“Monty Python star Terry Jones
Comedy Our Lady would have been 80 years old
Terry Jones lost his ability to speak but never lost his sense of humor.
© imago/MediaPunch
With “The Life of Brian” Terry Jones created a comedy classic. The Monty Python star would have turned 80 on February 1st.
“He promised me the whole known world, a little house on the Forum, slaves, donkey’s milk, as much gold as I could eat…” Terry Jones has slipped into many weird roles for the films of the British comedy troupe “Monty Python”. . However, no one was remembered as much as that one as the strict Mother of God with a shrill voice in “The Life of Brian” – named Mandy. But to reduce Jones, who would have turned 80 on February 1st, only to this role, even only to “Monty Python”, would be extremely wrong.
You shall be six friends
Terry Jones and Michael Palin (78) met at Oxford University, with whom Jones had the most intimate relationship within the group. At the funeral service honoring Jones, who passed away on January 21, 2020, Palin described it as “less a friendship and more a marriage.” John Cleese (82), Eric Idle (78) and Graham Chapman (1941-1989) knew each other from Cambridge, American Terry Gilliam (81) was the last to join the group – “Monty Python” was born.
The comedy show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” started at the end of the 1960s, and the first film “Monty Python’s Wonderful World of Gravity” was released in 1971 – a kind of highlight reel for the series. The first “real” film finally came out in 1975 and is still considered a milestone in weird slapstick: “The Knights of the Coconut”, which Jones directed alongside Gilliam. For the two films that followed, he even did it on his own: “The Life of Brian” (1979) and the anthology film “The Meaning of Life”, the troupe’s last film.
The great controversy
His “Brian’s Life” is the most commercially successful film of the six – and by far the most controversial. Church representatives stormed against the “blasphemy” captured on canvas. Countries like Ireland and Norway banned the film, and protest groups gathered in front of cinemas in the United States. The wonderful irony of it all: finally, Jewish, Catholic and Protestant associations agreed on something…
Incidentally, Jones himself never considered “The Life of Brian” to be blasphemous, as he revealed to The Guardian in 2011. “It was considered heretical because it was the structure of the Church […] criticized.” But he also stated in the interview that they would “think twice about making the film nowadays. Because at the end of the 190s he thought that “a religious nutcase could possibly shoot at us” – a scenario , which in his eyes has not become any more unrealistic over the years.
The historian, the children’s book author
After the great “Monty Python” era, Jones shot films such as “The Journey into the Labyrinth” (1986) with David Bowie (1947-2016) or “Erik the Viking”. He also tried his hand at writing children’s books. The titles of the books alone bring a smile to your face. For example in “How the squire Tom did a handstand, lost his heart and almost invented the flushing water”.
But it doesn’t always have to be humor. Jones was already interested in the Middle Ages when he was still at school. A circumstance that made him write a non-fiction book about the Crusades. Jones also launched a matching BBC documentary series.
Tragic death, funny farewell
Jones got his first bad news in 2006 when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. However, thanks to an operation, he defeated the disease. Ten years later, the shock diagnosis of dementia. Jones, who had a daughter in 2009 with his second and much younger wife Anna Söderström, lost the ability to communicate (aphasia) as a result. Finally, in January 2020, Jones passed away shortly before his 78th birthday.
After Graham Chapman, who died much too young of cancer, “Monty Python” had lost its second member. And like Chapman, the remaining four comedy stars grieved in their own unique ways. Jones’ coffin was carried into the church to the tune of her song “How Sweet To Be An Idiot.” Enclosing a bouquet of flowers, the four included a message that, how could it be otherwise, included a quote from Our Lady Mandy: “Terry, not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy! Love from all your followers, John, Terry G, Eric and Michael.”