Groucho - the Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx
Stefan Kanfer
Allen Lane £18.99, pp475
Buy it at BOL
Apparently, he hated his famous nickname. He said it made him sound 'like I'm the kind of guy who goes around whipping children'. Stefan Kanfer concludes his meticulous and engaging account by observing: 'In the end, the persona unhappily agreed with the man: living with Groucho Marx had been no pleasure, for his wives, his children - or himself.'
The teenage Julius dreamt of being a doctor. But his domineering mother, Minnie, made him curtail his education to earn money to pay off gambling debts incurred by his elder brother, Chico, her favourite son, thus robbing him of the childhood that might have produced a better adjusted adult (but a less accomplished comedian?).
'Women were never his strong point,' said his older daughter. She and his first two wives fell prey to substance abuse. He would humiliate them (as he did Margaret Dumont on and off screen). But his targets were not just women, they were the 'insecure, the submissive, the powerless'. He came down hard on those who showed weakness, be they his son, friends, writers or waiters. Perhaps it reminded him of himself, the pliant son and the naive teenage vaudevillian ripped off by hotel and theatre managers. Yet he ended up in old age allegedly bullied and swindled by his live-in secretary.
Harpo's wife Susan commented: 'He destroys people's egos. If you're vulnerable, you have no protection from Groucho. He can only be controlled if he has respect for you. But if he loses his respect you're dead. He won't take off on me because I'm as fresh as he is. So he leaves me alone and loves me dearly on account of it.'
The ups and downs are carefully chronicled - year after year of soul-destroying touring, Broadway hits and flops, the disastrous first foray into film, eventual international triumphs, the Wall Street crash (when Groucho's many prudent investments became worthless), the caprices of studio executives and the onset of radio and TV, over which Groucho triumphed as host of You Bet Your Life.
But even he couldn't conquer colour television. How could an audience cope with a man who had been in black and white his whole career? Yet he continued into his eighties, never really coming to terms with the notion of retirement, even after winning an honorary Oscar.
The brothers seem to have been as unruly off-camera as on - turning up late, removing producers' trousers and locking them in rooms - yet Groucho would often fret over lines. In A Day at the Races, eyed by a baddie, he chucks his watch in a basin of water: 'I'd rather have it rusty than missing.' On the pre-filming tour dates (several of their movies were road-tested in advance), he tried out 'gone' and 'disappear' 44 times and 'missing' 50. The latter always got the biggest laugh. Asked why some words worked better than others, Groucho said: 'I don't know. I really don't care. I only know the audiences told us it was funny.'
His performing style, apparently so artless, was finely honed. His character was a rich creation, 'because he managed to be a wise guy and a sympathetic antihero at the same time', said Chuck Jones, creator of Bugs Bunny.
This book is likely to become the definitive commentary on Groucho's life. Kanfer has interviewed everyone he can and read every book, review and interview. He elegantly captures the sheer joy the Marx Brothers can engender. He traces the development of their onstage personas (in which Minnie's brother, Al, a popular entertainer, played a part) and comedic armoury, perhaps at its best when deployed against the pomposity of government and business, targets for which the American public were initially cool.
For Kanfer, Groucho was 'a socially ambitious scamp, a loving and insensitive father, a faithful and contemptuous husband, a scripted ad-libber, an infantile grown-up, a fearful iconoclast and, above all, a depressive clown'.
Maureen O'Sullivan, on whom he had a crush, observed: 'Groucho never knew when to talk normally. His life was his jokes.' But what jokes.
