The Pythons consolidated their status as comedy stars with a series of sold–out shows at New York’s City Center in 1976.
It was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. A hilarious skewering of the Arthurian legend, it was directed by Jones and Gilliam, its low budget funded by a roll call of rock stars.
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Just as production of the TV series was winding down (Cleese had announced his intention to withdraw from the show), they shot ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. The group had wanted to further explore the creative opportunities of feature films. Other PBS stations followed suit, providing an eager fan base for the group's second movies, released in early 1975. Sparked by FM radio broadcasts of the Pythons' records, imports of the books and clips shown on TV, interest in the group grew in the United States until, in 1974, public television station KERA-TV in Dallas, Texas, became the first to air ‘Monty Python's Flying Circus’.
The Pythons received a similarly strong welcome when they performed live on stage, on tours of England and Canada, and finally at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The movie, a remounted collection of sketches, received a surprisingly strong response in England, despite the familiarity of the material from the original TV broadcasts. In 1971 the Pythons' first film, ‘And Now for Something Completely Different’, was produced as a means of introducing the group to American audiences, particularly the college crowd. In the days before home video, it was through their books and records that fans were able to relive and memorise their favourite Python moments. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of these items. (‘Matching Tie and Handkerchief’ was the first three-sided record album).
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At the same time they also released a string of hugely-popular vinyl albums, masterfully seizing the full imaginative potential of the audio medium. Its follow-up, ‘The Brand New Monty Python Bok’, amassed advance sales of over 100,000. The team's ‘Big Red Book’ (published, with a blue cover, in 1971) sold out its initial print run within a week. They both mined their prodigious television output and created new material that was as subversive as their TV scripts. In addition to 45 episodes of ‘Flying Circus’, the Pythons produced inventive work in other media (including record albums and books). Performed by the cast in German, it was so well-received, it led to the Python team returning in 1972 to record a second special (this time in English). The series soon gained acclaim outside the U.K., with a specially-made episode receiving the Silver Rose of Montreux, and an invitation to make a program for German television, titled ‘Monty Python’s Fliegender Zirkus’. Over the next few years the show received three BAFTA awards, including Best Light Entertainment Programme, and two special awards for its writing–performance, and for Gilliam's graphics. The iconic BBC globe was regularly hijacked, with voice-over announcers heard eating or engaged in tortured personal crises in the background. But they also frequently subverted the very grammar of television itself – for example, the opening titles might appear halfway through an episode, or the end title crawl would unspool at the very beginning. The Pythons’ gleefully deconstructed the very medium of television there were parodies of documentaries, game shows, commercials and chat-show interviews. on a Sunday night, sandwiched between ‘Omnibus’ and the weather. Their approach to comedy would be unpredictable, aggressive and irreverent, each episode a thirty-minute stream-of-consciousness, reflecting the revolutionary times of the late ‘60s.Ĭoinciding with the arrival of colour television, ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ made its debut on BBC1 on October 5, 1969, at 10:55 p.m. The team all agreed that they wanted to overturn the conventions of traditional sketch comedy – sketches with a beginning, middle and end, punchlines, blackouts, and topical gags.
Since 1966, five of the Pythons-to-be had all been writing and performing in numerous eclectic comedy shows, including ‘The Frost Report’, ‘At Last the 1948 Show’ and ‘Do Not Adjust Your Set’ – the last of which featured Gilliam’s highly-original cut-out animations, which would become integral to Monty Python’s unique style. Monty Python was born in May 1969, at the Light of Kashmir tandoori restaurant in Hampstead, where five Brits (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin) and an American (animator Terry Gilliam) first sat down to discuss working together on a new BBC comedy series.
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