Sacred cow status more or less justified, despite weak opening episode and Cleese’s habit of psycho-analysing the stage directions. The shot of the Fawltys in two separate beds with Basil reading Jaws is probably the funniest thing in the world, although the creepy, frozen ensemble pose in ‘The Anniversary’ also takes you aback slightly. The fire drill scene in ‘The Germans’ is absolute perfection (‘It’s a semitone higher!’), but is often over-shadowed on clip shows by the ‘Don’t mention the war’ nonsense.
1.
Despite its mythical infallibility, Fawlty Towers sometimes couldn’t get the laughs it needed. ‘The Builders’ (26/9/75), for example, was performed in front of a studio audience who didn’t speak English. Although the manic acting in the show kept the momentum going and created an illusion that the audience were on the ball, a close examination of the episode reveals how little laughter there is on the soundtrack. (Cleese’s over-acting in this episode is actually genuine panic.) Also, in ‘Communication Problems’ (the opening episode of Series 2, broadcast on 19/2/79), the first five minutes gets no laughter at all, most notably on a very contrived (and unfunny) quip from the Major about George and The Dragon. This is odd - the first episode of the second series is normally a cue to audiences for sycophancy and undue hysterics (Red Dwarf, Absolutely Fabulous), so we can assume that this sequence was the last of many re-takes. Alternatively, the lack of laughter could have been a result of Cleese’s arrogance over the material - there had been a gap of four years since the first series, and the show was not yet considered as a masterpiece to be unconditionally revered. Nowadays, audiences tend to feel that they have to laugh. We blame the recession.
2.
In ‘Gourmet Night’ (17/10/75), the drunk chef Kurt (Steve Plytus) vomits over Manuel. As he does so, there is an immediate cutaway of Sybil’s disgusted face. There are two alternatives here - either this was censorship by the BBC, or an artistic decision by Cleese that the comedy-value would be greater if we did not see the vomit itself. The latter is likely, since Cleese expressed similar views when he discussed the killing of the dogs in his 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda: he argued that the sight of a dog being killed in long-shot will cause an audience to laugh, but a close-up of the dogs’ entrails is more likely to upset them. (Kenny Everett had similar views: ‘A bucket of blood is funny,’ he once said to Barry Cryer. ‘[But] a trickle of blood is nasty and worrying’.)
3.
In the original draft for ‘The Germans’ (24/10/75), Basil - in the guise of his comedy Hitler impression - says something offensive concerning one of the Nazi concentration camps. Bill Cotton ordered this to be cut, but Cleese had already removed the reference himself before this censorship was imposed. (See also EDIT NEWS/MONTY PYTHON - Bill Cotton’s arse, John Cleese’s licking of.)
4.
There is a scene in ‘The Psychiatrist’ (26/2/79) where Sybil, believing that Basil has spent the night in a girl’s room, slams the bedroom door on her husband. As she does this, there is an immediate crash-zoom into Basil’s astonished face. Why? Because, in the previous take, Sybil’s door slamming had been so spectacular that the door had virtually come off its hinges. The audience, highly amused by this, were then treated to a brief piece of ad libbing from Cleese: he began doing his ‘checking for woodworm’ tapping gesture, which he had hitherto used as an excuse for why he had been in the girl’s room in the first place. The footage of this out-take still exists, and was shown as part of an It’ll Be Alright On The Night compilation a few years ago. Precisely how much similar unedited Fawlty Towers footage still survives remains a mystery. It is possible, however, that this was a one-off out-take preserved on a private collection.UPDATE: We were going to mention all the following stuff anyway but Simon Harries has mailed us and saved us the trouble:
'
I'm certain you guys must be aware of the BBC Christmas tapes,
but it is possible they may not have come into your possession. The
1979 tape has been raided many times for outtakes on both
"It'll Be Alright On The Night" and "Auntie's
Bloomers", indeed BBC staff are now forbidden from making their
own Christmas tapes a) because all preserved outtakes are now
required for "Auntie's Bloomers" and b) because so many
pirate copies of the original, satirical and often very pornographic
VT Christmas tapes were floating around, giving the BBC a bad name.
For example, on the 1978 tape, Michael Parkinson tells a floor
manager who asks him to behave like a professional to "piss
off", and numerous "Dr Who" outtakes show Tom Baker
trying to snog his assistant Mary Tamm, and telling K-9 he
"never knows the fucking answer when it's important". A
BBC employee was actually caught selling Christmas tapes in
Tottenham Court Road - she was only rumbled when she tried to sell
one to a man who turned out to be the director general! On the 1980
tape (the third one), in an outtake from a "Not the Nine
O'Clock" news studio recording, Pamela Stephenson in her
'Angela Rippon' guise reads out a news item, along the lines that
the director general has warned to all artistes to stop over-acting
and deliberately making mistakes in the hope of making it onto the
VT Christmas Tapes - BBC audiences are now unable to tell the
difference between outtakes shows and actual programmes. Mel Smith,
seated next to her, can be heard laughing off camera.
The 1979 tape contains clips from many brilliant BBC shows of the
time, and has a section devoted to "Fawlty Towers". I've
never seen any of the clips transmitted except for the one mentioned
in your article. There are shots of Cleese going cross-eyed
behind Prunella Scales while the floor manager issues instructions,
Cleese staggering around the kitchen with a carving knife while the
camera tracks backwards to reveal the edge of the set, and longer
cock-up clips. There is a sequence beginning with a genuine clip
from a studio recording (It's either "Basil the Rat" or
"The Anniversary"), involving one of the weird frozen
ensemble shots you refer to, where Cleese says, "Ladies and
Gentleman, there have been a lot of cock-ups this morning, there is
an explanation, and my wife will give it to you". This cuts to
an early scene from "Communication Problems", in which
Connie Booth tells Joan Sanderson, "Mr Thurston is the
gentleman I'm dealing with at the moment". Sanderson replies,
"What?", Booth then fluffs with "Mr Richards is the
gentleman.... Oh fuck, SHIT!!" causing Sanderson and the actor
playing Thurston to laugh. Then, from "Basil the Rat",
during the scene where Basil discovers the rat in Manuel's room,
Andrew Sachs mistakenly refers to Basil as a pigeon, and then
realises "he's not a pigeon, he's a hamster", upon which
Cleese looks at the camera with a bemused, mock horror expression.
The 1979 tape also contains Cleese joking around with Tom Baker
during studio sessions for the Dr Who serial "City of
Death", in which Cleese makes a cameo appearance as an art
lover alongside Eleanor Bron. I believe "Fawlty Towers"
and "City of Death" must have been in production at TVC at
the same time, hence an invitation to Cleese from Who producer
Graham Williams and script-editor Douglas Adams to take part. There
are two sequences on the Christmas tape and both are deadpan.
Cleese is standing by the TARDIS with a VT machine whirring away,
and when he knocks on the door Baker pops out.
CLEESE This is for you.
BAKER
From who? CLEESE
Doug. BAKER
Doug who? CLEESE
That's right.
Far more amusing is the sketch that closes the 1979 tape. Tom
Baker is standing in the art gallery set, and Cleese walks up behind
him with a BBC Dr Who Tom Baker publicity postcard.
CLEESE
Tom, could you sign this for my godson.
Lovely little fellow, he's blind. BAKER
Have you got a pen? CLEESE No I haven't. (Baker pats his
pockets, searching) Oh never mind, I'll tell him you signed
it. To be honest, they are VT engineers' wank tapes - lots of scenes
with "Legs and Co." dancing round quadruplex machines and
smooching up to the most horrific-looking, bearded, 70's
fashion-victim VT engineers and editors - including a very young
Chris Wadsworth - and loads of naked breasts culled from various
films and BBC dramas. There are also bizarre sitcom & comedy
outtakes, including "Terry and June", "Rosie",
"There's A Lot of It About", "Not the Nine O'Clock
News", and some blue stand-up material. Your speculation may be right, who knows how much similar
unedited "Fawlty Towers" footage still survives? Perhaps
the BBC archives has retained uncut studio sessions for "Fawlty
Towers". They retain all sorts of stuff, and because no-one can
be bothered to go and look for it, it's still there rotting away and
no-one knows about it! But the clip you refer to from "The
Psychiatrist" comes from the BBC VT Christmas tape for
1979. Hope this information is useful'. Simon
Harries
[NOTE: A full article about VT
Christmas Tapes from the various networks will soon appear in
HIDDEN ARCHIVE]
5.
6.
An edition of Television’s Greatest Hits in September 1998 featured a brief interview with Andrew Sachs. One of the cutaways in the interview showed a rehearsal script for ‘The Psychiatrist’, then going under the title ‘Sex’, which was - according to the title page - designed to be the fourth show in Series 2, rather than the second. It was labelled ‘Re-write’ and had hand-written annotations on it alluding to expected running times, along with the word ‘Incomplete’ scrawled in the margin. Sachs then turned several pages, showing a passage of dialogue cut from the finished programme. The video picture unfortunately renders most of the page illegible, and it is not possible to make an acceptable guess at the wording. With a lot of good luck and squinting, we have only been able to pinpoint this exchange:
HARRY That’s for being alive.
MANUEL Que?
HARRY I’m punishing you for being alive. And as long as you go on being alive, I shall go on pun...
[Note: The ‘door-slamming’ scene from the transmitted episode was shown in conjunction with the shot of the script page, although it does not necessarily follow that the two sources correspond. The ‘Harry’ character rather resembles Basil in the above extract; further confusion can be found in the fact that there is no character called ‘Harry’ in ‘The Psychiatrist’ (although this is the name of the loud American in ‘The Waldorf Salad’ episode broadcast a week later).]
With the dumbed-down, twat-vision of programmes like Television’s Greatest Hits monopolising mainstream TV, it is likely that discoveries like this will continue to be referred to in this fleeting way, with a viewing public too stupid and easily-pleased to expect anything better.
7.
Before videotapes of the shows were commercially available the only way people could enjoy Fawlty Towers in their own time was with the LP releases. These were edited TV soundtracks and featured narration from Manuel to describe any visual scenes. The second of these - The Second Sitting - featured the episodes 'Basil The Rat' (here simply referred to as 'The Rat') and 'The Builders'. Manuel's additional dialogue (written by Andrew Sachs) presents the LP as a letter home to his mother ('I am very important pop star - I release record') and he tells the stories as if relating an anecdote.