Raised Eyebrows

It took me longer than it should have to catch up with the new edition of Steve Stoliar's 1996 memoir Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House, published late last year. But I've finally done it. Besides feeling moved to equal portions of laughter and tears, I wonder what took me so long.

In brief: Steve Stoliar, in 1974, was a nineteen-year-old devotee of vintage comedy, with a particular fondness for Our Brothers. Through a remarkable series of events, he became an employee and a friend of Groucho during the final years of the great man's life. In Raised Eyebrows, with eloquence and wit, he tells that story. The expanded edition includes an afterword, with updates and new reflections.

What makes Raised Eyebrows unique among Marx Brothers books is its fan's-eye-view of Groucho's final act. The fading star had numerous Boswells in the seventies, and some of their books are excellent, and others are not. But nobody has come close to Steve Stoliar in making us feel as though we were there, in making us understand the literal and emotional realities of Captain Spaulding's last adventures. Stoliar is one of us -- that is, a fan to whom the word fan does no justice. This is not about showbiz. This is about love.

If you know anything about Groucho's life in the seventies, you know that it was dominated by a woman named Erin Fleming. Marxists accord her some credit for reinvigorating his career, and a great deal of blame for the hysteria and abuse to which she subjected him. Other accounts of Fleming's influence (like the last chapters of Hector Arce's solid Groucho) have overwhelmed me with sadness, that my hero's autumn was contaminated by this crazed martinet. But Raised Eyebrows makes me feel better. We may regret that Groucho had Erin Fleming, but we can rejoice, for he also had Steve Stoliar. There was a young man in Groucho's house who genuinely loved him, who cared for him unselfishly, and who, with limited power, did everything possible to give Groucho the joy and peace he deserved. We who love Groucho can never thank him enough.

I did thank him, incidentally. As regular visitors to the Comedy Palace will know, one of the projects I've been working on over the last few years is a book about comedy -- or, more accurately, about my love of certain comedians. (I recently published a short excerpt, about Groucho's Carnegie Hall concert, here.) A couple of years ago, while working on the Marx Brothers section, I reread the entire Marx library, including Raised Eyebrows. Noticing that we had some mutual Facebook friends, I sent Steve a message to say thank you. We had a brief, pleasant correspondence, during which it occurred to me that by contacting him I was following his example. Raised Eyebrows documents his pursuit of autographs and mementos, but he never comes across as a standard celebrity-hound. His intentions are pure and noble, rooted in a genuine desire to simply say thank you to people whose work has enriched his life. How can you not love a twenty-year-old in 1975 who goes out of his way to meet S.J. Perelman?

And that's another aspect of Stoliar's contribution to the Marx mythos. In some of his media appearances promoting the book, he's told anecdotes about people like Perelman and Nat Perrin (who wrote for the Brothers in the thirties, and became temporary conservator of Groucho's estate toward the end), while offering, for example, "a dead-on Nat Perrin impression." The radio hosts laugh at the joke -- how's anyone going to know whether that's really a dead-on Nat Perrin impression? -- but for us, for ever-loving Marxists, it's a revelation. So that's what Nat Perrin sounded like! Steve knows. He was there.

For these reasons, and many others, I'm so glad that Steve Stoliar stepped out of his monochrome Kansas and into the Technicolor madness of 1083 Hillcrest Road, and that he's given us this precious record of what he found there.

And that is why we say: Hooray, hooray, hooray.

Raised Eyebrows is available, in both print and Kindle editions, at the Comedy Palace Gift Shop. Signed and inscribed copies are available through Steve's website.

Overture: Groucho at Carnegie Hall

Sunday was the fortieth anniversary of Groucho's 1972 Carnegie Hall concert, preserved on the bittersweet LP An Evening With Groucho. (Actually, the recording draws on two concerts, one at Iowa State University.) Dick Cavett, who introduced the great man at Carnegie Hall, has reflected on the anniversary in his Times online column (read it here) and on All Things Considered (listen to it here). I'm marking the occasion by sharing the first two pages of the book I've been working on. It's a preface entitled "Overture," and it deals with the medley Marvin Hamlisch played at Carnegie Hall before Dick Cavett introduced Groucho Marx. (An Evening With Groucho is out of print, but available at archive.org, or right here.)

 

THE1972 LP AN EVENING WITH GROUCHO – a sad and joyous document with which all Marxists have struggled – begins with an Overture, performed by Marvin Hamlisch at the piano. Backstage, waiting to be introduced, is an eighty-two-year-old man named Julius Henry Marx. He has been in show business for nearly seventy years. Tonight, he has made it to Carnegie Hall.

Hamlisch, still a few years away from A Chorus Line and his Pulitzer, is in awe of the venue. The star is in awe of nothing. With a grand flourish, Hamlisch launches into Beethoven – Allegro con brio, the first movement of Piano Sonata No. 21, the Waldstein. He hammers the insistent opening chords before a momentarily disoriented audience.

The Waldstein twinkles along toward its first release. Through parting clouds emerges a melody so intrinsic to our psyches that we can hear the unsung lyrics: Hooray for Captain Spaulding, the African explorer! Did someone call me schnorrer? Hooray hooray hooray! It takes a moment to register, and then sweet applause. Behind their glasses, eyebrows, and moustaches, people in the audience have begun to cry.

“Hooray for Captain Spaulding” fizzles back into the Waldstein, and then erupts into a second movement, “Alone” from A Night at the Opera. This, too, is lovingly received, even though we will always fast-forward this number, later on, when we watch A Night at the Opera in our living rooms. We will never watch it to hear Allan Jones sing. We are here for our Brothers.

Hamlisch slides elegantly back to Kalmar and Ruby. “Everyone Says I Love You,” from Horse Feathers, suits the occasion. At last we are to meet him, the famous Captain Spaulding! Everyone says I love you.

Sitting in the audience is a very great man, thirty-seven years old, a sort of heir to the legacy celebrated tonight. He will eventually make a film called Everyone Says I Love You, but that’s many years away; right now he is between Sex and Sleeper. Tonight at Carnegie Hall he is sitting beside a radiant Diane Keaton.

We descend back into A Night at the Opera – “Cosi Cosa,” another lukewarm slab of Allan Jones. But then we catch on: “Cosi Cosa” is delivered this evening with a distinctive technical flourish, and the Carnegie Hall audience bursts into passionate applause, realizing what Hamlisch is doing here: He’s shooting the keys. At’sa fine.

He makes a triumphant return to Captain Spaulding by way of Beethoven, and then a coda: The unmistakable final spasm of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, to break our hearts, and to put the boys in company with the great art of the twentieth century.

The Marx Brothers are the Ghosts of Show Business Past, and some of us are haunted by them every day of our lives. To us, the jokes keep getting funnier, even though it’s been more than a hundred years since Minnie Schoenberg Marx gave birth to kings.

Of Muppets and Marx Brothers

As I've written elsewhere, the Muppets were, in effect, the first comedians I ever loved. I just saw last year's The Muppets for the second time (on DVD), and was reminded of something Jason Segel repeatedly said during promotional appearances for that film: The Muppets were his "gateway drug for comedy." Exactly. And I think the Muppets are also part of the reason why, when I was ready to discover other comedians, I gravitated so strongly toward the Marx Brothers, whose work was an obvious influence on Henson, Oz, and company.

The whole spirit of the Marx Brothers -- anarchic, absurd, and, though I hate to use this word, zany -- is unmistakably with the Muppets, if you watch them and look for it. As if to acknowledge the debt, Jim Henson and his writers (principally Jerry Juhl and Jack Burns) frequently paid direct tribute to the Brothers.

First, a selection from the second episode of the first season of The Muppet Show. Connie Stevens was the guest star, and the show originally aired on February 28, 1977, when I was exactly three weeks old. So I must have seen it in reruns. What I know is that by the time I saw the Marx Brothers in At the Circus, and Groucho went into his immortal rendition of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," I recognized it instantly as a Kermit the Frog number.



At the Circus, as you know, is not one of the Brothers' great films, but "Lydia" is a truffle in the mud. It was written for Groucho by two great songwriters, Harold Arlen (music) and Yip Harburg (lyrics). The rest of their score for At the Circus is well below par for them, but give them a break; they wrote the songs for The Wizard of Oz that same year. Arlen's music for "Lydia" is a lovely, bouncing waltz, but it's Harburg's song. The wordplay, puns, and fanciful lingual stretching exercises are all hallmarks of his best lyrics. Whimsy with an edge. According to most accounts, the songwriters intended "Lydia" as a pastiche of Gilbert and Sullivan, knowing of Groucho's fondness for the Savoy Operas.

Here's the original:



I definitely remember seeing the original broadcast of The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson. It aired in November of 1990, six months after the heartbreaking, unexpected death of Jim Henson, and it was the first Muppet production of the post-Henson era. It was also the debut of Steve Whitmire's Kermit. In this clip, Rizzo (also Whitmire) touts a vaudeville act called the Merrill Lunch Hungerdunger McCormack All-Accountant Marching Society...



...which is a clear and loving tribute to the immortal Animal Crackers routine in which Groucho dictates a letter to his lawyers at the firm of Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, and McCormack. Did I leave out a Hungerdunger?



On the fourth episode of The Muppet Show's first season (the guest star was Ruth Buzzi), Kermit and a mechanical Kermit doppelganger performed a version of the classic mirror routine -- a bit used by countless comedians throughout history, but associated most with the Marxes, due to Groucho and Harpo's version in Duck Soup, still one of the high points in cinematic history. 



(The Muppet version of the mirror scene is not embeddable, but you can watch it by clicking the above image, or this link; it starts at around 5:53 in the clip.)



On The Muppet Show, season two, episode thirty-one (guest star: Edgar Bergen), Rolf performed "Show Me a Rose," in one of the delightful Rolf piano solos that were common the show's early seasons. 



"Show Me a Rose" was one of Groucho's signature numbers. It was written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, the songwriting team most associated with the Marx Brothers. They wrote the songs for Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup, and were principal screenwriters on the latter two; they also wrote a discarded musical number for A Day at the Races, a discarded early screenplay for Go West, and a good deal of specialty material that appeared variously in Groucho's repertoire.

In this late-sixties appearance from Dick Cavett's short-lived morning show, Groucho twice offers to sing a song, and Cavett requests "Show Me a Rose." In this rendition, Groucho manages to bungle the funniest line in the song, and get a bigger laugh than he would have with the real line. "Show me a rose and I'll show you a girl named Sam" has always been one of my favorite lyrics, and I wish I could tell you why. Partly it's just the sound of the words. It's enigmatic doggerel in a pining, romantic tone. But on this particular Cavett episode, Groucho briefly goes up on the line, and blurts out, "Show me a rose and I'll show you a man named Sam." Which makes just as much sense, I suppose -- maybe even more.