Marty Feldman

Marty Feldman0:00

This is the BBC.

Speaker 10:05

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 10:10

The programme was recorded as it was broadcast and is in very poor condition. We've done our best to reduce the interference and we've added one missing music track by using a disc from the BBC Gramophone Library. For rights reasons, we've had to use shorter pieces of music than would have been used in the original programme. Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Speaker 10:33

The programme was originally broadcast in 1968 and the presenter was Roy Plumney.

Presenter0:39

Desert Island discs.

Presenter0:49

Each week a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which aid gramophone records would you choose to have with you?

Presenter0:58

As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumner.

Presenter1:02

Our castaway this week, ladies and gentlemen, is the television writer and comedian Marty Feldwin. Marty, you were a professional musician at one time, weren't you?

Marty Feldman1:10

Um yes, I was actually described in one of the national papers as the worst trumpet player in the world.

Marty Feldman1:15

Excuse me, some idea. I was very bad, but extremely bad.

Presenter1:19

Where did you play this? You had a group of your own?

Marty Feldman1:21

I had a girlfriend of my own, um, when I left school. I was about fifteen.

Marty Feldman1:26

At the same time as working as an office boy in an advertising agency.

Marty Feldman1:30

I saw double trumpet and drums. I played them both equally badly those.

Marty Feldman1:33

And uh they objected to me bringing my drum kid in and putting it behind the beds and I got fired. And I concentrated on running this jazz group, which is incredible because it was a very good group and I was the only guy in in the group who really couldn't play very well.

Presenter1:47

There's something very positive about being the fairly worst drummet player, this is fine.

Marty Feldman1:51

It's a yardstick Judge Unshrumber plays violin better than Marty Feldman.

Presenter1:55

What was your plan for choosing your A breakouts for the island?

Marty Feldman1:59

Um, well, originally I set up my favourite eight records, musically, and then I decided to think about it.

Marty Feldman2:06

being on a desert island and gradually I found that um it was my choice became sort of partly a m a musical choice.

Marty Feldman2:14

But also, partly, um well certain liquids have associations, connotations.

Marty Feldman2:19

And they put a lot of records for that reason too, that they have personal associations.

Presenter2:24

What's the first one?

Marty Feldman2:25

The first one is a record by Sally Rollins, a ten sexophanist. It's called The Bridge. Um Rollins was quite a big name in jazz about 1957-58 after Charlie Parker died.

Marty Feldman2:38

You sort of inherited Harka's throne sort of thing.

Marty Feldman2:41

And then he suddenly disappeared off the scene for about two years and nobody knew where he'd gone.

Marty Feldman2:45

He went away and studied uh I believe Eastern philosophy and worked with Ravishanko a lot.

Marty Feldman2:50

And after about two years he re-emerged with a new group and this was the first record he made with the group. It was a breakthrough at the time. I think it's still one of the most exciting jazz records I had.

Presenter2:58

Vertical

Marty Feldman2:59

The bridge.

Speaker 23:47

That would be a good thing.

Speaker 23:54

I would have

Presenter3:59

Sonny Rollins, the bitch. What's your

Marty Feldman4:02

Sick.

Marty Feldman4:02

The second disc is um by Albinoni disc. It's a child in D-Man Oprah and it's by V2. Great chain of the world. That's just another thing. And uh it's not it's tranquil, it's a big command and it's another consideration you only does live and you might have to take him on your pot but you know, but Albinoni did.

Presenter5:27

The opening of the Albinone Concerto in D minor for over made by the music.

Presenter5:32

Might you're in London, right? Yes.

Presenter5:36

You tell us about your pinozza, or early pinoza, perf professional musician. What happened when you stopped being the worst trumpet player in the world? What you were doing? What did you do?

Marty Feldman5:46

I drifted into a

Marty Feldman5:47

Fairground act, it was called Tejawano and Company, the builders from the rolling plains of North America. It was supposed to be Red Indian fake here. In fact, his name was Jack Taylor and he came from Peterborough. What did you do here? I was an authentic Red Indian assistant, as were the others, yeah, who were West Indians and Hawaiians. What did you hear? Yeah, we well, he was a fake here. I fired arrows into his stomach.

Marty Feldman6:12

We beat him with burning clubs, climbed barbed wire ladders, jumped on broken glass and went finale.

Marty Feldman6:18

He blew himself up in a great big cabinet while the band played land of open glory.

Presenter6:22

Hollow there.

Marty Feldman6:23

Can't follow that one.

Presenter6:24

As far as you could find out, this this was a a genuine act. He didn't mind these things happening.

Marty Feldman6:29

I don't know he did all these things, but uh they hurt him all the time. He used to cut his feet jumping on broken glass and blow half his arm off in the cabinet, but uh triumphant matter over mind.

Presenter6:40

After this one.

Marty Feldman6:42

After that, um when the app folded through, which it did quickly because there was no work.

Marty Feldman6:47

Um

Marty Feldman6:48

I teamed up with the Hawaiian guy in the Act Joe Moy and we did a double act around the Working Ex Clubs in Leicester.

Marty Feldman6:54

It was a crosstalk patterat and we also played instruments and he did a Hawaiian sword dance and

Marty Feldman7:00

He devised it.

Marty Feldman7:02

And he wrote the script.

Marty Feldman7:04

And then we came to our first show and he told me that I was expecting to come on and say guess who's in the Navy and he was going to say who and I had to say sailors. But at that point I just packed my bags and hitchhiked back to London and

Marty Feldman7:15

And then I sort of um

Marty Feldman7:17

I bummed around a bit taking odd jobs and got involved with a another trio, a musical speciality comedy.

Marty Feldman7:22

Come on, Martin Mo.

Marty Feldman7:24

And we toured in the Saucy Girls in nineteen fifty two. Oh, twice nightly review and matinees.

Presenter7:28

But

Speaker 17:28

Yeah.

Marty Feldman7:31

And the Saucy Girls in OnlyFifty Three.

Marty Feldman7:33

Um the finale came and we all stood in a box and we sang, so it's good night to you from the Saucy Girls of 1952 and the next year we all stood in the box wearing the same dinner jackets and our shirts a little bit dirty and we all sang and so it's good night you see from the saucy girls of nineteen fifty three and we folded after that and I don't think they could find a round for nineteen fifty four.

Presenter7:54

What was the first important thing to happen during these years?

Marty Feldman7:59

Well, it didn't seem important at the time, but I was playing York Empire, and there was a comedian on the bill.

Marty Feldman8:05

And we argued about living and we argued about our spots. Neither of us wanted to join the second spot from the beginning because people are still turning in from the bars.

Marty Feldman8:14

And we rang our respective agents and said, Look, I'm kinda hoping this fellow thinks he is.

Marty Feldman8:19

During the week uh became friendly. It turned out he was about Trump felt uh I had a common interest in chairs and.

Marty Feldman8:27

And our sense of humour will like.

Marty Feldman8:29

Um

Marty Feldman8:29

That was Barry Two.

Presenter8:31

Well, your your first meeting with your your partner and all this obviously foretells your writing career which we'll talk about in a minute, but in in the meantime let's have another record.

Marty Feldman8:40

Yes, well um I'd like to play a blues record here. This is pure blues and I think it's one of the best blues on record. It was made by Charlie Parker in 1948 and he was at the height of his powers.

Marty Feldman8:52

That was absolutely.

Marty Feldman8:54

Great music. There's a marvellous little piano solo on it by John Lewis. It's a marvellous little miniature thing.

Marty Feldman9:00

John Lowe selected from the Martin Jazz Quartet.

Marty Feldman9:03

They're here together and really playing very well. It's the uh it's called Parker's Mood.

Marty Feldman9:08

Joel Parker done this.

Speaker 29:12

Baby.

Speaker 29:54

Bup bumps.

Speaker 29:56

Yeah.

Presenter10:10

Park has moved.

Presenter10:12

You met Barry Took at York Empire. Was this the beginning of your writing career? Was this when you started?

Marty Feldman10:17

No, we've started writing together, ooh, three or four years later. It was the beginning of our friendship, but we both went separate ways.

Presenter10:24

What do you do?

Marty Feldman10:24

Yeah.

Presenter10:24

Yeah.

Marty Feldman10:24

Well the act that I was with folded.

Marty Feldman10:27

And I got walk on parts, almost anything on television shows.

Marty Feldman10:32

About two years after that, I met John Law.

Marty Feldman10:37

who's now a script editor at the BBC and um he encouraged me to write.

Marty Feldman10:41

In fact, he sort of always trained me to write, he used to sort of um sit me on his flat and we'd talk out a subject and he'd go out for a walk, come back, see how I was getting on.

Speaker 210:48

Yeah.

Marty Feldman10:49

And so on until he was happy with the sketch, then he would pester people until somebody bought it.

Marty Feldman10:54

He finally drove um Roger Hancock, who was the

Marty Feldman10:58

manager of George and Alfred Black organization at the time, drove him mad until Roger bought a sketch of mine for the Arthur Haynes show, which was the first thing I'd ever sold.

Speaker 211:07

Yeah.

Marty Feldman11:07

Roger later admitted that he did buy it just to keep John away.

Marty Feldman11:11

And you know, after that I was a writer, you know.

Speaker 211:11

I don't know.

Presenter11:13

You did the radio, right?

Marty Feldman11:14

Yes, I got on to um Educating Archie, which is the that's the great stable, isn't it? You know the people that have come out of it.

Presenter11:19

Uh

Marty Feldman11:20

Peter Brough sort of encouraged me then.

Marty Feldman11:23

Team me up with Ronnie Wolfe.

Marty Feldman11:25

It was really taught me all the tricks of radio writing and I spent about uh a year and a half writing that.

Marty Feldman11:32

whilst Barry at the same time was writing um Beyond Our Ken.

Presenter11:35

Yeah.

Marty Feldman11:36

About the same time as I got through with Educating Archie, he got through with Beyond Our Ken and we teamed up to write the last series of Take It From Here when Frank Mew and Dennis Norton left it. And from then on we really we were a partnership.

Presenter11:48

Yes. You did bootsy and stud.

Marty Feldman11:50

Yeah. Um that was more or less as a result of um the take it from here engagement.

Marty Feldman11:55

And we wrote.

Marty Feldman11:57

Devised and then wrote the first two series of Blitzynsage, about eighty programmes together.

Presenter12:02

Minuted brown the horn for

Marty Feldman12:03

Well yes, this was sheer joy uh doing Round the Horn because um

Marty Feldman12:09

Barry had been involved in Beyond the Arcade, and in fact had started it with Eric Mooreman.

Marty Feldman12:14

And it was coming home time for him and it was great for me because uh there's a pure release of writing radio again. I love writing for radio by the way.

Marty Feldman12:22

And writing for a cast like that, you could we just sort of put it down on the paper and they won't have.

Marty Feldman12:32

Oh.

Marty Feldman12:33

It's all confusing. About this time, while I was writing Round the Horn.

Marty Feldman12:37

I was also script editing and program associate on the Frost report.

Marty Feldman12:42

Um for BBC. And um I met John Cleese on this.

Marty Feldman12:47

Because he was involved as a performer and a writer. I went on holiday with him.

Marty Feldman12:50

And when we got back, about a month later, John called me up.

Marty Feldman12:54

and said that David Frost had asked him to assemble a show.

Marty Feldman12:58

Prior T V and would I um come take part in it?

Marty Feldman13:02

I thought he meant us a writer, but it turned out he meant us a performer.

Presenter13:04

So here you are making appearances again. Another part of your career cropping up. So this is another part where we can break for.

Marty Feldman13:06

Yeah.

Marty Feldman13:09

But

Marty Feldman13:11

Direct

Presenter13:11

The record.

Marty Feldman13:12

Okay.

Presenter13:12

What's number four?

Marty Feldman13:13

Well something for just for pure excitement, um the last part of uh The Symphony Fantastique by Berlin.

Presenter14:23

The closing passage of the Symphonie Fontastique by Bellio's Pierre Bullis conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter14:31

We had a big success as a performer for

Presenter14:35

Um, what was it? At last the 1948 show. Yeah, that was it, wasn't it?

Marty Feldman14:37

Maybe that was

Marty Feldman14:38

We did one series of that and then um I produced a series for David Frostiger and Ronnie Corbett, which was something else I'd wanted to do. And then I did another series of 48s.

Marty Feldman14:47

Um by this time they were rather confused'cause Barry and I have been writing a film too.

Marty Feldman14:52

And I didn't really know which was the next direction to take. Barry said perform and write and um I wanted to direct. I think I got hung up on directing. But then uh it was sort of taken care of for me because I got offers to do my own series.

Marty Feldman15:06

Um I was very t dubious about whether I could carry a shelf.

Marty Feldman15:10

Um, Barry wrote the bulk of it with me. I did it for BBC Two. It's called Marty.

Marty Feldman15:15

I'm not going to answer.

Presenter15:17

Yes, when's this going to be?

Marty Feldman15:18

The new series will be in November.

Presenter15:20

Hmm. How do you see your career shaping?

Marty Feldman15:23

Um, I think

Marty Feldman15:24

I'm beginning to see. I I I never quite knew at the time. I always sort of it seemed like a good idea as at at the time has always been the way I've worked.

Marty Feldman15:32

I can see a certain amount of performing because the offers are coming and I like it and it's a sort of cathartic thing, you know.

Marty Feldman15:39

You get it all out of your system, all the things when you when you're a writer you sweat and you watch other people doing it and you think, Swine is they're killing my script And you've nobody to blame when you're a performer, because you wrote it too.

Speaker 115:51

Oh, anyway.

Marty Feldman15:55

So I'm a lousy performing writer, but if it works, there's no satisfaction quite like that. It's your concept all the way through. Well, mine I'm barrier.

Marty Feldman16:03

Initially I

Marty Feldman16:04

Ours and then eventually mine in a bit.

Presenter16:07

Let's have record number five.

Marty Feldman16:09

Well this is um this is one of the ones that has sentimental associations. Um if I can't have my wife with me on the desert island, I can't have it. It's not the luxury I'm allowed to

Presenter16:16

It's not the label on the lab.

Marty Feldman16:18

Well in that case, um I would like this record because my wife and I

Marty Feldman16:22

Happened to

Marty Feldman16:24

Love it very much. It's a

Marty Feldman16:26

early holiday record and it's made when she was very young and life was good for her.

Marty Feldman16:31

And it's called God Bless the Child, which is one of our favourite songs too. So for my wife and myself, Billy Hollow is singing God Bless the Child.

Speaker 216:37

Rich relations give, crush the bread and such. You can help yourself, but don't take too much.

Speaker 216:51

Mama may have, papa may have, but God bless the child that's got his own, that's not his own.

Presenter17:03

Mm-hmm.

Presenter17:08

Billy Holiday

Presenter17:09

Well let's go straight on to the next one. What next?

Marty Feldman17:12

Uh something for nostalgia and and because it makes me laugh. Um it's a mighty fairground organ.

Marty Feldman17:19

Mammoth Gavioli, I think it was made for black tower when they opened it.

Marty Feldman17:24

It's it's awful and it's lovely in its awful way. It's um the other reason too is that it's um a single tune of one of my favourite comedians, Will Hay.

Marty Feldman17:32

O mister Porter, and Mammoth Cavioli

Presenter17:34

Take you straight back to being a Red Indian again.

Marty Feldman17:36

Yeah. I'm musical.

Presenter18:11

The mammoth gavioli.

Presenter18:13

Bless it.

Presenter18:14

How do you think you'd manage on this island, Marty? Could you look after yourself?

Marty Feldman18:17

But no

Presenter18:17

Uh

Marty Feldman18:17

No, I don't think I could.

Presenter18:19

It all goes with the hand.

Marty Feldman18:20

I'm not good at home. I can cook a little.

Marty Feldman18:23

But not very well. But I'm vegetarian so cooking wouldn't be a problem. I could live on nuts and whatever it is that vegetarians live on on desert islands, you know.

Marty Feldman18:30

Yeah.

Presenter18:31

Would you try to escape?

Marty Feldman18:31

Okay, I don't think so, no. Um, I think it depends on how long I would be I I was there. I would enjoy solitude,'cause it's a pretty rare thing.

Marty Feldman18:40

And we don't get it much of it about, you know.

Marty Feldman18:43

So I think I'll probably enjoy the solitude. I'd get time to think, which I don't get time to do now.

Presenter18:49

That everyone knows him.

Marty Feldman18:50

Well this is uh Charlie Mingus.

Marty Feldman18:53

And the record is called Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting. It's

Marty Feldman18:56

It's a jazz collective improvisation and it approximates the feeling of a revivalist meeting, a gospel meeting. It's very exciting and it's sort of

Marty Feldman19:05

I'd like to have it around so I can listen to it a lot and find new things in it each time.

Presenter20:10

Charlie Mingers.

Presenter20:11

Wednesday night prayer meeting.

Presenter20:13

Do you have a religious faith, Marty, that would help you on this island?

Marty Feldman20:16

Um I don't have a religious faith in the sense that I I'm an atheist. I have a great deal of religious feeling, but it's directed towards life. Um whereas I consider that most religions are directed towards death. It's directed towards people and living, you know.

Marty Feldman20:31

That would help me a great deal, yes.

Marty Feldman20:33

What's your last record? My last record, um

Marty Feldman20:36

Again, it has this sort of religious feeling, as did Went in that prayer meeting in a different sort of way.

Marty Feldman20:41

It's um the last part of uh King David by Honeke is conducted by Honeke and it's played by the Orchestre Nationale de Valédie Fusion Française and it's very beautiful.

Presenter21:50

King David.

Presenter21:51

conducted by the composer.

Presenter21:53

If you would have just one of the eight records you've chosen, which would it be?

Marty Feldman21:57

I think it would be the Albinone.

Presenter22:00

And one luxury to take with you.

Marty Feldman22:02

I would like to take a piano with me. I don't play the piano, but I think if I were stuck on a desert island for a long, long while...

Marty Feldman22:09

I would have to do something and I could learn to play the piano, which I haven't had the patience to do up to now, yeah.

Presenter22:14

One upright piano coming up, and one book putting aside the Bible and Shakespeare.

Marty Feldman22:19

I take The Little Prince. It's a French book. I have a translation by Antoine de Saint-Exuper. It's a very beautiful book and it's a pretty good guide to living with yourself, which would be a useful thing to have if you were going to live by yourself.

Presenter22:33

It was originally a a children's book as well.

Marty Feldman22:35

Well, no, it's uh the dedication is more or less. It's dedicated to a friend of his, dedicated to the child that he was. It's not a children's book.

Presenter22:42

Mm-hmm.

Marty Feldman22:42

I mean, it can be read on all sorts of allegorical levels, you know.

Presenter22:46

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exiponi

Presenter22:50

And thank you, Marty Feldman, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for listening. Goodbye, everyone.

Presenter23:08

The guest in this evening's programme, first broadcast on Monday, was Marty Felt.

Presenter23:13

The interviewer with Roy Pumley and the producer Michael Hall.

Presenter23:17

Next Wednesday evening at 7 o'clock the Castaway will be the film director Richard Lester.

Speaker 123:26

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co dot uk slash radio four.

Marty Feldman23:36

This is the BBC.