Stefan Kanfer - The Essential Groucho: Writings By, for and About Groucho Marx

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN CLASSICS

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First published in the USA by Vintage Books 2000
First published in Great Britain in Penguin Books 2000
Published in Penguin Classics 2008
1

Copyright Stefan Kanfer, 2000

The moral right of the author of the Introduction has been asserted

All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

978-0-14-191936-2

For Sari and Nate Kanfer

I know that you are true to the Army. I only hope it remains a standing Army.
The Napoleon Sketch from Ill Say She Is!

You can even get stuccooh, how you can get stucco.
Dialogue from The Cocoanuts

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
Dialogue from Animal Crackers

You bet Im shy. Im a shyster lawyer.
Dialogue from Monkey Business

Therell be no diving for this cigar.
Dialogue from Horse Feathers

Go, and never darken my towels again!
Dialogue from Duck Soup

I could rent you out as a decoy for duck hunters.
Dialogue from the lost radio shows, Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel

You havent got a baboon in your pocket, have you?
Dialogue from A Night at the Opera

Say, youre awfully large for a pill.
Dialogue from A Day at the Races

I had dinner with my celebrated pen pal, T. S. Eliot.
From The Groucho Letters

Right from the feedbag.
Covering Groucho

I am sometimes jealous of my past.
From fugitive comic pieces and articles by Groucho Marx

Ill never forget my wedding day they threw vitamin pills.
Selections from You Bet Your Life

Falstaff was louder and more flamboyant and outweighed Groucho Marx by some 250 pounds. Yet in one aspect these two comic forces were strikingly similar. According to Shakespeare, Sir John was not only witty himself but the cause of wit in others. According to a worldwide audience, so was Groucho.

Julius Henry Marx (1890-1977) was the third of Sam and Minnie Marxs six sons (the firstborn, Manfred, died in infancy). The German-Jewish immigrants raised their brood in the clamorous Upper East Side of New York, always a step or two from destitutionalthough they insisted that they were not poor, they just didnt have any money. Sams inept tailoring drew few repeat customers; as for Minnie (ne Schoenberg), she had brains, looks, ambitionbut no outlet for her prodigious energy. All this was to change when she assumed the role for which she was born: Stage Mother.

Unlike Minnies favorite, Leonard, who was to become Chico, Adolph (Harpo), Herbert (Zeppo), or Milton (Gummo), Julius was neither cute as a child nor prepossessing in early youth. Minnie favored her other four sons, and later on Grouchos slightly walleyed look put young ladies off. As the brothers grew, they split into pairs. The eldest, Chico and Harpo, went their own ways, finding trouble in school and adventure on the streets. Zeppo and Gummo were the babies of the family and sought company their own age. That left Groucho, the classic middle child, whose resentments were so marked that Minnie called him die Eiferschtige the Jealous One.

As such, he retreated into books, more interested in the tales of Horatio Alger than in any challenges to be found in Manhattans uptown ghetto. Alone of the siblings, he excelled at his studies and fantasized that he might become a doctor. It was not to be. Minnies parents were entertainers back in Germany, and even though they failed to catch on in the New World, something artistic resided in the genes. Minnies brother Adolph was living proof. Restless in New York, he had quit the pants-pressing business, renamed himself Al Shean, and entered vaudeville. A few years later he was one-half of the hit comedy team Gallagher and Shean. The star made a great show when he stopped by to see his sister, flashing a diamond stickpin and scattering fistfuls of coins to the boys. Minnie got it into her head that she could take her sons along the same route. She hired a teacher to give Leonard piano lessons (although he learned only to shoot the keys with his right hand) and encouraged young Adolph to play a harp that his grandmother had brought from the old country. One epochal day Minnie listened to Julius singing along while Leonard rehearsed a piano piece. It occurred to her that the homeliest child had the most appealing voice. Tirelessly she hauled him around to auditions. When he caught on as a tenor, his fate was sealed. Minnie stopped the boys formal education and entered him in the school of vaudeville. Following his example, three of the four remaining brothers took to the stage (Gummo wanted no part of performing). The Four Nightingales metamorphosed into the Marx Brothers, a wild comedy team that needed stern advice and drastic rewrites from Uncle Al.