94 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JUNE 2019
REAR VIEW
GROUCHO MARX
LIGHTS! CAMERA! INSANITY!
By ANNIE WILKINSON
There was no mistaking that bentkneed
loping walk plus the black
greasepainted eyebrows and mustache,
wild hair, and razor-sharp wit.
Cigar in hand, he spat out barbed
one-liners and zany asides to the
camera with devilish irreverence,
hamming it up and captivating audiences
for 45 years.
“Groucho” Marx and his brothers
used sight gags and pratfalls perfected
on burlesque stages and movie
sets, through two World Wars and
the Great Depression, to make people
laugh and divert attention from the
world’s bad news.
As CBS News’ Lloyd Vries wrote, audiences
“were startled, then amused
and finally convulsed by a kind of
comedy they had never seen before
… The four Marx Brothers brought
to the screen their own chaotic — and
subversive — view of the world.”
At the height of their popularity,
Groucho and his parents lived in
Great Neck. Local children would
line up to watch the madcap brothers
dashing around and jumping in and
out of windows.
The unruly pack’s leader was Julius
Henry “Groucho” Marx. His grandmother
was a yodeling harpist, his
grandfather a ventriloquist; was
there any doubt that the Marx Brothers
would be entertainers?
"THE SECRET OF LIFE
IS HONESTY AND FAIR
DEALING. IF YOU CAN
FAKE THAT, YOU'VE GOT IT
MADE.”
Groucho was born in 1890 to European
Jewish immigrants and raised in
Manhattan’s poor Yorkville section
of the Upper East Side. He started performing
in vaudeville and burlesque
in a singing trio; his brothers later
joined the song-and-dance comedy
act managed by their mother. Comedian
Art Fisher gave them names
reflecting their personalities during
a 1914 poker game; Groucho was the
self-described “moody one.”
By 1924, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and
Zeppo Marx had perfected the act
and were starring in a successful
Broadway run in The Cocoanuts.
They kept company with the notable
elite around the famed Algonquin
Round Table, T.S. Eliot, and George
Gershwin.
When Groucho was 36, he bought
a house at 21 Lincoln Road in Great
Neck Villa, near the Long Island
Rail Road station, for $27,000. His
son Arthur Marx later described
Great Neck: “Our house overlooked
hundreds of acres of deep forest rich
with birch and oak trees, unpolluted
ponds and streams, and all sort of
wild flora ….”
Groucho played croquet at Sands
Point’s Lands End mansion with the
Duke and Duchess of Windsor, traded
witty quips with satirist Dorothy
Parker, and partied with Scott and
Zelda Fitzgerald.
The Marx Brothers continued their
winning streak just as sound enhanced
silent pictures as “talkies” in
the early 1930s. The plots revolved
around the brothers bursting in
noisily to an elegant soiree, or a
cruise ship, or a roomful of stuffy dignitaries,
where they would disrupt
everything with annoying insults
and physical antics.
Life was fun — most of the time.
"I REFUSE TO JOIN ANY
CLUB THAT WOULD HAVE
ME AS A MEMBER.”
The New York Times described 1930s
Great Neck as “one of the few Gold
Coast communities that welcomed
or even allowed Jews then, mixed in
as they were with the theatrical and
literary crowd that flocked” there.
Groucho and his son tried to join
the Sands Point Bath and Sun Club
on Manhasset Bay, across from
Kings Point. He recalled, “The head
cheese of the place came over and
told me, 'Well, we're very sorry,
Mr. Marx, but we don't allow Jews
to swim at our beach.' We couldn’t
join because I was Jewish. So I said,
‘My son’s only half Jewish. Would it
be all right if he went in the water up
to his knees?’’’
Later that day, Marx joined the more
expensive Lakeville Country Club
in Lake Success, “with all the other
showbiz Jews.”
One interviewer asked Groucho
about the 1933 Marx brothers film
Duck Soup’s attacking anti-Semitism
philosophies, which were gaining
ground in Europe. Groucho’s
response? "What are you talking
about? We were five Jews trying to
get a laugh.”
“I'VE HAD A PERFECTLY
WONDERFUL EVENING. BUT
THIS WASN'T IT.”
The Marx Brothers made Time
Magazine’s cover in 1932; in 2004,
the magazine called them “the fathers
of every aggressive film comic from
the Stooges to Sandler.” They made 13
films, then in 1947, Groucho switched
gears. On his radio quiz show You Bet
Your Life, the Q&As mattered less
than his wisecracks. He won two
Hollywood Walk of Fame stars, one
for radio and one for TV broadcasts
from 1950 to 1956.
In 1974, he was awarded an Honorary
Oscar for the brilliant creativity and
unequaled achievements of the Marx
Brothers in the art of motion picture
comedy. He died in Los Angeles in
1977 at age 86.
L-R: Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx, A Night in Casablanca, 1946,
Creative Commons
Groucho Marx grew up in Great
Neck.
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