The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx, edited by Stefan Kanfer (TPB, 2000, $1.50)
Julius Henry (Groucho) Marx was the third of six sons. He looked funny, and was not his mother's favorite. His older brothers hung around together. His younger brothers hung around together. That left him angerly alone with his books. He was smart, and wanted to become a doctor. His mother wanted the family to become famous in vaudeville. Guess whose wishes were listened to.
Groucho still wanted to be a doctor, but there was no chance of that now. If he couldn't be a doctor, then he would be a full time writer... except he hated to sit at a typewriter for long. So instead of writing, he hung around comedy writers. Some of them became his collaborators. He could always sell his writing, even if he needed other people to edit and polish it first.
Gloria Stuart, someone who knew him well, commented, "He taught us how to be irreverent." Says Kanfer, "Onstage and in the cinema Groucho impudently kidded the medical, legal, and military professions, politics, the Academy, high society, and virtually every other bastion of power. These have never been the same again. "
But he never got to be a doctor.
Look for this book on the new non-fiction table. (L-bio)
