Making legends out of clay

One of the things I discuss in my new and now available for pre-order Groucho book is the way in which our biographical conception of the great man is to some extent a fantasy, conditioned by our tendency to believe what we want to believe about him and discard what we do not - whether it was that he was exactly the same wisecracking comedy dervish off-screen as on, or a tears-of-a-clown tragic figure, or a snarling misanthrope. 

This manifests itself in big ways and small, and I find the small ones just as interesting as the big ones. 
For instance, everybody knows the story that on the set of A Day at the Races director Sam Wood watched Groucho play a scene and declared ruefully, "You can't make an actor out of clay." Whereupon Groucho snapped back, "Nor a director out of Wood!" Very funny. And very much the Groucho we want our man to be. 
But do you really believe it happened?

If you do, why do you? Doubtless because it is quoted, and stated as fact, more or less every time the film is mentioned. But where does it come from? 
My assumption, in so far as I considered the matter at all, and perhaps yours, was that it was a story that came up somewhere in someone's first hand testimony, and was singled out and repeated ever after. But it's not. It's a publicity story, just one of dozens and dozens that the studios sent out to the newspaper gossip and film pages. 

Now, of course, this in itself does not mean that it didn't happen. There is indeed a very, very, very slim chance that it did - just as the Valley Morning Star (January 2, 1937) and scores of others would have us believe. But that certainly wouldn't be standard procedure with a story like this. In the main, such gems were concocted by people who were paid to do just that; people whose job it was to sit in an office and dream up funny or eye-catching stories about the stars, to plant in the press and grease the publicity wheels for their forthcoming releases. My point therefore is that on the evidence there is no actual reason why we should believe it - and the fact that it happens to be a great line shouldn't be a reason in itself. There are, after all, many more such nuggets to be found in the inkies about A Day at the Races, as there are about all their other films. So hats off to whoever came up with this one - it proved itself a classic.

But think about it. Even if Groucho were the wittiest, most spontaneous man who ever breathed, does this sound like an off the cuff exchange to you, or does it sound like a joke someone has sat at a table and thought up? Even if Groucho were that capable, in the first instance he has had the most tremendous luck that Wood so fortuitously handed him so perfectly worded a feedline. There are an infinite number of ways he could have made the same point, without explicitly evoking the metaphor of crafting the performance from a building material. And even if he had done that much, he could so easily have worded it differently, so the structure forbade the precise formulation needed by the comeback. Brilliant and lucky, Groucho!

Ah, but then - it's not just funny, is it?  Not just proof of Groucho's lightning wit. It's also biographical evidence of the dislike that existed between the two men, right? Nope. It's a publicity story. 
Groucho certainly did dislike Wood, and I don't doubt that the stories of Wood being frustrated and baffled by his stars are likewise true. But any kind of real feud, if made manifest in such a way, would not have traveled from the set to the papers via the publicity department. It's just a joke, merely a play on words. If Groucho had said it, he'd have said it of anyone, should the structural and linguistic opportunity have arisen. It's not evidence of anything at all.

As I explain in the book, I choose to dwell on things like this not because I like spoiling people's fun, nor because I think it's particularly important in itself. The real issue is that what it reveals about us - that we craft our images of our heroes from desires as much as from the evidence - has wider implications, especially in the case of someone like Groucho, whose offscreen character was also, much of the time, a performance. 
This is why each new sensationalist biography vies with the last to exaggerate his negative traits still further, in their quest to portray him as demon father, tyrant husband or all-round sarcastic bastard. But when you return to the primary sources, this deeply unpleasant character is simply not to be found there. The real Groucho is a basically rather ordinary fellow, with his full complement of frailties, as are most of us, but - frustratingly - offering little to satisfy our need to make him the equal of his onscreen persona in importance, vitality or dominance. So we jiggle things around a bit, and change him into that which we prefer, and thus prove that you can make a man out of clay. 
That is the phenomenon that interests me, and which I believe has distorted our sense of Julius Henry Marx (whoever the hell he was), and which I address in the new book. 

The most glorious creature under the sun

 a guest post by Rodney Stewart Hillel Tryster

Nearly a decade before writing the first history of silent film in Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine, R.S.H. Tryster (seen here at age 14) was planning to write a book on the Marx Brothers' writers. 

Though this project never came to fruition, here is a digression related to a song from At the Circus. 

Yes, that song.

How often does it happen that one of a world-famous performer's favourite party pieces is one best-known for not being showcased in one of his films? 
Of course, it happened to Groucho Marx, who loved singing the song Dr. Hackenbush, which had been written for A Day at the Races. In his next MGM film, At the Circus, he would sing one of his most popular ditties, Lydia the Tattooed Lady, but in A Day at the Races he didn't sing at all, unless one counts By the Old Mill Stream, a few words of which accompany the hand-washing interludes in the big examination scene, and a single line, just before the fade-out, of yet another song that didn't make it into the finished picture, I've Got a Message from the Man in the Moon. 

Bizarre as it may sound, what these next few paragraphs will examine is the question of whether, in a certain sense at least, Groucho did receive a message from the man in the moon.

To achieve this feat, it is perhaps best to go back to Berlin. 

In the Marxian world, Berlin is usually taken to mean the man who had no hits in The Cocoanuts, or, as Groucho once put it in a letter, "Irving, not Hitler". But in the capital of present-day Germany, in mid-2013, it was hard to walk around without seeing this poster on bus stops:

It was part of a campaign to raise money for a memorial to Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. 

Hirschfeld (1868-1935), succeeded like no other prominent Berlin figure of the 1920s in combining at least three of the main elements the Nazis wished to purge from society: he was Jewish, socialist and homosexual. 

He was also an empiricist and founded an 'Institute for Sexual Research', as well as what may be considered the world's first gay rights movement. It is not surprising that Hirschfeld's institute and its library were among the earliest targets of the Nazis after they achieved power in Germany. It was ransacked on May 6^th, 1933 and most of its contents 'starred' in the great public book-burning that took place four days later, the bonfire topped off by a bust of Hirschfeld. 

Among the witnesses to these events was Christopher Isherwood, whose first permanent lodgings in Berlin had been an apartment attached to the Institute. Hirschfeld himself was absent at the time and instead of returning home from his travels, he ended his days in France.

Hirschfeld was a very well-known figure indeed and his nickname was 'Tante [Aunt] Magnesia'. So much had he become a part of the culture that one even discovers a late 1920s solo cabaret act featuring the actor Wilhelm Bendow as a character called 'Magnesia the Tattooed Lady'.

"So what?," I hear you snort. Tattooed ladies were a staple of a certain kind of entertainment back then. Why should one in 1920s Berlin be relevant to our story, especially if she wasn't even called Lydia? 

Ah, but she was...

The character that eventually morphed into Magnesia the Tattooed Lady began life as Lydia Smith the Tattooed Lady in the literary-political cabaret 'Die Wilde Bühne' ('The Wild Stage') that opened in the basement of Theater des Westens in September 1921. 

The actress Trude Hesterberg was behind this venture, on borrowed money (her artistic co-director was Hans Janowitz, best-remembered for co-authoring the screenplay of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). Among the talents involved were later legendary names like Friedrich Holländer and Kurt Tucholsky. 

The Tattooed Lady sketch was not a song, however (though Mischa Spoliansky and Kurt Schwabach had the previous year written Das Lila Lied [The Lavender Song], dedicated to Magnus Hirschfeld). Tucholsky and Bendow were the credited authors of the monologue during which Bendow used the illustrations on his torso suit to comment on events of the day.

What is presumably the first script of this act has been published, with topical jokes relevant to the concerns of 1921. Bendow, however, seems to have gone on with the character till at least the end of the decade, by when, as noted above, she had been renamed Magnesia, a nod in Magnus Hirschfeld's direction that seemed to have required no explanations (Bendow's own nickname was 'Lieschen'). 

Nobody claims to know how much of the act was written by Tucholsky and how much by Bendow, though it may not necessarily be the case that Bendow was responsible for more of the material as the years went on. One can read descriptions of Bendow and Tucholsky sitting together many an evening in order to update the act. Not many holds were barred in terms of content and Bendow not infrequently got in trouble with the police.

The act was in two parts, one for mixed audiences and a raunchier finale for which Bendow asked the ladies to leave (this is in the script; it is by no means clear that ladies in the real audience were actually expected to exit). Bendow would introduce himself as coming from the state of Orania, having been born a little behind South America in the city of 'New-Popel' (i.e. 'New-Snot'). 

He then explained that most of the political illustrations were to be found on his breast. Here one could formerly have found the Kaiser and his family, now erased. A blank space is explained as waiting for the man who will bring order to Germany's finances. The right breast showed the king of Greece being bitten by a wild monkey (this was true and had been fatal in 1920). Movie star Fern Andra was in the portrait gallery on his back, part of which had, he said, been confiscated by the censor (this part was "anders als die anderen" - different from the rest, an obvious reference to Richard Oswald's 1919 film of that title about homosexuality). Nearby was Herr Lubitsch, seen filming "Sumurun, the Oyster Princess of Dubarry" (three Lubitsch titles in one – Dubarry was to pop up in Groucho's introduction to the 1939 song). 

The show business jokes continued: the director of the Lessing Theatre was seen at a table counting out and  paying entertainment tax to the Berlin municipality; the table was too long to fit in the area available for the illustration and would be continued, Bendow said, on his sister's body. Two honorary members of the film-extras union were named: Emil Jannings and President Ebert. Bendow apologised for an unsightly spot where the tattoo artist's hand had trembled: "In Munich I call the spot an Expressionist painting. Nobody notices". The first half came to an end with Piesecke, described as a lunatic and the only man in Germany who hadn't gone on strike, and, underneath him, the only living creature in Kattowitz that would vote Polish in the Upper Silesian referendum: a louse.

The second half included Adam and Eve (the apple, Bendow claimed, was drawn from life) and nude dancer Celly de Rheydt in her work clothes ("not even a bonbon in her mouth"). Bendow described parts of his body that had not been approved by the police for exhibition in public; there one would otherwise have been able to see Germany's independent party after its split, the Siamese twins ("partly going for a walk, partly on the road to sin") and a circumcision celebration in southern Madagascar. 

In other accounts, presumably of later versions of the act, this appears to have evolved into "the tribe of wild horsemen, the Goyim, celebrating Ludendorff's circumcision". (WWI military commander Ludendorff was allied with Hitler during the 1923 attempted coup, the 'Putsch'. Apparently partly due to his wife's influence, Ludendorff hated Catholics as much as he hated Jews and Hitler's refusal to join him in the former hatred brought about an estrangement between the two.)

In writing a song about a tattooed lady in the late 1930s, Arlen and Harburg weren't breaking new ground; WWI soldiers had sung 'The Tattooed Lady' to the tune of Harry Von Tilzer's My Home in Tennessee, with lines both suitable and unsuitable for publication at the time (and rhyming 'hips' with 'battleships' into the bargain). 

One published source tries to make a connection between the Bendow act and Groucho's song, but it seems highly speculative. In Ethan Mordden's Love Song: The Lives of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya (2012), Bendow's act as Lydia is mentioned as part of a description of early 1920s Berlin cabaret and a footnote goes on to inform us that "Somebody at MGM took note of Lydia, because the Marx Brothers film At the Circus (1939) offered Groucho in a number by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, Lydia the Tattooed Lady." 

The footnote also points out how much tamer the MGM version was than Bendow's original. Bendow's Lydia was around before MGM was founded, but could still be seen for a few years after that event. The footnote unfortunately conjures up the unlikely vision of an early 20s talent scout standing at the back of the 'Wilde Bühne', scribbling in his notebook: "Use Lydia character for song after Marx Brothers become famous on Broadway and are finished at Paramount." 

However, the mere fact that someone has already gone into print linking the two Lydias is certainly a reasonable excuse to dig around a bit more.

Was Groucho's tattooed lady called Lydia for any other reason than her convenient near-rhyme with 'encyclopedia'? Whether Harburg intended anything more than that is surely very hard to know with any certainty today, but it is perhaps worth asking how likely it is that he knew of the tattooed lady of Berlin cabaret. 

Bendow's Lydia/Magnesia character seems to have been very well-known locally, but how would the news have reached the USA? Or, more specifically, Harburg? By the late 1930s there were many talents in the USA who had seen better days in Berlin, but if one looks at the chronological list of Harburg's songs, he seems to have collaborated only once with one of them, Franz Waxman (as former pianist for the Weintraub Syncopators, Waxman could easily have been a source of information about Berlin cabaret from the late 1920s on, but can't we do better than that?)

Harburg's schoolmate and good friend, Ira Gershwin, collaborated with Kurt Weill more than once, but not before Harburg had written the song in question. Weill was apparently not very enthusiastic about George Gershwin, but his relationship with Ira seems to have been excellent. Ira and Weill had met no later than the Gershwin brothers' arrival in Berlin in April 1928, when Bendow's tattooed lady character would still have been a staple of his cabaret turns. 

However, much more useful than the chronology of Harburg's published songs is the chronology provided by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, where one can read: 'March-June 1937: Begins working with Sam and Bella Spewack, and E.Y. (Yip) Harburg on a musical play ("The Opera from Mannheim") about German refugee actors. Unfinished lost.'

So we do know that Harburg actually spent a lot of time with Weill before working on At the Circus. 

In his letters to Lotte Lenya, Weill refers to Harburg as brilliant, as well as mentioning that working with him every morning is "a lot of fun", so they probably talked about more than just the show they were working on (and the show they were working on had, in any case, relevance to pre-Nazi German theatre). 

Although it's highly unlikely Weill didn't know about Bendow's Lydia, can we be absolutely certain he did? We can actually get very close, because at the 'Wilde Bühne' in January 1922, shortly after the Lydia character was launched there, a piece of theatre history took place, for a total of six evenings: the only appearances as a performer on the Berlin cabaret stage by Bertolt Brecht. If that doesn't clinch it, nothing will.

Of course, the preceding was just a little game, in order to demonstrate how straight a potential line drawn between the two Lydias could theoretically be. 

Plenty of people who must have known Bendow's version were in Hollywood in the 1930s: 'Wilde Bühne' composer Friedrich Holländer was around as Frederick Hollander; Marlene Dietrich was there, having shared bills and cast lists on the German stage and screen with both Bendow and Trude Hesterberg. Ernst Lubitsch, a comedy specialist, cannot have been unaware that he was allegedly depicted on Lydia's body. In fact, there were probably enough people in the know to justify Harburg's having used the name deliberately as an in-joke.

Exactly when Wilhelm Bendow gave up his tattooed lady is unclear, though Magnesia could not safely have appeared after the Nazis had had their way with Hirschfeld's institute. Despite his apparently open homosexuality, Bendow continued to appear on stage and screen in the Third Reich, though there was a little gap towards the end of the war. He was sentenced to six months in a labour camp for having ad-libbed a line in a shipwreck sketch: he had answered his sketch-partner's cry about salvation upon seeing an island with a drily intoned "Yes, can there be any salvation for us anymore?" - and everyone knew what he meant. (If Bendow spent six months in a labour camp for ad-libbing one line, what would the Marx Brothers have been sentenced to?) 

Probably the biggest production he ever appeared in was Goebbels' answer to The Thief of Bagdad, the colour fantasy epic Münchhausen. Bendow had the small but showy part that must be mentioned if the lead-in to these lines is to make any sense: The Man in the Moon.

How to fake a fake moustache (and perform a forward and reverse Groucho or die trying)

I found this picture by doing a Google search for 'sexy Groucho'.
Why I was doing a Google search for 'sexy Groucho' is another story and a very unpleasant one, but I think it's fair to say this photo more or less lives up to its promise, despite the presence of that open tin of paint and industrial yellow mop and bucket behind her.
If you are the sexy Groucho in question, why not drop us a line here at the council to let us know why you decided to have yourself photographed as a sexy Groucho in what looks like a disused kitchen, and whether it is something you do regularly or just that once.
And if any of you know of an even sexier Groucho, by all means send me the photos to prove it. (I've added 'Sexy Grouchos' as a label so I'm relying on you all now.)

Yes, it's party season, that's the point, and doubtless you'll all be digging out the Groucho costume, heading off to the office party, and wondering why nobody wants to dance with you. (Unless you're our sexy Groucho here, who was doubtless danced off her feet all night, with and without that wheelie-bucket.)
But as our sexy Groucho ably demonstrates, it's vital to get the look exactly right. There's nothing worse that dressing up as Groucho and having people just assume you're Professor Robert Winston.

So here are some tips, courtesy of ehow.com ("Discover the expert in you").
First, how to have a Groucho moustache.
"Groucho Marx is one of the most recognizable stars from Hollywood's early days," the preamble informs us, "thanks in part to his exaggerated mustache and eyebrows".
Of course you can save time by buying a glasses-nose-moustache combo ready made, and save yourself having to deal with all that messy greasepaint. This link will get you to the relevant page of the 'Just for Fun' online party supplies website, and to a charming photograph of what Groucho might have looked like in the nineteen-seventies if he'd retained his hair, and started smoking carrots.
Meanwhile, back at ehow.com ("Discover the expert in you"), here's how to be really serious and get yourself the whole costume. Full marks to whoever wrote this one for remembering Gummo, but points withdrawn for offering me no assistance whatsoever on how to create a Gummo costume.
A Groucho swing dance move is apparently a real move in swing dancing (hence the name) that is inspired by the famous loose-limbed Groucho dance, but not, obviously, a mere imitation of it. Imagine how silly that would look. The link above will show you how to do both a forward and a reverse one, which is like a forward one, only backwards. Bizarrely, it tells us that "the move may actually be referred to by a different name depending on the person to whom you're speaking".

And while we're on the subject of fake moustaches and their purpose and application in theory and practice for fun and profit, Damian, one of our most esteemed and longest-serving council members has forwarded me the following anecdote and photographic evidence. Make of it what you will...

I was in Berlin at the weekend and went to visit the Film and Television Museum. While passing through the Dietrich archive I came across a picture of her and good old Groucho which made me do a double take. It wasn't the photo itself but the fact that Groucho's 'tache and eyebrows looked like they had been retouched by hand. I don't know if he wasn't wearing his grease paint smear on that day and then the studio put it in afterwards, or if it needed 'thickening' - either way someone got nifty with a .001 paintbrush.
Photography wasn't allowed and I had already been approached twice for taking shots so I couldn't take a snap of the actual photo; I have tracked down a copy on the net and attached it, and even in this version it looks a few shades darker than anything else in the shot!

(That's Groucho on the left.)

Avert innocent eyes: a delicate enquiry about Groucho and pornography

I sense an unresolved tension in Groucho during his latter years.
Like many another comedian before him - Bertrand Russell, for example - I'm sure he was intoxicated by the adoration of the young and trendy college generation that hailed him as a counterculture hero, bestowing upon him the kind of cred so rarely accorded those of such advanced years.
The urge to return the favour, and assume their attitudes and opinions, must have seemed not merely mannerly but virtually an obligation, not least because his continued golden boy status might easily rest upon his continuing to live up - or down - to their preferred image of him.
Obviously, the crusty conservatism of a Bob Hope was out of the question, and in later interviews, Groucho obligingly toes the line in many areas, especially regarding Nixon and the war in Vietnam. He was a regular visitor to the Playboy mansion, too, and a notable subject of the Playboy Interview; he seems to have genuinely liked Hugh Hefner.

Then, of course, there is the notorious Marx Brothers Scrapbook, in which author Richard Anobile published, without Groucho's sanction and to his great subsequent chagrin, unedited transcripts of what he had assumed were off-the-record digressions into his sexual history and fantasies, relayed in the kind of censorable language he might well have assumed would never in a million years make it into print. If so, he misread the age.
Hilarious as much of it is (he explains how he "wanted to fuck" Thelma Todd and Marilyn Monroe, the latter of whom "wore this dress with bare tits") you strongly get the impression that this is not the voice of the real off-duty Groucho, but rather that of an old man attempting, a little desperately, to impress a young author with his modern attitudes.

But when you watch him on the Dick Cavett Shows of the sixties and seventies, beyond the modish front and the comic lechery (when Erin Fleming describes herself as his secretary on one show, he mumbles "that's the euphemism of all time"), a frequently very old fashioned fellow indeed emerges.
He talks of his boredom with permissiveness in films and theatre, and tells, at least twice, the story of his walking out of Hair halfway through - an anecdote more calculated to alienate him from the counterculture can scarcely be imagined. There is a wounded sincerity about him in these moments, suggesting that he felt himself to be at the centre of a culture he in fact somewhat disapproves of.
As well as expressing the old-fashioned idea that men should only tell 'dirty stories' to each other, out of the hearing of women (and gets as close as Groucho ever could at that time to audible audience disapproval when opining that he will approve of women's lib only when women pay alimony), he frequently makes plain a squeamishness about nudity and sexual frankness in popular culture. (A friend and fan of Woody Allen's, he was nonetheless greatly displeased by Erin's appearance in Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, a film whose humour he found alienatingly one-note.)
However else he may have made friends with the sixties generation, it seems certain, pornography, and in particular its new, overground popularity among unashamed trendsetters (so-called 'porno chic') would have left him cold.
So imagine my surprise when I read this passage in John Baxter's biography of Fellini, concerning an occasion in which il Maestro approached Groucho with a view to him making an appearance in Giulietta of the Spirits:Marx ... declined, though he and Fellini did meet in new York. Strolling down Broadway, Marx took him into a sex shop to show him some porn movies. 'He himself had seen an enormous quantity,' says Fellini. 'He said to me: "You're Italian, yes or no? Then you can't have not gone to see porno films." He was convinced that Italians spent their life going to see porno films and masturbating.'
Now, I can believe this of Fellini - though it's hard to imagine any commercially-available pornography able to keep up with his fantasies - but not of Groucho. I would have trouble believing it of the Groucho who called for Nixon's assassination in the 1970s, but given that this would have had to have taken place in the early 1960s I think it is simply unimaginable.

So what does everyone else think? Have you heard this story anywhere else, or anything comparable? Does it ring true to you?

Hello, I must be coming?

Does Chico sell honey?

We received the following enquiry today from a new correspondent:

The other day my parents said there's an advert for honey being shown at the moment that Chico Marx is in! Whether it's done from archive footage or a lookalike (it's a tough break for both of them!) I don't know, but I had a look on youtube and googled it but I have no idea what they're going on about! Does anybody know, or are my mother and father slowly going crazy in their old age? Thank you!

My first instinct was to relegate this to the looney file, but then I suddenly remembered that it just so happened I was passing by a television the other day when I heard Chico and Harpo's Big Store piano duet being used as the background to an advert.
I didn't know what it was being used to sell, but turns out it was Rowse's honey.
So your parents were right, but sadly, no visual representation of the great man is involved.

Then around the same time, Damian, who had earlier remarked on the obsession with nuts and nut-related tie-ins and promotions in Marx Brothers pressbooks, sent me this:

It is, and I quote, "what could have been if a Planters/Marx endorsement had been signed".

I've known this fellow for over a decade, and only now do I discover that he's been keeping his own blog for the best part of two years. Take a look here, and tell him Groucho sent you.

Marx Mystery: Why the hell isn't “The Incredible Jewel Robbery” on DVD?

I mean, when you think that you can get just about everything else...

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Statistics show that there are now more compilation DVDs called things like "The Best of the Marx Brothers", containing adverts for Creamy Prom, that weird unedited You Bet Your Life pilot where Groucho's got an open-necked shirt on and a crappy documentary with all the clips taken from public domain trailers, than there are people alive on the planet.

With a bit of ingenuity, you can even track down a rough assembly of Deputy Seraph.

But Jewel Robbery, which according to some sources isn't even all that bad, and is of enomrous, not to say enormous importance as the last starring vehicle featuring all three non-Zeppo or that other one Marx Brothers in the same place, at the same time, doing more or less the same thing and looking in roughly the same direction, remains trapped in the archives, probably in a big rusty tin labelled 'Absolutely No Value To Anyone'.

How wrong can you be?

The closest I've come to seeing it is this eight minute condensation issued as a home movie, unfortunately robbed not only of about two thirds of its length but also the original soundtrack where Groucho speaks at the end.

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Come on, copyright holders, give us a proper release for this thing. Don't put any extras on it if you don't want to and charge us twenty quid.

We're idiots.

We will buy it.

Marx Mysteries Solved While You Wait! Just ask the council...

Hurrah!
The man I feared was destined to be known forever as Weirdo, the illusory sixth Marx Brother, has been identified, apprehended and charged.
If by any chance you've no idea what I'm talking about, you can either go back to here and start again, or if you'd rather, here's a quick update.
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Earlier this week, my friend Richard alerted me to this CD, on the EMI label, which proudly offers the purchaser some Groucho Marx Madness and isn't joking, since it insanely opted to put a picture of someone done up like Groucho on the cover rather than the genuine article:
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I was amused to see so prestigious an outfit as EMI making so elementary a gaffe, and was also keen to know just who it is under the greasepaint.
Since then, I've learned that the same mistake has been made many times, such as here:
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... and even, recently, by Penguin Books, who have reissued their Essential Groucho anthology with the same pesky interloper front of house:
. Under the circumstances, a somewhat ironic choice of title.
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Then, in what seemed like a couple of days, and not without reason, the answer arrived, courtesy of council member Tom, who wrote:

"Mystery solved! I know who this person is. He's Life Magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. I bought a copy of the book Life goes to the Movies back in 1976. The picture is on page 222."

And he's right, even about the page number, which is the sort of thing I'd be just as likely to get wrong, figuring that it doesn't really matter and it's easier to just guess if you've already put the book back on the shelf in another room. (I should perhaps stop and explain here that I keep most of my books in a different room from the one the computer's in, hence the scenario outlined in the previous sentence.)
And as proof, if proof be needed, and I always think proof be welcome even if it not necessarily be needed as such, we have this. (Thanks to council member and fellow Marx blogger David for the link. And for the Manly Blogger Guy Award, but that's another story.)
Or if you prefer your proof a little more visual, techno-savvy and eerie in a way you find it difficult to fully put your finger on, here's a picture of Eisenstaedt taken accidentally when he mistook his mirror for Groucho pretending to be him without make up and raised his camera in an effort to burst the illusion, followed by council member Damian's ingeniously photo-shopped moustache-free version of the CD cover pic:
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It makes you wonder if all men look like they're sucking an enormous gumball when you photoshop their moustache off or if there was something special about Alfred. Nonetheless, nasty swelling or no, the jury don't need to retire long before reaching their verdicts here.
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So thanks to Tom, Damian, David, Richard and everyone else who helped to make this half-century-old puzzle such a Rider Haggard-style page-turner.
And I leave you with the news that Penguin books have finally selected the cover photo for their forthcoming re-issue of The Groucho Letters:
. Apparently it was taken during an ad break on You Bet Your Life.

(Hey, David! Does this entitle me to a second Manly Blogger Guy Award?)

Because a picture of Groucho would have been too obvious...

My friend Richard just alerted me to this.
I've heard of The Great Animal Crackers Doppelganger Mystery but this is ridiculous:
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A nice new CD of Groucho radio extracts - always welcome, always nice. I like listening to them as I drift off to sleep at night.
But who - I say who - is the half-arsed would-be lookalike on the cover???:
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We've all dressed up as Groucho at some point in our life, either for a party, to amuse our colleagues and loved ones, or to try and get free meals in hotels and restaurants.
But we don't end up on the front of official Groucho CD releases.
Which is ironic, because the chances are we look more like Groucho than this ding-dong does.
Let's see him again:
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Now come on! This guy looks more like Groucho than he does:
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And this guy looks a lot more like Groucho than he does:
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Let's face it, even this guy looks more like Groucho than he does:
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Somebody knows who he is. I wonder if David does, for instance. (I'm off to ask him as soon as I post this.)
It's not just someone dressed as Groucho for fun. My guess is it's someone who played him on tv or the stage once. He's obviously doing it professionally... which is more than EMI are, clearly.
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Oh, okay. Just once more:
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Say, Herbert... That you in the dark?

Original council member Eugene Conniff has opened a whole new can of worms on the matter of the Marx Brothers Doppelganger Conspiracy, the scene in Animal Crackers in which Groucho, Chico and Harpo are represented by doubles (see here).
He's drawn my attention to this bit of speculative Youtubery, in which it is suggested that the fake Groucho is in fact none other than Zeppo, whose legit appearances in the film are so few in number and brief in duration that they amount to little more than a cameo.
If you look at the brightness-enhanced clip, it is true that in certain shots he does look very much like Herbie Marx.
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But then, you always have to be careful on these occasions that you're not simply seeing what you want to see.
To test that hypothesis, I watched it again, this time pretending that I was convinced it was Claudette Colbert. Ironically, I now remain convinced that it is.
Truth is, yes it looks like Zeppo in some shots, and in others it doesn't. What we're seeing here, I think, is a mingling of the now increasingly widely accepted fact that it isn't Groucho, with the old story of Zeppo substituting for him once and nobody noticing - a story which may well be apocryphal but which ostensibly took place on stage and pre-dates this film by many moons.
The Youtube posters certainly reveal something of the perils of wishful thinking when they go on to speculate that Zeppo can be discerned impersonating Groucho's voice, when one of the most obvious giveaways that it is a double in the first place is the imprecise manner in which he is miming to a soundtrack - the voice is unquestionably Groucho's own.
In addition, it is not merely Groucho but all three present brothers being doubled: if it is merely Zeppo doing Groucho as an in-joke, why the third-rate Chico and Harpo stand-ins?
Sorry, but I'm not buying this one.
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But while we're here, let's stroll down oddity cul-de-sac with some more great Zeppo moments...

For ages - until after I first posted it if I'm honest - I thought this image of Groucho ironing Zeppo during the football match in Horse Feathers was merely the deranged, drug-fuelled fantasy of the artist that drew this DVD sleeve. But no - the scene really existed, as shown below. Still an inexplicable choice for the DVD cover image, though.
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. Zeppo's impersonation of a Red Indian putting the move on what would appear to be Charlie Ruggles
.Zeppo's impersonation of former President Richard Nixon