![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I missed this when it happened, but there was a revival, a few years ago, of the Marx Brothers’ big breakout, which unlike Animal Crackers and Monkey Business did not receive a film adaptation and had been considered a lost musical for decades. Per Adam Gopnik:
“The pre-jazz operetta, slightly ragtime music was, Diamond knew, essential to the effect: without that roistering tone, however dated, one can’t register the Marxes’ seismographic surprises.”
Yes! That’s one of the Laws of the Marx Brothers’ Universe – there always has to be a fairly conventional sub-Romberg operetta going on in the background, which the brothers then disrupt, although most of the chorus never seem to fully register the weirdness going on in front of them.
“In need of brothers to join him in the pursuit, Diamond enlisted Seth Shelden, a brilliant young intellectual-property lawyer who was just returning from a Fulbright fellowship in Latvia.”
That actually sounds like perfect training to become Harpo. One must know what not to do.
“The object of the Marxes’ comedy is anarchy, but its subject is fraternity: they are in it together to the end. Zeppo’s inclusion in the family made the others less like clowns and more like brothers.”
I always view Zeppo as the Marx who, being the youngest, is best able to pass. He serves as interpreter between them and the regular humans (if you can apply that diagnosis to the inhabitants of this ruffled operetta-world).
“There is a hair-raising photograph of the four Marxes in their youth… that shows them hungry and beautiful and looking exactly like either an anarchist cell or a gathering of Futurist painters, or maybe both.”
“The pre-jazz operetta, slightly ragtime music was, Diamond knew, essential to the effect: without that roistering tone, however dated, one can’t register the Marxes’ seismographic surprises.”
Yes! That’s one of the Laws of the Marx Brothers’ Universe – there always has to be a fairly conventional sub-Romberg operetta going on in the background, which the brothers then disrupt, although most of the chorus never seem to fully register the weirdness going on in front of them.
“In need of brothers to join him in the pursuit, Diamond enlisted Seth Shelden, a brilliant young intellectual-property lawyer who was just returning from a Fulbright fellowship in Latvia.”
That actually sounds like perfect training to become Harpo. One must know what not to do.
“The object of the Marxes’ comedy is anarchy, but its subject is fraternity: they are in it together to the end. Zeppo’s inclusion in the family made the others less like clowns and more like brothers.”
I always view Zeppo as the Marx who, being the youngest, is best able to pass. He serves as interpreter between them and the regular humans (if you can apply that diagnosis to the inhabitants of this ruffled operetta-world).
“There is a hair-raising photograph of the four Marxes in their youth… that shows them hungry and beautiful and looking exactly like either an anarchist cell or a gathering of Futurist painters, or maybe both.”
no subject
Date: 2019-09-26 08:32 pm (UTC)From:I like this one, they look like very earnest physicists
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/48/4d/26/484d26963fb16e84d795c28fa23f1cee.jpg
no subject
Date: 2019-09-26 11:37 pm (UTC)From:They do.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-26 11:36 pm (UTC)From:Oh, thank God the article includes the photo. They were all beautiful—and all so startlingly alike, which is how you knew from looking at Zeppo that Groucho if he ever washed off the greasepaint would knock your socks off.
(Harpo looks exactly like himself; even his hair looks like his hair. I am relatively confident about Groucho and therefore by process of elimination relatively confident about Chico. I am seriously wondering if the one I'm not confident about is Gummo, not Zeppo, who was so much younger than the rest.)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 12:27 am (UTC)From:I once saw a documentary in which they interviewed one of their kids, who told the story of how she’d always regretted the afternoon on which she decided to go get her hair marcelled instead of watching a matinee performance of a show she had by that time seen over and over. When she got back after the show and came backstage, Chico and Harpo were smirking and nudging each other, and one of them finally asked her:
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“I told you she wouldn’t notice.”
They had swapped costumes and roles.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 12:34 am (UTC)From:That's beautiful. (I would regret missing that, too.)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 12:41 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 12:52 am (UTC)From:Yes. His face isn't right, but the way he uses it is.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 01:40 am (UTC)From:(they do cheat a bit and use the mini-mikes that I guess are now standard in stage musicals, but their Harpo is about as flawless as can be)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 11:00 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 11:32 am (UTC)From:youtube that featured Harpo— I kept waiting for the reveal, but it never came, so maybe there was more than one episode featuring “Harpo,” or maybe this is a collective false memory?
no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 12:33 pm (UTC)From:Somewhere buried in the comments of that one there's people talking about the Harpo/Chico episode, which apparently is a different one, but the instructions they give for finding it on Youtube don't lead anywhere now.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-27 02:17 am (UTC)From:https://corvidaedream.tumblr.com/post/184672800936/kelssiel-silver-tongues-blog-reyohnaka/amp