Being a huge fan of the Marx Brothers, and the talented Groucho Marx, I was very happy to come across Groucho And Me - The Autobiography of Groucho Marx by (Of All People!) Groucho Marx.
This was a 1959, first edition hardcover, the cover and fore-edges appealingly sunned.
In the preface he writes how he dislikes ghostwriters and asserts he has written the whole book himself. "Give or take a few years, I was born around the turn of the century. I won't say which century. Everyone is allowed one guess."
Whatever he is talking about, the book is packed with his irreverent wit and impeccable sense of the ridiculous with one liners and toss away jokes falling off the pages. He was born Julius Henry Marx, and includes the story of how he got his name Groucho. No, it's not from his crazy, forward-leaning walk!
The first half is the best, as he describes his family life, breaking into Vaudeville, and how they became the famous Marx Brothers. They lived like gypsies, often moving his four brothers, parents, grandparents and various family members from flat to flat as money allowed. The boys left school in their early teens to pursue entertainment and had a variety of jobs in singing and acting. He talks quite a bit about the interesting and crooked world of the vaudeville circuits and how they gradually worked their way up to headlining, and then opening their own show on Broadway. Hollywood called and they began filming their plays starting with The Coconuts.
The section on Hollywood was good, and although he didn't get into much detail, he had lots of amusing stories. I was looking for more inside info about the movies I love so much, Margaret Dumont, and especially the movie I like best, one of his last and his least favourite or popular, Copacabana with Carmen Miranda. If you get a chance, I think he's at his funniest and the crazy schemes the two of them concoct to have to break Carmen into supper clubs is hysterical. It also has the great crooner Andy Russell, who was as popular as Frank Sinatra at the time. Later in the book, the chapters are light musings about doctors, golfing, his daughter Melinda and wife Eden, bad holidays and the like. While I wish it was all vaudeville and Hollywood, every page has witty lines and is a pleasure to read.
This is not a serious autobiography, as Groucho himself admits, but you can easily hear his dry delivery of the lines, and no one is better than him at delivery.
A pleasure to read, and I'm happy to have such a nice a first edition!
"From the moment I picked the book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it." ~ Groucho Marx.
1959 / Hardcover / 344 pages
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