Volume 47, Number 12 · July 20, 2000
The Triumph of Marxism
By Geoffrey O'Brien
Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx
by Stefan Kanfer
Knopf, 465 pp., $30.00
The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx
edited by Stefan Kanfer
Vintage, 254 pp., $12.00 (paper)
Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers
by Simon Louvish
St. Martin's, 471 pp., $25.95
The things about the Marx Brothers that most people remember—that they obsess over and memorize and if they are feeling reckless even try to imitate—are found in seven films made between 1929 and 1937. The brothers made another six movies after that, culminating in the dreary and impoverished Love Happy in 1950, but the comic frenzy subsided after A Day at the Races. While Groucho went on to a second career as television's most (or perhaps only) memorable quizmaster in You Bet Your Life, which ran from 1950 to 1961 and persisted long after in reruns, Chico and Harpo found few performance opportunities after the movies dried up. (Gummo and Zeppo, the younger brothers who had in earlier phases been part of the act, had long since dropped out.)
Review, 4341 words
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