THE MARX BROTHERS: S/D

I think Animal Crackers is my favorite. Coincidentally, it was the first one I ever saw by them. It seems to represent them at their, (yes, I will use the word) "anarchic" best.

Duck Soup and Horse Feathers for me.

love these guys -- i still go through a phase every couple of years where i have to watch all their movies (though i never got around to any of the ones they did after day of the races -- i've tried a couple of them and they're just painfully stiff, not to mention it's depressing watching them get old). everything up through night at the opera is untouchable.

one of my favorite film-related books ever is this old book from the 70s called "the marx brothers scrapbook," with tons of amazing pictures and wonderful interviews with the remaining brothers. groucho swears nonstop in all his interviews (no, REALLY swears, like all the words you'd never imagine lovable old groucho saying), bitches nonstop about all his brothers, suggests that (then-president) nixon ought to be assassinated -- he was apparently horrified when the book came out because he'd assumed the author would cut all that stuff out!

Pretty sure it was Animal Crackers I saw first, on network TV in 1979 or something in the evening! Those were the days.

I remember A Night in Casablanca being pretty good, definitely better than the other late-period ones I saw, but it's been a while.

But yeah, Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business.

I think Morbs OTM, but my favourite single scene has to be the stateroom scene in Night of the Opera, such a beautifully constructed piece of comedy. The pre-MGM one benefit from having been fine tuned as stage shows; the timing is sharper.

v sad joke from (i think) the big store, with chico getting groucho to pose for a photo —

"just look at me and pretend to laugh"
"i've been doing that for thirty years"

okay this is kind of a standard but the particular resignation with which groucho says it makes it queerly affecting

POO: 'go west' versus 'night at the circus' versus 'the big store'

(totally 'night at the circus', it's incredibly incredibly creepy)

The last big bio of them has a very funny story about the eulogy at Chico's funeral, tho of course I can't recall enough details to make it work.

A Night in Casablanca is watchable cuz Harpo is the star. At the Circus has "Lydia the Tattooed Lady."

The Cocoanuts is a pain to watch, so slow and primordial, and they sort of take a backseat to the plot.

Ed, I'm pretty sure the first 2 MGM movies were pretested on stage -- the comedy routines, that is.

I saw a Groucho imitator a year or so ago, great show at an elegant venue. He did lots of songs and had audience participation and was basically all over the place while documenting his entire career.

I <3 Marx Brothers, and they don't get enough credit. Harpo and Groucho type humor is especially not prevalent nowadays - crazy unique stuff. For some reason last night before I went to sleep I was thinking about the end of Duck Soup when they throw tomatoes at the fat lady singing the Land of Freedonia song.

A Night in Casablanca is watchable cuz Harpo is the star.

thx now i have an excuse for not having seen it

booooooooooooooo

Captain, I think that might be the guy who played "Groucho" in the Broadway pastiche of their films? or in their musical bio, Minnie's Boys?

the fat lady, Margaret Dumont, sposedly used to ask Groucho (nee Julius), "Julie, why are they laughing?"

it supposedly extended beyond just that instance -- no less than isherwood wrote about how m. dumont kept the fairly-person persona intact for the better part of a 30 year acquaintance with the bros.

oh yeah, she was clueless, it seems.

uh wait what

does that make the marx bros more or less funny? i mean she wouldve had to have been borderline retarded to not get it

she just didn't find it funny?

but yeah, I like the insults she gets in all the movies... horse feathers for instance.

you & me together margaret, i can see it now...our children laughing, you leaning over a hot stove...i just can't see the stove...

This must be a gala day for you.

The Marx Bros. bits were the best parts of the first few years of Cerebus.

and who has ever met a Zeppo fan?

the brothers:

harpo
groucho

the other brothers

mr. and mrs. marx

the brother who invented the zip-ties still used on airplanes

zeppo

did Gummo invent the zip-ties still used on airplanes?

harpo marx is the worst marx brother

the fact that you bring up zeppo at all is proof of this

LOOK AT CHICOLINI...HE SITS ALL ALONE

gummo's laundry basket:

http://www.marx-brothers.org/biography/gummo/1320335_1s.jpg

zeppo's moisture delivery pad:

http://www.marx-brothers.org/biography/zeppo/2590026-1s.jpg

Harpo is fantastic deeznuts wrong as usual

C'mon, don't perpetuate the old myth about M. Dumont. Enough already.

^^i was gonna say CT

shakey, chico is bro-est of the bros, groucho is hilarious & incisive & a model for us all, harpo annoys the shit out of me by playing his fucking harp because hey guess what he doesnt do shit but play along w/ chico & PLAY HIS FUCKING HARP

fast-forward

Harpo is a mischevious child-like mute with a bawdy side and innumerable handy objects stored in his trousers. How any human can dislike him is bewildering.

harpo dropping random unlikely stuff out of his coat sleeve = classic

harpo marx is the worst marx brother

of all the lame shit you've said this takes the cake forever

seriously like hating on Harpo is publicly admitting "I have no sense of humor at all"

Well when Harpo played his harp, it was a mystery
All the laughing stopped back to the balcony
Chico, Chico, sure to please
Now let's watch him shoot the keys
When Harpo would play his harp, all was still

When Harpo played his harp, it was a dream, it was
Well if someone else can do it, how come nobody does?
Groucho, Groucho, fast as light
Some talk like him but not quite
When Harpo would play his harp, all was still, still

Well Harpo Harpo
This is the angels and
where did you get that sound so fine?
Harpo Harpo
We gotta hear it
One more time

Harpo Harpo
We're in the galaxies and
where did you get that sound so fine?
Harpo Harpo
We gotta hear it
One more time

Do you remember what he would do sometimes before he played?
Well he'd look up to the sky and he'd look the angels' way
Harpo Harpo, when you start
Tears of joy inside my heart
Harpo would play his harp and all was still

Out of many many examples, without Harpo there's no kicker to the swordfish scene. Therefore you = wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZOlrZNIod0

anybody who can watch that without laughing should be killed

J0hn's words about deez's immortal ineptitude could have come right out of my mouth

yeah, this is one thread where I'm happy to join in on a group slam against deeznuts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmXOBKQ6A1E

I dunno how anyone can watch Harpo's face and not laugh

Was just reading about Harpo in Oscar Levant's memoir- he's got a whole chapter on him- about the time Oscar meet a cute girl and wanted to date her and she said "first your family has to meet my family." So Oscar showed up at their mansion one night with Harpo, saying he was his uncle. Chaos ensued, just like you see in the movies.

I got to see Minnie's Boys about a month ago. I really love that one song ("Mama, a Rainbow").

So the great "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" was written by Arlen and Harburg, right? But lots of their other songs were written by Kalmar and Ruby, I think.

Although apparently a lot of those didn't make it into the movies, I see.

like "Show Me a Rose"? Yes, that was Kalmar-Ruby I'm pretty sure. Welcome back, Ken!

deez reveals idiocy to a unanimous throng

"Most people have a conscious and a subconscious," he said of himself. "Not me. I've always operated on a subconscious and a sub-subconscious." Ben Hecht recalls that Harpo had only to float into a room full of people, and his relaxation, contentment, charm, and good will would contaminate the assemblage. The best time to try to understand this man is when you're sound asleep and the cosmic forces deep inside your consciousness are in total command....

...As for Harpo, his best summation of himself was: "I am the most fortunate self-taught harpist and non-speaking actor who ever lived.
-Jose Adamson's Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo: A Celebration of the Marx Brothers

I've been trying to find movies that are as funny as these, or actors who are as funny as these guys. Or at least sort of in the same ballpark. Certainly in the 20s and 30s there was a lot of comedic talent around. Does anything else from then exist that was witty like the Marx Brothers? Anywhere close?

For me, the marx bros are like the beatles to gier. sorta the starting point going in either direction, and the benchmark for everything else.

i wish more you bet your life was available than is available.

i seen all the you bet your lifes available on youtube, fun stuff

w.c. fields is almost as funny as the marx bros, though much more lowkey -- no one else's in the same ballpark.

my dad told me to look into Harold Lloyd. ive queued up Bust Keaton's The General and Lloyd's "Safety Last", the latter I'm really looking forward to. but it's silent isn't it? ill definitely check out some w.c. fields.

the Marx Brothers had a quickness and a playful sarcasm to the delivery of their gags that is still funny as hell today. i mean, some of these jokes are pretty cheesy but when they say them, they're funny on so many different levels. oh yeah...

search:
Man: Are you a man or a mouse?
Groucho: Put a piece of cheese on the floor and you'll find out.

Chicolini, when were you born?
Chicolini: I don't remember. I was just a little baby.

the scene where they're tricking the strong man in At the Circus

destroy: Room Service, all the scenes in later movies where they get pushed around by bullies rather than the other way around which is how it should be!

Fields probably made more *great* comedy features than the Marxes. It's a Gift and The Bank Dick, namely.

Laurel & Hardy are comedic grace & poetry, more in their shorts than in the features. But the best features are Sons of the Desert and Way Out West.

seek all of Keaton's silent work, then all of Chaplin's and Lloyd's.

Yeah, the Marx Bros films after Day at the Races are mostly depressing.

seriously like hating on Harpo is publicly admitting "I have no sense of humor at all"

See, I love Harpo but I can totally see why other people might not. Plus Harpo is often quite cruel... and very creepy towards women.

I think one of the main things that makes them so enjoyable for me is the rapid pace of the jokes; they just spit them out constantly and if you don't think one is funny then wait for 2 seconds and another will be right up. So even if you think 1/2 the jokes are actually funny then you're still laughing the whole movie. It's like they aren't even telling jokes for the sake of an audience, they're just being the biggest wise-asses they could possibly be.

Oh, and Groucho & Miss Dumont = a match made in heaven. They should've done a spinoff together.

Plus Harpo is often quite cruel... and very creepy towards women.

harpo, patron saint of internet forums

^see also Elvis, Dylan, Jimi, Prince

...Brando, Clift, Philip Roth, Hitchcock....

(i'm talking about artistic personae there. Harpo appparently stood out as a fine husband and dad compared to Groucho and Chico.)

Harpo apparently never learned how to tune a harp, he tuned it himself and learned how to play it himself. I read somewhere that he was actually a better pianist than Chico but that is hard to believe from the evidence we have! They were all higher dimensional beings.

Also

Search: Harpo doing a reverse Smooth Criminal move in At The Circus.

S, also the Groucho Marx, Detective series of books. They're kinda so-so except that Ron Goulart (RON GOULART!) nails Groucho. So much so that I kinda think most of Groucho's dialogue is just lifted from the 1,000,000 hrs of available footage of the man.
Marx Bros are pretty much IT for me. Loved 'em as a kid; marvelled as a teenager that the older, smarter badass kids I wanted to hang out with were also big fans, and as an adult I watch one of their movies whenever I feel blue and don't want to feel blue.
And of course, Groucho begat Bugs Bunny, so, um, that alone = godhood.

I just saw some Dali sketches at MoMA last week for the film treatment he tried to do for the Marxes. One w/ Groucho as Shiva.

http://charmicarmicat.blogspot.com/2008/08/groucho-shiva.html

http://www.miskatonic.org/dali-marx.html

does any1 have a jpeg (or gif) of the dog living in a hole in harpo's chest in duck soup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNkUtBa3_RI

its at the end of the mirror scene

That's not at the end of the mirror scene, it's early on in Groucho's office.

oh yeah lol

ha - rescreened animal crackers last night, interludes appreciated. i could go for a gif of his opening dance scene.

Harpo made this face, called "the gookie," in honor of a guy who made it as he rolled cigars in a window on Lexington Avenue.

http://www.harpomarx.net/gookie1.jpg

Sunday overhead somebody saying "Do you know that song 'Lydia the Tattooed Lady' from 'The Fisher King'? Made my blood boil.

you intervened, of course

No, I sadly had to let it pass, it wasn't worth it. The last time I intervened was when I told someone that Kurt Vonnegut didn't actually write Venus on the Half Shell. It did not go well

And of course, Groucho begat Bugs Bunny, so, um, that alone = godhood.

― Dr. Superman, Thursday, September 18, 2008 9:50 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Funny, I always think of that Bugs bunny persona as being my ideal of what 'punk' ought to have been and maybe was when it began but got siderailed into worshiping inept hoodlums and dressing like Mad Max extras. By which I mean incredibly streetsmart and always having the answer etc.
Can see that BB could be a cartoon version of Groucho too though.

Thinking of Marx brothers connections to punk I also always think Harpo and Johnny Rotten look very similar facially.

Harpo's book 'Harpo Speaks' was a very interesting read way too long ago, really must try to track down another copy since it must be 20 odd years since I read it. But it talks about him hanging out in the Algonquin club keeping up with wits like Dorothy Parker.

Groucho also had a great autobio but I can't remember what it was called.

I don't remember Julius having an autobio, exactly, but a couple quasi-photo album books (The Groucho Scrapbook or some such)?

a friend of mine has Harpo Speaks, been meaning to borrow his copy for years

the last big Marx Bros bio is huge but well worth skimming

I've been thinking, could the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy be made into a movie in modern times the way they've done it with The Three Stooges?

yeah, with jason segel and james franco and whoever.

It was done in this -- they changed the looks and other things, but there's no mistaking it (Turturro as Groucho):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103872/

It wasn't terrible.

Tony Martin, the romantic lead/singer in The Big Store, died. Very few cast members from these films left.

saw 'animal crackers' on the big screen yesterday, kind of a fuzzy print but a wonderful experience.

My friend's son, who is 16 and goes to a prominent perf arts high school -- the one where yer gonna learn how to fly, high -- says he was the only one laughing when they showed Horse Feathers in class. "It's too dry for them." DRY? No expulsive diarrhea gags, I guess.

wtf

"I feel like joining a club and beating you over the head with it" = dry to 21st-century youth

sadly, didn't seem like there were a lot of younger ppl in the audience -- i feel like marx humor is pretty universal, but prob best appreciated if you first see them early in life. though there was a 20-something guy sitting right behind me wearing an anchorman shirt who yelled 'that was AWESOME!' as the credits came up at the end.

Some friends as well as our own family have realized how much kids love the Marx Brothers. Basically, if your kids like the Muppet Show, they will also like the Marx Brothers, and just like the Muppets there are a million jokes they'll never get but which you'll love all the more for that.

took me years to understand the line 'you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did.'

"play Somewhere My Love Lies Sleeping with a male chorus"

the onion ran this story a while back called 'area man still trying to get into the marx brothers' or something like that and it kinda stunned me to realize that could even be a thing, that there were people out there trying to make themselves like the marx brothers because they're 'important' or 'influential' or whatever. it's like if someone were trying to get into bugs bunny because it was 'important to the history of animation' or trying to enjoy french fries because they're 'important to american culture.'

Marx Brothers were far more anarchic than Punk could ever be.

Punk rock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHash5takWU

one of their Broadway shows that never became a film is being staged at the NY Fringe fest

http://www.illsaysheis.com/

(sold out, alas -- maybe i can get standing room)

actually, it's the only one of their 3 B'way shows that wasn't adapted into a movie.

random memory from a marx bros book: groucho claimed to be able to explain the titles of every show/movie they ever did "except 'i'll say she is.'"

wow, anyone seen this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_That_Shadows_Built#Marx_Brothers_segment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGwSGD-d52Y

i regret not seeing Minnie's Boys when it was last produced -- i have no idea if i'll ever get the chance again :(

http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/whats-your-opinion-of-the-casting-groucho-i-havent-fished-in-years

"Critics. I know about critics. When we were working Chicago I used to go to the movies with Carl Sandburg. He was the movie critic of the Daily News at that time. He always instructed me to wake him up 10 minutes before the movie was over. I'd be asleep too, but I had myself trained."

the saga of the brothers across 70 years would make a helluva 8-hour miniseries, but I'm not sure anyone would have the will to do it right. They'd need a few gangsters a la Boardwalk Empire.

ilx has me so trained, I see this thread bumped and I think "oh no, one of the Marx Brothers must have just died..."

Has anyone read David Thomson on the Marx Brothers? Batshit insane, he has REAL weird problems with them. I'll post some quotes later (I heard of this first from AP Mike of "Best Show on WFMU" fame)

Chico needed the money.

always

and who has ever met a Zeppo fan?

Fassbinder named him in a list of his favourite actors!

Also he is the spitting image of my cousin, Jim ... Zeppo, not RWF.

Has anyone seen the Inside the Marx Brothers doc? I was thinking of checking it out soon.

I haven't watched it yet (at work) but I think I've got this bookmarked to the beginning of an animated version of the Napoleon sketch from I'll Say She Is, albeit with only Groucho

http://youtu.be/sjp9em8uQlU?t=11m43s

Did anyone get the TV appearances set? J Hoberman put it on his ten-best film list for this year.

https://www.shoutfactory.com/tv/comedy/the-marx-brothers-tv-collection

This TV comp has some great stuff... Groucho highlights include him doing a duet of the old "Oh Mr Gallagher / Oh Mr Shean" vaudeville tune with Jackie Gleason in '67, and totally dominating a quiz show panel ("Who Said That?") in the '50s.

There's also Groucho's sole straight role for TV circa 1961, in which he's the stern, unhappy father of a would-be teenage bride. Never mind that Grouch is past 70 in it... his daughter and prospective son-in-law are played by the then-married Brooke Hayward and Dennis Hopper!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blCImW5uZXg

on Duck Soup, and from his book Harpo on his 1933 trip to the USSR:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/09/craig-brown-on-the-delights-of-duck-soup

I should not be reading those dialogue excerpts at work because I'm giggling too loudly

man I really need to get around to reading Harpo Speaks

Watched some of A Day at the Races a while ago for the first time since childhood. The non-Marx bits are pretty tiresome but I had forgotten about the glorious phone scene:

http://youtu.be/0CL6syWe6dE

bunch more current articles related to London BFI retro

Alice Cooper: “Groucho used to call me in the middle of the night and ask me to come over. We’d sit around and watch old black and white movies and he loved to point out personal things I didn’t want to know about the actors. Groucho was the ringleader of the brothers, sort of like the lead singer in a band. So I obviously really related to him.”

When the city of Fredonia, New York complained about the similarly named Freedonia[in Duck Soup], Groucho wrote back to the mayor: "Our advice is that you change the name of your town. It is hurting our picture."

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-the-best-of-the-marx-brothers

So what happened about that UNCUT night at the opera then?

Wiki sez this Hungarian print's existence "has not been independently verified," and Warners (rights holders) has said nothing.

Duck Soup is great but if it had scenes of Chico playing the piano and Harpo playing his harp it would push over the edge for me to ultimate greatness. Think I slightly prefer Animal Crackers because of the awesome frantic tag-team they do on that piano.

i'm fine with that in the other movies, but DS is streamlined; no specialty acts. (and aside from scant moments w/ Zeppo and whatsername, Raquel Torres?, no straight romance)

Harpoi is ok on the harp but i vastly prefer him shoveling books into a fireplace or bathing in Edgar Kennedy's lemonade.

that extended lemonade/peanut stand scene is some of their best physical comedy by far

Yeah that's a high point I their filmography

Having both that and the mirror scene in the same film is kind of crazy, the more I think about it.

Steve Allen used to do a joke "Edgar Kennedy died today in the slow-burn unit of Cedars Sinai..."

(in later years it was hardly worth telling cuz first he had to explain who Edgar Kennedy was)

Yeah the mirror scene totally killed me when I saw it. "So that's where Bugs Bunny got it....."

"Duck Soup" is streamlined yeah, and probably the best Marx Bros. movie cos of it. I just really love seeing Chico shoot at the keys.

Yeah the mirror scene totally killed me when I saw it. "So that's where Bugs Bunny got it....."

I saw a couple silent Charley Chase shorts that McCarey directed in 1924-26, and in one called Sittin' Pretty that Chase and another actor do a mirror scene that is not only close to the one in DS, but has some of the same reaction shots! Have heard there were other mirror scenes too, so not a Marx invention.

Some of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4VdIZLiRec

pretty sure the mirror scene gag happened in theatre/vaudeville too!

no doubt

They kind of cemented it for all time, though

Max Linder's mirror scene in Seven Years' Bad Luck is one of my favorite incarnations, though it's not the first on film.

I assume same director, similar staging, this is the closest antecedent.

Nice! I wonder if the Marx Bros. invented the stepping-in-the-mirror/switching places variation...

Pretty amazing how that scene has no dialog at all and the characters are dressed exactly the same and yet the personalities still come through clear as a bell!

that's Hal Roach Studio silent comedy

mccarey ripped off his own (older) work all the time! and why the hell not?

btw this might be the funniest short i've ever seen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXQANS-V0YA

Max Davidson, Spec O'Donnell?

Rob Zombie has acquired the rights to a memoir about the late legendary comedic actor Groucho Marx. The book is by Steven Stoliar and is called Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House. Deadline is reporting that Zombie will direct, co-produce and co-write the screen adaptation of the movie....

The memoir is about the last few years of Marx’s life, from the perspective of a young fan who is hired to be a personal assistant to the Marx Brothers. On his Facebook page, Zombie simply wrote “my next film” and linked to the Deadline article. He also changed his cover photo to a picture of Marx.

Zombie will share screenplay co-writing duties with Love & Mercy writer Oren Moverman.

http://loudwire.com/rob-zombie-groucho-marx-movie

oh fuck that

plum role for Woody Allen

I enjoyed Stoliar's awkward book but can't imagine the point of this, beyond whoever gets the Erin Fleming role imagining it to be a careermaker

maybe a Kardashian

rmde

I got the Captain Spaulding reference in that one movie. The movie itself was trash, admittedly the kind of trash some people enjoy, but I thought it was just trash. His whole deal just reminds me of that era in the 90s where everyone in the bands would stare really bug-eyed and try and look like a psychotic clown when they played. Rob Zombie is a living Hot Topic.

Still I am interested because there is a massive gap in Marx Bros. stuff aside from the original movies and one or two documentaries of talking heads talking about those movies.

basically all the Old Groucho you need is in that TV box set from last year, and Gilbert Gottfried's impression.

Richard Pryor ran into Groucho in the mid '60s at a party at Bobby Darin's house, a few days after Pryor and Jerry Lewis had been spitting water on each other on The Merv Griffin Show. Groucho asked Pryor, "Do you want to have a career you can be proud of, or do you want to be a spitwad like Jerry Lewis?"

started reading this article, got halfway through and went "who the fuck is this old fart," then scrolled up and glanced at the byline and went "...oh."

http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2047/jews-on-the-loose/

Groucho's FBI file

https://vault.fbi.gov/Groucho%20Marx

GRAUCHO

lol

Groucho's Mexican cousin I assume

'best copy available' deserves a pun

the letters from concerned citizens who want to warn mr. hoover about groucho's communist leanings are particularly wonderful

'if i lean any further i'll be in back of you'

Saw Monkey Business last night, and I would rank it second after Duck Soup. But my all-time favorite Marx Brothers moment comes in A Night at the Opera, after Groucho looks at the check for dinner: "Nine dollars and 40 cents? Thats an outrage! If I were you I wouldn't pay it!"

I was just gifted with this book!

https://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2019-03-22/what-if-the-marx-brothers-got-around-to-making-that-movie-with-salvador-dali/

I learned about and promptly forgot about that book because its existence feels mythical. Must buy.

Maybe my favourite exchange in cinema history:

Mrs. Teasdale: What's that?
Rufus T. Firefly: Sounds to me like mice.
Mrs. Teasdale: Mice? Mice don't play music.
Rufus T. Firefly: No? How about the old maestro?

Maybe it's just because I've taught college, but my favorite Marx Brothers scene is Groucho in Horse Feathers trying to teach a science class, with Chico and Harpo as students who keep heckling him. "Any questions? Any answers? Any rags, any bones, any bottles today, any rags?"

"Any questions? Any answers? Any rags, any bones, any bottles today, any rags?"

I had a high school teacher who used to say this all the time. Had no idea what she was talking about.

It's really hard not say, if you're a teacher and you've watched that scene enough! So far I've resisted, but I know one day I'll crack.

"really hard not to say," that is.

Hat slap gag

This is a long time favourite of mine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZvugebaT6Q

"any rags, any bones, any bottles today?" is a riff on this now-forgotten Tin Pan Alley song from the 1900s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A908CsCxmJg

should warn anyone listening that the song is fairly racist, btw.

i'm a sucker for the sanity clause bit.

watching a night in casablanca for the first time in my life

very hefty fez content

Heh

I think I've finally reached the age where I might be ready to reassess these guys (positively)

TIL that harpo's wig was generally pink

"Any questions? Any answers? Any rags, any bones, any bottles today, any rags?"

When I hear someone say "Any questions?", my brain keeps telling me to answer "Yeah, when you gonna cut open the watermelon?"

https://grouchoandcavett.com/
^this was good

Always happy when I'm reminded that their father was French and was nicknamed Frenchy into the bargain.