Graham Chapman: Difference between revisions

Graham Chapman
Born	Graham Arthur Chapman
Other names	Gray Chapman
Years active	ca. 1960-1989
Partner	David Sherlock (1966 - 1989)

Graham Arthur Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was a British comedian, actor, writer, physician and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe. He was also the lead actor in their two narrative films, playing King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the title character in Monty Python's Life of Brian. He co-authored and starred in the film Yellowbeard.

Education

Chapman was educated at Melton Mowbray Grammar School and studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, he began writing comedy sketches with fellow student John Cleese. Chapman qualified as a medical doctor at the Barts Hospital Medical College, but never practised medicine professionally.

While at Cambridge, Chapman joined Footlights. His fellow members included Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, Tony Hendra, David Hatch, Jonathan Lynn, Humphrey Barclay, and Jo Kendall. Their revue A Clump of Plinths was so successful at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that they renamed it Cambridge Circus, and took the revue to the West End in London and later New Zealand and Broadway in September 1964. The revue appeared in October 1964 on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Before Python

Cleese and Chapman wrote professionally for the BBC during the 1960s, primarily for David Frost, but also for Marty Feldman. Chapman also contributed sketches to the BBC radio series I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and television programmes such as The Illustrated Weekly Hudd (starring Roy Hudd), Cilla Black, This is Petula Clark, and This is Tom Jones. Chapman, Cleese, and Brooke-Taylor then joined Feldman in the television comedy series At Last the 1948 Show. Chapman, and on occasion Cleese, also wrote for the long-running television comedy series Doctor in the House. Chapman also co-wrote several episodes with Bernard McKenna and David Sherlock.

Monty Python's Flying Circus

Main article: Monty Python's Flying Circus

Graham Chapman as The Colonel in Monty Python's Flying Circus

In 1969 Chapman and Cleese joined Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and American artist Terry Gilliam for the BBC television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus. He most often played characters with personalities close to his own: outwardly calm, authoritative figures barely concealing a manic unpredictability.

In David Morgan's 1999 book Monty Python Speaks, Cleese asserted that Chapman - although officially his co-writer for many of their sketches - contributed comparatively little in the way of direct writing. Rather, the Pythons have said that his biggest contribution in the writing room was an intuition as to what was funny. John Cleese said in an interview that one of Chapman's great attributes was "his weird takes on things." In writing sessions Chapman "would lob in an idea or a line from out in left field into the engine room, but he could never be the engine", Cleese said. In the "Dead Parrot Sketch", written mostly by Cleese, the frustrated customer was initially trying to return a faulty toaster to a shop. Chapman would ask "How can we make this madder?", and then came up with the idea that returning a dead Norwegian Blue parrot to a pet shop might make a more interesting subject than a toaster.

Chapman played the lead roles in the troupe's first two narrative feature films: Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian. Cleese complimented his writing partner by saying that he was "very possibly the best actor of all of us".

Post-Python career

In the late 1970s, Chapman moved to Los Angeles, where he guest-starred on many U.S. television shows, including The Hollywood Squares, Still Crazy Like a Fox, and the NBC sketch series The Big Show. Upon returning to England he became involved with the Dangerous Sports Club (an extreme sports club which introduced bungee jumping to a wide audience). He began a lengthy series of U.S. college tours in the 1980s, where he would tell the audience anecdotes about Monty Python, the Dangerous Sports Club, Keith Moon, and other subjects. His memoir, A Liar's Autobiography, was published in 1980 and, unusually for an autobiography, had five authors: Chapman, his partner David Sherlock, Alex Martin, David Yallop and Douglas Adams, who in 1977 was virtually unknown as a recent graduate fresh from Cambridge. Together they wrote a pilot for a TV series, Out of the Trees; it was aired in 1975, but never became a series. They also wrote a show for Ringo Starr, which was never made. Chapman mentored Adams, but they later had a falling out and did not speak for several years. It took years of planning and rewriting before he secured the funds to create Yellowbeard; The movie was finally released in 1983.

In 1988, Chapman appeared in the Iron Maiden video, "Can I Play with Madness". His last project was to have been a TV series called Jake's Journey. Although the pilot episode was made, there were difficulties selling the project. Following Chapman's death, there was no interest. Chapman was also to have played a guest role as a television presenter in the Red Dwarf episode "Timeslides", but died before filming was to have started.

In the years since Chapman's death, despite the existence of the "Graham Chapman Archive", only a few of his projects have actually been released. One of these projects is a play entitled O Happy Day, brought to life in 2000 by Dad's Garage Theatre Company in Atlanta, Georgia. Cleese and Palin assisted the theatre company in adapting the play.

Personal life

Chapman was a tall (6'2"/1.88 m), craggy pipe-smoker who enjoyed mountaineering and playing rugby. At the same time, he was highly eccentric and in later life open about his homosexuality.

Chapman was an alcoholic from his time in medical school. His drinking affected his performance on the TV recording set as well as on the set of Holy Grail, where he suffered from withdrawal symptoms including delirium tremens. He finally stopped drinking on Boxing Day 1977, having just irritated the other Pythons with an outspoken (and drunken) interview with the New Musical Express.

Chapman kept his homosexuality a secret until the mid 1970s when he famously came out on a chat show hosted by British jazz musician George Melly, becoming one of the first celebrities to do so. Several days later, he came out to a group of friends at a party held at his home in Belsize Park where he officially introduced them to his partner, David Sherlock, whom he had met in Ibiza in 1966. Chapman later told a story in his college tour that when he made his homosexuality public, a member of the television audience wrote to the Pythons to complain that she had heard a member of the team was gay, adding that the Bible said any man who lies with a man should be taken out and stoned. With fellow Pythons already aware of his sexual orientation, Eric Idle replied, "We've found out who it was and we've had him shot." Chapman said in his book Graham Crackers that this took place just before John Cleese left the show, and he wondered what the woman thought about his disappearance after getting Idle's response.

Chapman was a vocal spokesman for gay rights, and in 1972 he lent his support to the fledgling newspaper Gay News, which publicly acknowledged his financial and editorial support by listing him as one of its "special friends".

Among Chapman's closest friends were Keith Moon of The Who, singer Harry Nilsson, and Beatle Ringo Starr.

Before going sober, Chapman jokingly referred to himself as the British actress Betty Marsden, possibly because of Marsden's oft-quoted desire to die with a glass of gin in her hand. John Cleese used Marsden's name in his eulogy at Chapman's memorial service.

In 1971, Chapman and Sherlock adopted John Tomiczek as their son. Chapman met Tomiczek when the teenager was a runaway from Liverpool. After discussions with Tomiczek's father, it was agreed that Chapman would become Tomiczek's legal guardian. John later became Chapman's business manager. He died in 1992.

Death

Chapman died of a rare spinal cancer, which was diagnosed in November 1988 after his dentist found a growth on his tonsils. By September 1989 the cancer was declared incurable. He filmed scenes for the 20th anniversary of Monty Python that month, but was taken ill again on 1 October. Present when he died in a Maidstone hospice on the evening of 4 October 1989 were John Cleese, Michael Palin, David Sherlock, his brother John, and John's wife, although Cleese had to be led out of the room to deal with his grief. Terry Jones and Peter Cook had visited earlier that day. His death occurred one day before the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of Flying Circus; Jones called it “the worst case of party-pooping in all history."

Memorial tributes and services

A private memorial service to honor Chapman was held on the evening of 6 December, 1989 in the Great Hall at St Bartholomew's Hospital. Cleese delivered his eulogy:

Graham Chapman, co-author of the "Parrot Sketch", is no more.

He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He's kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky. And I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun.

Well, I feel that I should say: nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries.

And the reason I feel I should say this is he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw — threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as I was writing this:

"All right, Cleese," he was saying, "you're very proud of being the very first person ever to say 'shit' on British television; if this service is really for me, just for starters, I want you to become the first person ever, at a British memorial service, to say 'fuck'".

You see, the trouble is, I can't. If he were here with me now I would probably have the courage, because he always emboldened me. But the truth is, I lack his balls, his splendid defiance. And so I'll have to content myself instead with saying 'Betty Marsden...'

But bolder and less inhibited spirits than me follow today. Jones and Idle, Gilliam and Palin. Heaven knows what the next hour will bring in Graham's name. Trousers dropping, blasphemers on pogo sticks, spectacular displays of high-speed farting, synchronized incest. One of the four is planning to stuff a dead ocelot and a 1922 Remington typewriter up his own arse to the sound of the second movement of Elgar's cello concerto. And that's in the first half.

Because you see, Gray would have wanted it this way. Really. Anything for him but mindless good taste. And that's what I'll always remember about him — apart, of course, from his Olympian extravagance. He was the prince of bad taste. He loved to shock. In fact, Gray, more than anyone I knew, embodied and symbolized all that was most offensive and juvenile in Monty Python. And his delight in shocking people led him on to greater and greater feats. I like to think of him as the pioneering beacon that beat the path along which fainter spirits could follow.

Some memories. I remember writing the undertaker speech with him, and him suggesting the punch line, 'All right, we'll eat her, but if you feel bad about it afterwards, we'll dig a grave and you can throw up into it.' I remember discovering in 1969, when we wrote every day at the flat where Connie Booth and I lived, that he'd recently discovered the game of printing four-letter words on neat little squares of paper, and then quietly placing them at strategic points around our flat, forcing Connie and me into frantic last minute paper chases whenever we were expecting important guests.

I remember him at BBC parties crawling around on all fours, rubbing himself affectionately against the legs of gray-suited executives, and delicately nibbling the more appetizing female calves. Mrs Eric Morecambe remembers that too.

I remember his being invited to speak at the Oxford Union, and entering the chamber dressed as a carrot — a full length orange tapering costume with a large, bright green sprig as a hat — and then, when his turn came to speak, refusing to do so. He just stood there, literally speechless, for twenty minutes, smiling beatifically. The only time in world history that a totally silent man has succeeded in inciting a riot.

I remember Graham receiving a Sun newspaper TV award from Reggie Maudling. Who else! And taking the trophy falling to the ground and crawling all the way back to his table, screaming loudly, as loudly as he could. And if you remember Gray, that was very loud indeed.

It is magnificent, isn't it? You see, the thing about shock... is not that it upsets some people, I think; I think that it gives others a momentary joy of liberation, as we realized in that instant that the social rules that constrict our lives so terribly are not actually very important.

Well, Gray can't do that for us anymore. He's gone. He is an ex-Chapman. All we have of him now is our memories. But it will be some time before they fade.

Michael Palin also spoke and said that he liked to think that Chapman was there with them all that day — "or rather, he will be in about twenty-five minutes," a joke in reference to Chapman's habitual lateness when they were all working together.

Afterward, Idle led Cleese, Gilliam, Jones, and Palin, along with Chapman's other friends, in a rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from the film Monty Python's Life of Brian. Not to be outdone by Cleese, Idle was heard to say during the song's close, "I'd just like to be the last person at this meeting to say 'fuck'. God bless you, Graham."

Burial

On 31 December 1999 Chapman's ashes were rumoured to have been "blasted into the skies in a rocket". In reality, however, Sherlock scattered Chapman's ashes in Snowdon, North Wales on 18 June 2005.

Legacy

After his death, speculation of a Python revival inevitably faded, with Idle saying, "we would only do a reunion if Chapman came back from the dead. So we're negotiating with his agent". Subsequent gatherings of the Pythons have actually been accompanied by an urn, said to contain Chapman's ashes. At the 1998 Aspen Comedy Arts festival, the urn was 'accidentally' knocked over by Terry Gilliam, spilling the 'ashes' on-stage. The cremains were then removed with a dust-buster.

Asteroid 9617 Grahamchapman, named in Chapman's honour, is the first in a series of six asteroids carrying the names of members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.

In 1997, David Sherlock allowed Jim Yoakum to start the Graham Chapman Archives. Later that year, the novel Graham Crackers: Fuzzy Memories, Silly Bits, and Outright Lies was released. It is a semi-sequel to A Liar's Autobiography, with Chapman works compiled by Yoakum. A collection of unpublished material has been released in 1999, Ojril: The Completely Incomplete Graham Chapman, containing scripts Graham wrote with Douglas Adams and others, such as "Our show for Ringo Starr, a.k.a. Goodnight Vienna". And in 2005 Calcium Made Interesting: Sketches, Letters, Essays & Gondolas was published. At one time, the script for "Out of the trees", written by Chapman and Adams in 1975 (and later extensively rewritten by Chapman with Bernard McKenna), was online, but Jim Yoakum had it removed, to the disappointment of the fans of Monty Python and also of co-writer Douglas Adams, who had made no objections to it being there. The debate that followed did nothing to promote the legacy of Graham Chapman, and cast some doubt about the erratic way in which Jim Yoakum, who had only known Graham Chapman superficially, was handling his literary estate. Jim did however start his own website, called the Graham Chapman Archives, demanding people to turn in any rare recordings featuring Graham Chapman they might have, but the site never offered any real biographical information or other materials, and it has since disappeared from the web.

Graham Chapman's college tours in the 1980s had been recorded and these were released over the years by Yoakum. The CD A Liar Live was delayed several times, but was released as A Six Pack of Lies in 1997. Other, almost identical, college tours also came out on CD, such as Spot the Loony in 2001. A DVD of the tours (Looks Like a Brown Trouser Job) was released in 2005. The single episodes for "Out of the trees", which was wiped but later recovered on an early home video system, and "Jake's Journey" still remain to be released.

In 2004 there was talk of a movie about the life of Graham Chapman, to be called "Gin and Tonic", by Hippofilms in cooperation with Jim Yoakum. Auditions were held in March 2004 in California, but since then the project died silently, and it isn't clear when exactly it has been officially abandoned. Its website is no longer online and the IMDB page has been deleted; the Graham Chapman Archive's website has disappeared as well.

The BBC website, through its H2G2 section, has the following to say about Chapman: Graham Chapman has been referred to as the only genuine anarchist within Python, and the most subversive element in a group of subversive elements. It was his unique outlook on life that coloured some of Python's most surreal, most bizarre and, most importantly, funniest moments.

References

• McCabe, Bob (2005). The Life of Graham, The authorised biography of Graham Chapman. London: Orion Books. ISBN 0752857738.
• Chapman, Graham (2005). Jim Yoakum (ed.) (ed.). Calcium Made Interesting : Sketches, Letters, Essays & Gondolas. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. ISBN 0283070161. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Hewison, Robert (1983). Footlights! - A Hundred Years of Cambridge Comedy. London: Methuen London. ISBN 0413511502.
• Wilmut, Roger (1980). From Fringe to Flying Circus - 'Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960-1980'. Eyre Methuen. ISBN 0413469506.
• Chapman, Graham (1980). A Liar's Autobiography (Volume VI). Methuen Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0416009018.

External links

• Graham Chapman at PythOnline Pythons Page
• Graham Chapman at the BFI's Screenonline
• Graham Chapman at the Internet Broadway Database
• Graham Chapman at IMDb
• Graham Chapman at the TCM Movie Database
• Template:Tvtome person
• Template:Ymovies name
• Graham Chapman at the BBC Comedy Guide
• Graham Chapman at the Comedy Zone
• Graham Chapman at Gay Greats
• Graham Chapman at Find a Grave

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