Harpo Marx Talks At Last!

I admit it without shame: I'm a Marx Brothers fan. It's a real delight for me to read occasional Marx-related news in The New Yorker, particularly during 1929 when their star was on the rise. Reviews! Goofy letters! Gossip!

But whenever I run across a Marx Brothers tidbit I usually curb my enthusiasm, assuming that readers of this blog wouldn't give a damn. Usually their New Yorker stuff is pretty dumb anyway.

This advertisement from Rosoff's, however, is just fun enough to deserve mention.

Described as "The Broadway Night Club dedicated to good food," Rosoff's was apparently a popular eatery in its day, but it closed in 1981 and has left few internet footprints. Perhaps trying to imitate the "celebrity spy" advertisements from Reuben's, here's Harpo Marx giving a ringing Rosoff's endorsement.

"You needn't think that just because I play the harp I'm an angel. Nor even that I'm stringing you. After the performance of 'Animal Crackers' every other pay day I let the blondes take me over to your restaurant. I have one of your club steaks à la Rosoff, and after that I'm ready to be all four of the Three Muskateers.

"And I want you to know that if Groucho ever kills me for charging these feeds up on the swindle sheet, you can have him hanged for Harpocide.

"Yours for more clubbing and staking,"

(Signed) HARPO MARX

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "Theatrical Note"

I was beginning to wonder if Dr. Seuss had given up on being a media whore, but no! Here he is on January 5, 1929 with yet another "Flit" advertisement.

This picture gives us some crucial insight into vaudeville; we now know that these sorts of acts juggled cheese-balls, candles, flowers, piranhas, and "bowling-and-killing" implements, all while standing on the ass-faced pig-dog.

Why Groucho Marx is holding the Flit I have no idea.

A Harpo Profile

I was excited when I came across an extensive profile of Harpo Marx in the December 1, 1928 issue of The New Yorker. I couldn't wait to read a contemporary account of his life -- written during the run of the stage version of "Animal Crackers" -- and I'd actually be able to contribute something to this blog OTHER than Frigidaire advertisements!

But then I realized it was written by Alexander Wollcott. Oh hell.

Only Wollcott -- and his flippant associates of the Algonquin Round Table -- could turn Harpo Marx's life and behaviour into a boring (and largely incomprehensible) profile. The Wollcott technique? Using sly, dry, ironic language to twist little-known personal anecdotes into descriptions of how gosh-darn unusual Harpo was and -- by extension and association -- how clever Mr. Wollcott was.

This was the entire problem with early New Yorker issues, this reliance on witty bon mots and self-aggrandizing style that managed to make even the most interesting subject sound like...well, a bunch of rich and cynical critics sitting around in a restaurant, trying to top each other's stories with a combination of embellishment, dry humour, and wordplay.

Is it any wonder that I reprint the newspaper advertisements more often than anything else?

The Marx Brothers: Cocoanuts

Needless to say I was a late-comer to the Marx Brothers. I'd always dismissed them as little more than the Three Stooges, who I have never been able to enjoy, partly because they're grotesque and they're lunkheads.

But when I worked at Generation X video I was determined to watch all the Classic films from the top of the shelf to the bottom, and the Marx Brothers were at the top.

The first film I saw was "Room Service," which is pretty awful but started two obsessions in one swoop: the need to find out who this "Ann Miller" person was (pre-nose job, only 15, terrorized by Harpo behind the scenes), and the inkling that there was more to the Marxes than I'd thought. And I was right.

It still amazes me that, by the time their first film had been released, they were already up in years and late in their careers. That film, of course, was "The Cocoanuts," and it stands up both as typical Marx insanity AND an example of Hollywood learning -- from scratch -- how to make a movie with this new sound technology.

Anyway, one great thing about reading "The New Yorker" is finding reviews of films and plays that were written when the films and plays first came out. It was fun reading about "Metropolis" ("gosh it's weird, those Germans are really on to something, it features a sexy robot") and now, on May 28, 1927:

The return engagement is the Marx Brothers in "The Cocoanuts," at the Century. It is now a platitude to say that no intellect has been found profound enough to drain the heady madness of "The Cocoanuts" at a single draught. True, the Florida real-estate theme on which "The Cocoanuts" is built has come to seem like a series of kicks at a pecurliarly destitute cripple, the music has died a little, and the settings and costumes were never much--still, "The Cocoanuts" must be seen again. An arabesque of wisecracking, clowning and satirization, reaching its climax in the immortal viaducts conference, "The Cocoanuts" can be relied on to induce a glorious condition somewhere between vertigo and hysteria.

And yes, from the very beginning (1925) this paper has been full of details about the "Florida real-estate theme." I didn't realize it until now, but "The Cocoanuts" must have been very topical when it first appeared on the stage. In 1927, when the stage show returned to New York, the theme was getting old. By 1929, when the film was actually made, it must have been positively out-of-date.

Henry Ford and Father Coughlin Love the Jews

Update: I can't possibly do this subject justice during breakfast, but this is simply a quick "off the top of my head" writeup. I'll be the first to admit that it contains simplifications and generalizations of Coughlin's speech. But that doesn't mean he wasn't a dirtbag.

From the May 28, 1927 issue of The New Yorker:

A visitor calling on the Marxes in their dressing-room, incidentally, arrived just as another gentleman departed. "That fellow you saw leaving," explained Harpo (of the red wig), "is the greatest salesman in the world...He must be, because he just convinced two Marx Brothers that Henry Ford loves the Jews, and sold them Lincoln cars."

Henry Ford's extreme anti-semitism is no secret, but this reminds me of another psycho, this one Canadian: Father Coughlin.

I make it a habit (or rather a duty) to listen to every old time radio show that comes my way. The wonderful otrcat site includes comprehensive "samplers" of shows when you order from them, so even though I haven't purchased the Father Coughlin collection, I still listened to one of his 1938 broadcasts called "Jew, Christian, and Persecution."

I don't have a lot of time for racists, and that includes anti-semites. It's always confused me that certain people (including Ernst Zundel, who was just sentenced to jail in Germany and who used to live across the street from a friend of mine in Toronto) stereotype Jews as being incredibly capable on one hand -- able to control the entire WORLD, apparently -- but incredibly inferior on the other. If one race has managed to dominate the financial and political machinery throughout the entire world then the rest of us are a bunch of lazy bums.

So sitting through an hour of Father Coughlin wasn't my favourite thing to do, but it did hammer home the lessons that racists -- and ideologues in general -- use to twist the facts.

The most disgusting and cynical technique of all is false sympathy. He repeatedly and vehemently sympathises with the Jewish victims of persecution in Germany...then proceeds to blame them for their persecution. And this is how he does it:

1. In Russia, the Czar treated the people well (he never states this outrageous claim, but it's a necessary unspoken premise for everything that follows).
2. The only reason that the people suffered was because the bankers in Russia were greedy.
3. Jews dominate the banking community, therefore the Jews made the people in Russia suffer (pogroms, anyone?)
4. As a reaction to this Jew-created suffering, the people were willing to embrace any ideology that would save them.
5. So they embraced Communism, an idea developed and bankrolled by "secular Jews" (must of Father Coughlin's broadcast consists of his proving this link, but I don't think it's particularly relevant. Since Coughlin hates Communism almost as much as he hates the Jews, however, this link is important to him).
6. Communism is evil, not because it resulted directly and indirectly in the deaths of millions of people (which the world community wasn't much aware of in 1938) but because it's GODLESS, thanks to those secular Jews who developed and paid for it.
7. Nazism is sorta bad and represses people (Coughlin gives lip-service to Hitler's badness, but is most angry that people focus on the repression of Jews in Germany, and don't give equal time to repression of Christians...so one of Hitler's most heinous crimes is of eclipsing repression of Christians by repressing so many darn Jews).
8. Nazism is simply a response to the GODLESS THREAT OF COMMUNISM!

That's the big point of Coughlin's speech, which leads us to his final rhetorical swoop: since Jews are responsible for Communism, they are ALSO responsible for their own victimization in Germany! And as Coughlin ominously says, if communism isn't stamped out here in America, something akin to Nazism will arise in America as well, and the Jews will suffer.

But you see, Coughlin says he doesn't WANT the Jews to suffer (it's apparent that he really doesn't want Jews getting any sympathy). He really loves the Jews. Meanwhile, from the other side of his face he's exposing the Great Jewish Conspiracy to Spread Communism. So excuse me if I don't buy into his false sympathy routine.

Why am I mentioning all this? Because this is one of the most complicated and bizarre anti-semitic slippery slopes I've run across, and also because people have forgotten Father Coughlin, who was born in Hamilton Ontario so therefore not so very far from where I live. He's better left forgotten, but he is a potent reminder of how offensive hatred often hides itself as concern and defense.

PS: If it's any consolation, FDR managed to get Coughlin shut down in the early '40s. Not because of his antipathy towards Jews, but because of his opposition to FDR's policies, mainly as they regarded American entry into WWII.

PPS: And where did Hitler plan to relocate all the Jews in Europe? You guessed it: Madagascar.

If the Nightingale / Could Sing Like You...

I just finished rewatching the Marx Brothers in "Monkey Business," you know, the one where they're stowaways and need to impersonate famous people to get off the boat. Errr, to differentiate it from "A Night at the Opera," this is the one where they pretend to be Maurice Chevalier, and where Harpo does a Punch & Judy gag with a lot of children who are being forced to laugh. And you know how awful it is when little kids have to pretend to laugh in a film.

Some of the best moments in a Marx Brothers movie are when Chico does a one-on-one routine with either Harpo or Groucho:

GROUCHO: Well, the picnic's off, we didn't bring any red ants.
CHICO: I know some Indians got a couple of red aunts.

I also love to watch the Marxes tease and confuse women. I don't know whether it's a misogynistic streak or what, but a common thread in these movies is one of the brothers flirting with a woman, routinely insulting her at the same time, and then scaring the heck out of her or sort of physically assaulting her. I find this refreshing not because I like to see women get insulted, jacked up like cars, or crushed under couch cushions, but because I like to see a Hollywood "flirtation routine" get turned completely on its head.

CHICO: You're a very pretty girl. You've got "it."
MANICURIST: Thank you.
CHICO: And you can keep it.

Watching Groucho irrationally insult a pretty girl ("Does your husband know you used to dance in a flea circus?") also provides a welcome change from hatchet-faced Zeppo woodenly wooing the dull romantic lead. And anything that delays a harp solo is a good thing in my books.

(Every blog entry requires a certain amount of writing-agony, but this time around I couldn't remember how to spell cushion...think about it, it's a strange word)