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| Group Madness: The Making Of Yellowbeard | |||
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DVD: $12.00
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Directed By: Michael Mileham & Phil Schuman
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Release Date: 2007-05-15
Running Time: 0:47
Content Rating: PG (Parental Guidance)
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DVD Region: All Regions
Media Format: NTSC-DVD
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Audio Language(s): English
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Genres: Comedy >> International :: Documentary >> Comedy :: Comedy >> Intellectual Humor Influences: Holy Grail, Mad Mad Mad Mad World, The Ruttles, This Is Spinal Tap // Monty Python's Life Of Brian |
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RARE AND FUNNY FILM: Mike Medavoy said "Group Madness is funnier than the movie (Yellowbeard)". When "Yellowbeard" was announced in pre-production filmmakers Michael Mileham and Phil Schuman were looking to make a behind the scenes film with a "hook". They got the "hook" and the biggest collection of wacky comics ever assembled since "Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". The filmmakers negotiated unprecedented terms that allowed complete access to the stars anywhere anytime and first class accommodations with the stars. What happened was an amazing intimacy with the stars resulting in a remarkable film. The film contains an original song written and performed by Harry Nilsson. In the few showings of this film, great praise was given by some notable people.
This is a must see film at a low price. Enjoy
Cheech" is derived from chicharron, a spicy fried pork skin snack.
His father is a 30-year veteran of the LAPD.
Resides in San Francisco's Seacliff neighborhood
Speaks fluent Spanish.
Is a brother of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity
Hated golf until he co-starred in Tin Cup (1996) ; now is a avid golfer
Is among the top collectors of Mexican and Mexican-American art, having put together at least one book on the subject and supported the development of Chicano art on the West Coast.
Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. Pg. 104-105 (article "Cheech and Chong"). New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387
He was the first Celebrity Jeopardy Champion.
Has worked with director Robert Rodriguez seven times starting with Desperado (1995), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Spy Kids (2001) , Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002) , Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) , Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003) and Grindhouse (2007).
Owns and plays Taylor guitars.
Majored in English at Calfornia State University Northridge.
Played in the 2005 All-Star Cup golf tournament, dubbed the 'Celebrity Ryder Cup', at Newport, Wales, UK.
Mexican accent.
Former guitarist of the 1960s interracial sextet, Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers. He also co-wrote the group's biggest hit, "Does Your Mama Know About Me."
Has a stand-up comic act with his wife Shelby. They frequently perform to sold-out crowds. [2001]
Has two children with first wife Maxine: daughters Rae Dawn (born 1961) and Robbie (born 1965). He also has three children with second wife Shelby: daughter Precious (born 1968, while he was still married to first wife Maxine), and sons Paris (born 1974) and Gilbraun (born 1980).
His father is Chinese, mother is Scots-Irish.
Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. Pg. 104-105 (article "Cheech and Chong"). New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387
True to his comedy image, Tommy and his family ran Nice Dreams Enterprises, an internet company that sells marijuana bongs and pipes. He was arrested in 2003 on federal drug paraphernalia charges and sentenced in September of that year. He will spend 9 months in jail and pay around $120,000 in fines.The only person of the 55 arrested during the US Drug Enforcement Administration's "Operation Pipe Dreams" to serve time in prison.
Originally considered for the part of Shenzi alongside Cheech Marin in The Lion King (1994). But the directors couldn't get hold of Chong, So the part went to Whoopi Goldberg.
Shared the stage with Producer/Actor Anthony Begonia for an East Meets West event in Little Tokyo.
His son Marcus is also from his first wife and was born in 1967.
A bold, blunt instrument of hatred and violence at the onset of his film career, Peter Boyle recoiled from that repugnant, politically incorrect "working class" image to eventually play gruff, gentler bears and even comedy monsters in a career that lasted four decades. He was born on October 18, 1935, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, but eventually moved to Philadelphia where his father, Peter Sr., was a sought-after local TV personality and children's show host. Following a solid Irish-Catholic upbringing (he attended a Catholic high school), Peter was a sensitive youth and joined the Christian Brothers religious order at one point while attending La Salle University in Philadelphia. He left the monastery after only a few years when he "lost" his calling.
Bent on an acting career, Boyle initially studied with guru Uta Hagen in New York. The tall (6'2"), hulking, prematurely bald actor wannabe struggled through a variety of odd jobs (postal worker, waiter, bouncer) while simultaneously building up his credits on stage and waiting for that first big break. Things started progressing for him after appearing in the national company of "The Odd Couple" in 1965 and landing TV commercials on the sly. In the late 60s he joined Chicago's Second City improv group and made his Broadway debut as a replacement for Peter Bonerz in Paul Sills' "Story Theatre" (1971) (Sills was the founder of Second City). Peter's breakout film role did not come without controversy as the hateful, hardhat-donning bigot-turned-murderer Joe (1970) in a tense, violence-prone film directed by John G. Avildsen. The role led to major notoriety, however, and some daunting supporting parts in T.R. Baskin (1971), Slither (1973) and as Robert Redford's calculating campaign manager in The Candidate (1972). During this time his political radicalism found a visible platform after joining Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland on anti-war crusades, which would include the anti-establishment picture Steelyard Blues (1973). This period also saw the forging of a strong friendship with Beatle John Lennon.
Destined to be cast as monstrous undesirables throughout much of his career, he played a monster of another sort in his early film days, and thus avoided a complete stereotype as a film abhorrent. His hilarious, sexually potent Frankenstein's Monster in the cult Mel Brooks spoof Young Frankenstein (1974) saw him in a sympathetic and certainly more humorous vein. His creature's first public viewing, in which Boyle shares an adroit tap-dancing scene with "creator" Gene Wilder in full Fred Astaire regalia, was a show-stopping audience pleaser. Late 70s filmgoers continued to witness Boyle in seamy, urban settings with brutish roles in Taxi Driver (1976) and Hardcore (1979). At the same time he addressed several TV mini-movie roles with the same brilliant darkness such as his Senator Joe McCarthy in Tail Gunner Joe (1977) (TV), for which he received an Emmy nomination, and his murderous, knife-wielding Fatso in the miniseries remake of "From Here to Eternity" (1979) (mini).
While the following decade found Peter in predominantly less noteworthy filming and a short-lived TV series lead as remote cop "Joe Bash" (1986), the 90s brought him Emmy glory (for a guest episode on "X Files"). Despite a blood clot-induced stroke in 1990 that impaired his speech for six months, he ventured on and capped his enviable career on TV wielding funny but crass one-liners in the Archie Bunker mold on the long-running sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond" (1996). A major Emmy blunder had Boyle earning seven nominations for his Frank Barrone character without a win, the only prime player on the show unhonored. He survived a heart attack while on the set of "Everybody Loves Raymond" in 1999, but managed to return full time until its cancellation in 2005.
Following a superb turn as Billy Bob Thornton's unrepentantly racist father in the sobering Oscar-winner Monster's Ball (2001), the remainder of his films were primarily situated in frivolous comedy fare such as The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002), The Santa Clause 2 (2002), Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006), typically playing cranky curmudgeons. Boyle died of multiple myeloma (bone-marrow cancer) and heart disease at New York Presbyterian Hospital in 2006, and was survived by his wife Lorraine and two children. He was 71.
He was one of five comedians pictured on a set of UK postage stamps issued 23 April 1998. His caricatured likeness was on the 63p stamp. The other comedians honored were Tommy Cooper (20p), Eric Morecambe (26p), Joyce Grenfell (37p), and Les Dawson (43p).
Founder and proprietor (under pseudonym Lord Gnome) of British satirical magazine 'Private Eye'
Was a member of the prestigious Cambridge University Footlights Club and, later, became President of the Footlights Club.
Ran the "The Establishment Club" in Greek Street, Soho, London from October 1961 - September 1962. The cradle of the 1960s satire boom.
Father was a diplomat.
Comic creations include E.L. Wisty and Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling.
Had two daughters with his first wife, Wendy Snowden: Lucy, born in 1964, and Daisy born in 1965. Daisy is an artist.
John Lennon once told Peter and his wife at the time, Wendy, that the song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds was written for their eldest daughter, Lucy. Although it has also been stated that the song was inspired by a picture that John Lennon's son, Julian had drawn of his childhood friend, Lucy.
He had his daughter Lucy appear in a sketch for Not Only, But Also during the 3rd episode of the series. Lucy was an infant at the time. The segment was "Incidents in the Life of my Uncle Arly" (an Edward Lear poem).
Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith, pg. 117-118. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387
He and his third wife Lin lived in separate homes 100 yards apart in Hampstead.
Voted greatest comdedian on all time in a poll of comedians. 2005.
Has won two Special Tony Awards: in 1963, along with his "Beyond the Fringe" co-stars Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore, "for their brilliance which has shattered all the old concepts of comedy," in a show that was recreated in a television version of the same title, Beyond the Fringe (1964) (TV); and in 1974, shared with co-author and co-star Dudley Moore for their show "Good Evening."
David Bowie is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of pop music. Born David Jones he changed his name to Bowie in the 60s, to avoid confusion with the then well-known Davy Jones (lead singer of The Monkees).
The 60s were not a happy period for Bowie, who remained a struggling artist awaiting his breakthrough. He dabbled in many different styles of music (without commercial success), and other art forms such as acting, mime, painting, and playwriting. He finally achieved his commercial breakthrough in 1969 with the song "Space Oddity", which was released at the time of the moon landing. Despite the fact that the literal meaning of the lyrics relates to an astronaut who is lost in space, this song was used by the BBC in their coverage of the moon landing, and this helped it become such a success. The album which followed "Space Oddity" and the two which followed (one of which included the song "The Man Who Sold The World", covered by Lulu and Nirvana) failed to produce another hit single, and Bowie's career appeared to be in decline. However, he made the first of many successful 'comebacks' in 1972 with 'Ziggy Stardust', a concept album about a space-age rock star. This album was followed by others in a similar vein, rock albums built around a central character and concerned with futuristic themes of Armageddon, gender dysfunction/confusion, as well as more contemporary themes such as the destructiveness of success and fame, and the dangers inherent in star worship. In the mid 70s, Bowie was a heavy cocaine abuser and sometime heroin user. In 1975, he changed tack. Musically, he released 'Young Americans', a soul (or plastic soul as he later referred to it) album. This produced his first number one hit in the US, 'Fame'. He also appeared in his first major film, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). With his different-colored eyes and skeletal frame, he certainly looked the part of an alien. The following year, he released 'Station to Station', containing some of the material he had written for the soundtrack to this film (which was not used). As his drug problem heightened, his behaviour became more erratic. Reports of his insanity started to appear, and he continued to waste away physically. He fled back to Europe, finally settling in Berlin, where he changed musical direction again and recorded three of the most influential albums of all time, an electronic trilogy with Brian Eno 'Low, Heroes and Lodger'. Towards the end of the 70s, he finally kicked his drug habit, and recorded the album many of his fans consider his best, the Japanese-influenced 'Scary Monsters'. Around this time, he played the Elephant Man on Broadway, to considerable acclaim.
The next few years saw something of a drop-off in his musical output as his acting career flourished, culminating in his acclaimed performance in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983). In 1983, he recorded 'Let's Dance', an album which proved an unexpected massive commercial success, and produced his second number 1 hit single in the US. The tour which followed, 'Serious Moonlight', was his most successful ever. Faced with this success on a massive scale, Bowie apparently attempted to 'repeat the formula' in the next two albums, with less success (and to critical scorn). Finally, in the late 80s, he turned his back on commercial success and his solo career, forming the hard rock band, Tin Machine, who had a deliberate limited appeal. By now, his acting career was in decline. After the comparative failure of Labyrinth (1986), the movie industry appears to have decided that Bowie was not a sufficient name to be a lead actor in a major movie, and since that date, most of his roles have been cameos or glorified cameos. He himself also seems to have lost interest in movie acting. Tin Machine toured extensively and released two albums, with little critical or commercial success.
In 1992, Bowie again changed direction and re-launched his solo career with "Black Tie White Noise", a 'wedding' album inspired by his recent marriage to Iman. To date, the 90s have been kinder to Bowie than the late 80s. He has released three albums to considerable critical acclaim and reasonable commercial success. In 1995, he renewed his working relationship with Brian Eno to record "Outside". After an initial hostile reaction from the critics, this album has now taken its place with his classic albums. In a career spanning four decades, Bowie has influenced the course of popular music several times and influenced several generations of musicians. His promotional videos in the 70s and 80s are regarded as ground-breaking, and as a live concert act, he is regarded as the most theatrical of them all.
John Cleese was born on October 27, 1939, in Weston-Super-Mare, England. He was born into a family of modest means, his father being an insurance salesman, but he was nonetheless sent off to private schools to obtain a good education. Here he was often tormented for his height, having reached a height of six feet by the age of twelve, and eventually discovered that being humorous could deflect aggressive behavior in others. He loved humor in and of itself, collected jokes, and, like many young Britons who would grow up to be comedians, was devoted to the radio comedy show, "The Goon Show," starring the legendary Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, and Harry Secombe.
Cleese did well in both sports and academics, but his real love was comedy. He attended Cambridge to read (study) Law, but devoted a great deal of time to the university's legendary Footlights group, writing and performing in comedy reviews, often in collaboration with future fellow Python Graham Chapman. Several of these comedy reviews met with great success, including one in particular which toured under the name "Cambridge Circus." When Cleese graduated, he went on to write for the BBC, then rejoined Cambridge Circus in 1964, which toured New Zealand and America. He remained in America after leaving Cambridge Circus, performing and doing a little journalism, and here met Terry Gilliam, another future Python.
Returning to England, he began appearing in a BBC radio series, "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again", based on Cambridge Circus. It ran for several years and also starred future 'Goodies' Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden. He also appeared, briefly, with Brooke-Taylor, Chapman & Marty Feldman in "At Last the 1948 Show" (1967), for television, and a series of collaborations with some of the finest comedy-writing talent in England at the time, some of whom - Eric Idle, Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Chapman - eventually joined him in Monty Python. These programs included "The Frost Report" (1966) and Marty Feldman's program _"Marty" (1966)_ . Eventually, however, the writers were themselves collected to be the talent for their own program, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969), which was originally to be a vehicle for Cleese but soon showed itself to be an ensemble program. Monty Python displayed a strange and completely absorbing blend of low farce and high-concept absurdist humor, and remains influential to this day.
After three seasons of the intensity of Monty Python, Cleese left the show, though he collaborated with one or more of the other Pythons for decades to come, including the Python movies released in the mid-70s to early 80s - Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), and The Meaning of Life (1983). Cleese and then-wife Connie Booth collaborated in the legendary television series "Fawlty Towers" (1975), as the sharp-tongued, rude, bumbling yet somehow lovable proprietor of a rundown English seaside hotel. Cleese apparently based this character on a proprietor he had met while staying with the other Pythons at a hotel in England. Only a dozen episodes were made, but each was truly hilarious, and he is still closely associated with this program to this day.
Meanwhile Cleese had established a production company, Video Arts, for clever business training videos in which he generally starred, which were and continue to be enormously successful in the English-speaking world. He continues to act prolifically in movies, including in the hit comedy A Fish Called Wanda (1988), in the Harry Potter series, and in the James Bond series as the new Q, starting with The World Is Not Enough (1999), in which he began as R before graduating to Q. Cleese also supplies his voice to numerous animated and video projects, and frequently does commercials.
Besides the infamous Basil Fawlty character, Cleese's other well-known trademark is his rendition of an English upper-class toff. He has a daughter with Booth and a daughter with his second wife, Barbara Trentham. He is currently married to Alice Faye Eichelberger. Education and learning are important elements of his life - he was Rector of the University of Saint Andrews from 1973 until 1976, and continues to be a professor at large of Cornell University in New York. Cleese lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Montypython Flyingcircus / Eric Spam Eggs and Chips Idle / Eric Whicker Whicker Idle / Eric C. Idleberg / Rice Lied / Monty Python / The Usual Lot
Graham Chapman was born on January 8, 1941 in Leicester, England while a Germain air raid was in progress. Graham's father was a chief police inspector and probably inspired the constables Graham often portrayed later in comedy sketches. Graham studied medicine in college and earned an M.D., but he practiced medicine for only a few years.
At Cambridge, he took part in a series of comedy revues and shortly after completing his medical studies at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Graham realized what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to perform comedy. In 1969, Graham along with school friends John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam formed the own comedy group called Monty Python. Their BBC TV series "Monty Python's Flying Circus," which aired a short while later was a an instant hit. Their often self-referential style of humor was delightfully original but completely accessible to most audiences in Great Britian.
Before the show appeared on public television in the U.S.A., many people assumed that Americans would find Monty Python much too British to consider it funny. But PBS never had a larger audience than when stations began to air it during the early 1970s. The classic routines have since become standard college humor.
So enduring was the Python humor that fans know entire sketches such as "The Pet Shop," "Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink," "Argument Clinic," and "Penguin on the Telly." Graham was a standout of the group with his tall, blond profile and his zany characters (one of the more memorable was Muriel Volestrangler, a vaguely military-type character who would stop a sketch because it was "much too silly").
Graham was openly gay long before it was socially acceptable, and was open about his long-term relationship with writer David Sherlock, who lived with him for 24 years. He even adopted and raised a teenage runaway named John Tomiczek. Graham played the title role in the movie Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) as well as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). By the late 1970s most of the Python members were pursuing independent movie projects and the group slowly faded into obscurity. In 1983 he co-wrote and starred in the movie Yellowbeard which received negative reviews.
In 1988, Graham began working on another series when his health began to decline. A longtime alcoholic, who suffered liver damage before he stopped drinking in 1977, Graham began to have trouble concentrating at work. In November 1988, a routine visit to a dentist revealed a malignant tumor on his tonsil which was surgically removed. A visit to the doctor revealed another tumor on his spine which had to be removed which confined him to a wheelchair. During most of 1989, he underwent a series of operations and radiation therapy but for every tumor that was found and removed, another would form either along his spine or in his throat. In his wheelchair, he attended the September 1989 taping for the Monthy Python's 20th anniversary special. But on October 1, he was hospitalized after a massive stroke which turned into a hemorrhage. He died at the age of 48 on 4 October, 1989 from complications of the stroke as well as throat and spinal cancer.
Madeline Kahn was born on September 29, 1942, in Boston, Massachusetts. She began her acting career in high school and went on to university where she trained as an opera singer and starred in several campus productions, ultimately earning a doctorate in her chosen field. Her finest years came in Paper Moon (1973) with Ryan O'Neal, which was followed the next year by Mel Brooks's outrageous Blazing Saddles (1974) as Lili Von Shtupp, a cabaret singer. She was so delightful in both that Madeline was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in both movies. In 1998, Madeline lent her voice to Gypsy in the wildly popular animated film A Bug's Life (1998). Tragically, on December 3, 1999, Madeline died of ovarian cancer in New York, a disease from which she suffered for about a year while she was a cast member of "Cosby" (1996). The accomplished stage and screen actress was just 57.
Great English actor of British and American films. Born in Yorkshire, attended Marlborough and Cambridge, where he discovered acting on a lark and abandoned a planned career as an architect. Following work in stock companies, he joined the Old Vic under the guidance of Sir Tyrone Guthrie and of Alexander Korda, who gave Mason at least one small film role in 1933, but fired him a few days into shooting. Mason remained in the theatre becoming a prominent stage actor, meanwhile getting first small, then rapidly larger roles in "quota quickies", minor films made to accommodate laws mandating a certain percentage of films shown in Britain to be British-made. Mason's talent for playing protagonists of a decidedly hard-bitten or melancholy stripe brought him from these minor films to a position as one of Britain's major film stars of the Forties. When, late in that decade, he came to America, he played somewhat more glamorous or heroic roles than he had been accustomed to in Britain, but he remained a dynamic and intelligent force on the screen. His tendency to take any job offered led him to have many unworthy credits on his resume, but throughout his career he remained a respected and powerful figure in the industry. His mellifluous voice and an uncanny ability to suggest rampant emotion beneath a face of absolute calm made him a fascinating performer to watch. He died of a heart attack in 1984 at his home in Switzerland.
On the Wogan chat show he said he refused the offers to play the second Doctor Who (played by Patrick Troughton) and Maigret (played by Rupert Davies).
He and Ian McKellen, who have both played Gandalf, also share the same middle name of Murray.
He was awarded the 1988 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre Award) Special Award.
Terry Gilliam's first casting choice for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988).
Made his professional debut in 1937 at the People's Palace, east London, playing Lodovico in "Othello". Later in the year he joined the repertory company of the Little Theatre in Bristol; it was here that he met his future wife, actress Eve Mortimer. They had one daughter.
He and brother Peter were educated at Brighton College.
Notable stage work for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and in London, at the Old Vic and in the West End. In addition to his many Shakespearean roles (As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night), Hordern performed in plays by Strindberg, Chekhov, Ibsen, Pinero, Pinter, Dürrenmatt, Albee, Alan Ayckbourn, David Mercer and Tom Stoppard. His King Lear is considered his most respected work, which he also played on the BBC.
"I am too old to die young, and too young to grow up," he told a reporter -- a week before he died. This beloved comedian, who poked fun at himself as well as others, was born Marty Feldman, on July 8, 1933, in London, England. The son of immigrants from Kiev, Marty spent his childhood in the poverty-stricken London East End and left school at the age of 15, hoping for a career as a jazz trumpeter (his appearance in a Variety show earned him the title "the worst trumpeter in the world"). He had just started his comedy career, as a writer for BBC radio programs and TV shows in the late 1950s, when he married Lauretta Sullivan in January 1959 (they would stay married until his death in 1982). There's a saying: "Your face is your fortune"; Marty had received a double-whammy. His nose was mangled in his youthful years in a boxing match; his walleyed orbs were the result of both a hyperactive thyroid and a botched operation after a car accident before his 30th birthday, in 1963. American audiences first saw Marty in "Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers" (1968), where he did comedy skits with Susan McIver and the Golddiggers. He appeared in a number of movies, his most-remembered role being that of Igor (pronounced: Eye-gor) in Young Frankenstein (1974). Besides acting, he made his directorial debut in The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977). Beloved and popular, it seemed Marty was to enjoy a long career in the entertainment field. However, he died of a massive heart attack, caused by shellfish food poisoning, while filming Yellowbeard (1983) in Mexico City, on December 2, 1982... he was only 49.
Lovely Susannah York, the gamin, blue-eyed, cropped blonde British actress, displayed a certain crossover star quality when she dared upon the Hollywood scene in the early 1960s. A purposefully intriguing, enigmatic and noticeably uninhibited talent, she was born Susannah Yolande Fletcher on January 9, 1941 (some sources list 1939) in London, but raised in a remote village in Scotland. Her parents divorced when she was around 6. Attending Moor College, she trained for acting at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, winning the Ronson Award for most promising student. She then performed classical repertory and pantomime in her early professional career. Making an impression on TV opposite Sean Connery in a production of _Crucible, The (1959) (TV)_ as Abigail Williams to his John Proctor, the moon-faced beauty progressed immediately to ingénue film roles, making her debut as the daughter of Alec Guinness in the classic war drama Tunes of Glory (1960). She emerged quickly as a versatile frontrunner with the sensitively handled coming-of age drama The Greengage Summer (1961), the more complex psychodrama Freud (1962), as a patient to Montgomery Clift's famed psychoanalyst, and the bawdy and robust 18th century tale Tom Jones (1963), with Susannah portraying the brazenly seductive Sophie, one of many damsels lusting after the bed-hopping rogue Albert Finney. She continued famously both here and in England in contemporary and period drama opposite the likes of Warren Beatty, William Holden, Paul Scofield and Dirk Bogarde.
Susannah had no trouble at all courting controversy in some of the film roles she went on to play. She gained special notoriety as the child-like Alice in her stark, nude clinches with severe-looking executive Coral Browne in the lesbian drama The Killing of Sister George (1968). A few years later she and Elizabeth Taylor traveled similar territory with Zee and Co. (1972). Acting awards also favored her at this time, winning the BAFTA film award as well as Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for her delusional Jean Harlow-like dance marathon participant in the grueling Depression-era film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Her mad scene in the shower with Oscar-winner Gig Young was particularly gripping and just one of many highlights in the acclaimed film. She also copped a Cannes Film Festival award for her performance in Images (1972) playing another troubled character barely coping with reality. On TV she was Emmy-nominated for her beautifully nuanced 'Jane Eyre' (1972) (TV)_ opposite George C. Scott's Rochester.
Susannah lost major ground in the late 70s perhaps in a continued pursuit of challengingly offbeat roles as opposed to popular mainstream work. The film adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971) opposite Rod Steiger and Jean Genet's The Maids (1974) with Glenda Jackson were not well-received, Other prime roles in such films as Gold (1974), Conduct Unbecoming (1975) which starred another famous York (Michael York), That Lucky Touch (1975), Sky Riders (1976) and The Shout (1978) were either overlooked or the films themselves were...or both. In the one popular movie series she appeared in, the box-office smashes Superman (1978) and sequel Superman II (1980), she had literally nothing to do as Lara, the wife of Marlon Brando's Jor-El and birth mother of the title superhero.
While Susannah continued to pour out a number of quality work assignments in films and TV, nothing helped recapture the glow of her star during the late 60s and early 70s. Wisely, she began extending her talents outside the realm of film acting. Marrying writer Michael Wells in 1960, she focused on her personal life raising their two children for a time. The couple divorced in 1980. In the 1970s she wrote the children's books "In Search of Unicorns" and "Lark's Castle". She also found time to direct on stage and wrote the screenplay to one of her film vehicles Falling in Love Again (1980). Falling In Love Again was photographed by Michael Mileham, Group Madness Driector. On stage she performed in such one-woman shows as "Independent State", 'Picasso's Women", "The Human Voice" and "The Loves of Shakespeare's Women", while entertaining such wide and varied theatre challenges as "Peter Pan" (title role), "Hamlet" (as Gertrude), "Camino Real", "The Merry Wives of Windosr", "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Private Lives", "Agnes of God" and the title role in "Amy's View".
At age 60+ and showing promise once again on film in a delightful cameo role in The Gigolos (2006), the legendary Susannah York is ripe for a major film comeback, perhaps in a similar vein to Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren. It's way past due.
Michael immigrated from England to the USA in 1953. He stayed with his godmother, Jessica Tandy. He served as a Marine with Mike 3/7 made famous by "A Face Of War" (documentary). He is the only British subject to receive three purple hearts in Vietnam. He became the protege of famed cinematographer, Lee Garmes. later he was friends and partners with Peter Cook and Graham Chapman (Python Founder). Known as a multi-talented filmmaker.
Michael immigrated from England to the USA in 1953. He stayed with his godmother, Jessica Tandy and her husband Hume Cronyn. He served as a Marine with Mike 3/7 made famous by "A Face Of War" (documentary). He is the only British subject to receive three purple hearts in Vietnam. He became the protege of famed cinematographer, Lee Garmes. later he was friends and partners with Peter Cook and Graham Chapman (Python Founder). Known as a multi-talented filmmaker. He photographed the first films of Michelle Pfieffer and is a pioneer in music videos.
Everybody Hates Chris
ichael immigrated from England to the USA in 1953. He stayed with his godmother, Jessica Tandy and her husband Hume Cronyn. He served as a Marine with Mike 3/7 made famous by "A Face Of War" (documentary). He is the only British subject to receive three purple hearts in Vietnam. He became the protege of famed cinematographer, Lee Garmes. later he was friends and partners with Peter Cook and Graham Chapman (Python Founder). Known as a multi-talented filmmaker. He photographed the first films of Michelle Pfieffer and is a pioneer in music videos.