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?

The Chico Suicides

Strangest darned pictures of the elderly Chico and Harpo I've ever seen...
But I can't stop looking at 'em. I love the way that drill bit seems to warp and bend, because they haven't lined themselves up properly.

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.

Gems from the “Night at the Opera” Pressbook!

Look closely at this man on the left.

Think he's Groucho Marx? Well think again.

It's actually an usher made up like Groucho - just one of a thousand socko and surefire ways MGM have come up with to make you want to see their latest comedy release A Night at the Opera, starring this crazy bunch of goofs the Marx Brothers.

Pressbooks are always weird; their ballyhoo suggestions always peculiar in the extreme. But there's something especially revealing about these, since Opera was, after all, a prestige release from the ritziest studio on the block.

Given Thalberg's unease over the team's reputation for undisciplined zaniness, you might have thought they'd play down the madcap stuff and concentrate a little more on the production values, but these campaigns are, if anything, sillier than the Paramount ones.

The thanks for sending them my way go out to Damian, a Council regular (he's the man who solved the Abe Kabibble mystery). In his accompanying dispatch he notes the relentlessness with which the Brothers were associated with nuts, taken to extreme lengths here with a huge variety of peanut endorsement tie-ins and related nut-based tomfoolery.
It prompts the wider point that, while the Marx Brothers were regarded by their adherents as an oasis of comic sophistication in a roughhouse desert of pratfalls, they were always marketed as the most lowbrow comics imaginable, as a bunch of nuts, Tourette zanies almost to be pitied as much as enjoyed. An odd disjunction.

Anyway, time to let MGM work their magic.
Think you don't especially want to watch A Night at the Opera at the moment? You will after the hidden persuaders have gone to work on you with this lot:

MGM display the personal touch. Who, me?

Because the Marx Brothers are nuts themselves, see?

"Hey, honey, I've just seen three tramps on a tandem. Let's go to the movies tonight!"

Because the Marx Brothers are nuts themselves, see?

We've all heard the expression 'to laugh one's head off', but it takes the comic imagination of the MGM publicity department to see its true potential. Here we see a man distracting passers-by with a big coat and a small porcelain head.

Here they actually invent their own well-known expression out of thin air before converting it into comic promotional gold. But is it just me or does this person look like he's upside down in absolutely no way, shape or form?

More nut-related promotions, and a cuckoo clock one for variety. Because the Marx Brothers are cuckoo themselves, see? (No wonder Bernard Shaw and T.S. Eliot loved them so much.)

You loved them in Duck Soup!

Boy, that guy looks pleased to be there! MGM take no chances with their early or late Santa promotion. What's the betting they had a third sign made for Christmas Day screenings: "I came at exactly the right time to see A Night at the Opera"?

And what about that 'Press Idea'? Genius.

Michael Myers, the killer from the Halloween movies, stands in for Harpo at this Loew's Halloween midnight prevue event. The promotion presumably trades on the fact that the Marx Brothers are themselves nuts.

The only man who took up that 'want ad' offer was disqualified for laughing at the bit where Lasparri beats the crap out of Harpo.

A cigar ad. You can work out the connection for yourselves.

This idea was later revived for Go West, but by then it was: 'Hear for yourself Baltimore audiences chuckling every so often, a man at the back coughing, and the occasional sound of people heading for the exit'.

Or if you're really desperate:

I'm going out and getting another prescription

You would think that if there was anywhere in the modern world I stood some chance of feeling like I belonged, it would be in a packed repertory cinema showing a Marx Brothers movie. And so, for the most part, I do.
But my enjoyment of A Night at the Opera is always compromised by the knowledge that in just a moment Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle are going to start singing Alone - and that it will get a big laugh from these people who really should know better.

. Like all laughter at old movies it is not genuine but faked, and for the same reason - on the honest assumption that it is the correct thing to do. It seems to be an article of faith among Marx Brothers fans that everything in the films other than the actual comedy sequences are impositions, to be mocked or endured. I suppose they think this attitude is in some way true to the iconoclastic spirit of the boys themselves, wrecking the opera and tearing the coat tails of snobs.
If so, they are very wrong. I think the Marx Brothers would have been appalled at such rudeness towards showbusiness professionals.
But it is not just the usual philistinism that rankles in this special case: it is that this performance of this song is so very beautiful. You have to be an utter barbarian not to be charmed by it - unless, I suppose, you refuse to see and hear it at all.

The Marxes never again, and never before, had a heroine quite as classy as Kitty Carlisle's Rosa. She is beautiful, quietly amused by the Brothers' destructive wit and horseplay without ever quite endorsing it or joining in, and her dignity is such that even they dare not attempt puncturing it. Groucho is clearly besotted with her, Harpo rests his head on her bosom for comfort after a beating. Even Chico is courteous in her presence (whatever he may be thinking).
Something of a theatrical legend, she only ever moonlighted at the movies, but it is as Rosa that we will remember her: provided we have the eyes to see her and the ears to hear.
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(reposted from Movietone News)

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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'Tis the season...

Okay. I already wrote here about how my first encounter with the Marx Brothers was at Christmastime back in the dim distant prehistory of what, with pre-Orwellian irony, I still like to think of as 1983.
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I also mentioned, sort of casually, kind of half-jokingly - the way I do when I'm being deadly serious and fanatical - that I try to recreate that exact experience by rewatching the same films on the same nights at the same times.
And this year will be no exception.
But this time there's a big difference. I'm running a blog with 28 followers.
So I hereby invite you all to partake of the great annual Tonight We're Gonna Party Like It's 1983 Basically Futile Watching Specific Marx Brothers Films At Specific Dates and Times Challenge.
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You may think it's a near-alarmingly pointless thing for a man like me to still be doing at my age. If so, think how much more idiotic it would be if you did it too! Without even the pathetic, skeletal pretence of justification that animates my poor tortured brain. I don't have much of an excuse, but you'll have none at all. So come join me! Let me know how you got on, what it was like and what kind of transcendent state you reached. Send me photos of yourself with the film clearly visible on a tv screen, holding a watch to confirm the time and the newspaper to confirm the day. So get your diaries out; here come the dates. Cancel that party! Forget that Gordon Ramsay's Christmas Celebrity Foxhunting on Ice Special you were planning to watch instead.
Imagine by contrast the warm fraternal glow, imagine how - in the profoundest, most Dickensian sense - Christmassy it will feel, to be part of an esoteric community, all over the world (well, Britain and America, and one in France, oh - and an Australian), all linked in this one common aim. If any one of you actually does this, even with just one of the films, or even is still reading this now, as opposed to having given up somewhere back when I started going on about taking photos of yourself holding a newspaper, I will be both profoundly delighted and frankly surprised.
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23rd December, 10:30 pm: Monkey Business
.This was the one. I actually came in late for this one, somewhere around the Chevalier impressions. I'd seen the trailer for them all several times but was only mildly curious, had been out to some family party or other, and switched on casually when I got back home - only to encounter the funniest men of all time being funnier than anybody has ever been in the history of people being funny.
You can, if you wish, recreate the exact experience by starting your recording at 10.30 but leaving the television switched off until about five past eleven. Sometimes I like to do that; other times I just watch from the start. I say this to assure you that I'm not some kind of fanatic.
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Christmas Day, 11pm: Duck Soup
.Now, this is the curious one. My memory tells me that after cursing my ill-judgement and coming in late on Monkey Business I made sure I didn't miss a second of any of the rest. And yet, I have no specific memory of this first viewing of Duck Soup. I remember other things about that night: like, for instance the fact that my mother wanted to watch the All Creatures Great and Small special on BBC1 while my grandfather wanted to see Jimmy Tarbuck on ITV. But of watching Duck Soup later that night I recall nothing. Further, one of my clearest memories of Horse Feathers was of being surprised when Groucho begins singing at the start, and not realising that they did this. Perhaps I again missed the beginning? Or perhaps I really did miss the whole film? I just don't know. However, for this reason, it is permissible to watch it at 12.20 am on New Year's Day, when BBC1 showed it in 1984. I know I didn't miss it then. It's okay if you want to stretch the rules a little and do this. I won't mind. Too much. `
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28th December, 11.15 pm: Horse Feathers
.Here, perhaps, was the moment that a temporary fixation became a lifelong obsession. I just didn't know that anything could be this funny. And my father began watching them with me at this point. He likes to pretend he doesn't much care for them now, but the truth is we were weeping with laughter. When Harpo cuts the cards he rolled off the sofa on to the floor.
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29th December, 10.50 pm: A Night in Casablanca
.The BBC decided to test me by throwing in a late non-Paramount and see if I'd spot the difference. I did, but I couldn't quite place why. I remember my dad saying that it wasn't quite as good this time, and I think we both concluded that they were just not at their best the day they made this one. The truth is that the film is really pretty damned good to compare so favourably with the early-thirties faultless masterpieces. Not many of the MGMs would have stood up so well in such company. For that reason I've always had a soft spot for this film.
Hammer fans will note a thirty minute overlap between this and the 1984 BBC-2 showing of The Mummy, which began at 11.45 pm. Fortunately, however, I missed the first half hour of The Mummy, not by pretending to watch A Night In Casablanca instead, but because my sister wanted to record a programme about Duran Duran on ITV. So again, history solves a dilemma with almost eerie precision.
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30th December, 11.55 pm: Animal Crackers
.The last, and still, for me, the best. I realised by this time that I could not bear to say goodbye to these boys. So, placing a curse on all my friends with video recorders - I basically spent the whole of 1982, 3 and the first half of 1984 fantasising about video recorders; I still love handling those tapes - I rigged up my little portable cassette recorder and taped the soundtrack. No direct linking cables or anything, just a tiny little mic inset in the machine, capturing the full gamut of household sounds along with the movie. So many times did I play it over the following years (until we finally got a Betamax video and I made the film one of my first purchases) that I still find myself mildly surprised that a door doesn't slam when Harpo makes his first entrance.
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So there we are. All you need for the merriest Christmas ever. You may do more important things this year. But it's unlikely you'll get a chance to expend energy achieving anything quite so senseless.
Let's go!
And we'll be back in the new year with an annotated Duck Soup, that long-promised discussion of the Marx Brothers' films and the rise of European fascism, and lots more!
Thanks for making this first year of the Council such fun.
Merry Christmas,
Matthew.

Uncut "Night at the Opera" discovered! Can "Humor Risk" be far behind?

The ever-excellent Jennifer, normally to be found holding court at Flappers and Flickers and Silent Stanzas, brings me the momentous news that the uncut and free-to-make-references-to-Italy version of A Night at the Opera has finally been found - and right where I always thought it would be.

Hungary.
Follow the link to read the full story, and then petition MGM or Warners or whoever the hell it is that owns the rights to put out a new DVD featuring both versions.
And happy birthday, Groucho!

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Stop Press 15/11/9:

Original council member and all-round good egg Eugene Conniff has brilliantly celebrated the find in splendid illustrated form over at his blog The Poison From My Brain.

I cannot recommend it highly enough, and my only question is what you're still doing here, trying to decipher the miniscule text on my reproduction, when all you have to do is click on the link and there it'll be, all big and colourful.