A British TV Legend Nearly Ruined Monty Python
Americans likely know David Frost best as the TV host who took on Richard Nixon in the landmark interview that served as the basis for Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon – a film that earned rave reviews from everybody except those who went in thinking it was a sequel to Michael Keaton’s harmonica-playing snowman movie.
Frost also had a huge impact on the comedy world, thanks to his 1960s satirical news program The Frost Report, which, along with the Frost-hosted That Was the Week That Was, inarguably paved the way for future news parodies such as The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.”
The Frost Report’s supporting cast included Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett (who later starred in The Two Ronnies) as well as a young performer named John Cleese. The show’s writing staff also included future Monty Python members Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones.
Cleese first met Frost while attending the University of Cambridge; years later, after a failed attempt to make it as a Broadway actor, Cleese landed a job working as a journalist for Newsweek. That didn’t work out either. He quit after just a month because he liked his editor “too much to put him in the embarrassing position of having to fire me.”
Unsure of what to do next, Cleese randomly received a phone call from Frost inviting him to join the cast of what would become The Frost Report. As Cleese put it, he suddenly went from “utter obscurity” to appearing on “national television,” purely thanks to Frost.
But when the idea of teaming Cleese with Chapman, Palin, Jones, American animator Terry Gilliam and Do Not Adjust Your Set’s Eric Idle was in the works a few years later (accounts vary as to how exactly this came about), Cleese’s Frost gig put that project in jeopardy.
As reported by Chortle, a newly-released batch of archival documents belonging to Sir David Attenborough (who commissioned Monty Python’s Flying Circus while working at the BBC) reveal the behind-the-scenes drama that nearly ruined the Pythons’ plans.
A memo from Barry Took, the BBC’s “comedy advisor” who became known as “the Father of Monty Python,” describes how Frost’s company, David Paradine Productions, was holding Cleese to his contract, and wanted to be cut in on the Flying Circus deal. “John Cleese phoned me today (20.4.69) to say that he is still under contract to Paradine Productions who want to be involved in ‘The Circus’ project in a co-production,” Took wrote.
As a result of Frost’s team’s threat, Took suggested that the show might have to give up on Cleese, and come up with a new, non-Monty Python show that would incorporate the other comedians: “Should the BBC be uninterested in the idea of co-production with Paradine, John Cleese must withdraw from the project as a performer, although he says he will be able to contribute to the scripts.”
Took went on to suggest “that we scrap the idea of The Circus and proceed with my original concept (of) a show starring Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle, with cartoon inserts by Terry Gilliam,” adding, “When John Cleese is freed from his Paradine commitment we can then re-examine the concept of The Circus, say in 1971.”
While we don’t know exactly how this was rectified, Frost seemingly relented and allowed Cleese to appear in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, thus altering the future of comedy/Twitter feuds.