The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx

I wonder how many young people today--that is, anyone younger than 50--know or enjoy Groucho Marx. A product of the Vaudevillian Age, Groucho with his brothers Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo starred in a series of memorable slapstick films in the 1930's and 1940's. It was the age of Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges, but Marx Brothers films--full length features--were in a class by themselves.While Zeppo never looked entirely comfortable in the quartet, Harpo and Chico were pure slapstick performers. Groucho enjoyed physical slapstick and was not above heaving a pie or sliding down a fire escape in his films, but his true talent was "verbal slapstick" and his one-liners have taken their place in American cultural history. [My personal favorite: "I would never belong to any club that would have me as a member."] After World War II Groucho's verbal dexterity made him a natural to ease into the medium of television, and he remained a celebrity of the small screen through the 1960's.This collection of letters is drawn primarily from the television years, though gratefully the full correspondence [undated, in the text] between Marx and the legal department of Warner Brothers is retained in full. Warner Brothers contended that the Marx Brothers' proposed film, "A Night in Casablanca" was an impingement upon the studio's film, "Casablanca," made famous five years earlier by the performances of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. An outraged Groucho put pen to paper alleging that Warner Brothers' claim to exclusive rights to the name of the city of Casablanca was overreaching. By the end of the first letter he had outrageously undermined the rights of Harry and Jack Warner to their own names, pointing out to Jack that another Jack, Jack the Ripper, "cut quite a figure in his day." [15]However, the Warner Brothers correspondence is the highlight of what is generally a modestly humorous survey of letters, ranging from 1939 to 1966. The majority are post-1950 when Marx enjoyed success with his long-running "You Bet Your Life" TV venture. Marx shows considerable ambivalence about television. His own show required little heavy lifting and made him a fair amount of money. But Marx in his correspondence, particularly with men of letters, belittles the medium as a junkyard. His letters to aging classic actors express sympathy that television, as a rule, did not cultivate significant artistic performance. Marx was evidently a voracious reader and he worried that the children of his day were losing interest in books because of the popularity of television.Marx does not write much, if anything, about his wives. The reader is left to his or her own devices to figure out the makeup of the Marx household from year to year. He has Jerry Seinfeld's eye for the humor of daily life, such as misadventures with repairmen and large companies. He seemed to have enduring problems with the IRS, which crop up incessantly in the texts. He maintained good relations in writing with all his brothers. Harpo, in particular, was a fair writer in his own right. Curiously, Groucho, with his eternal leer and infamous double entendres on film and TV, reveals a bit of a prudish side in his letters. The writer who hoped to do a film with Mae West "if she doesn't die from curvature of the bed" [168] expresses in other letters his disgust over Broadway plays that have crossed the line of good taste into crudity and vulgarity. The moral boundaries of the noted wit are somewhat amorphous, to say the least.In his preface to the collection, Arthur Sheekman compares Groucho Marx to Falstaff as "the cause of wit in other men." This is remarkably on target. One of the strengths of this work is the inclusion of letters written to Groucho. Throughout the wide range of correspondences with actors, writers, politicians and the like, one sees a tendency in Marx's correspondents to slip into "Groucho-ese" so to speak, a wit mixed with attention to detail and mild self-deprecation. The sheer breadth of correspondents from the higher echelons of show business--George S. Kaufman, Abe Burrows, Irving Berlin, David Susskind, S.J. Perlman, Arthur Sheekman, Leo Rosten, to cite but a few--give evidence of the old saying that the entertainment world is indeed a small town.It speaks well of Marx's way with words that the book is an amusing read despite its being dated and peopled from several generations past. It is too eccentric to be called a genuine history, but it serves as an entertaining timepiece for an era when an aging actor could captivate the nation's television viewing audience with no props but a good cigar and a dagger wit.

The kind of humor that I grew up with, intelligent, witty, and no cursing! Hysterically funny!

Don't get your hopes up too high. I'm not saying DON'T buy this book, but these are letters, and they are thus out of context, so alot of humor that is probably there is lost on us modern folk. I've run across numerous cultural references that I realize are such but am not familiar with them enough to get a laugh out of it. And I am someone well versed in cinema and TV of yesteryear, and far more knowledgeable about history and life in past America than average.Granted, you'll still find a quote or two you'll want to share with your friends for their hilarity, but, alot of the reading became arduous to me....On the other hand, you have different fingers. And since these are letters, it's easy to pick up the book, read a snippet, put it down, then continue later, without feeling like you have to go back and re-read for context. Because there is no context!It's like alot of random short stories. Or rather, parts thereof. It's like flipping around the TV and watching random bits of Marx brothers movies, at best.

The Kindle version of this book was published in JAN 2023, soon after the PBS America Masters show about Groucho and Dick Cavett aired. Fantastic show. How timely and delightful! Except.......it's not an ebook - what was delivered to my Kindle Oasis was photos of each page of the original book. No way to enlarge the font, nor to zoom in on the pages, no TOC, no chapters. You Bet Your Life I got the refund for this dishonest product. I'd love to read these letters, in a real ebook!There's no reason to sell these letters in such a photo format - they're all typed, not handwritten, in the original book! You want to read these letters, buy the paperback or hardcover. At least no device will get between you and your magnifying glass.

Groucho has said and written some pretty hilarious stuff, but this book also includes serious and sad and sometimes downright puzzling letters. I think some if the letters should have been explained. I don't know anything about "show business" and even less about screenwriters and other behind-the-scenes people. Letters addressed to them or referring to them are meaningless to me and somewhat boring. If this collection had been categorized and explained in advance a little I think I would have enjoyed it more. But I do recommend it to anyone who wants to learn the deeper side of Groucho Marx.

Someone said they read one a day just before falling asleep and it gave them funny dreams. Caint beat that!

This is one of my favorite all-time books. I have read it several times. Every few years it pops in my head and I o pull it off the shelf. In a recent move, it was lost so I bought another copy and read it again. Just as good, maybe even better, than the first time I read it.

If you love the backhanded comments of Groucho that you grew to love from the Marx Brothers comedies, you will LOVE this book. There are letters that he wrote to attorneys that were going to sue him and Groucho would respond to them and have the attorneys so confused they weren't sure how to respond back. It is so hilarious to read some of these letters that were only written from his humor and common sense. There are also touching letters to his brothers. I highly recommend this book for some good stomach laughs and just pure fun!!

Some good letters but if you don't know who he's writing to it gets boring.

I had read this in my early twenties and really enjoyed it. Somehow re-reading it (in more mature years) did not produce the same feelings. Groucho does write with wit and the grouping of his letters with responses from some of his friends and family provide some insight into his life.

it's Groucho - you're not from Warner Brothers are you?? Just buy it, read it, laugh and remember a comic genius - and NEVER, EVER forget there ain't no sanity clause (know that's Chico but they ALL were fab!!)Just a couple of quid and a laugh a minute - the Warner Brothers letters are worth that alone! - and "don't become a member of any club they'd have you a member of!!"

very funny and typical of grouchos cutting, witty sense of humour. Loved the warner correspondence, Go read this

The humour was side splitting could not stop laughing all throughout the book,so good I read it twice and bought it twice more as gifts.