Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo

1973, undated Simon and Schuster edition
Joe Adamson
Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo: A Celebration of the Marx Brothers (alternate subtitle A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World)
Original price $10.00, purchase price unknown
Hardcover with stains and broken spine but no way am I getting rid of it
A-

The last A- I read was from 1934, so long ago that the Marx Brothers were transitioning from Paramount to MGM.  In fact, I almost made this the first A, but the section on the two Thalberg movies went on too long.  Adamson has written an appreciation of the Marxes that is as funny as they are, no small feat.  I got this book as a teenager, and it not only shaped my evaluation of the movies (roughly a rise to Duck Soup and a gradual fall for the next eight), but I picked up a couple of his writing tics.  One is the heavy use of self-interruption, particularly parentheses.  The other is sometimes tortured wordplay.  (He states at one point that a pun isn't funny; it's the audacity of telling a pun that's funny.)

I think Adamson was the first to get the Marxes' birth years right, and you know he's writing in the 1970s because he mentions the astrological signs.  (Chico was a "restless Aries.")  He also sorted out what he calls "Antiquity," their vaudeville roots on through to the first two movies, both based on successful stageplays.  He discusses the contradictory stories in various earlier books, including Arthur Marx's books on Groucho, as well as the anecdotes of the people he interviewed.  I'm especially pleased that he spoke with the screenwriters.  In particular, erudite S. J. Perelman (Monkey Business, Horse Feathers) would be dead six years later, and Harry Ruby (music for Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup, as well as close friendship with Groucho) would be gone the February after this book came out. 

Chico died in 1961 (of the eulogy, "He did not have an evil or a mischievous thought in his soul," Adamson comments, "It must have seemed like a nice thing to say"), Harpo in 1964 (Adamson says his soul can't be resting, "at peace, of course, always.  But at rest, never"), but Groucho was still around and even read this book in manuscript.  As the title implies, Adamson acknowledges Zeppo, and Gummo, but they're understandably not a huge part of the book.  Funniest is "(Figure 1) Nausea Rating," which assesses the appeal or lack of the various male romantic leads that clutter the movies, with The Big Store's Tony Martin "just about tops," while in last place is "Zeppo Marx (you remember)." 

The third chapter is about what Adamson considers the three "real" Marx Bros movies, the very movies that other books to that point "brush off...in one subordinate clause."  He goes into detail about how these movies were made and what resulted.  (He spends at least as much time on Night at the Opera and Day at the Races in the fourth chapter, but like I said, I don't care as much.)  Somehow he can explain the logic of illogicality, without killing the humor, like how when Harpo literally cuts the cards with an axe in Horse Feathers, the players are annoyed, not scared.  The extras in Monkey Business become "the faceless they," and Groucho is having an existential crisis in Duck Soup (where he isn't actually anywhere, so maybe he and Chico never meet), and Adamson pulls this all off, don't ask me how.

He not tells what works, he tells what doesn't work, particularly in chapter six, "Joy Becomes Laughter."  (The short fifth chapter, "Intermission," explains why Room Service doesn't meet the Webster's definition of a Marx Brothers movie.)  He not only points out why the last five movies aren't very funny, but how Groucho, Harpo, and Chico have been character-assassinated by then.  Not that he's wowed by their first movie either.  (He thinks Animal Crackers is "approximately five times the better film.")  Whether I'm reading about The Cocoanuts [sic] or watching the movie, I still burst into giggles for the jail-break scene:

"The limit is reached when Chico completely forgets his lines....Chico is trying to tell Bob Adams that Polly Potter is going to get married if he doesn't hurry up and break out of jail.  When Bob Adams asks him who is going to get married to her, all Chico can say is 'Polly' again.  Finally, Oscar Shaw, who is doing his best to play Bob Adams, realizes that Chico is never going to get the line right and blurts out, 'Do you mean that Polly is going to marry Harvey Yates?'  (Chico has said nothing to give him that impression.)  'Yeah,' says Chico.  'That's right.'"

Before I had this book, I would watch the Marx Bros movies and not really notice anything except what was obviously funny.  After that, I became a more observant viewer, and sure enough, that scene became hilarious for the wrong reasons.  (Chico even says, "Polly.  Engaged to Polly.")

And for some reason, maybe better quote selections, I could "hear" the Marxes' inflections on the lines better than I could with Anobile's book.  Not that Adamson neglects Harpo.  He salutes Harpo's magical ability to bring anything (like a candle lit at both ends) out of his ratty old raincoat and to exaggerate normal emotions to a cartoonish level.  Adamson offers a blank page to "represent ghostly, unreal silence" for the mirror scene in Duck Soup, a Tristam-Shandy-ish touch, but then he actually does analyze this dialogueless classic scene.  (I just wish he hadn't omitted what I think of as the "ta-da moment," where Harpo cheats and doesn't spin.)  He says, "The mirror scene is everything it should be.  It is more, in fact, than it seems it could ever in the world be able to be.  We even feel a sense of outrage that it should be allowed to be all that, without anybody stopping it."

And that's how I feel about this book, which I could quote till the cows come home.  Or I could quote the cows till you come home.