Word: grouchos
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...turn to Stefan Kanfer's Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx (Knopf; 465 pages; $30) if you're looking for laughs. Kanfer, a former TIME critic, deserves no censure for failing to amuse with his large, serious and occasionally logy biography. For one thing, no writer could possibly explain what made Groucho Marx so funny. The printed page cannot show what he could do with a quick leap of his eyebrows, much less with his preposterous body, its upper half canted illogically forward from those scurrying legs. His voice? Let's not even...
...other, more imposing force working against Kanfer is the familiar truism: he who is funniest while performing is rarely appealing when the camera stops. In Groucho's case, his wit didn't abandon him off the set, but the man Kanfer discovers behind the joker is no fun at all. By the time he breaks up with Chico and Harpo, Groucho has become a crabby miser, shamefully manipulative of his wives and children. You wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have this guy as a member...
...West b) Groucho Marx c) Queen Elizabeth II d) Ronald Reagan...
...Firing Line's heyday, Hugh Hefner could discourse on the Playboy "philosophy" and Groucho Marx on the nature of comedy. From Jack Kerouac to Mary McCarthy, and every President from Nixon through Bush, there are few figures of intellectual significance who didn't submit to Buckley's leisurely sparring. He might open a show, as he did with Norman Mailer in 1967, like this: "I should like to begin by asking Mr. Mailer, who has been sentenced to five days in jail for a march on the Pentagon and is appealing on the grounds that he was sentenced because...
...Hattie, a mute laundress who tries to tries to take up Emmet as a lover. Looking like she just stepped out of a silent film, Morton gives a performance that, without a single line of actual dialogue, matches Penns in intensity and sheer entertainment value. Her expressive eyes and Groucho Marx facial expressions make her the perfect foil for Emmets self-absorbed rambling. Its so clear that the two are right for each other that when Emmet totally fails to realize the value of Hatties unconditional love, we realize just how long it has been since one of Allens films...