And Now For Someone Completely Different

And Now For Someone Completely Different

When the six foot five inch man that is John Cleese is mentioned, most people

see him in their minds eye complaining about his dead parrot or as the brave Sir

Lancelot. What many people don't think of, though, is his involvement with multiple

other productions, not all of them comedy. His involvement, too, stretches from just

simple acting. John Cleese is truly a Renaissance man of the media.

John Cleese went through school wanting to be in the legal profession and he

received his M.A. degree from Downing College in Cambridge. He soon abandoned his

plans in law, however, when he had a great success with Footlights, the performing arts

society for Cambridge. He met his future writing partner and Python member Graham

Chapman in Footlights. Cleese had an appearance in the Footlights Revue which was a

campus production that later was shown in London's West End, and then again, as

Cambridge Circus, on Broadway in 1964 (Current Biography). He stayed in New York to

perform in the British musical Half a Sixpence.

When he returned to England he was approached by David Frost to help write and

to perform in Frost's new weekly BBC comedy show, The Frost Report, in 1965.

Chapman was also working on The Frost Report, with other to be Python members Eric

Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones (The Life of Monty Python). Cleese went on with his

writing partnership with Chapman after The Frost Report, working on such titles as The

Magic Christian, based on the novel by Terry Southern (The Fairly Uncreative Monty

Python Site).

Cleese's largest comedy hit came when he joined up again with Chapman, Idle,

Palin, and Jones. Together, with American cartoonist Terry Gilliam, they created the

notorious Monty Python's Flying Circus. The whole group co-wrote and starred in this

"breakneck barrage of satiric skits, [and] surreal cartoons" (Current Biography) for

several years; drawing over ten million viewers each week. The Monty Python sextet

would later collaborate to write books, do live performances, and make movies, such as

Monty Python and the Holy Gail (1975), a spoof on the legend of King Arthur and his

quest for the Holy Grail, and The Meaning of Life (1983), which was Monty Python's

view on the stages of life (TFUMPS).

At the emerging point of his career that was his BBC works, he met American

actress Connie Booth, who he would wed in 1968 (TLOMP). The couple would write and

star in a small motion picture in 1974 but would have great success in the television