"Groucho and Me", Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx was one of the great comic actors of cinema and one of the most charismatic icons and entertainers of the twentieth century, both from the showbusiness and the mediatic american life. His career was always spread by the theater, cinema, radio, television and writing, reinventing himself for new generations whenever it was necessary. With his brothers he created one of the most iconic comedy groups in the cinema, characterized by an anarchic style of humor, between slapstick made with perfect sense of timing, dialogue gags and word games, which continues to work and enchanting audiences today. Proof of that are on some of the classics from the group's catalog, such as A Night at the Opera (1935), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933), which appears among the top of several lists dedicated to the best movies ever (of the comedy genre and of all cinema ever made).
The Marx brothers began their artistic journey in vaudeville, leaving for the cinema shortly after the transition from the silent films to the so-called "talkies". Groucho, while facing the success brought by the stage and the big screen, made radio shows and wrote humoristic chronicles for newspapers and magazines. With the success brought by the movies, the Marx brothers entered on the pantheon of American comedy and cinema. Many years later, when the group was no longer active, Groucho, who failed with some previous radio shows and solo movies (like Copacabana (1947), a little curiosity where he worked with Carmen Miranda), won a new generation of viewers with his television appearances and the contest he hosted for many years, You Bet Your Life (1965), that ran for almost 15 years. He continued to write, always keeping a hilarious ironic and sarcastic sense of humor.
Groucho and Me has himself telling his life, from childhood to the fame renewed by television. Groucho's sense of humor and jokes are mixed with more or less dramatic real stories, which give not only a portrait of an era, but also another look at the world of cinema. Here we can read about the first and second phases of the brothers' films (so divided by the change of studios and, consequently, the style imposed by them), the sudden changes that art and Hollywood suffered over several decades, and there is also space for some behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Groucho doesn't hide, among the jokes, some more disastrous histories of his life that, by themselves, can already cause laughter. In this book he explored a new way of telling his adventures, a little different from what characterizes his chronicles: here it is as if we were witnessing a great and pleasant conversation with a relative, who is suddenly remembering other interesting stories, memories or existential thoughts, amid a more comprehensive reflection, but without ever losing the main stories. And he speaks to the reader from time to time with his successive interruptions to the reading (wondering, for example, why someone would like to read an autobiography made by Groucho Marx!).
Groucho and Me is, therefore, a portrait of Hollywood in a period just before and after the end of silent movies, which has driven the emergence of more "sound" groups like the Marx brothers, and a way of looking at the American industry with humor and Grouchist wisdom. It is not a technical book about cinema, but a great collection of stories, told in a passionate way, about memories of a distant past of the cinema and the world of entertainment in the USA. We start in vaudeville and end up with television, which changed the world and that of many artists as well. By letting Groucho Marx tell his story, we discover little known Hollywood facts and some curiosities about this cinematic world.
Rui Alves de Sousa*
Excerpts:
"The Pantages Circuit was composed of a string of semi-medieval theatres stretching from Chicago to the Coast and back again. We were on our way from Duluth to Calgary and had a three-hour layover in Winnipeg. We stashed our hand luggage in the depot and all the boys, except me, automatically headed for the nearest pool-room. In recent weeks I hadn’t been too hot with the cue, and decided that I needed a brief sabbatical from the green cloth. I left the boys and the depot (in that order), and walked up the main street. A half-block away from a frowzy-looking theatre I heard roars of laughter. I decided I had better go in and see who could possibly be that funny. On the stage were eight or ten assorted characters in an act called 'A Night at the Club'. One of these actors wore a very small moustache and very large shoes, and while a big, buxom soprano was singing one of Schubert’s lieder, he was alternately spitting a fountain of dry cracker crumbs in the air and beaning her with overripe oranges. By the end of the act the stage was a shambles.
Leaving the theatre, I went back to the depot to meet my brothers. I told them I had just seen a great
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| Groucho Marx and Chalipe Chaplin in 1972. |
The Sullivan-Considine Circuit and the Pantages Circuit ran parallel to the coast, and we finally caught up with him in Vancouver. I had talked him up so much that my brothers were all a little sceptical. Then he appeared, and in less than five minutes they were willing to concede that he was everything I said, and more.
After the show we went backstage and introduced ourselves. We found him in a dingy dressing-room which he was sharing with three other eccentric comics. After the preliminary introductions, we told him how wonderful he was. During the ensuing conversation he told us he was getting fifty dollars a week and, although he had been promised a raise to sixty, it had never come through.
He had already created considerable excitement in the movie industry. In fact, he told us that some movie mogul had offered him five hundred dollars a week to work for him. We congratulated him.
'When do you start?', I asked.
'I’m not going to take it', he answered.
'Why not?' I asked, astonished. 'You’re only getting fifty a week now. Don’t you like money?'
'Of course I do,' he replied (and, boy, did he prove this later in life!). 'But look, boys, I can make good for fifty dollars a week, but no comedian is worth five hundred a week. If I sign up with them and don’t make good, they’ll fire me. Then where will I be? I’ll tell you where I’ll be. Flat on my back!'
He was a strange little man – this Charlie Chaplin. The first time I met him he was wearing what had formerly been a white collar and a black bow tie. I can’t quite explain his appearance, but he looked a little like a pale priest who had been excommunicated, but was reluctant to relinquish his vestments.
(...) I ran into Charlie again while we were playing the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles some years later. He still affected the peculiar collar and tie combination. The only difference was that this time they were spotless. Oh, yes – there was another slight change. He was now the most famous comedian in the whole world.
He came back to see us after the show and invited us all to dinner at his house. There were twelve of us at the table. The plates were solid gold, or close to it, and I think the furniture was made of the same metal. There were six uniformed manservants. This was quite a jump from the first time I saw him in that ten-cent theatre in Winnipeg, spitting crackers and throwing oranges at the soprano.
Charlie lives in Switzerland now, but it doesn't make any difference where he lives. He's still the greatest comic figure that the movies, or any other medium, ever spawned.
After Chaplin's success, the movie moguls began to realize that there were some pretty good comics in vaudeville and on Broadway. At one time or another most of them were brought out and given a fling at the movies, but most of the great comedians of the stage never were too successful on the screen. We were one of the luckier groups.
Ed Wynn, Bea Lillie, Willie Howard, Bobby Clark, Frank Fay and many, many others were never able to duplicate their tremendous Broadway triumphs. The real big comic movie smashes were Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Howard Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy, most of whom had very little stage success."
Link to the complete book in PDF:
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| Groucho Marx in Duck Soup (1933). |
Rui Alves de Sousa is a film critic at the online magazine Take Magazine, podcaster at À Beira do Abismo and a stand-up comedian.
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