- Born
- Died
- Birth nameGraham Arthur Chapman
- Nickname
- Gray
- Height6′ 3″ (1.91 m)
- Graham Chapman was born on January 8, 1941 in Leicester, England while a German air raid was in progress. Graham's father was a chief police inspector and probably inspired the constables Graham often portrayed later in comedy sketches. Graham studied medicine in college and earned an M.D., but he practiced medicine for only a few years.
At Cambridge, he took part in a series of comedy revues and shortly after completing his medical studies at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Graham realized what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to perform comedy. In 1969, Graham along with University friends John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and American Terry Gilliam formed their own comedy group called Monty Python. Their BBC TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), which aired a short while later was a an instant hit. Their often self-referential style of humor was delightfully original but completely accessible to most audiences in the UK.
Before the show appeared on public television in the US, many people assumed that Americans would find Monty Python much too British to consider it funny. But PBS never had a larger audience than when stations began to air it during the early 1970s. The classic routines have since become standard college humor.
So enduring was the Python humor that fans know entire sketches such as "The Pet Shop," "Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink," "Argument Clinic," and "Penguin on the Telly." Graham was a standout of the group with his tall, blond profile and his zany characters (one of the more memorable was Colonel Muriel Volestrangler, a vaguely military-type character who would stop a sketch because it was "much too silly").
Graham was openly gay long before it was socially acceptable, and was open about his long-term relationship with writer David Sherlock, who lived with him for 24 years. He even adopted and raised a teenage runaway named John Tomiczek. Graham played the title role in the movie Life of Brian (1979) as well as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). By the late 1970s, most of the Python members were pursuing independent movie projects and the group was slowly fading into obscurity after their last successful effort The Meaning of Life (1983). Also in 1983, Graham co-wrote and starred in the movie Yellowbeard (1983), which received negative reviews.
In 1988, Graham began working on another series when his health began to decline. A longtime alcoholic, who suffered liver damage before he stopped drinking for good in 1977, Graham began to have trouble concentrating at work. In November 1988, a routine visit to a dentist revealed a malignant tumor on one of his tonsils which was surgically removed. A visit to the doctor a few months later revealed another tumor on his spine which had to be removed which confined him to a wheelchair. During most of 1989, he underwent a series of surgical operations and radiation therapy but for every tumor that was found and removed, another would form either along his spine or in his throat. By July 1989, his cancer was declared terminal and that he would not survive the year, yet he continued to pursue treatments which included chemotherapy. In his wheelchair, he attended the September 1989 taping for the Monty Python's 20th anniversary special. But on October 1, he was hospitalized after a massive stroke which turned into a hemorrhage. He died at the Maidstone hospital at age 48 on October 4, 1989 from complications of the stroke as well as throat and spinal cancer.- IMDb Mini Biography By: matt-282
- ParentsWalter ChapmanEdith Chapman
- Often cast as comical authority figures (most notably the Colonel)
- His pipe
- Walking onto the screen and talking directly to the audience to let them know that a sketch has gotten too absurd and will now end
- Towering height
- Playing the straight central character [King Arthur, Brian, Yellowbeard, etc.].
- Died of cancer on 4th October 1989, just one day before the 20th anniversary of Monty Python. Terry Jones called it "The worst case of party-pooping I've ever seen.".
- Struggled with alcoholism, especially during the filming of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). According to Terry Gilliam, Chapman constantly forgot his lines and was so drunk during filming that he couldn't make it across the Bridge of Death, so the assistant cameraman had to double for him. Additionally, Chapman was genuinely struggling with the rock climbing scene because of his alcohol struggle, which surprised the other Pythons since they had known him to be an excellent climber and wondered if his suit was interfering with his climbing.
- When he came out to his parents, his mother cried for a week. His father, however, was especially accepting, telling not to worry, and that "women don't understand this sort of thing".
- While filming Life of Brian (1979) in Tunisia, he put his medical knowledge to good use and opened a surgery for the cast and crew. He brought along and dispensed much-needed medication for things like dehydration, food poisoning and other Tunisian complaints.
- Longtime (24 years) companion of David Sherlock. Together, the two raised a son, John Tomiczak.
- We don't deliberately set out to offend. Unless we feel it's justified. And in the case of certain well-known religions, it was justified.
- I hope I will have achieved something lasting.
- John Howard Davies was not a very human person ... if you made a mistake of any kind, any sort of pause in speech, he would treat you rather as if he was a schoolmaster.
- [Chapman and the other members of the Monty Python group traveled to visit the site of Dachau concentration camp in Germany, but were told by staff that they were too late and the museum was about to close] Tell them we're Jewish.
- [1974; on whether his Monty Python work serves to get something out of his system that needs to be gotten out] Certainly in terms of writing. You get the argument from a lot of people that you're supposed to write to make people laugh. That's true. But also everything you do is written from something in your own experience. Nothing is written from outside the universe. You can't do a good situation comedy about stones. It's got to be animate. It has to be about human beings. Writing is therapeutic for me because - as you say - it gets something out of my system, some frustration, some anger. You almost have to be angry to write, I think. If you're angry about something, then you can always put something down on paper. If you're not, if you're just totally happy - and I don't actually know anyone in the whole bleeding world that is - you wouldn't be able to write a single thing. But if you're angry about something, it's possible to be witty, possible to be interesting, possible to write.
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