It doesn't have Groucho in it but you still might want to set your TiVo (or for you cavepeople, VCR) and snag New Faces of 1937, which runs very early Wednesday morning on Turner Classic Movies. It's a great look at what Broadway was like back in the thirties, with performances by some pretty good comedic performers including Milton Berle, Joe Penner and Harry Parke. Mr. Parke went under the character name of Parkyakarkus and is probably best recalled today as the father of Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein. (Bob Einstein follows in the family tradition by maintaining his own dual identity. You know him better as "Super" Dave Osborne.) Joe Penner was a top radio comedian who is now best known for being oft-parodied in Warner Brothers cartoons. In fact, the early version of Elmer Fudd was something of a Joe Penner burlesque before he evolved into the Fudd we know and love.
New Faces of 1937 is filled with sketches, including Berle doing "A Day at the Brokers," which was a popular comedy routine of the thirties. There are also songs — Ann Miller's in there somewhere — but there's also a plot. What is this plot, you ask? Well, it's basically The Producers but without the Nazis.
While you're setting whatever machine you set, you might also want to get one or more of the movies TCM is running later that day. Following New Faces of 1937, they have Stage Door, which features Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, Eve Arden and Franklin Pangborn and is based on the George S. Kaufman-Edna Ferber play. Mr. Kaufman reportedly did not like what Hollywood did to his work and suggested they rename it Screen Door but it's not that bad, and Hepburn is wonderful in the role that she didn't get to play on Broadway. (It was written with her in mind but her agent and the producer could not arrive at a workable working arrangement.)
Then comes The Life of the Party, which also stars Joe Penner, Parkyakarkus and Lucille Ball, along with Billy Gilbert and Margaret Dumont. It was written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, who wrote so many wonderful things for Broadway and the Marx Brothers, and directed by William Seiter, who directed maybe my favorite Laurel and Hardy movie, Sons of the Desert. It's not a great film but there are moments that make it worth a viewing.
This is followed — they have sort of a theme going here — by the Marx Brothers version of Room Service, which also has Lucille Ball and Ann Miller in it. Both ladies are also in the next film, Too Many Girls, which is a faithful adaptation of the Rodgers and Hart Broadway hit. Desi Arnaz was the breakout sensation of the show when it played New York, and when RKO bought the movie rights, Desi came out with most of the cast to make the movie. Lucille Ball was added to that cast, the two of them met on the first day of rehearsal and...well, we all know what happened next. It's not a very good movie, by the way — silly plot, generally unmemorable songs and much of the cast — most obviously, Lucy — was badly dubbed.
These are followed by nine more movies that have Ann Miller in them...for those of you who like to see someone doing great, strenuous tap dancing without their hair moving a hundredth of an inch. Then they start on a binge of Jane Fonda flicks.
Last February, you may recall, we had great expectations that the Boomerang cable channel was going to air the 1966 Hanna-Barbera TV special, Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? This was the H-B version of the classic story as adapted by Bill Dana, who wrote the script, and Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, who wrote the Broadway-quality songs. Despite rumors that it may happen soon, this show has never been available on home video.
Just to screw with us, Boomerang advertised that version but ran a different, less interesting animated Alice in Wonderland instead. Well today, they apparently decided to even up the score. They advertised that less interesting Alice in Wonderland and, Christopher Cook informs me, ran the '66 Hanna-Barbera version. Somewhere in the vast Time-Warner empire, someone is toying with us. Just because they can.
I just decided we oughta have more Groucho on this site today. Here's a five minute excerpt from an interview with the man. This is from 1961 and the interviewer is newspaper columnist Hy Gardner.
Joe Conason on the legacy of Karl Rove. It's odd how people are reacting to Rove's departure from the Bush White House. Folks who don't like Bush — Conason being a prime example — credit him with deliberately and craftily planning a lot of things that may have been, for the Republicans, happy accidents. Meanwhile, folks on that side are for the most part hailing Rove as if he did a great job of selling a lousy product, that product being George W. Bush. It's like Rove got the guy into office and Cheney's made all the key decisions since then. Isn't it possible that George Bush has had a little something to do with the things he's achieved?
Thirty years ago today, the nation was still busy mourning the death of Elvis Presley and not nearly enough attention was paid to the passing of a man who meant as much if not more to some of us. Groucho Marx may have been born in 1890 — there are still historians willing to argue the point — but there's no argument that he died on August 19, 1977. In body, at least. One could insist that he'd died a few years earlier when his brilliant mind began to fail. One might even have wished that. But the body went on 8/19/77 — and that's all that went. The spirit...the influence...the legacy of immortal TV shows and movies and oft-quoted anecdotes remain intact.
I don't have a lot to add today that isn't in this article but I did want to note here that Groucho quotes and impressions are as ubiquitous as ever. In fact, we have reached the point now where people are imitating people imitating Groucho, which I suppose is also the case with Elvis impersonators copying other Elvis impersonators. I will also note that the once-endless cascade of books on the Marx Brothers seems to have dwindled to a trickle because, I suspect, we actually managed to momentarily exhaust the topic.
We need more on them and about Groucho, especially. Actually, what we really need today is Groucho, himself. Our leaders are doing a decent job of always reminding us that those in charge usually don't know what they're doing and are in constant need of deflation. But it would be nice to have Groucho around to make it funny. Or at least as funny as it can possibly be.
August 20, 2007
