THE EYES HAVE IT

Robert Ross remembers Marty Feldman, the beloved bug-eyed comedian who poked fun at himself, as well as others…

MARTY FELDMAN (1934-1982)

Eccentric, rubber-lipped, and bug-eyed, Marty Feldman philosophically built a comedy career on the Gothic mask that hard knocks, hard work, and hard living had given him. It was particularly effective in his internationally renown performance as Igor (that’s Eye-Gor!) in the classic Mel Brooks comedy, Young Frankenstein. Still, he didn’t always have the face that required zero make-up to star in a horror film.

Martin Alan Feldman was born in Canning Town, East London. A disrupted education and Dickensian periods of poverty saw the young Marty sleeping rough across the capital’s train terminals and great parks. He hung out with poets and painters in Soho. He journeyed to Paris and became an artist’s model. While still in his teens he paid his fairground dues at Dreamland in Margate; and had established his own jazz band, Marty Feldman and the Bebop Seven, with himself on trumpet and, the soon-to-be legendary, Tubby Hayes on trombone.

Forming the knockabout variety troupe Morris, Marty and Mitch, with Joe Moe and Mitch Revely, Feldman stampeded through the dying days of music-hall, pretty much wrecking theatres en-route. It was as part of this comedy team that Feldman made his television debut, on Showcase, in 1955. Also during these days of stage struggle, he met bottom of the bill stand-up comedian Barry Took.

Sharing a corkscrew sense of humour, the two decided to put performing on the back burner and try their hands as writers. The Army Game, Granada Television’s flagship situation comedy, proved a fertile training ground, and, in 1960, the duo created the spin-off series, Bootsie and Snudge, relating the Civvy Street exploits of Private Alfie Bass and Sergeant Bill Fraser. Set in an exclusive gentleman’s club on Pall Mall, it dropped the feuding ex-servicemen in to menial work and mind games. A masterpiece.