The Essential Groucho: Writings By, For, and about Groucho Marx

Send this book to a friend who needs a cheer up - or read it yourself for a laugh. BTW, best essay in the book has to do with 'income tax.' If you've been taxed enough already,you may find it comforting to know that Groucho would feel your pain. Fun book.

This is a fine selection. There's a brief introduction by Groucho's biographer, Stefan Kanfer, a couple of Time magazine articles about Groucho, then the rest of the material is by the man himself. A kind of "greatest hits" volume. So you know it's guaranteed to be funny. It includes favorite scenes from "Animal Crackers", "Monkey Business", "Horse Feathers", "Duck Soup", "A Night at the Opera", and "A Day at the Races", among other films. There are some freelance articles, as well as selected material culled from his appearances on radio and TV. All of this is reliably funny stuff, but for my money the best part of this book was "The Groucho Letters", roughly 30 pages of correspondence. There's the surreal correspondence between Groucho and Warner Brothers, who were trying to claim exclusive rights to the name 'Casablanca'. Letters to Fred Allen, Russell Baker, Alistair Cooke, and others. But the oddly moving center to the whole collection is an exchange of letters between Groucho and T.S. Eliot, initiated when Eliot, who was an avid fan, wrote in 1961, requesting an autographed photo. Anyone troubled by the anti-Jewish sentiments in some of Eliot's writing should read these letters, which go a long way to softening the image of Eliot as a rabid anti-Semite. The two men obviously grew friendly, and held each other in high regard, as this excerpt from a letter from Groucho to Russell Baker shows: (January 21, 1965) I was saddened by the death of T.S. Eliot. My wife and I had dinner at his home a few months ago and I realized then that he was not long for this world. He was a nice man, the best epitaph any man can have .... I recommend the book, though you may prefer to watch the films again.

Stefan Kanfer has done an excellent job of putting together a very entertaining collection. Script snippets, magazine articles, and correspondence -- this is an excellent overview of Groucho's genius. Yes, there are more exhaustive compilations of his scripts and letters available, but this book is intentionally a shorter "best of" collection; the subtitle -- "Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx" -- tells you what to expect. I also heartily recommend this book to anyone learning the craft of comedy writing, as there are a lot of script excerpts included. I studied Groucho's works years ago when I was first starting out as a writer, and his economy of writing is revelatory.

I bought this book because I didn't know anything about the Marx Brothers, and I wanted to get a feel for who they were offstage. (I just saw "Duck Soup" for the first time, and now I just HAVE to get all of their movies! Absolute Genius!) I read the other review, and wondered, but this book did just fine in giving me a look at who these wonderful entertainers when they weren't performing (well, mainly Groucho). Plus it has some transcripts form the movies and his show "You bet your life" ! All in all, a really easy and fun read. Enjoy!