Word: grouchos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What has eight legs and laughs? ran the question in the '30s. Answer: the Marx Brothers. Later they lost a pair of legs, when Zeppo dropped out of the act. Groucho, Chico and Harpo went on to make eight more films together, becoming precursors of the new American humor. Groucho's flip irrelevancies foreshadowed the theater of the absurd: "I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse." Harpo was a troll bridge between the silents and the talkies. "How can you write for Harpo?" shrugged George S. Kaufman. "All you can say is, 'Harpo enters...
...Brothers Marx found themselves the darlings of the Intelligentsia. Harpo became a visitor to the Algonquin Round Table; Groucho corresponded with T. S. Eliot in a number of letters that showed that he thought of himself as a cerebral clown. But the old vaudeville team had begun its film career comparatively late in life-in 1929, at the time of their first film, The Cocoanuts, Chico was 40-and by the late '40s their creative energy had faded. To a whole generation of television viewers, the Marxes are at once as familiar and as obscure as the Smith Brothers...
...joke. It's called Skidoo, and the only conceivable reasons to see it are 1) to hear each and every credit, from cameraman to copyright date, sung on the sound track; 2) to see actors like Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Burgess Meredith, Peter Lawford and even Groucho Marx make fools of themselves; and 3) just to believe that it exists. Ostensibly a comedy, Skidoo was produced and directed by Otto Preminger, who has also unleashed on an unwary public such tid-bits as Hurry Sundown and In Harm's Way. He is funnier when he is serious...
...begins to work, stunning audiences with articulate force. His current comedy, Jimmy Shine, is a mere vaudeville of the absurd. But within it is the vortical power of Dustin, pulling in the laughs, the cast and the audience. He growls like Durante, drones like W. C. Fields, shambles like Groucho Marx, and dances like a good-natured puppy. Yet the elements are his own?so much so that other performers are already copying them...
...before I advance a tentative explanation or two, a couple of immediate points might be stated: Skidoo is hysterically funny, although many people will disagree and I'd be hard put to tell them specifically what in it was funny. Skidoo is superbly acted, notably by Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, and Mickey Rooney, three good and obviously wise...