From the archive: Looking good in the eye-popping 1970s

Published: May 18th, 1976. Photograph by Kevin McMahon

It has happened to the best of us. You get all dressed up in your snazziest shirt and tie, and you fluff up your hair, and you head off to meet somebody at the airport – and they make a show of you.

You try to be nice. You try to smile, even. But you end up looking abashed at Arrivals.

Today's photograph shows the managing director of Ardmore Studios, Sheamus Smith – better known to most of us in his subsequent incarnation as Ireland's longest- serving film censor – greeting the British comedian Marty Feldman, who was arriving in Ireland to make the film The Last Remake of Beau Geste.

By the mid 1970s Feldman's unmistakable mug was one of the most celebrated on British television. He had begun his comedy career as a radio scriptwriter and initially appeared on TV when John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graham Chapman needed a fourth cast member for their sketch series At Last The 1948 Show.

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Before he ever opened his mouth, Feldman looked funny. As a performer he made the most of his hulking frame and those bulging eyes – which, though nobody knew it until it was explained at length in the 2008 BBC film Six Degrees of Separation, had been inflicted on him by a botched operation for his Graves' disease.

One of Feldman's biggest successes was in the role of Igor in the Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein. This prompted him to direct, co-write and star in a movie of his own in the shape of The Last Remake of Beau Geste. But though the cast included Spike Milligan, Peter Ustinov and Sinead Cusack, the film was not – to put it mildly – a hit.

Neither Smith nor Feldman was even dimly aware of the critical drubbing to come, of course, on the day they posed for our photographer. Just look at that checked cap: only a confident man could carry it off. Although to be fair, Mr Smith’s dazzling shirt-and-tie combo would make anybody’s eyes widen.