Visar resultat för..."Groucho"

'The temptation to write about yourself is irresistible, especially when you are prodded into it by a crafty publisher who has slyly baited you into doing it with a miserly advance of fifty dollars and a box of cheap cigars' - Groucho MarxGroucho Marx's autobiography is a rags-to-riches story with a difference. The most outrageous and voluble of the legendary Marx Brothers had a career that stretched from Vaudeville to gameshow, conquering Hollywood on the way. From the triumphs and disasters of a life spent in show business to his unconsummated loves, Groucho's story is told with humour and wit and in Groucho's own unique style. As TS Eliot said of him: 'The mind boggles'.

With impeccable timing, outrageous humour, irreverent wit, and a superb sense of the ridiculous, Groucho tells the saga of the Marx Brothers: the poverty of their childhood in New York's Upper East Side the crooked world of small-time vaudeville (where they learned to carry blackjacks) how a pretzel magnate and the graceless dancer of his dreams led to the Marx Brothers' first Broadway hit, I'll Say She Is! how the stock market crash in 1929 proved a godsend for Groucho (even though he lost nearly a quarter of a million dollars) the adventures of the Marx Brothers in Hollywood, the making of their hilarious films, and Groucho's triumphant television series, You Bet Your Life! Here is the life and lunatic times of the great eccentric genius, Groucho, a.k.a. Julius Henry Marx.

We begin at the beginning according to Liz Calder, Groucho’s inventor. Liz’s friend and fellow publisher and founder Carmen Callil called her ‘probably the most magnificent of the generation of women who changed things; who moved the centre of the universe, of vision, and gave it a jolt’. The opening of the Groucho Club in 1985 was a part of that jolt. Dreamt up by a group of publishers as an alternative to stuffy gentleman’s clubs who wanted somewhere to meet and relax, they approached Anthony Mackintosh owner of ‘The Zanzibar’ – a members bar in Covent Garden – and Restaurant 192. Tony and his partners got to work and the Groucho Club was created.Premises were found in Soho, the bohemian heart of London, and the doors opened to a membership drawn from the arts, publishing, film, music and advertising. It soon became the approved watering hole for the bright young things. Over the years its four thousand or so members have become something of a dysfunctional family. And along the way the Club has, through member's donations, accidentally become the guardian of one of the most, if not the most, special collections of modern British art on the planet. But above all it has become a home from home.To mark their thirtieth Birthday in 2015 the Groucho Club are publishing this, their first autobiography.

A trenchant examination of an iconic American figure that explores the cultural and psychological roots of his comic geniusBorn Julius Marx in 1890, the brilliant comic actor who would later be known as Groucho was the most verbal of the famed comedy team, the Marx Brothers, his broad slapstick portrayals elevated by ingenious wordplay and double entendre. In his spirited biography of this beloved American iconoclast, Lee Siegel views the life of Groucho through the lens of his work on stage, screen, and television. The author uncovers the roots of the performer’s outrageous intellectual acuity and hilarious insolence toward convention and authority in Groucho’s early upbringing and Marx family dynamics.  The first critical biography of Groucho Marx to approach his work analytically, this fascinating study draws unique connections between Groucho’s comedy and his life, concentrating primarily on the brothers’ classic films as a means of understanding and appreciating Julius the man. Unlike previous uncritical and mostly reverential biographies, Siegel’s “bio-commentary” makes a distinctive contribution to the field of Groucho studies by attempting to tell the story of his life in terms of his work, and vice versa.

Here are Groucho's improbable tales of true romance, narrated with his characteristic panache and illustrated with splendid New Yorker -esque cartoons.

I am honoured to meet you.You are, as they say, a man after my own heart.And you have lifted mine.My heart, that is.Two men, together, on the edge of heaven. In a strange restaurant, two American giants who revere each other, Groucho Marx and T. S. Eliot, meet for dinner. Both in their own ways great defiant spirits, they create magic and anarchy, revealing secrets and sorrows. The evening is presided over by the Proprietor, who seems to control the workings of the universe. Or perhaps not.All is revealed, or nearly so. A fast-paced fictional dinner date like no other, Frank McGuinness's Dinner With Groucho was first produced by b*spoke theatre company at The Civic, Dublin, in September 2022.

This inspired bio musical about The One and Only begins with Groucho as an old man doing his famous Carnegie Hall show. It then goes back to the beginnings of the Marx Brothers and their struggles to make it in vaudeville their rise to stardom and their eventual break up. All classic Groucho songs are included. One actor plays Groucho another plays Chico and Harpo and one actress plays all the wives girlfriends and Margaret Dumont. A hit in New York across the U.S. and in London this show will delight Marx Brothers fans and the as yet uninitiated.

Groucho Marx's career as a solo performer began long before the Marx Brothers and lasted almost until the end of his life, with a series of controversial sold-out concerts in his eighties. In between came several films, numerous television and radio appearances, theater performances, dramatic acting and writing and his smash hit radio and TV quiz show You Bet Your Life (1947-1961).This first ever comprehensive study of his work without his famous brothers reveals a Groucho perhaps unfamiliar to the public. Driven to prove he was much more than just a comedian with a greasepaint (later real) mustache, Groucho always thought of himself as essentially a solo performer and strove for individual success in his professional life--and to balance (if not always successfully) his career with his family life. Many rare photographs are included, along with new and previously unpublished interviews.