FREE MARTY FELDMAN: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A COMEDY LEGEND PDF

Robert Ross | 336 pages | 25 Oct 2011 | Titan Books Ltd | 9780857683786 | English | London, United Kingdom Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend by Robert Ross

Watching the Brooks films again on Blu-ray recently, Feldman made me laugh as hard as he did when I was 11 years old. Almost 30 years after his untimely death in Feldman is in danger of becoming a footnote, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, where his reputation rests on those movies plus his own The Last Remake of Beau Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legendone of the few films to hold its own against the Star Wars juggernaut in the summer of For American readers, this book pretty much begins with Chapter Thirteen, when Feldman leaves a burgeoning TV career in his native England for Hollywood. But Ross, who has written books on and the Carry On movies, expertly traces the Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend artistic roots of his too-brief life. His admiration of and vaudeville performers of yore spilled into some dodgy stage acts that he toured England in, and the knocking-about years are fun to read about. Feldman, who was now writing comedy, rolled with it. And a curse, in that Feldman felt he had more to offer creatively, as a writer, performer, and director, as he moved up the ranks in TV sketch comedy to his own, envelope-pushing, scattershot shows, where he worked with Spike Milligan, the Pythons and reminisceand Tom Lehrer while swinging through the 60s. Drug and alcohol problems followed him into the 70s, but Feldman, who maintained a basic innocence and equilibrium even when downing a bottle of vodka at breakfast, had his greatest success collaborating with Brooks and . Ross makes a case for it as a stinging satire of U. Even in his last, depressing patch there were bright spots, notably his mentoring of an eternally appreciative David Weddle, who has gone on to write and produce episodes of Deep Space NineBattlestar Galacticaand CSI. His best source is the man himself—candid, introspective, and self-deprecating notes Feldman left for a planned autobiography provide a strong foundation. Ross as well deftly recreates the vanished worlds of British theater and TV that loosed Marty Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend on an unsuspecting planet. In short, a fine tribute to a comedy king. He's also a member of the Drama Desk theatrical critics society in New York. Press ESC to close. November 17, 3 Min Read. Which you can read while looking up choice bits of Feldmania on YouTube. Book ReviewsBooks. Show Comments. Share Article:. View All Articles. Book Review: Deanna M. Marty Feldman - Wikipedia

He quickly became a celebrity in the United Kingdom. Feldman went on to appear in films such as The Bed Sitting Room and Every Home Should Have Onethe latter of which was one of the most popular comedies at the British box office Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend He died in of a heart attack on the set of in Mexico City. He recalled his childhood as "solitary". Feldman suffered from thyroid disease and developed Graves' ophthalmopathycausing his eyes to protrude and become misaligned. A childhood injury, a car crash, a boating accident, and reconstructive eye surgery may also have contributed to his appearance. But this way I'm a novelty. Leaving school at 15, Feldman worked at the Dreamland funfair in Margate[9] but had dreams of a career as a jazz trumpeterand performed in the first group in which tenor saxophonist Tubby Hayes was a member. Although his early performing career was undistinguished, Feldman became part of a comedy act — Morris, Marty and Mitch — who made their first television Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend on the BBC series Showcase in April InFeldman first met while both were working as performers, and with Took, he eventually formed an enduring writing partnership which lasted until This work placed Feldman and Took 'in the front rank of comedy writers', according to . Feldman then became the chief writer and script editor on — With John Law, he co-wrote the much-shown "Class" sketchin which John CleeseRonnie Barker and faced the audience, with their descending order of height, suggesting their relative social status as upper class Cleesemiddle class Barker and working class Corbett. The television sketch comedy series At Last the Show Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend Feldman's profile as a performer. His character in At Last the Show was often called Mr. Pest, according to Cleese. The second series in was retitled It's Marty this title being retained for the DVD release of the series. InFeldman gave evidence in favour of the defendants in the obscenity trial for Oz magazine. This vehicle lasted for just one series. InDennis Main Wilson produced a short BBC sketch series for Feldman titled Marty Back Together Again — a reference to reports about the star's health — but it never captured the impact of the earlier series. Marty proved popular enough with an international audience the first series winning the Golden Rose Award at Montreux to launch a film career. Many lines in were improvised. Wilder says he had Feldman in mind when he wrote the part. He also guest-starred in "Arabian Nights", an episode of in which he was teamed up with several characters, especially Cookie Monsterwith whom he shared a playful cameo comparing their eyes side by side. Politically, Feldman was described as an 'avowed socialist ' [19] telling one interviewer 'I'm a socialist by conviction, if not by lifestyle' [20] and another, 'I'm a socialist from way back, but in order to pay my back taxes I have to live in America to earn enough money to pay the back tax I owe to the socialist government that I voted in. An exception was when during a promotional tour for The Last Remake of Beau Gestehe Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend the campaign led by Anita Bryant against homosexuality. Feldman was a vegetarian. In a interview, when asked how long he had practised this, he stated: 'I was about five and a half or six when I converted; I'm forty-three now, so it's been approximately thirty-eight years. Feldman died from a heart attack, [11] in a hotel room in Mexico Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend on 2 December at age 48, during the making of the film Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend ; the film was subsequently dedicated to him. On the DVD commentary of Young Frankenstein, cites factors that may have contributed to Feldman's death: 'He sometimes smoked half a carton five packs of cigarettes daily, drank copious amounts of black coffee, and ate a diet rich in eggs and dairy products. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the actor. For the football player, see Marty Feldman American football. East LondonEngland. Mexico CityMexico. Lauretta Sullivan. BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 18 November Retrieved 5 July Edinburgh University Press. New York Daily News. Retrieved 30 August Feldman, Martin Alan [Marty] — and scriptwriter. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. BBC Two. The New York Times. . Archived from the original on 19 November Archived from the original on 4 May Retrieved 9 January The Kettering 4. Archived from the original on 10 August Los Angeles Times. Titan Books. The Vegetarians. Brookline, MA: Autumn Press. Biography portal. Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote. Feldman in The Bed Sitting Room. Every Home Should Have One. The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins. The Last Remake of Beau Geste. Slapstick of Another Kind. At Last the Show. The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine. The Flip Wilson Show. Wikiquote has quotations related to: Marty Feldman. Book Review: "Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend"

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Marty Feldman by Robert Ross. Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend writer, director, performer and true pioneer of his art, Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend died aged only His name was Marty Feldman, and here, at last, is the first ever biography. Beginning in the dying days of variety theatre, he went from the behind the scenes scriptwriting triumphs of and The Frost Report to onscreen stardom in At Last the Show and his own hit series Marty. That led to transatlantic success, his work with Mel Brooks, and a five- picture deal to write and direct his own movies. From his youth as a tramp on the streets of London, to the height of his fame in America — where he encountered everyone from Orson Welles to Kermit the Frog, before his Hollywood dream became a nightmare — this is the fascinating story of a key figure in the history of comedy, fully told for the first time. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. Published October 25th by Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend Books first published January 1st More Details Other Editions 7. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Marty FeldmanMarty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Jun 12, Debbie Zapata rated it it was ok Shelves: douglaspre I also have fuzzy memories of seeing him on various shows on television before that. But I never knew much about him except that he was from England. This book introduced me to the real Marty Feldman: the street-wise kid who quit or was expelled from 13 schools before running away from home at age fifteen to live what was then known as a bohemian life in France. The jazz musician who knew he could not play well but loved the lifestyle. The poet. The artist. The carnival sideshow actor. The professional book thief. He stole books and took them to his boss, who paid him a percentage, then sold them. This is how Marty began to appreciate reading. He liked Rabelais, Cervantes, and Evelyn Waugh among others. And the writer. Feldman became one of the most popular comedy writers in Great Britain, writing scripts for both radio and television for years, then beginning to find his place in front of the camera as well, until he eventually starred in his own show. He lived at a hysterically fast and unhealthy pace; and it was that pace and 8 packs of cigarettes a day that caused him to develop Graves' Disease, which resulted in what became his trademark Like most comics, he felt as though he did not really belong, was not understood. He seemed to be a mixture of a gentle soul, anxious for love and attention, and an egotistic artiste. An alcoholic, a recreational drug user, a complex person trying to cope. This was Marty Feldman. It all caught up to him at age 48 when he died of a massive heart attack while filming the movie Yellowbeard. Feldman's Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend was fascinating, but I admit I skimmed through many of the chapters of this book. Anyone more familiar with British television of the 50's and 60's would not skim, but for me there were too many names dropped that meant nothing, and too much focus on contract negotiations and other aspects of the business side of Marty's world at that point. And while I learned details about the man, I never really felt that he came to life here, not the way subjects of other biographies usually do. I'm not sure just why that is; the author was sympathetic to Marty and certainly included plenty of information, but somehow the timing was off for me. I did manage to find this nifty youtube video of The Monster Sketch from Feldman's early days, Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend watching it brought him a bit more into focus. Maybe that is the secret to understanding Marty View all 4 comments. Feb 19, F. To be a good biographer, one has to be a critical friend. One has to acknowledge flaws, recognise that not everything the subject did had merit, be ready to challenge those set in stone stories the subject told about their life. As a comedian who was falling of fame himself, this was clearly a project which would have had resonance with him. And perhaps another biographer could have latched on to a detail like that and written a much better work — by acknowledging the brilliant moments and the great work, but zeroing in on how it all went wrong. That would be a better biography, a more human biography. L'autore ha fatto ricerche. Tante ricerche. E non si approfondisce. Non che l'autore non ci provi, eh? E' solo che non gli viene proprio bene, quando si tratta di parlare della persona Feldman. Cerca di far empatizzare, cerca di mostrarne il lato umano, ma non ci riesce. Tutto troppo asettico, tutto troppo distante. Dec 12, Douglas Lord rated it liked it. Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudesthe online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal. May 09, Pam Keevil rated it really liked it. A very detailed account of Marty Feldman's career from his rise as a writer on programs like the Billy Cotton Band Show and Educating Archie- staples of listening to the radio Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend my parents as a small child. I never realized he was very much part of the top team of writers on so many shows. It was good to be reminded of the sketches where he's Bishop of the Train, with the monster in the wicker basket and the gnome who wants a mortgage on a property in Dingly Dell. Brilliant stuff. There was l A very detailed account of Marty Feldman's career from his rise as a writer on programs like the Billy Cotton Band Show and Educating Archie- staples of listening to the radio with my parents as a small child. There was less about his personal life but that is fine; there was enough to get a flavor of his life and the challenges he encountered. What pity he died so young. I wonder what he would be writing now? I bei vecchi tempi sono belli solo quando sono passati. Le notti passate dove di Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend dovevi legare gli scarponi alla branda per evitare che te li fregassero. E anche la giacca e i pantaloni finivano con te sotto le lenzuola se volevi ritrovarli la mattina successiva. Tra le varie esperienze dopo il terzo rimpatrio forzoso dalla Francia, anche una, breve ma significativa, come operaio di catena in una fabbrica che realizzava scarponi. Apr 22, Tlingit added it Shelves: don-t-ever-want-to-read. So far the writing is unclear in that certain terms that are not in use lately aren't explained well. I have to guess at what is being written about. And the inconsistencies like petty crime was in Marty's blood and yet he wasn't cut out to be villain; they don't make sense to me. So far these things are making it distracting to get into his story. The shame is it sounds like an interesting time Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend I can't understand half the story for the poorly described detail and the writing. I give up. I th So far the writing is unclear in that certain terms that are not in use lately aren't explained well. I thought this would be an interesting story but it's gotten into tedious details of his television writing career that I'm not interested in. I think I just don't know enough about Marty Feldman and I am even less interested in English life to care to look up the many expressions in this book. A quarter of the way into the book, what a shame.