John Cleese
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Plot. London-based gangster George Thomason plans a jewel heist with his right-hand man, Ken Pile, an animal lover with a stutter. They bring in two Americans: con artist Wanda Gershwitz and weapons expert Otto West, a volatile anglophobe. Wanda and Otto are lovers, but pretend to be siblings so Wanda can work her charms on Ken and George.
Jul 29, 1988 · A Fish Called Wanda: Directed by Charles Crichton, John Cleese. With John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin. In London, four very different people team up on a jewel heist, then try to double-cross one another for the loot, complicated by their efforts to fool a very proper barrister.
- (154K)
- Comedy, Crime
- Charles Crichton, John Cleese
- 1988-07-29
In London, Georges Thomason (Tom Georgeson), his seductive American girlfriend Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis), and their associate Ken Pile (Sir Michael Palin) are planning their latest crime: a diamond heist that should net them 13 million pounds sterling.
- IT WAS DIRECTOR CHARLES CRICHTON’S FIRST FILM IN TWO DECADES. Back in the 1950s, Charles Crichton was a famous director of Ealing Comedies—a series of comedy films produced by London’s Ealing Studios—who was known for his work on films like The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), Hue and Cry (1947), and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).
- CRICHTON AND JOHN CLEESE SPENT FIVE YEARS WRITING THE FILM. A Fish Called Wanda was years, even decades, in the making. Cleese and Crichton first met and began discussing ideas for a comedy heist film, inspired by The Lavender Hill Mob, all the way back in 1969.
- IT WAS INSPIRED BY THE EALING COMEDIES. Unsurprisingly, A Fish Called Wanda was heavily indebted to the Ealing Comedies, especially Crichton’s own The Lavender Hill Mob, a heist comedy which starred Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway as a pair of bumbling bank robbers.
- THE ACTORS HELPED SHAPE THEIR CHARACTERS. Cleese encouraged Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, and Jamie Lee Curtis to contribute ideas and help develop their characters.
In “A Fish Called Wanda,” for example, Michael Palin is desperately in love with a tank of tropical fish, and so Kline, who is equally desperate about discovering the whereabouts of some stolen jewels, eats the fish, one at a time, in an attempt to force Palin to talk.
Otto West. Michael Palin. Ken Pile. Watchlist. British gangster George Thomason (Tom Georgeson) and his hapless aide, Ken Pile (Michael Palin), draft a pair of arrogant Americans, grifter Wanda...
- (69)
- Comedy
- R
Jul 12, 2018 · There’s a fittingly dark footnote in the history of the classic 1988 comedy A Fish Called Wanda: the movie killed someone. In 1989, Dr. Ole Bentzen, a 56-year-old Danish audiologist...
