Okay, I’ll
admit it – I’m a Marxist. I’ve been a
Marxist for as long as I can remember, dating back to my earliest years of
grade school. And I don’t see it
changing any time soon. I’m a Marxist for
life. (Note to the NSA: this is an old,
venerated American tradition called humor.
Just go with it.)
Hard as
it is to believe now, but at one time it was possible to be young in the US and
have aesthetic and emotional attachments to cultural artifacts of previous
generations. When I grew up in the
1970s, it was just as easy to be a rabid fan of The Marx Brothers or, say, Bela
Lugosi, as it was to appreciate Elton
John or The Beatles. Culture was a more amorphous stew of new and
old, good and bad, the tried-and-true and the newly emerging. Radio dramas from the 1940s could still be
heard in reruns on radio along with Top 40 programs, and late night television was
awash in classic American cinema. It was
a wonderful time to grow up, if one was awake, because the great kaleidoscope
of American culture was spread out before you.
That has
largely changed. Our culture has become
too fragmented, our viewing and listening habits too balkanized, and our deep
and abiding suspicion of anything remotely challenging has shrunken the offerings
of our cultural landscape. It is, I believe,
the sneaking suspicion that something not contemporary may be too challenging
-- too slow, too much story, not loud enough – that has consigned so much of
American culture, both high and pop, to the contemporary dustbin.
Not so
just a few decades ago. And no figures
from the Golden Age of American pop culture loomed larger – in college campuses
or grade school playgrounds – than the comedy team The Marx Brothers. It is
arguable that the Marx Brothers were more popular in the 1970s than they were
in their heyday of the 1930s. It is a
success story that has no real equal in American entertainment, except, of
course, for the continuing popularity of the more proletarian Three Stooges.
During this
reclamation, the aging and increasingly frail Groucho Marx (1890-1977) managed a one-man show at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and appeared on just
about every television venue that would have him. It was a wonderful coda to a remarkable career,
and one that, we hope, made up for many real-life disappointments and setbacks.
Born Julius
Henry Marx in New York, Groucho was pushed into show business by his mother,
Minnie. She was convinced that a family
act would be a hit, and all five brothers would eventually work onstage as a
team or separately.
Chico, the oldest brother, was a
compulsive gambler and womanizer who seemed, oddly enough, to be mother’s
favorite. Things came easily to Chico,
and Groucho resented that. Harpo, who clearly had some kind of
undiagnosed learning disability, was often the subject of Groucho’s most
condescending jokes. However, Harpo was
a genuinely happy man – he had a talent for happiness that Groucho lacked. (Indeed, Groucho was deeply suspicious of happiness.) The two younger brothers, Zeppo and Gummo, never
really embraced show business, but Groucho felt a responsibility towards them,
and often made arrangements to further their careers and businesses.
In fact,
Groucho played father to his brood of brothers, something that their real-life
father Sam could never quite pull off. It
is perhaps this early imposition of responsibility and obligation that soured
Groucho so early in life, and made his private relationships so fraught. He married three times, twice to women young
enough to be his daughter, and spent his sunset years with a conniving
adventuress who sucked away his energy and cash while trying to establish
herself as a Hollywood player.
But,
whatever messiness of his private life, Groucho was probably the most gifted
comedian of the 20th Century.
He had all the gifts: he looked funny, his voice was funny, his walk and
mannerisms were funny; he was a gifted physical comedian and a comedic lord of
language.
Groucho’s
métier was the insult; this has been much degraded of late, but with Groucho it
was an art form. Groucho’s insults
relied on real wit, not merely funniness, which is, in the final analysis, the
ultimate indication of intelligence. We
could easily fill up multiple pages with examples, but here is one delirious scene
from Horse Feathers (1932). Groucho, as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff,
romances college widow Connie Bailey (Thelma
Todd) in a rowboat while she tries to steal information on the upcoming
college football game:
Wagstaff: This is the first time I've been out in a canoe since I saw The
American Tragedy.
Connie: Oh, you're perfectly safe, Professor, in this boat.
Wagstaff: I don't know. I was going to get a flat bottom but the girl at the
boat house didn't have one.
Connie: Well you know, Professor, I could go on like this, drifting and
dreaming forever. What a day! Spring in the air.
Wagstaff: Who, me? I should spring in the air and fall in the lake?
Connie: Oh, Professor, you're full of whimsy.
Wagstaff: Can you notice it from there? I'm always that way after I eat
radishes.
The
football team's signals fall out of Wagstaff's coat pocket into the water and
drift by Connie. He boasts that he has a second set of signals in his other
pocket: Luckily, I've got a duplicate
set in my pocket. I always carry two of everything. This is the first time I've
only been out with one woman. Then, she attempts to use baby talk on him to
divulge Huxley's football signals:
Connie: Do you know, Professor, I've never seen football signals? Do
you think a little girl like me could understand them?
Wagstaff: I think a little girl like you would understand practically
anything.
Connie: Is gweat big stwong man gonna show liddle icky baby all about
the bad footbawl signals?
Wagstaff (startled): Was that you or
the duck? 'Cause if it was you, I'm gonna finish this ride with the duck.
Connie: If icky baby don't learn about the footbawl signals, icky baby
gonna cwy.
Wagstaff: If icky girl keep on tawking that way, big stwong man gonna kick
all her teef wight down her thwoat.
The Marx
Brothers made some 13 films in all; some brilliant (Duck Soup, Monkey Business,
Horse Feathers, A Night at the Opera, A Day
at the Races), some awful (At the
Circus), but all worth seeing, even if for only occasional glimpses of
genius.
In the
1950s, Groucho became a solo act, serving as quiz master for You Bet Your Life on both radio and
television. Here was Groucho in his
element – talking to a broad cross-section of people and deploying his killer
wit. Oddly enough, this was Groucho’s
most celebrated star turn before his great revival in the 1970s, and though
amusing, You Bet Your Life was never as inventive, transgressive or fall-down
funny as his classic films.
If you
have not seen the early Marx Brothers films – particularly the films made at
Paramount: The Coconuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck
Soup – do so without delay. They are
among the most wonderful artifacts of American pop culture.
