Smile

Regular readers of this page know my fondness for The Marx Brothers and Groucho in particular. Those readers should also know of my affection (addiction? disease?) for the Boston Red Sox. At school this afternoon I had students congratulating me on the World Series victory as if I was the Red Sox bullpen. I blame my Great Aunt Amy for this Red Sox affliction, but that is another story for another time. Check out the Soxaholix link to the right to see the depths of this condition. However, as this is a blog about film I'll bring it back to Groucho.

As I kid my parents showed me classic old films. Sometimes my dad would bring home a film print of Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers and we would project it on a wall in our living room. The screenings were infrequent, but wonderful. More often we would watch on TV a Charlie Chan film or some other relic that most readers of this page will have no idea what I am referencing. (Once on TV there used to be something called The Late Show where old movies would be screened. Now there is You Tube- see below.)

To me Groucho is the best. For pure anarchy and zaniness nobody can beat him- a raised eyebrow, an eye roll and a leer can get more laughs than a thousand stand-up comedian monologues. But Groucho hard a dark side. He, like many geniuses, was depressed. He lost a fortune in the 1929 stock market crash, married badly and had more personal failures than one would wish on your worst enemy. And, unlike the rest of us, he didn't have a Groucho Marx in his life to make him laugh. If anyone needed a Groucho it was Groucho.

So for everyone who reads this page and needs to smile here is Groucho as Captain Spaulding almost 80-EIGHTY!- years ago in Animal Crackers.

Now I must be going.

PeterH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCvz8y_DUSY

Groucho

Thirty years ago last Saturday, the 18th, Groucho Marx died.

I have been a fan of the Marx Brothers and Groucho in particular for as long as I can remember. I don't know if there are any comic actors today who can do what he did so well. He could double as both a straight man and the funny guy. He could be his own straight man as well with a pause or a leer or an eye roll, followed by a zinger. Could anyone do more just by raising his eyebrows?

The classic Marx Brothers' films- Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, A Night at the Opera- all feature a level of anarchy that you don't see in today's comedies. In each of those films the brothers lampoon science, government, universities and "high" art and through their antics show us the hypocrisy of those institutions and the people who run them.

Regular readers know I think cinema is first a visual medium, the pictures tell the story. But there are only two purely visual (and classic moments) I can think of in their films. The first is Groucho and Harpo in pajamas and night caps aping each other in the mirror- a gag copied with Harpo on I Love Lucy. The second (and repeated often) is everyone piling into a small room and when the door opens they come tumbling out from A Night at the Opera.

But in Marx Brothers' films it's really the dialog that is the important thing. So despite all of their genius I don't think film was the ideal medium for them, oddly I feel the frame was too limiting for them- they needed to burst out of the screen. It was when Groucho hosted "You Bet Your Life" on television that audiences really got to see Groucho at his best.

There has been enough of my words, I am going to end with Groucho doing his thing, from Horse Feathers the lyrics to his song, "Whatever It Is."

PeterH

I don't know what they have to say,
it makes no difference anyway -
whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it!

Your proposition may be good,
but let's have one thing understood -
whatever it is, I'm against it!
And even when you've changed it or condensed it,
I'm against it!

I'm opposed to it.
On general principles I'm opposed to it.

For months before my son was born,
I used to yell from night to morn -
"Whatever it is, I'm against it!"
And I've kept yelling since I first commenced it,
"I'm against it!"