Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx - Hardcover

Kanfer, Stefan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375402187 ISBN 13: 9780375402180

Publisher: Knopf, 2000

Synopsis

The temptation is to start with a classic wisecrack: One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don't know.

But Groucho Marx, like Stefan Kanfer's superb biography, consists of much more than just jokes. Underneath the most famous Marx brother's oneliners and carefree attitude was a life dominated by deep sadness, professional dissatisfaction, and personal turmoil.

Beginning with the Marx Brothers' family heritage and their youth in turn-of-the-century New York, we see Julius and his brothers Adolph and Leonard become Groucho, Harpo, and Chico. We go backstage as they develop their routines in vaudeville, on Broadway, and, finally, in Hollywood. Groucho's story unfolds against the backdrop of the changing world around him and his star-studded milieu, which includes other classic comic figures such as Charlie Chaplin and W. C. Fields, as well as great names like Ben Hecht, George Gershwin, and even T. S. Eliot. Kanfer delves into Groucho's complicated relationships with the people around him — his failed marriages, his destructive behavior toward his children, his clashes with the self-indulgent Chico. The Brothers become the biggest movie stars in the world — a success bitterly followed by slow decline as age, years of profligacy, and ego all catch up with them. Finally, we witness Groucho's extraordinary resurrection — coming back from the career-dead to host the television quiz show You Bet Your Life, which cements his legendary status in American culture.

Groucho Marx proved that comedy could be raucous, sophisticated, and wildly unexpected — all at once. Groucho raises the curtain on this icon of twentieth-century cynicism and irreverence in an authoritative, affectionate, and unsparingly honest look behind the cigar.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"Engrossing...exhilarating... Kanfer calls Groucho the father of modern comedy, whose influence extends from M*A*S*H to Jerry Seinfeld to Woody Allen to daily conversation.... [With] a truckload of gemlike anecdotes, incisive mini-biographies of all the Marx Brothers and invaluable film and stage criticism."
-- Publishers Weekly

"Groucho has finally gotten a biographer worthy of him."
-- Wall Street Journal

"Delightful and definitive. Groucho is one of the great biographies."
-- Lance Morrow

"Not since Boswell has there been a more perfect matching of biographer and subject, and Boswell couldn't tell what was funny. Stefan Kanfer -- brilliant and hilarious himself, blessed with a critic's eye and a scholar's scruples -- presents Groucho's mind and world as no one else could. He looks into the comic genius and sees the man; then he brings both to life, not a moment too soon. This is a rich, full, glorious book."
-- Roger Rosenblatt

About the Author:

Stefan Kanfer's books include The Eighth Sin, A Summer World, The Last Empire, and Serious Business. He was the primary interviewer in the Academy Award-nominated documentary The Line King. A former writer and editor at Time and a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, he has been a writer-in-residence at the City University of New York, the State University of New York at Purchase, and Wesleyan University. He lives in New York and on Cape Cod.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375402187
• ISBN 13: 9780375402180
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480