THE ONE THE ONLY GROUCHO

is the one the only oh that's me she was comedies great anarchist a sharp food Thorin in the hide of American propriety and funny enough he loved her for it now what do you got to say to me justice can you sleep on your stomach with such big buttons on your pajamas misses my aunt and she's come to talk over some old family matters I wish I had an aunt look like that well I'll take it up at your uncle Groucho reveled personally in in in knocking everything and everybody he would make outrageous statements or do outrageous things this would be a better world for children and for parents had to eat the spinach he was the original rebel I don't know what they have to say it makes no difference anyway whatever it is I'm against it pardon sir who commenced it I'm against Groucho certainly uh mainly had such a wonderful arrogance he was against anything that was normal your proposition may be good but let's have one thing understood whatever it is I am against it and even when you changed it all condensed it I'm against it he was a very disrespectful remember you're fighting for this woman's honor which is probably more than she ever did he made fun of most everything uh nothing seems sacred but he fááááá are we all gonna get married all of it all of us but that's bigamy yes that's bigamy - an insult from Groucho is only an insult in quotes it was part of his character I'm opposed to it my general principle I'm opposed to it the months before my son was born I used to yell for knife lamorne whatever a day I'm against it and I'll kigali since I boys commenced if I'm against it he buggy buddy he was ahead of his time really he was a really a kind of a Renaissance humorist I felt he was one of the brightest men overall that I've ever met she seemed to have so much confidence he was apparent he was he was very funny at times he was very serious at time he was very moody he had a streak of sentimentality raccho it did um he kept friends an awfully a long time he was a depressed man who suffered I think not only clinical bouts of depression but little problems with his family and wives I have never seen Groucho uh when his guard was down from the vaudeville stage to Broadway from movies to radio - you bet your life on television Groucho Marx ruled the comet roost for the better part of seven decades for a poor Jewish boy without an education it was his escape from poverty and his entree into the world of art his wit was exhilarating the destructor it spared no one who crossed its path and no pomposity was safe him in Groucho's presence his skill at puncturing the pampas balloon was was marvelous and you can say what the real love met we married for money a my shrinking violet hey with my height you to shrink 30 or 40 pounds oh you impotent head I'll report you to your paper I'll thank you to let me do the reporting is it true you're getting a divorce as soon as your husband recovers his eyesight is it true you wash your hair in clam broth is the true used to dance in a freezer I guess this is outrageous throughout his life he sought the companionship of writers because in his deepest heart he wanted to be acclaimed as an author not a performer a romantic he married for love and drove his wives away with his caustic tongue for Groucho comedy was an offensive weapon he used as a defense against an often hostile world everybody turn ingratiate himself with the audience at Groucho he took such a chance at being disliked why I've never been so insulted in my life well it's early yet you nine dollars and 40 cents this is an outrage if I were you I wouldn't play it pbut ran from the screen to the audience he was the one that did the first decides I'd ever seen hello good music so all right let's get out of here sit down I've got to stay here there's no reason why you folks shouldn't go out into the lobby to listening blows over the high literary quality of the humor oh boy highly sophisticated but combined with extremely broad physical humor it's not McCormick's Nara to the jungle where all the monkeys throw enough if I stay here I'll go nuts but it wasn't physical comedy that made Groucho famous it was his incomparable way with words Groucho could exist only in sound unlike Charlie Chaplin the master of silent comedy I played tennis with Charlie Chan and Charlie he turned around at me and he said gee I envy you I says you envy me right says I wish I could talk on the screen the way you and I found this kind of such an ironical statement is he the greatest comedian I think that there's ever been stage screen anyplace clowns and every all over the world has never been anybody's good and he's sitting there envying me because I could talk and now on with the Opera but joy being confined let there be dancing in the streets drinking in the saloons and necking in the parlor played on the idiocy of the way of his way of thinking which was so wonderful in all the years of medicine I have my years of Medicine why you don't know the first thing about medicine and don't point that bad at me it might go on in the films Groucho was the theater of the absurd his perception on reality that would seem so surreal to me pardon me while I have a strange interlude a couple of baboons what makes you think I'd married a one of you the best woman I think I ever did was an animal crackers where I had a scene where we had gone to have forget a hunt we was I supposed to be a huntsman is something and face mone I said we we got up at 6 o'clock in the morning had a good breakfast and we're back in bed at 7:00 that was the opening line and then then we went hunting and I caught an elephant I got an elephant in my pajamas how he got in my pajamas I'll never milk and then I said I had this elfin I didn't know what to do with them because I wanted to remove the tasks because and they're very difficult to remove from an elephant because they're very powerful and very strong Isis on the other hand in Alabama the Tuscaloosa and I think that's as good there's a certain musical rhythm that they had that the Marx Brothers really had and he's retained that rhythm he would tell certain jokes over and over and what was magnificent was they always had that perfect you know like perfect timing it is so distinctive and there are the rhythms and the readings they were very special but that all stems from from a sense of music hello I must be going I cannot say I came to say I must be going I'm glad I came but just the same I must be going you know he was not an overnight sensation he was a person that and his brothers you know we're doing the same thing for years and years and years before they really caught on I mean invertible they were okay in 1905 fourteen-year-old Julius Henry Marx began in show business career as a boy singer in vaudeville by 1915 Groucho and his brothers had developed their lunatic comic style on the vaudeville circuit and he would come up with lyrics to songs that he sang in vaudeville with his brothers a little thing called peezy Weezy when fishing last Sunday and I caught a smelt put him in the pan and the fire he felt of all the smells I have a smelt well I never smelled the smell five that smell smell too easy what's his day easy peezy peezy Weezy was his game he will get you if Weezy Weezy pz is a bad man speaking of audible those old jokes they survived because they're so good they're great that's why they survived seems to be a joke about a an actor was playing in vaudeville in small town and he got Longinus mm-hmm and looking for a doctor he didn't know anybody walks along the suburbs of this little town he finally comes to a cottage and there's a sign outside dr. Smith or brown or something and he can't talk very well and he rings the bell and a very pretty woman comes to the door who is the wife of the doctor and she opens the door and he says is the doctor in and she says no come on Eric gradually Groucho created his classic character in 1921 late for a show and with no time to paste on his Phaeton stash he dabbed grease paint on his upper lip before running on stage with his darting stoop walk the long cigar the painted mustache and the leering eyebrows the Groucho persona was now complete he had given his entire youth to the back-breaking demands of vaudeville the dressing rooms were terrible the money was awful they would close a show in the middle of the week if they didn't like it oh yes it was a very very hard life very hard like the brothers have made the transition from vaudeville headliners to Broadway stars when their first full-length played the coconuts opened in New York in 1925 really older folks the really lucky ones got to buy tickets to Broadway sit there look at that curtain with the gold fringe and the warm lights on at last lights went down and know that the curtain was gonna go up in the for young Marx Brothers we're gonna come out of stage and revolutionize comedy it was totally known it was totally known in 1929 the coconuts was filmed LG was just short of 40 when his illustrious movie career began I mean they broke down so many of these walls that people would like oh my god they really doing that I hope this TV station see if I don't you doing there is one indisputable chest x-ray x-ray x-ray the brothers made the coconuts monkey business horsefeathers and Duck Soup for paramount then move to MGM for a Night at the Opera and a day at the races the when I was a kid living in San Francisco they had a wonderful theater called the Golden Gate Theatre that showed a movie and a stage show and every once in a while the Marx Brothers would come up to the Golden Gate Theatre do five shows a day little scenes from their upcoming movie that they had not shot yet and I got to see day at the races where they pay per day wallpapered poor Margaret Dumont into the wall five times a day this was a perfectionist this was not someone who just goes out there and tries a joke and if it doesn't work you know too bad no no if it doesn't work he either perfects it that it does work or it's gone he was probably the best editor of comedy that I've ever seen you don't I don't want to talk to you about this again you snob I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse you're willing to pay him $1,000 a night just for singing I can get a phonograph record a Minnie the moocher for 75 cents for a buck and a quarter you can get Minnie even before I was in showbiz where I used to watch the scenes I had this like quiet little kind of sadness for any other actor who had the numbers the nerve to be in the scene with them but after all we must remember that artists on Phil on the other hand waters water isn't it and he's disease the West is West and if you take cranberries and Sue them like apple sauce it is much more like prunes and rhubarb does now uh can you tell me what you know he cared for all of his brothers my father told me to stay away from my brother my mother told my brothers to stay away from me first we just didn't work out because we were pretty successful working together and oddly enough we're still very good friends we see each other all the time there were five marx brothers and all chicle real name Leonard arrived in 1887 a year after came Adolf later known as Harpo Groucho was born on October 2nd 1890 two years later Milton or gumbo was born and the fifth brother Herbert or Zeppo was born in 1901 I think there was a favorite brother who was humble he's got about a 15% metabolism with an overactive thyroid and a glandular halfback tation of about 3% that's bad with a 1% mentality he's what we designate as the crummy moronic type I would always used to say when I was growing up and it got kind of difficult around our house because of my parents than the fighting I would say I wish that Harper was my father I would bicycle over when it got really difficult in our house and I would it would be hectic and dreaming and I'm carrying on with kids but there was a peacefulness in the air you've always said that chicka was the most interesting of the brothers I heard you say yes he had a brilliant mind Chico hey Chico had gone into mathematics is something he would have been at one someplace in New England you know and one of those in my tears and MIT or one of those were here is a little Peninsula and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland why at all I'm all right how are you I say here is a little Peninsula and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland all right why at all I'm not playing ask me another I say that's a viaduct all right why your dock it's what it was oh why oh no chicken oh I don't know why in our chicken I'm a stranger here myself all I know is that it divided up you try to cross over there a chicken and you'll find out by it up Chico was far too irresponsible too much of a gamble for Groucho's tastes he was he was a scalawag and I and of gambler no Chico even though he was a gamblin was broke almost all the time Chico was so broke at a time that he lost his membership in a Hillcrest Country Club and it that was his a waterhole he'd be there every day playing bridge or whatever he played gin rummy and here he was no longer remember well Groucho and Harpo chipped in and restore this membership brought it back for so they were very close ties and all his life he remained amazed and somewhat envious at Chico's phenomenal success with women there's a rather well-known story but it never hurts to repeat it when young Tallulah Bankhead hit new york she was a great great aristocratic beauty and daughter of important politician and chicka had always wanted to meet her as the story goes and dresser said they met at a party but people had warned him that don't do your usual crude approach to women which in your case always works and that they met and that the conversation was quite civil miss Bankhead mr. Marx and so and as everyone was breathing a sigh of relief chico said you know i really want to you and she said and so you shall you old-fashioned boy Danya doctor my brother thinks he's a chicken we don't talk him out of it because we need the eggs hey you look like a fella used to be my brother I don't think I got your name no I got my name I think you're pulling my leg yeah just to get him even well would you mind helping me push this camera store around imma sorry I gotta go to the golf course and lay down in the sand trap Sandra yeah you see it's a Sunday and that's when I see my psychiatrist I'm sure I used to know him if I'm not mistaken we both had the same mother Rogers mother Minnie Marx would forever be the dominant woman in his life she had left Germany as a teenager to come to America and at 19 married Simon Marx a sweet ineffectual tailor from Alsace the flirtatious ambitious mini was a classic stage motor a frustrated performer herself she pushed her children into show business and became their manager would you analyze me you Oh every time I see you with a cigar in your mouth I think of all the frustrations you had as a child and the wrong kind of a bottle that they gave you Mademoiselle it may interest you to know that I never had a bottle they say your heart beau inherited all of my mother's good qualities she's an interesting thing to say cuz she was a bit of a horror I mean the way she forced those boys into the business I know that the boys all adored many and many was the takeover person on that family you know she bleached the boys hair to make them look less Jewish she was responsible for their careers and they say that your attitude toward women has to do with your mother and one sad thing that I learned about Groucho once from a relative was that his they said that his mother made it clear that he was the least favorite brother Lee's favorite son I don't know a thing about women Groucho once said I'm a sucker for a pretty face Shozo let's go we were seeing against the mother Croucher was very fond of women he really was he liked women but not the power-on with one of them goes around with a black mustache so do i I had my choice I'd go around with a little blonde he had girls he dated a lot of girls and I didn't like any of them because they were well because probably I was jealous but also because they were young and dumb you know you took care of everything you're tall and short and slimming stout and blond and brunette and that's just the kind of a girl I crave he loved women but he was a sexist he didn't think of women as friends where's all those farmers daughters I've been hearing about the years he always said to me don't throw the ball like a girl throw the ball like a boy don't play tennis like a girl play tennis everything had to be like a boy and so I grew up thinking that males were superior are you a man or a mouse you put a piece of cheese down and you'll find out you see I'm not happy with my husband he should have married some little housewife madam I resent that some of my best friends are housewives well let's not waste any time why don't the three of his neck no that's the first time I've ever enjoyed say no to have the first time I ever enjoyed hearing it darling it's later than you think that's what I say it's later than you think come on children less neck Groucho Ethel does not Nick and neither do I speak yourself down everyone says I love you but just a Singapore I never knew its just inviting trouble for the poor Sokka who says I love you are you a great lover would you say have you been a real and miserable over that's why I've been married three times I'm an ardent lover but an ineffectual one do you believe in marriage do I believe in marriage not as much as I used to everything that ever grew the goose and the gander and the Gosling - the duck upon the water when he feels that way - says that's a wise quack you keep your bill out of this how would you like it if I brought it into your affairs and laid an egg he married young women good-looking women he was 30 when he married 19 year old Ruth Johnson they stayed together 22 years Ruth he had he had married Maria very early on I think she was in the chorus and one of the shows she would come home from the Tennis Club which is where she did a lot of her drinking and then he would start arguing with her and making her look foolish and it wasn't hard to make her look foolish because he was drunk but he buried two more women who were alcoholic so it leads me to believe that he liked the feeling of being with done he was able to dominate these women in 1945 a 55 year old Groucho married 22 year old keg or see that one lasted six years okay and I were friends before my father married her she would come to see me only I'd began to dawn on me that she was not really coming over the house to see me she was coming to see my father and then one night I recall she didn't come to see me at all she would read straight into my father's room and spent the union with him and so that kind of gave me a little clue that no I knew and he tried to boss her around and tell her what to do and and treated her like kind of a jerk and and she really wasn't she was just she wasn't well-educated or anything he had a happy time in the morning marketing and one day she said to him grouchy I'm your wife you'd never let me go marketing so he said okay gave her a hundred dollars and off she went to the market and there were shortages you know during the war she came back very proudly she had a carton of toilet tissue and a cocker spaniel puppy and that was the last time did he ever let her go marketing his final marriage which took place when he was 64 was to twenty-year-old even Hartford when she left him 14 years later Eden told a friend she would have stayed if only once he told me he loved me he put her down too because she would be drinking and he didn't understand about alcohol then she wasn't very smart and there was a vast age difference and they had no child to bring them together I was very fond of all three of them they divorced him happily I think though grudges relationships with women never worked out on-screen he found his perfect match in the formidable Margaret Dumont I shall never get married before my daughter you did one towering proud and profoundly obtuse in film after film she navigated the stormy seas of Groucho's abuse I can see you right now in the kitchen bending over a hot stove but I can't see the stove did Margit do much find you funny she played the as everybody knows the Dowager never understood anything I did on the stage really she thought I was serious if I feel you are the most able statesman and all Fredonia well that covers a lot of ground say you cover a lot of ground yourself you better beat it I hear they're gonna tell you down and put up an office building where you're standing you can leave in a taxi if you can't get a taxi come even a huff if that's too soon II can leave in a minute not off yeah sure I did with her was the Hollywood Palace but a pretty simple animals inhabiting the African jungle are moose Elks and Knights of Pythias don't you wanna know what a moose is that's big-game place - shot two bucks was the biggest game we had don't step on those few laughs I have it captain - all right oh you're showing meat any wild boar not until I saw you you hunt bear are you kidding I always wear a bikini oh and two days later she died and it's your last show she did was with me on the Hollywood Palace how did you have the time to really bring up a family the way a normal father because I enjoyed it I didn't do it as a duty I had two small children that I was crazy about and I don't think I made any sacrifices if Groucho increasingly ignored his wives he doted on his children making sure they got the attention he'd been deprived of as a child Arthur who would later write two books about his father was the firstborn Miriam arrived six years later he was a very devoted father very caring father he was a kind of father who always took me everywhere he was very involved in our lives clothes wise he wasn't real great unclosed I would say I need an address and he come into my closet and look and say well the hem on that can be lowered he didn't understand that you can't keep going to school on the same outfit or one or two outfits every single day one of their neighbors went to the same high school I did and one day the step grandmother told me this she the little girl came Horace Ikuo and said well who does she think she is just because she's Groucho Marx her daughter she can wear that one outfit all the time what do you think it is that so many of the over the youngsters of the famous that names get into trouble I think it's partly what they see at home if they see the parents boozing the kids are apt to grow up and drink and we weren't drinkers I never was a drinking well I'm going to be perfectly honest and tell you that I'm a recovering alcoholic and so until I got to the program that I'm in recovery program I really didn't learn a lot about life about myself and when I when I got sober and started learning he was dead by then with second wife Kay Groucho had Melinda born in 1946 when his mum Melinda was born he and I were in the hospital waiting in the waiting room and the nurse came in and said that he had a little baby daughter and he looked at me and he said don't worry Miriam she'll never replace you candy bacon and Melinda Marx now which one is candy pike I'm candy Bergen oh and you must be melindam on candy Melinda and I will sing a song that we've been carefully rehearsing for the past three weeks musical dream babies just like a beer is like a beautiful if you will play from McAfee you get all my and that is a Pacific crazy power musical diamond set your honey a dream and won't you play me serenity just change that this charmer you get all high and that is simply because I want to listen to right Melinda hated the spotlight and fled Hollywood I asked her why she ran off so many time very often he didn't know why she was he'd hire private detectives to find her but he kept pushing her into areas that she didn't think she could handle Rocha was happiest in the company of writers he worked with the great Broadway playwright George S Kaufman on the coconuts and animal crackers you know George Kaufman hated writing for he did it but he hated it he because Groucho was changing it always worked well you don't change George Kaufman you know unless you're pretty damn good he said you know Kaufman said to me once my greatest compliment you're the only actor I thought I had live in something I wrote grouches best friend journalist Arthur Sheik Minh collaborated with Groucho on books and sketches also in the groucho inner circle were screenwriter Nunnally Johnson songwriter Harry Ruby and NAT Perrin whom Groucho brought to Hollywood to work on monkey business with longtime friend Norman krasna he wrote his only play time for Elizabeth I think Groucho would rather have been a successful and famous writer than as a performer and he oddly enough would refer to himself as a writer he wrote will as a writer Gaucho's published works included memoirs letters and a comical look at the IRS and he had kept up correspondence with so many people and well famous people and world famous writers I was on one of the night shows I don't want to mention the name of the show it was the Johnny Carson show I had mentioned that I had written a book a book of letters it's called by Groucho Marx with all these notable people then and the next day I got a letter from the head of the Congressional library washing not 11 phone call and they asked me if they could have the original letters which I sent to him and if anytime you were washing you go to the Congressional library and you can read my book there and it's 2 cents a day this is truth I'm probably the only actor in the last 4050 years that had a book in the Congressional library and while I'm very proud of that he never seemed to like gonna let her stop there was always a PS and every letter I've got from him it would be an utter witty funny strange done sequitur even talk about Alexander Woollcott because I'd asked about whoa Katniss wonderful prose he wrote about well cut he talked about him great length and said I hope this answers most of your questions I have to go now Groucho PS have you ever noticed that Peter O'Toole has a double phallic name and he was not a formally educated person and I think it it bugged him didn't bug anybody else we used to go to school in the morning my mother always fix sandwiches for us in the morning to go to school because we lived in 93rd and the school was of 93 but by the time we got to school we were hungry again so we always ate our lunch and then we went home and had lunch again it was always so astounding she's like prepared lunch boy one sheet it says we ate that on the way to school this is why I didn't get an education and since you went to the University of Yale I was thrown out of the hotel in New Haven you can take great great performers of Laurel and Hardy or WC Fields with us than that and that's a good way to point it out no way that the intelligence or the literacy of what they were saying had anything to do with the result in comedy great as it was but he had everything to do with with Groucho well but this college be without football have we got a stadium yes have we got a college yes or we can't support both tomorrow we start tearing down the college but professor where the students leave where they always sleep in the classroom he had started his career as a voice of Panem and music remained a passion throughout his life I love a piano a lot of Seanna I love to have somebody play upon a piano a Gabby Anna it simply carries me away a fine or fine way to treat a Steinway I love to run my fingers or the keys the ivories and with the pedal had left a metal Paderewski comes his way I'm so excited if I'm delighted to hear that long hair genius play keep your finger keep your bow give me a P I am oh I love to sit right besides an upright or a high tone baby a couple of times I play piano at Groucho's house and but what specifically there was other people in the room I just thought I was the greatest thing since Paderewski because Groucho didn't say anything for about a minute he just listened I thought that was the height of confidence he was quite musical and he sang on key and he had it just a natural gift for them already our only dear say have you met Lydia or any other tattooed lady when our muscles not relaxing Encyclopaedia only the other champ of them all but two men she will do Amazon oranges with a view of Niagara that nobody has on a clear day you can see Alcatraz you can learn a lot from it yeah and I don't believe that you could ever have been a real close and intimate friend of garages use friending a lot of people if you couldn't sing crediting harmony but people like having rupees I had three letters from your friend Harry Ruby in as many days he's a congenital idiot and the compulsive bladder writer here's Harry Ruby is the great songwriter also a friend of mine too oh and he's written by truly all the songs that I sing this man is allegedly a composer and can only play in one key role in only plays in one or two faint hope and played on every key yeah but he's not on this show George you know why don't you he wouldn't wait for this money why did you put this Larry yeah don't you know the song yet you know I don't know it by heart do you know it by the piano when doe cleanings not a thing to rave about it won't get you in the Hall of Fame oh wait a minute you can do better than that well become of those fancy toils of yesteryear ouch oh please don't pick on me I play by ear the same as you sing let's see I got he has to it was a time when he suddenly discovered you're bitten Sullivan well any time he came it was home we had to listen to Gil business Sullivan if you're having dinner there twice a week and you have to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan each time it gets painful after a few months yum yum to think how entirely my happiness is wrapped up in that little possum really it hardly seems worthwhile Oh matrimony Oh magic what's the matter can't you see that I'm soliloquy zhing we we used to do a couple of little Gilbert and Sullivan things cuz you know a lot of the material that was written for him was kinda Gilbert and Sullivan II because it had all those wonderful quick little words and things like that once he was doing tit Willa when he came to the line now if if you remain callous and obdurate I shall perish and he stuck me said can I stop the band from him how many people in this audience know what obdurate means and I don't think any hands been up and he said I'm not gonna finish a song for an illiterate audience and if you remain callous and obdurate I shall perish has heeded and you though I probably shall not explain as I die oh well oh well in the 40s the Marx Brothers made in different movies for MGM and United Artists Groucho his first marriage over was a lonely man uncertain of his future and finding only sporadic work and radio for a man who required the limelight and always worried about money these were difficult days he once said to MFK Fisher we were terribly poor boys four in a bed so forth and so forth and he said if I'm ever poor again I'll have to kill myself he said I can't I can't handle it I stand here shocked that you haven't been paid oh I don't care the money isn't important anyhow long as I get it we three would make an ideal couple why you've got Beauty Chara money you had that money haven't yet because if you haven't when you quit right now he was always worried even when he was well off that he was going to wake up one morning and be broke hey don't think that poison that's four dollars an ounce I got cleaned out in 29 I had 250,000 dollars saved from many years of rooms without bath and Greek restaurants and I lost it all and 48 hours added to his insomnia was the fact that he could remember a light bulb burning in some part of the house and he said when you've been through the depression you've to get up and turn it off no matter how wealthy again we have been paid in tuition we want our wages wages you want to be wage slaves answer me that no course not but what makes way slaves wages I want you to be free remember there's nothing like Liberty except Colliers insanity post be free my friends one for all at all for me and me for you and three four five and six for a quarter Groucho had had a long period where he didn't work and he was a very very unhappy man there was Burns and Allen there's Jack Benny all the great comedians Milton Berle we're going great guns you bet your life brought Groucho renewed fame and fortune it ran successfully for three years on radio and for 11 years on NBC television the Groucho Show or you got your life from one of a better title was produced by a genius named John Goodell there was a Walgreen to our show radio show in which there were a lot of stars and shows participated in now on this show was oddly plenum and his partner is Jon Goodell they've been together for many years on television and radio and I did a scene with Bob Hope and we both dropped the script on the floor and we started that living and they had lived for about ten minutes which is amazing the amazing part is there wasn't dirty you know they were funny and I amazed me I wasn't thinking of Groucho as any possibility of doing a show where head living is involved when I come off the stage Goodell said to me he says hey would you like to do a quiz show and I said well I don't know quiz shots is about as low as you can sink and show business isn't a quiz sherry and he said well um I flopped four times on the radio I might try anything I'll be competing with refrigerators but that's okay today nobody would buy that show you you're going to sell the show you say hey we got a with a little guy with a moustache and glasses and he sits on a stool and he talks to people and then they do a little quiz no way there was the first time any comedy quiz format was used for basically a comedy show we won the Peabody Award one year is the best comedy show not the best quiz show ordinary people came on and he'd asked them or a nerd question and then he'd take their answer and twist it into what was really a comedy routine everybody came off second to Groucho what about the main customers don't they enter try fighting with you oh sometimes but I show them my wedding ring not only protects one finger we had the secret word and that's an interesting thing the secret word I just threw it in before the show went on there that we used to have on people are funny alarm clock that would go off and whenever it went off somebody was talking with get a hundred dollars I said well let's do something like that on this one and so the first person who said the secret word win a hundred dollars well it got into the it got in dictionaries of the secret word many of our couples say the secret way the duxelles drop down and pay me a hundred extra bucks how doc I've seen you lately ah this is the wind right here okay ducky go on back up there and hatch those a and drop my on phenomen that chemistry of George and Groucho was absolutely essential to make it work and Groucho who said that I was the mail Margaret Dumont what is the secret wide mr. Penniman well it sounds like a column now I'm gonna call you mr. Feldman alright grow that okay George it's fine of course perfume evaporates quickly but the best way to use it is on the wrists behind the hand and in the fold of the elbows and of course if they really want to be sophisticated behind the knees gosh yes the thing that I remember most is the fear in the eyes of his contestants because you know it was like being on the show with Spartacus I would not have ever wanted to get into a one-on-one conversation or or an argument in front of people let's say a debate with Groucho I would run he makes passes he's liable to wind up getting married isn't this true jr. well I don't think so I think that the man stays on his toes he can stay single all his life if he stays on his toes yeah he didn't get the feeling of superiority or get this one yet huh was that a zinger never never never I think that's why the people loved him oh that way is your husband romantic show me that he is oh man have you ever been made love to by a Frenchman now that I can recall you bet your life was the number one show on NBC for seven years and was on you know 15 years radio and television you had a girl I imagine how do you mean that when I met it in the in the nicest way you possibly could he didn't like off-color humor and he always used to say to me and I still believe this he said if a comic has to be dirty to be funny then he's not funny sure he can get a cheap easy laugh by being dirty but I found out it wasn't worth it and I don't want to be known as the daily comedian in him all he had to do was raise his eyebrows and whatever you said had another meaning but he didn't say a word what have you lying after being 25 years in public well the old fashioned way is still a bit I must have some reputation you know there isn't anything anybody can say to me anymore that doesn't evoke some kind of a daddy laughs in the audience what do you mean by the old-fashioned way weren't you offered the lead Altezza no but I was invited at the opening night and I wouldn't go and I told the man who want to take me that I don't want to see anything on the stage and I'm not doing at home I think it's apocryphal I do I really do but it is he could have said it was according the story and maybe it didn't appear on the air we had this couple who had like 19 children um he said nope no whywhy do you have so many children and the man said well I just like children and Groucho said oh I like my cigar but I take it out of my mouth once in a while if Groucho became more culturally conservative with age his politics were always to the left of center roger was a liberal hapa was a liberal and chicken bet on the Chicago White Sox Nixon became his neighbors almost across the street I guess in Trousdale Estates and of course they rushed to Groucho to ask him what he thought of that and he said better here than in the White House he was very concerned with the Jewish people in this world and felt very much although he wasn't religious that he was Jewish we were talking about anti-semitism and how prevalent it was in Hollywood and so for and so and he said well he said I wanted to join Santa Monica beach club but they said no Jews so I said look my daughter's half Jewish if we do join can she go into the pool up to her waist in his 80s Groucho's health finally gave out but not his vaudevillian spirit he traveled to kin to receive the French Legion of Honor and in 1974 accepted a special Oscar honoring his lifetime achievement slow down by a stroke and involved in a controversial relationship with his companion Erin Fleming groucho continued to perform at Aaron's urging the 82 year old Groucho gave a one-man show before a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall I think for him toward the end he always remembered Carnegie Hall is something very very special you know and he had a wonderful wonderful time the evening at Carnegie Hall was largely anecdotes and just he talked and he came through the curtain carrying a violin and he said I use tired of Jack Benny's music as I have any stumped on the violin first of all just coming out I mean he gets a five minute standing ovation people got their hours ahead of time just because they didn't want the evening of Groucho to be as long as possible and there were mobs that said Carnegie Hall long before curtain time there was rows of people who looked like Roger they came with the glasses they came with the thing they came with the but they came with the whole thing what you know like this he wants out to this you know I mean he has not yet and all of a sudden as this place goes crazy he sees rows of himself loved it and I have to do this little overture for you know for the New York audience so I decided because it's Carnegie Hall to come out and start with a Beethoven sonata okay this is called the wallenstein Beethoven's - no this is for real and I go out there I go and people are saying themselves what does this have anything to do with Groucho Marx I'm playing my thing and all of a sudden I go and it had everything to do with Groucho Marx it was funny in the New York concert when he's saying hello I must be going I started to feel you know we're not gonna have him around much longer you know and it was very poignant to hear him sing that and I'm just glad that he could experience the love of the public to that degree toward the end of his life I think there's there's nothing greater than that near the end I was over the house I went over and I stuck my arms under his arms and I don't lift it him up and then I'm kind of walking him back to the bed and this little weak voice says hey finiman you always were a lousy dancer you know miss one occasion you became by and ah Groucho came by with the the young lady who was his manager or whatever at the time and I put the two of them together because I thought these two old men of show business would really like looking at each other and talking well nothing happened they didn't say anything to each other and Groucho sits and UB sits and plays the piano go Ruby goes through hole you know a lot of songs and finally UB gets to I'm just well God of all that a bird a bird or devil on a Monday and Groucho who was like this was coming up to the piano and UB his play and Groucho is singing and there for the first time this lady said it was the first time that Groucho had gotten up to do anything like that I think the nicest compliment I ever had that way was a I was walking around along the street and babbling and there was a Jewish woman on the side where I was there's a Jewish man finally they stopped the woman came up to me and she says never die just keep on living Groucho Marx died on August 19 1977 and aged 86 he had spent a lifetime plan comic time bombs under our seats the explosions of laughter he left us will be heard forever when I think of him interestingly enough I don't think about him singing I don't think about him being funny I just think about him being very kind I just sort of felt that he was saying hey you know life is crazy and a little secret I know it is and watch what I do Groucho was special terribly special he was not just another funny man everybody who knew him severely worried about him and he would be lonely and he'd be depressed a lot and he needed a Groucho Marx to cheer him up he was the only person who couldn't have one you Oh hey what are you doing in there nothing come on

Channel: David Levecke

Views: 2,281,157

Keywords: THE, MARX, BROTHERS

Id: dEFd_2_b6X8

Length: 57min 36sec (3456 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Graiiaspl]

Great upload about a great performer! Nothing left to say, except thank you for this!

[u/Sheetkicker]

I remember reading once that Groucho Marx was known for having one of the biggest dingdongs in Hollywood.

I don't know how true that is, or how relevant it is, but there you go.

[u/Nichijo]

This school was here long before you were, and it'll be here long before you're gone.

[u/maya0nothere]

Night at the Opera 1935

Groucho Maximus