Peter Edward Cook was an English comedian, actor, satirist, playwright and screenwriter. He was the leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishment comedic movement that emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s.
Dudley Stuart John Moore CBE was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer. Moore first came to prominence in the UK as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He was one of the four writer-performers in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe from 1960 that created a boom in satiric comedy. With a member of that team, Peter Cook, Moore collaborated on the BBC television series Not Only... But Also. As a popular double act, Moore's buffoonery contrasted with Cook's deadpan monologues. They jointly received the 1966 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance and worked together on other projects until the mid-1970s, by which time Moore had settled in Los Angeles to concentrate on his film acting.
Beyond the Fringe was a British comedy stage revue written and performed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore. It debuted at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival and went on to play in London's West End and then in America, both on tour and on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s. Hugely successful, it is widely regarded as seminal to the "satire boom", the rise of satirical comedy in 1960s Britain.
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation. Sketch comedy is a genre within American television that includes a multitude of schemes and identities.
Alan Bennett is an English playwright, author, actor and screenwriter. Over his entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George (1994). In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.
The Cambridge Footlights, commonly referred to simply as Footlights, is a student sketch comedy troupe located in Cambridge, England. Footlights was founded in 1883, and is one of Britain's oldest student sketch comedy troupes. The comedy society is run by the students of Cambridge University.
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.
The Odd Couple is a play by Neil Simon. Following its premiere on Broadway in 1965, the characters were revived in a successful 1968 film and 1970s television series, as well as several other derivative works and spin-offs. The plot concerns two mismatched roommates: the neat, uptight Felix Ungar and the slovenly, easygoing Oscar Madison. Simon adapted the play in 1985 to feature a pair of female roommates in The Female Odd Couple. An updated version of the 1965 show appeared in 2002 with the title Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple.
Bedazzled is a 1967 British comedy DeLuxe Color film directed and produced by Stanley Donen in Panavision format. It was written by comedian Peter Cook and starred both Cook and his comedy partner Dudley Moore. It is a comic retelling of the Faust legend, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s. The Devil (Cook) offers an unhappy young man (Moore) seven wishes in return for his soul, but twists the spirit of the wishes to frustrate the man's hopes.
Not Only... But Also is a BBC British sketch comedy show starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore that aired in three series between 1964 and 1970.
E. L. Wisty was a fictional character created and played by the comedian Peter Cook on and off throughout his career. A bland, monotonal know-it-all, Wisty usually appeared in monologues, or in two-handed sketches in which he bores the other person. According to British comedy scholar Roger Wilmut, "The striking thing about E. L. Wisty was that he never smiled—Cook managed to keep a straight face throughout, despite the audience laughter."
The satire boom was the output of a generation of British satirical writers, journalists and performers at the beginning of the 1960s. The satire boom is often regarded as having begun with the first performance of Beyond the Fringe on 22 August 1960 and ending around December 1963 with the cancellation of the BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was. The figures most closely identified with the satire boom are Peter Cook, John Bird, John Fortune, David Frost, Dudley Moore, Bernard Levin and Richard Ingrams. Many figures who found celebrity through the satire boom went on to establish subsequently more serious careers as writers including Alan Bennett (drama), Jonathan Miller (polymathic), and Paul Foot.
Dame Esmerelda Cicely Courtneidge, was an Australian-born British actress, comedian and singer. The daughter of the producer and playwright Robert Courtneidge, she was appearing in his productions in the West End by the age of 16, and was quickly promoted from minor to major roles in his Edwardian musical comedies.
Derek and Clive was a double act of comedic characters created by Dudley Moore (Derek) and Peter Cook (Clive) in the 1970s. The performances were captured on the records Derek and Clive (Live) (1976), Derek and Clive Come Again (1977), and Derek and Clive Ad Nauseam (1978), as well as in a film documentary, Derek and Clive Get the Horn (1979). Upon release, more than 100,000 copies of Derek and Clive (Live) were sold in the United Kingdom.
The Oxford Revue is a comedy group primarily featuring students from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University, England. Founded in the early 1950s, The Oxford Revue has produced many prominent comedians, actors and satirists. The Revue writes, produces and performs several shows each term in the pubs and theatres around Oxford, as well as touring to cities in the United Kingdom and performing a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival every year.
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer is a 1970 British satirical film directed by Kevin Billington, and starring Peter Cook, Vanessa Howard and John Cleese. It was co-written by Cook, Cleese, Graham Chapman and Billington. The film was devised and produced by David Frost under the pseudonym "David Paradine".
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 1978 British comedy film spoofing the 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It starred Peter Cook as Sherlock Holmes and Dudley Moore as Dr. Watson. A number of other well-known British comedy actors appeared in the film including Terry-Thomas, Kenneth Williams and Denholm Elliott.
Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, and then in twenty-four sequels by Burroughs and numerous more by other authors. The character proved immensely popular and quickly made the jump to other media, first and most notably to comics and film.
John Bassett is the person credited with putting together the talent for the Edinburgh International Festival revue, Beyond the Fringe, in 1960.
"A Trip to the Moon" is a 1964 television science fiction comedy film, produced as an episode of the CBS series Chronicle. The script was written by Jonathan Miller and Robert Goldman, based on Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon. All characters are portrayed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Miller, and Dudley Moore, who had first worked together in the revue Beyond the Fringe.
