Introduction
Terrence Graham Parry Jones aka Terry Jones died at the age of 77 on January 21, 2020. This was after a long battle with dementia, lasting over five years. Anyone who knows or loves Monty Python’s Flying Circus knows that Jones was an integral part of this brilliant comedy troupe.
As part of this eclectic comedy team, Jones would often dress up in a waitress outfit. Yelling “Spam, Spam, Spam Spam, and Spam!” he also frequently played the straight and snooty “man on the street.” This was against fellow Monty Python member Eric Idle in the “wink-wink-nudge-nudge” sketch. It didn’t just stop there.
Jones was a versatile comedic actor, writer, director, and producer. He was also a focal part of the chaos that was Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Premiering on BBC1 back in 1969, the show would run until 1974. Its huge success spawned numerous movies, concert tours, albums, reunions, and books. It made the Monty Python team extremely wealthy, and famous. It also turned them all – and deservedly so – into comedy legends. However, like the rest of the Pythons, Jones was so much more than what he appeared to be on this surrealistic British television show. Jones would later reflect:
“One of the things we tried to do with the show was to try and do something that was so unpredictable that it had no shape and you could never say what the kind of humor was.”
Beginnings
Terry Jones was born in Wales in 1942. While studying at Oxford he met and performed with future Python mate Michael Palin and performed in The Oxford Revue back in the early 1960s. Jones and Palin would become writing partners and also appear in, and write on, Do Not Adjust Your Set for ITV, The Complete and Utter History of Britain, and The Frost Report; both in the mid to late 1960s and for the BBC.
Fellow Python legends John Cleese and Eric Idle were also young up-and-coming writers and performers on The Frost Report in 1966. The nucleus of what was to be was beginning to take shape. The late Graham Chapman and John Cleese met while attending Cambridge University together and were also both writing and performing for BBC TV and BBC Radio in the mid to late 1960s.
Cleese met iconic animator/director, and Python member, Terry Gilliam, while Cleese was in New York performing and touring with the Cambridge University Footlights. Gilliam would later move to London and work on the animation for Do Not Adjust Your Set. The last piece of the Python puzzle was now in place.
The Circus
Cleese and Chapman were soon offered a development deal by the BBC, and Palin – at the behest of John Cleese – was convinced to join. Gilliam, Idle, and Jones joined up to form the six-man troupe after their development deal with Thames Television fell apart. Monty Python’s Flying Circus officially launched in October 1969, and the rest is history.
During the show’s 45-episode run, Jones would be widely credited as the key driving force in creating the surrealism of the series. He also would be the one that moved the comedic team away from more “traditional” humor, and closer to a more stream-of-consciousness style.
In 1975, Terry Jones began to show his versatility in the medium, when he co-directed (with Terry Gilliam) the first (excluding And Now For Something Completely Different) Monty Python feature, Monty Python, and the Holy Grail. The stories that surround the production of this film are fairly well known by now.
Graham Chapman, the “star” of the movie, was an out-of-control alcoholic who was driving everyone bonkers. Further, co-directors Gilliam and Jones did not see eye to eye on just about anything, as both had completely different visual styles. Still, on a $400,000 budget, the film grossed over five million dollars worldwide and was a huge hit.
It was agreed to by all parties involved that Terry Jones would be better suited for all directorial duties for the next two Python movies, Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The former, being, the more critically and commercially successful of the two.
The Pythons quite often disagreed on creative decisions, and all of the members were extremely opinionated as to current and future projects, as well as what the final product should look like. None more so than Cleese and Jones, who were constantly butting heads with each other. As Cleese would later reflect:
“Terry Jones and I were the most powerful personalities, or the most argumentative, or the most stroppy — you could put it lots of different ways, positively or negatively, but because we were such different character types, and he was all about feeling and I in those days was all about intellect, it was very easy for us to get into these confrontations.”
Regardless of the confrontations and disagreements, the members of the Monty Python troupe truly respected and cared for each other, and it showed in their work – be that on the small screen or in major film features.
Recording Artist
Another aspect that was widely attributed to Terry Jones was their huge success as a recording artist. When The Pythons first “conquered” America in the early 1970s, it wasn’t via TV (PBS wouldn’t start airing the show until 1974), it was via their comedy albums.
Michael Palin and Jones both supervised and were the driving force behind their first album, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. They also worked together on their two follow-ups Another Monty Python Record and Monty Python’s Previous Record. All of these were huge successes and turned the Python troupe into cult figures. This was even BEFORE the show started airing in the US.
With a wildly successful cult-like TV show, several popular comedy albums, and three popular and successful movies under his belt, Terry Jones could have just kept riding the Monty Python train into retirement. To some extent, he did. However, as previously stated, he was, and was interested in, so much more than just being a member of the Monty Python team.
Renaissance Man
One might even have called Terry Jones a “renaissance man,” as he wrote scholastic-type books such as Chaucer’s Knight (1980), which was his view on The Canterbury Tales. He also wrote several children’s books. Jones even wrote the screenplay for David Bowie’s greatest role – Jareth in the cult-classic film Labyrinth (1986).
If you look at the IMDB page for Terry Jones, the auteur never stopped writing after the original Python series ended. He also was obsessed with medieval and ancient history. This was reflected in the subsequent TV work that Jones would do. Especially on the documentary side of the medium.
Jones was particularly obsessed with Chaucer and wrote about him frequently. He also would continue to direct feature films. This included the bizarre Erik the Viking (1989) with Tim Robbins. He also directed Absolutely Anything (2015) with Simon Pegg. Jones was a man who consistently stayed busy.
Outside of film and television, Jones was married twice and had three children. He was a staunch anti-war activist and wrote about it frequently. Especially about the “War on Terror” which he went on at length about in Terry Jones’s War on the War on Terror: Observations and Denunciations by a Founding Member of Monty Python (2004). He would go on to state:
“What really alarms me about President Bush’s ‘War on Terrorism’ is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? … How is ‘Terrorism’ going to surrender? It’s well known, in philological circles, that it’s very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.”
Conclusion
Monty Python functioned as a single hilarious organism. They were all equals. Integral to the process. All of them were dependent upon each other. That’s why when the amazing Graham Chapman died in 1989, it was all over.
As time marches on and the remaining members of Monty Python leave this mortal coil, it will hurt. It will be sad – perhaps extra so. With other screen legends of stage and screen, we only have to deal with their passing once. We still have to go through this four more times.
Monty Python was one of – if not the – greatest “comedy teams ” in the history of the medium. Right up there with The Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, and The Three Stooges. They should be celebrated and passed down from generation to generation.
Terry Jones passed away on January 21, 2020, from frontotemporal dementia. He’s survived by his wife Anna Söderström, as well as two daughters and a son. Jones has been honored by the surviving members of Monty Python, as well as actors, writers, directors, musicians, athletes, and fans around the world.
