Art Ducko Volume I an Illustrated History of the Marx Brothers

Marx Brothers Tv Collection, The

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"Treasure trove" is an overused term, but it unquestionably applies to The Marx Brothers Telly Collection, a revelatory compilation of the team'southward work in that medium. I fancy myself as something of a Marxist completist, having read nearly of the myriad biographies and autobiographies covering the team, and having DVD copies close at hand non simply of the team'southward greatest films (Duck Soup, A Dark at the Opera, etc.) only also oddities like Double Dynamite and The Story of Mankind. And nevertheless again and again I found material in this intelligently, imaginatively curated and packaged iii-disc fix that I had never fifty-fifty heard of before. Some relatively familiar are highlighted, such as the Bros.' terminal-ever joint appearance on a General Electric Theater episode called "The Incredible Jewel Robbery" (1959), but the vast majority of the fabric - complete shows, excerpts from others, Television set commercials and other miscellanea - will surprise and delight hard-core and casual fans alike.

Fifty-fifty ameliorate, some of these shows, heretofore available simply as copy-of-a-copy bootlegs, are often presented via superior, official transfers licensed to Shout! Manufacturing plant, the boxed ready'southward distributor. Plus in that location'south an invaluable booklet that helps put all of the material into context.

Sets like these tend to just lump a bunch of unrelated cloth together until in that location's enough to fill out a couple of discs, only producers Bill Marx (ane of Harpo's sons) and Robert Southward. Bader, with a lot of enthusiastic assist, have really put together an enlightening, entertaining bundle of material. In that location'south logic in the fashion the material is presented, and the set goes a long way to fill up a huge gap of previously undocumented and under-documented Marxian history.

Left-to-Right: Harpo, Zeppo, Chico, Groucho, and Gummo Marx

In the wake of Love Happy (1949), effectively their final motion picture every bit a squad (though only just), Groucho, Chico, and Harpo more or less went their split ways. Harpo and Chico performed equally a duo human activity occasionally, but Groucho had reinvented and reinvigorated his career with You Bet Your Life, the long-running quiz show first on radio and after television. In their sixties and into their seventies, Chico found work wherever he could to feed his gambling addiction, while Harpo, financially secure, was more than selective. Groucho, even wealthier considering of the quiz bear witness just psychologically far less secure after losing i fortune in the 1929 Stock Market Crash, took outside jobs also. Unlike his older brothers, nonetheless, Groucho was eager to move as far away every bit possible from his earlier, greasepainted screen persona, preferring to project more attuned to his self-educated, well-read quick wit.

The Marx Brothers Idiot box Collection is a fascinating gathering of material. While much of information technology showcases the brothers individually, with Harpo and Chico withal playing the same characters and doing much of the same shtick they'd been honing since the 1920s, and Groucho making amusing disruptive appearances on other shows basically as the Groucho of the Y'all Bet Your Life years, some of the most intriguing material veers far afield from what Marx Bros. fans have come to expect.

An episode of The Full general Electrical Theater, "The Hold Out" (1962), features Groucho'south only dramatic performance on tv, adequately playing the wealthy father of a teenage daughter (Brooke Hayward) overly anxious to get married. (Dennis Hopper plays her suitor.) A subdued Groucho is serious throughout the programme, playing a conservative parent not far removed from the real Julius Marx. At the time his youngest daughter, Melinda, was nearly xvi, and a few years later she would marry under circumstances similar to those Groucho'due south character hither is trying to avoid.

Another real oddity is "A Silent Panic," a 1960 episode of The DuPont Evidence with June Allyson, featuring Harpo in his commencement dramatic function. In it he plays Benson, a deaf-mute working as a department store window attraction, performing as a man-sized wind-upward toy. Through the department store window he witnesses a murder, and then hides out in a shack manned by security baby-sit Daniel (Ernest Truex). Dramatically, what unfolds is reminiscent of the famous vignette of the Frankenstein Monster and the old blind hermit in Helpmate of Frankenstein.

A General Electrical Theater show, "The Incredible Jewel Robbery," is some other strange 1, albeit unintentionally. It pairs Chico and Harpo for a comic heist story, told without dialogue only with lots of gratingly, emphatically funny music (by Elmer Bernstein, far from his best work). Nada well-nigh the fabric is really suitable for either man, particularly for Chico, he with his health declining and denied his signature phony Italian accent doesn't get to do much. Groucho makes a piffling cameo at the end, his appearance a network politics-mandated surprise when it was new.

Groucho fairs better in a justly famous 1955 episode of The Jack Benny Programme, especially for its hilarious segment in which the notoriously vain Benny character appears as a contestant on You Bet Your Life. Even ameliorate is Groucho's 1967 appearance on an episode of The Jackie Gleason Show. Groucho and Gleason, the latter actualization as Reggie van Gleason, recreate "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean," the signature song of Groucho's real-life uncle, Vaudeville comedian Al Shean, who helped the Marx Bros. intermission into bear witness business. The specially tailored lyrics crusade Groucho to mess upwardly some of the words, simply this merely leads to some truly hilarious ad-libbing by both men, and Gleason, always the most generous of performers, sweetly and subtly steers the segment so that Groucho comes off best.

Groucho's last years were plagued with well-nigh abiding disease (including multiple strokes and encroaching dementia), just a 1970 episode of The Dick Cavett Show, one specifically highlighting Minnie's Boys, the Broadway musical Groucho'due south son Arthur wrote virtually the team's early years, finds him at the tail cease of his genius, only before his public appearances became more sad than funny.

He also comes off well in a 1972 Right Guard deodorant commercial, i of a series that had comedian Chuck McCann speaking to various neighbors through a Twilight Zone-similar portal in his medicine cabinet.

Perchance nigh surprising, in 1976, just a year before he died, Groucho appeared in a curt moving-picture show (A Boob tube commercial? The liner notes don't explain how it was used, if at all) to promote the rerelease of his 1929 book Beds. In the segment, You Bet Your Life announcer-straight man George Fenneman interviews Groucho from Groucho's actual bed, and probably due to Fenneman's deft prompting, clever editing, and the familiar surroundings, audiences are treated to i last glimpse of the Groucho of old, one far wittier and more than coherent than, say, the Groucho that cameo'd on Joys, a Bob Hope special from that same year in which the neat comedian'southward appearance was downright sorry.

The Marxes did a lot of game shows during the '50s and '60s. The most promising show excerpted hither is a 1954 episode of I've Got a Secret featuring Harpo. Harpo'due south clandestine? He'due south actually Chico, in disguise. Minus their wigs the two were practically identical twins and dorsum in their Vaudeville days Harpo and Chico would on occasion stand up-in for the other. (Zeppo, too, took Groucho'due south place at least in one case and nobody'south quite certain which brother plays the second Groucho imposter in the famous mirror scene in Duck Soup.) Unfortunately, Chico (whom, every bit elsewhere, everyone mispronounces "Cheek-o," instead of the correct "Chick-o") makes virtually no attempt to imitate Harpo's miming, instead alternate between an awkwardly frozen grin and complete placidness. Further, he tin't keep straight with host Garry Moore whether it'south one honk of the horn for "Yes" and ii honks for "No" or the other way effectually. Chico comes off much improve in a 1955 appearance on the same show, with guest host Don McNeill and the comedian sharing a dripping, freezing-cold cake of ice while the blindfolded panelists try and estimate what they're property.

Other game show fabric includes a side-splitting You Bet Your Life "Stag Reel" from that show's final season, the only stag reel not included on Shout!'s terrific 2-volume collection of You Bet Your Life episodes; Harpo on Celebrity Golf (1961); Chico on Title Bridge with Charles Goren (1960, with Chico all business in that segment); Groucho, a 1965 clone of You Bet Your Life produced by Britain'due south ITV network; another I've Got a Underground featuring Harpo (and a pre-Tonight Show Johnny Carson); and Who Said That?, a What's My Line?-type spinoff likewise hosted by John Daly. In this episode Groucho is among the panelists challenged with identifying the source of various newsmakers' quotes. What'south nearly interesting about this episode is that voracious reader Groucho comes off only so-so. June Lockhart correctly answers nearly all of the tough questions. Who'd take thought information technology?

TV commercials as well occupy a good portion of all three discs, most featuring Harpo in spots for Labatt's Beer, All-Pure Evaporated Milk, and Foster'south Freeze. Many of these are downright surreal.

But wait, at that place's more! Lots. Harpo is in character on the long-forgotten Goggle box accommodation of Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, appearing reverse star Fess Parker in what would show to exist Harpo's last television appearance (airing October 1962). Also included is the just surviving episode of The College Bowl a 1951 series starring Chico in a role close to his familiar screen persona; Chico and Harpo recreate a couple of famous routines on a 1952 episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour; and Chico alone is interviewed and plays the piano on British TV, a 1959 episode of First. A strange promotional film from 1958 for The Sabbatum Evening Post stars Orson Edible bean and Chico, with an evidently disgruntled Groucho making a cameo; Nib Marx narrates clips from the brothers' home moving picture collection, footage dating back to 1928 and featuring Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, and Alexander Woollcott. Harpo is the guest star on the 1962-63 season premiere of The Ruby Skelton Hour, making one of his most memorable TV appearances. Another complete show teams Harpo with Carol Burnett, for "The Wonderful World of Toys," a 1961 episode of The DuPont Show of the Calendar week, filmed in Central Park. And fifty-fifty that isn't everything. Shout! lists a running time of 10 1/2 hours. Surprises abound.

Video & Audio

As one might expect, the video quality on The Marx Brothers TV Collection various tremendously, from outstanding to merely fair. On the whole, however, the quality of the fabric presented is far better than i might have expected. The GE Theater shows, for instance, were all licensed from Universal, who seem to have provided Shout! with newly-remastered copies of these shows, which all await great. A segment from The Sunday Spectacular: Inside Beverly Hills, hosted by Art Linkletter and featuring Harpo, typically survives only in kinescope form only in this example Harpo'due south married woman thankfully saved the color film shot for their segment. That and other material are derived from the personal collections of diverse Marx families, the archive now maintained past Neb Marx. Other material was licensed from 20th Century-Fox, Candid Camera'due south Peter Funt, Jackie Gleason Enterprises and others, including maybe private collectors. The mono sound, English only with no subtitle options, is fine, and the ready is Region one encoded.

The packaging is excellent. Featuring terrific embrace art by Drew Friedman; each disc includes the prototype of one Marx brother. (Too bad that there couldn't have been v discs, if merely to add Zeppo and Gummo to the mix!) The menu screens are extremely well organized and easy to navigate.

Extra Features

It's all extra features, isn't it? Additionally, the set comes with a Criterion-worthy booklet, 38 pages and generously illustrated in full colour, that opens with an excellent essay by Robert S. Bader, editor of Groucho Marx and Other Brusque Stories and Tall Tales. Next follows detailed prune-by-clip descriptions with network and airdates that put each segment into historical context. (Each disc offers a mix of Complete Shows, Bonus Tv Clips, and Bonus Short Films.)

Parting Thoughts

One of the best DVD releases of 2014, The Marx Brothers Tv set Collection is a winner all the way, a DVD Talk Collector Serial Championship.

Stuart Galbraith Four is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His credits include motion-picture show history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features.

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