Related Research Articles
Peter Sellers was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show, featured on a number of hit comic songs and became known to a worldwide audience through his many film roles, among them Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series.
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan was an Irish actor, comedian, writer, musician, poet, and playwright. The son of an Irish father and an English mother, Milligan was born in British Colonial India, where he spent his childhood, relocating in 1931 to live and work the majority of his life in the United Kingdom. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg.
The Goon Show is a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme. The first series, broadcast from 28 May to 20 September 1951, was titled Crazy People; subsequent series had the title The Goon Show.
Eric Sykes was an English radio, stage, television and film writer, comedian, actor, and director whose performing career spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, John Antrobus, and Johnny Speight. Sykes first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, most notably through his collaboration on The Goon Show scripts. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he appeared with Hattie Jacques in several popular BBC comedy television series.
Richard Lester Liebman is an American retired film director based in the United Kingdom.
Valentine Dyall was an English character actor. He worked regularly as a voice actor, and was known for many years as "The Man in Black", the narrator of the BBC Radio horror series Appointment with Fear.
Terry Southern was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style. Part of the Paris postwar literary movement in the 1950s and a companion to Beat writers in Greenwich Village, Southern was also at the center of Swinging London in the 1960s and helped to change the style and substance of American films in the 1970s. He briefly wrote for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s.
Graham William Stark was an English comedian, actor, writer and director.
John Bluthal was a Polish-born Australian actor and comedian, noted for his six-decade career internationally in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. He started his career during the Golden Age of British Television, where he was best known for his comedy work in the UK with Spike Milligan, and for his role as Manny Cohen in the television series Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width. In later years, he was known to television audiences as the bumbling Frank Pickle in The Vicar of Dibley. At 85 he played Professor Herbert Marcuse in the Coen brothers' film Hail, Caesar! (2016).
Casino Royale is a 1967 spy parody film originally distributed by Columbia Pictures featuring an ensemble cast. It is loosely based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, the first novel to feature the character James Bond. The film stars David Niven as the "original" Bond, Sir James Bond 007. Forced out of retirement to investigate the deaths and disappearances of international spies, he soon battles the mysterious Dr. Noah and SMERSH. The film's tagline: "Casino Royale is too much... for one James Bond!" refers to Bond's ruse to mislead SMERSH in which six other agents are pretending to be "James Bond", namely, baccarat master Evelyn Tremble ; millionaire spy Vesper Lynd ; Bond's secretary Miss Moneypenny ; Bond's daughter with Mata Hari, Mata Bond ; and British agents Coop and The Detainer.
Ghost in the Noonday Sun is a 1974 British comedy film directed by Peter Medak starring Peter Sellers, Anthony Franciosa and Spike Milligan. The film suffered a difficult production due to Sellers's erratic behavior and was not theatrically released. Medak described the film as "the biggest disaster of my life" in 2016.
David William Frederick Lodge was an English character actor.
Produced by George Martin is a 2001 various artists compilation box set of tracks produced by Sir George Martin. It is also the title of a documentary film on George Martin co-produced by the BBC's Arena team and released in 2012 by Eagle Rock Entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray.
The Magic Christian is a 1969 British satirical farce black comedy film directed by Joseph McGrath and starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, with appearances by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Raquel Welch, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Richard Attenborough and Roman Polanski. It was loosely adapted from the 1959 comic novel The Magic Christian by the American author Terry Southern, who co-wrote the screenplay adaptation with McGrath. The film also features pre-Monty Python appearances of John Cleese (credited) and an uncredited Graham Chapman, who had jointly written an earlier version of the film script.
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With a line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are commonly regarded as the most influential band of all time. Between 1964 and 1970, they appeared in five major motion pictures, beginning with A Hard Day's Night (1964) and ending with Let It Be (1970). From late 1965 to 1969, the group also appeared in several promotional films for their singles, which have been credited with anticipating music videos and the rise of MTV in the 1980s.
John Arthur Antrobus is an English playwright and screenwriter. He has written extensively for stage, screen, TV and radio, including the epic World War II play, Crete and Sergeant Pepper at the Royal Court. He authored the children's book series Ronnie, which includes Help! I am a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory.
The Great McGonagall is a 1974 British comedy film directed by Joseph McGrath and starring Spike Milligan in the title role, Peter Sellers as Queen Victoria and Julia Foster as Mrs McGonagall. It is a humorous biopic of the Scottish poet William McGonagall that includes several of McGonagall's actual poems, his appearing in the title role of Macbeth and his "improvement" of the Bard's plot, his pilgrimage to Balmoral Castle, the attempted assassination of Queen Victoria by Roderick McLean and a tribute to McGonagall from Lt Frederick Rollo of the Royal Scots in Zululand.
The British actor and comedian Peter Sellers (1925–1980) performed in many genres of light entertainment, including film, radio and theatre. He appeared in the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show, recorded a number of hit comic songs and became known internationally through his many film characterisations, among them Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series. The filmmakers John and Roy Boulting described him as "the greatest comic genius [Britain] has produced since Charles Chaplin".
Julian Chagrin is a British-Israeli comedy actor. He is the husband of actress and comedian Rolanda Chagrin.
Peter Randolph Eton was a producer for BBC radio and television. He was invalided out of the navy after being wounded during the Dunkirk evacuation and joined the BBC.
References
- ↑ "The British Entertainment History Project | Joe McGrath |".
- ↑ Lewis, Roger (1995). The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. London: Arrow Books. ISBN 0-09-974700-6. 1108 pp. Published in the U.S. via Applause Books This comprehensive biography contains multiple reference to Milligan and McGrath.
- ↑ Ventham, Maxine (2002). "Joe McGrath". Spike Milligan: His Part in Our Lives. London: Robson. pp. 86–91. ISBN 1-86105-530-7.
- ↑ Rodriguez, Robert (2012). Revolver: How the Beatles Reimagined Rock 'n' Roll. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books. pp. 159–60. ISBN 978-1-61713-009-0.
