In this six page essay Harpo Marx tells the tale of Groucho (1890 – 1977) as only an older brother could see it. From the Marx family’s earliest days in the slums of New York and Groucho’s first entertainment job (he was 13), Harpo (1888 – 1964) briefly recounts his brother’s wins and losses leading up to the team’s first popular show on Broadway (“I’ll Say She Is”, 1923) and the man’s travails on his T.V. game show, “You Bet Your Life”.
“Groucho’s infatuation with the language has been the backbone of his entire life and has, undoubtedly, played the largest single part in shaping him into one of the greatest wits of our time. Groucho doesn’t regard words the way the rest of us do. He looks at a word in the usual fashion. Then he looks at it upside down, backwards, from the middle out to the ends, and from the ends back to the middle… Groucho doesn’t look for double meanings. He looks for quadruple meanings. And usually finds them.”
Click here to read about the manner in which the Marx Brothers would test their jokes.
