The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx

About this book

No personage is too big no nuance too small no subject too far out for Groucho s spontaneous hilarious and ferocious typewriter. He writes to comics corporations children presidents and even his daughter s boyfriend. Here is Groucho swapping photos with T. S. Eliot ( I had no idea you were so handsome! ); advising his son on courting a rich dame ( Don t come out bluntly and say How much dough have you got? That wouldn t be the Marxian way ); crisply declining membership in a Hollywood club ( I don t care to belong to any social organization that will accept me as a member ); reacting with utmost composure when informed that he has been made into a verb by James Joyce ( There s no reason why I shouldn t appear in Finnegans Wake. I m certainly as bewildered about life as Joyce was ); responding to a scandal sheet ( Gentleman: If you continue to publish slanderous pieces about me I shall feel compelled to cancel my subscription ); describing himself to the Lunts ( I eat like a vulture. Unfortunately the resemblance doesn t end there ); and much much more. That mobile visage that look of wild amazement and that weaving cigar are wholly captured bound but untamed in The Groucho Letters.