When the six foot five inch man that is John Cleese is mentioned, most people see him in their minds eye complaining about his dead parrot or as the brave Sir What many people don't think of, though, is his involvement with multipleother productions, not all of them comedy. His involvement, too, stretches from justsimple acting. John Cleese is truly a Renaissance man of the media.John Cleese went through school wanting to be in the legal profession and hereceived his M.A. degree from Downing College in Cambridge. He soon abandoned hisplans in law, however, when he had a great success with Footlights, the performing artssociety for Cambridge. He met his future writing partner and Python member GrahamChapman in Footlights. Cleese had an appearance in the Footlights Revue which was acampus production that later was shown in London's West End, and then again, asCambridge Circus, on Broadway in 1964 (Current Biography). He stayed in New York toperform in the British musical Half a Sixpence. When he returned to England he was approached by David Frost to help write andto perform in Frost's new weekly BBC comedy show, The Frost Report, in 1965.Chapman was also working on The Frost Report, with other to be Python members EricIdle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones (The Life of Monty Python). Cleese went on with hiswriting partnership with Chapman after The Frost Report, working on such titles as TheMagic Christian, based on the novel by Terry Southern (The Fairly Uncreative MontyPython Site). Cleese's largest comedy hit came when he joined up again with Chapman, Idle,Palin, and Jones. Together, with American cartoonist Terry Gilliam, they created thenotorious Monty Python's Flying Circus. The whole group co-wrote and starred in this"breakneck barrage of satiric skits, [and] surreal cartoons" (Current Biography) forseveral years; drawing over ten million viewers each week. The Monty Python sextetwould later collaborate to write books, do live per...
