my ringtone just when Jones died last year.

Ken Jones died in 1988.

[Twonty Gostelow]

JT possibly getting mixed up with Ken Jones the veteran sports journalist, who died in 2019.

[Jake Thingray]

Was actually thinking of another composer, who styled himself Kenneth V. Jones and did die last year, Louis is correct.

[Twonty Gostelow]

RIP the Ken Joneses.

[derek stitt]

RIP the Ken Joneses.

Another top notch comedy performer there. Afraid old 'Orrible Ives' is nowhere near the calibre of the worlds greatest sex object Tommy Godfrey.

[Glebe]

RE: Reading Cleese's So Anyway..., not hugely au fait with Feldman's work but I was surprised to read that At Last the 1948 Show was to feature his first proper work as a performer as opposed to just a writer. Cleese and Chapman apparently had to convince David Frost that he'd be good.

[Spiny Norman]

Of the It's Marty clips and specially shot studio sketches included in Dean Martin Presents The Golddiggers in London, a lot are sadly available already, but it's intriguing that in one ep, he rehashes the Four Yorkshiremen sketch before the Pythons did, only it's just two Yorkshiremen, him and the delightful Julian Orchard, both in aged make-up. Like all the other Golddiggers eps I've seen, the end credits insist that all Marty's material was by him and Barry Took; nice that they got the credit for something (co-)written by Pythons, but it would never happen again.

It's a 1948 show sketch, but you probably knew that.
One of the approximately 5,000 that he reused for Golddiggers and Comedy Machine. Not that I blame him, without repeats or even without known copies. But perhaps it shows that even the best can run out of good material.

Totally agree. It's Marty would deserve a DVD release exactly like the brilliant BFI reconstructions of 1948 Show & DNAYS. The seven color episodes were shown by Arte (in Germany) years ago and contained some of the best sketches the Pythons penned outside of the Flying Circus, and great performances by Marty's co-stars Junkin, Brooke-Taylor and MacLeod.

In Six degrees of separation (I think) Cleese tells that they used nearly all the sketches that he rejected in the Flying Circus.

What he rejected them for was (well, according to Cleese) that they didn't have a big enough leading part.