Before the Ministry of Silly Walks there was the One-Legged Man Auditioning for the Role of Tarzan…

Fifty years ago this spring, Beyond the Fringe debuted on London’s West End—kicking off the ‘60s satire boom and leading directly to such television shows as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and That Was the Week That Was … and indirectly begatting all manner of television heirs, from the Smothers Brothers and SCTV to Tracey Ullman and Stephen Colbert.

When Beyond the Fringe  first  opened at the Edinburgh Festival in the summer of 1960, the show’s stars Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore were clean-cut young graduates of Cambridge and Oxford— clad in dark suits and skinny ties and looking for all the world like bankers in training. Then they opened their mouths, and out came a wickedly funny rush of words. “Isn’t there a lot of poverty in America?” Dudley Moore asked. “Yes, but it’s concentrated in the slum areas,” responded Peter Cook.

They were off and running, satirizing everything from Sunday morning sermons and patriotic World War II films to Shakespeare absurdities, the royal family, and the proper way to prepare for nuclear war. There was also, of course, Dudley Moore’s brilliant piano playing (as he helplessly tried to disentangle himself from a piece that wouldn’t end) and his mock pretentious delivery of an art song about Little Miss Muffet.

In 2005 the Paley Center (then known as The Museum of Television & Radio) screened the 1964 gala farewell performance of Beyond the Fringe, filmed at a London theater for the BBC. At the time I was interviewed by a bright, personable USC student named Jesse Thorn for a college radio program he had created. The name of the program was The Sound of Young America, and he devoted an entire episode of the show to Beyond the Fringe (listen to the episode). In 2006, The Sound of Young America was picked up for distribution by Public Radio International, and today many of the guests (actors, writers, stand-up comics) continue to reflect Thorn’s interest in comedy and his longtime participation in improv groups.

I sometimes catch myself comparing the sketches on Saturday Night Live to Beyond the Fringe. More often than not I’m disappointed, but last week’s mock commercial for a law firm that “specializes in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark injuries” was right on target. Among the lawsuits: An actor playing Spider-Man was severely injured when he fell out of the theater and was hurtled onto 42nd Street; Client X didn’t like the songs; Y was confused by the plot; Z got bored and fell asleep so suddenly he hit his head on the seat in front of him … and  Bono sued for a damaged reputation and was awarded a settlement of “one ticket to the show.”

It was very funny stuff. Downright Fringe-worthy.