Word: harpo
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Marxian humor consists of two types. The sublimely lunatic Harpo wields the slapstick. He, as a personification of the Id, drops ice out of windows, cuts holes in floors, scatters passports to the wind, chases pretty girls, and gleefully slugs people he doesn't particularly like. Groucho handles the leering quip with illimitable finesse: ". . . some days I never got to bed at all--in those days a college widow stood for something." Chico, an underrated artist, is a good straight man and a master of the pun: "there ain't no Sanity Clause." Zeppo tries hard, but he's only...
After three viewings, you may be able to remember that "Horsefeathers" is the one in which Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo careen through Huxley College in a garbage-wagon chariot, among other conveyances. In "Monkey Business' the Marx boys plague the captain, crew, and passengers of an ocean liner like four hyper-thyroid Nemeses. But plots count for nothing when the Marx Brothers are around. In fact, everything counts for nothing--except unending hysterical laughter--when the Marx Brothers are around...
...Like watching the March hare playing tricks on an indulgent mad hatter," said the Manchester Guardian of Harpo & Chico Marx, now appearing on the London stage (Groucho was at home). The London Times burbled: "What makes these great clowns is this combination of fun and fantasy with something else, a mixture of worldly wisdom and naïveté, of experience but also of an innocence never altogether lost, of dignity and absurdity together, so that for a moment we love and we applaud mankind...
...worth their keep, to Showman Billy, were any of the Met's 38 directors: "Letting Belmont, Bliss, Colt, Dillon, Reed, Whitney, Winthrop et al. boss our most complicated entertainment venture is as daffy as letting Harpo Marx run U.S. Steel. In the old days . . . Otto Kahn and his contemporaries . . . were willing to pay for the privilege of making the Met their hobby . . . But today's directors have shown little facility with the fountain pen . . . they (should) hold one last meeting and fire themselves...
This aggregation takes its stroke from Charlie Rimmer, veteran of several seasons at this key position. Behind him range Albie Carter, George Lodge, Bill Barber, Jim Homans, Nat Ober, Harpo Hanson, and Lou Cox, with Sam King doing the talking from the storn