British television never planned for Marty Feldman to become a star. He was hired to write jokes, not to appear in front of the camera, and one of the most powerful men in comedy at the time reportedly worried that Feldman’s unusual face and bulging eyes would frighten viewers. That fear proved completely wrong. When the camera finally turned toward him, audiences could not stop watching.
Martin Alan Feldman was born on July 8, 1934, in Canning Town in the East End of London. His parents, Cecilia and Myer Feldman, were Jewish immigrants who had both come from Kiev in Ukraine. Myer made gowns, but money was often tight, and Marty later remembered the family being forced to leave rented rooms because they could not pay what they owed. During the Second World War, like many London children, he was evacuated to the countryside.
He later described those years as solitary. He was far from home, mixed poorly with other children, and felt that he belonged nowhere. At school, he was usually the only Jewish child in the room. He said teachers did not know what to do with him during Bible lessons, so they gave him extra mathematics instead.
He joked that the Bible must have been hard work, because God knows maths was. Behind the laugh was a child who already understood what it meant to be treated as different. He moved through many schools, ran away from some, and was expelled from others. By 15, he claimed he had been thrown out of some of the worst schools in London.
He was bullied for being Jewish, and fights followed him. A cricket ball once broke his nose. He struck back and was expelled again. English was the one subject where he showed real talent.
At 11, he wrote a poem so good that teachers accused him of stealing it. He insisted it was his own, but they punished him anyway. That moment deepened his dislike of formal education. Comedy became his escape.
After seeing Danny Kaye, 12-year-old Marty tried stand-up at a bar mitzvah, smoking and joking about his wife. The stolen material failed. He admired Laurel and Hardy, but Buster Keaton became his hero. “I feel about Keaton the way an organist thinks of Bach,” he said.
Feldman’s famous appearance did not come from one event. He suffered from thyroid disease and later developed Graves’ eye disease, which pushed his eyes forward and left them badly misaligned. Surgery may have made the bulging worse. Other accounts pointed to a childhood injury, a car crash, a boating accident, and reconstructive surgery.
He had nearly drowned when young, and doctors reportedly performed a tracheotomy. Boxing also broke his nose several times. He turned that painful history into a brutal joke, describing his face as “the sum total of the disasters of my life. ” Instead of hiding, he learned to control the attention.
“Physically, I am basically equipped to be a clown,” he said. When asked why he did not have his eyes corrected, he gave one of his sharpest answers: if he tried to look like Robert Redford, he would end up like every other actor with two lines on Kojak. “But this way, I’m a novelty. ”
Even his diet came from an early shock.
During the war, a rabbit he had played with appeared on his dinner plate. He became a committed vegetarian and later joked that he would not eat intelligent life, though he would gladly eat a network executive or politician. At 15, Feldman walked away from school. Freedom did not bring immediate success.
He worked at Dreamland Fun Fair in Margate, handled rides and stalls, worked as a fairground barker, helped a hypnotist, and joined touring acts. He later claimed he had even driven a getaway car for an East End criminal. For a time, he lived around Soho and squatted in a gardener’s hut in Soho Square. He stole books on philosophy and history, read them, then sold them to second-hand shops.
He entered poetry circles as a rising talent. Some poems were published, and Dylan Thomas reportedly supported him. Music, however, was his first dream. He loved jazz and wanted to become a trumpet player.
He traveled to Paris and found gigs, but confidence could not replace skill. He later called himself the world’s worst trumpet player. He told musicians that tuberculosis had weakened his chest so they would carry him until he caught up. He never had tuberculosis.
During those years, he joined a performance group called Morris, Marty, and Mitch. Their mix of music, slapstick, and dance was dreadful. One theater paid them to stop performing but still demanded a final bow. Before it, a fight broke out at the stage door, and Marty and his partner appeared before the audience covered in blood.
The confused crowd assumed the fight was part of the act. Marty knew the trio was finished, yet he kept writing jokes, poems, and sketches. He waited outside theaters trying to sell lines to working comics. People ignored him, but he kept studying what made a joke land.
The failed trio had shown him that confidence alone was not enough. His first real opening came when Scottish comedy writer John Law noticed him during a stage act and saw promise. Law guided him toward radio, where only the jokes mattered. Marty began writing for Educating Archie, a BBC show starring ventriloquist Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews.
A radio ventriloquist seemed ridiculous because listeners saw nothing, but the job gave him work, pay, and a place inside British comedy. Marty had met Barry Took while they were both performers in 1954. Their shared humor formed a writing partnership that lasted about 20 years. In January 1959, Marty married Loretta Sullivan, beginning a marriage that lasted until his death.
She witnessed the hard writing years, television awards, and his eventual move into Hollywood. Friends said women found Marty highly attractive despite his unusual appearance, but Loretta remained the central partner documented in his private life throughout those years. Marty and Barry wrote The Army Game and much of Bootsie and Snudge. They completed 39 episodes, over 950 script minutes in 10 months, alongside other programs.
The pressure made Marty moody and unreliable, but his strange imagination stayed clear. One episode even gave a character a full conversation with an ant. Next came Round the Horn. The BBC radio series drew as many as 15 million listeners per episode.
Its satire, camp humor, and sexual hints pushed boundaries. Marty and Barry used Polari, slang from gay and theater circles, for the flamboyant characters Julian and Sandy. While homosexuality was illegal in Britain, those sketches quietly carried gay humor into millions of homes. BBC executives could hardly object without admitting they understood the slang themselves.
Dennis Norden placed Feldman and Took in the front rank of comedy writers. By 1966, Marty had become chief writer and script editor on The Frost Report, David Frost’s BBC television series. The show brought together major talent, including John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett, while future Monty Python members Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones worked behind the scenes. With John Law, he wrote the famous class sketch, where Cleese, Barker, and Corbett used their different heights to mock Britain’s class system.
His support mattered to younger writers. Michael Palin later said Marty’s praise was the first real encouragement he and Terry Jones ever received. Marty’s comedy was playful, but never harmless. He believed humor should challenge authority, not protect it.
He once compared comedy to painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa, calling it a spontaneous act of anarchy. Yet even at his most successful, some still believed he belonged behind the camera. David Frost reportedly worried that Marty’s grotesque looks and unusual eyes might frighten viewers. Cleese, Chapman, and Tim Brooke-Taylor pushed back.
They wanted him to perform beside them in a new sketch show. Marty assumed acting would be a brief experiment before he returned to writing. Both he and Frost were wrong. The 1948 show, placed before viewers in 1967, featured Marty beside Cleese, Chapman, and Brooke-Taylor.
Marty’s characters often behaved like cheerful threats. In a famous sketch, he tormented a shop assistant by asking for invented books, including Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying. He also helped write and perform the Four Yorkshiremen sketch with Chapman, Cleese, and Brooke-Taylor. The men turned childhood hardship into an absurd contest.
Monty Python later made the sketch famous on stage, but Marty had been there at its birth. Audiences did not turn away from Marty. They could not stop watching him. His eyes, loose movements, and timing made even a pause feel dangerous.
The BBC soon gave him his own series, Marty, in 1968. Its budget allowed outdoor filming, stunts, silent comedy, and rare visual ideas for British viewers at home. He later called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Golfer the best thing he ever made and the closest he came to Buster Keaton. The show won two BAFTA Awards, while its first series received the Golden Rose at Montreux.
A second series followed as It’s Marty. Fame arrived quickly. Marty moved through fashionable London clubs, mixed with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and became part of the late 1960s scene. Success also brought drinking, drugs, long nights, and a feeling that normal limits no longer applied.
“I think the success went straight to my crutch,” he later joked. He recorded the albums Marty and I Feel a Song Going Off, showing that his old love of music had not disappeared. Film roles followed, including The Bed Sitting Room and the lead in Every Home Should Have One. That 1970 comedy let him play an advertising man whose private mistakes nearly destroyed his home.
Every Home Should Have One did not save his longest partnership. After years of deadlines, both men were exhausted. The film became their last major project together. Took later compared the split to ending a love affair and called it a real divorce.
The BBC had sold some Marty sketches to America without his knowledge. Those clips led to The Dean Martin Show, and then The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, a British-American series filmed at Elstree Studios. Produced by ATV and ABC, it created 15 episodes across 1971 and 1972. It did not last, but gave Marty an American audience.
In 1971, his rebellious humor entered a real courtroom. Marty supported defendants in the Oz magazine obscenity trial. He refused to swear on the Bible and chose to affirm. When the judge treated Christianity as the only religion, Marty turned court into a sketch.
Asked to explain satire, he quoted a BBC producer who allowed two bloodies and one bastard if a writer removed one tit. The convictions were later overturned. In Britain, producers tried to revive his earlier magic with the 1974 series Marty Back Together Again. Its title played on reports about his health, showing how closely his body and career had become linked.
The new series never matched his earlier work. Then Gene Wilder caught the Marty Feldman Comedy Machine late at night. He was developing a black and white Frankenstein comedy and needed a hunchback assistant who felt foolish, friendly, and slightly dangerous. Wilder wrote the character with Marty in mind.
Young Frankenstein brought Marty to American cinema in 1974 and gave him the role that defined his Hollywood career. Gene Wilder played Frederick Frankenstein, while Marty became Igor, the crooked assistant whose name was pronounced “Igor. ” Mel Brooks joked that Marty’s eyes looked like hard-boiled eggs with the pupils painted in the wrong places, but he also believed nobody else could play Igor the same way. Marty began improvising almost at once.
In the station scene, Igor told Frederick to “walk this way,” handed him a stick, and made him copy the limp. Marty thought the joke was too old and wanted it cut, but Brooks kept it. Audiences loved it. The line later helped inspire Aerosmith’s hit “Walk This Way.
” Another running joke involved Igor’s hump changing sides. When Frederick questioned it, Igor simply replied, “What hump? ”
The film copied the look of 1930s horror movies. Brooks shot it in black and white, used old-style transitions, and reused laboratory equipment from the 1931 Frankenstein.
Young Frankenstein became a major success, earned two Academy Award nominations, and was later selected for the National Film Registry. Marty followed it with The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother and Brooks’ Silent Movie, which gave him room to use the physical comedy he loved. He also appeared in Italian comedy and shared a playful Muppet Show scene with Cookie Monster comparing their eyes side by side. After those films, Universal offered Marty a multi-film deal to create his own work.
For once, the studio seemed ready to trust his ideas. He could write, direct, and star. Marty explained his goal clearly: “I don’t want to be a director, I want to direct. There is a difference.
”
His directorial debut became the last remake of Beau Geste in 1977. He wrote it with Chris Allen, starred, and gathered Michael York, Peter Ustinov, Ann-Margret, James Earl Jones, and Trevor Howard. The film attacked military glory with Marty’s old disrespect for authority. One line compared medals to hemorrhoids because every fool eventually got one.
Production brought a painful lesson. Poor test screenings made studio executives nervous. They took the picture and changed the edit, leaving Marty without control. The response did not save his deal or the creative respect he expected from Universal.
While promoting the movie, Marty also denounced Anita Bryant’s campaign against homosexuality. He said he wished more straight people would openly stand against her. Marty described himself as an avowed socialist, although he enjoyed mocking the distance between his beliefs and his Hollywood life. “I’m a socialist by conviction, if not by lifestyle,” he admitted.
He joked that he needed American earnings to pay taxes owed to the socialist government he had supported in Britain. Marty’s second film as writer and director was In God We Trust, released in 1980. He played Brother Ambrose, a monk sent to Los Angeles to raise money for his monastery. The monk falls for a prostitute and faces Reverend Armageddon T.
Thunderbird, a rich television preacher played by Andy Kaufman. Richard Pryor, Louise Lasser, and Peter Boyle appeared. Marty attacked televangelism, organized religion, greed, and power. Reviews were poor, the box office was worse, and Universal ended his contract.
Then his friend John Lennon was murdered, pushing Marty into another stand. He became an anti-gun advocate in America and appeared on the late-night show Fridays wearing an anti-gun shirt and hat pin. Yet strong opinions could not return him to the position he had lost. Marty entered what he called the Hollywood wilderness.
He accepted work on Hollywood Squares, The Johnny Carson Show, and US Against the World to remain visible. He joked that he had won an award for being the best loser. By the early 1980s, Marty had fame, a lasting marriage, and a role audiences would never forget. Yet his own films had failed, and the studio dream was over.
He began considering a return to England and television writing. Before he could make that move, another comedy offered one last chance to rebuild. His final movie was Yellowbeard, a pirate comedy co-written by Graham Chapman, who played the title character. The project was modest, but placed Marty among friends.
John Cleese, Eric Idle, Madeline Kahn, Peter Cook, Peter Boyle, Spike Milligan, Cheech Marin, and others filled the cast. Marty played Gilbert, a bumbling pirate. He did not love the script, yet enjoyed the company. Filming took the group to Mexico City.
Mel Brooks later described Marty as smoking up to half a carton, or six packs, of cigarettes each day. He also drank large amounts of black coffee and ate a diet heavy in eggs and dairy products. Some reports claimed shellfish poisoning triggered a crisis, although Marty had been a vegetarian since childhood. Others suggested food poisoning, altitude-related lung trouble, or an overdose.
His manager, Michael Maslansky, announced the cause as a massive heart attack. Marty had been in Mexico City since October 19, 1982, and the movie was almost complete. On December 2, he was waiting in his hotel room in case the crew needed him for another shot. An editor’s note in his later autobiography said Graham Chapman was with him when he died.
Marty was 48 years old. He had survived poverty, bullying, illness, failed acts, brutal deadlines, and Hollywood disappointment only to die while trying to rebuild his career. Yellowbeard was finished and dedicated to him, but later failed at the box office. Chapman said he took pleasure in knowing Marty was back on form for his final role.
Marty’s funeral was held on December 6, 1982, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. About 100 relatives and friends attended, including Mel Brooks, Cheech Marin, and Dom DeLuise. A five-piece band played Dixieland jazz, bringing his first love into the room. The service lasted about 20 minutes and carried laughter beside grief.
A long-time friend said people recognized the love and humanity in him. “Marty approached everyone as an equal,” he explained, and that was why children loved him. Then he looked toward the casket and offered the kind of line Marty might have respected: “Marty Feldman never liked funerals, so I guess he wouldn’t have liked this one. But he showed up anyway, didn’t he?
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Mel Brooks struggled to speak. He called Marty uniquely gifted and said the feelings were too complicated to put into words. “I’ll miss him,” he said. Marty was buried in the Garden of Heritage, close to Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton, two men who had shaped his love of comedy.
His agent noted that Keaton’s grave was about 30 yards away and Laurel’s about 60. He left behind Loretta, his mother Cecilia, and his sister Pamela. Loretta lived until 2010. After her death, Marty’s own account of his life was brought to light and published in 2012 as Eyeballs: The Autobiography of Marty Feldman, with a forward by Eric Idle.
The book returned attention to the writer, rebel, jazz lover, and lonely child hidden behind Igor’s stare. Marty once described himself with a line that now sounded painfully exact: “I’m too old to die young, too old to grow up. ”
