Groucho Marx

Julius Henry Marx primarily known as Groucho Marx, was an American comedian and actor, famous for his work in the Marx Brothers comedy team, and his solo film and television career.

Sourced

• A likely story — and probably true.
  • The Al Jolson Show repartee following a trite, scripted Al Jolson joke. (1949)

• Although it is generally known, I think it's about time to announce that I was born at a very early age.
  • From his autobiography Groucho and Me (1959)

• I sent the club a wire stating, "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER".
  • Telegram to the Friar's Club of Beverly Hills to which he belonged, as recounted in Groucho and Me (1959), p. 321
• [Variant:] "Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member".
  • As quoted in The Groucho Letters (1967) by Arthur Sheekman. The sentiment predates Groucho, however; it likely originated with John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga, chapter II: Old Jolyon is said to despise the club that took him as a member after another refused him because he was in trade.

• No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.
  • From his book Groucho and Me

• Here's to our wives and girlfriends... may they never meet! (Variation on an old Royal Navy wardroom toast: "Wives and Sweethearts! May they never meet!")

• From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.
  • To S J Perelman about his book Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1929), as quoted in LIFE (9 February 1962)

• They say Allen got something from the Marx Brothers. He got nothing. Maybe twenty years ago, he might have been inspired. Today he's an original. The best, the funniest.
  • On Woody Allen, in an interview with Roger Ebert in Esquire magazine (7 March 1972)

• I got $25 from Reader's Digest last week for something I never said. I get credit all the time for things I never said. You know that line in You Bet Your Life? The guy says he has seventeen kids and I say: "I smoke a cigar, but I take it out of my mouth occasionally"? I never said that.
  • Interview with Roger Ebert in Esquire magazine (7 March 1972); more on this at Snopes.com: "I Love My Cigar"

• I did a bond tour during the Second World War... We were raising money, and we played Boston and Philadelphia and most of the big cities. And we got to Minneapolis. There wasn't any big theater to play there, so we did our show in a railroad station. Then I told the audience that I knew a girl in Minneapolis. She was also known in St.Paul, she used to come over to visit me. She was known as "The Tail Of Two Cities." I didn't sell any more bonds, but eh... they didn't allow me to appear anymore.
  • Recounting a War Bonds tour in his Carnegie Hall appearance (6 May 1972)

• My experience is that people are most likely to listen to reason when in bed.
  • Liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972) the recording of his appearance at Carnegie Hall.

• I don't have a photograph. I'd give you my footprints, but they're upstairs in my socks.
  • When asked for a photograph for identification
  • The Groucho Phile (1976)

• I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
  • As quoted in Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984) by Leslie Halliwell
  • Unsourced variant: I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

• To write an autobiography of Groucho Marx would be as asinine as to read an autobiography of Groucho Marx.
  • Just after completing his second autobiography, as quoted in The Marx Brothers: A Bio-bibliography (1987) by Wes D. Gehring, p. 137

• Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication.
  • As quoted in What Color is Your Paradigm: Thinking for Shaping Life and Results (2003) by Howard Edson, p. 184

• Die, my dear? Why that's the last thing I'll do!
  • Last words
  • Lord Palmerston's had similar last words in 1865: "Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do!"

Misattributed

• I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.
  • Apparently said by Oscar Levant

About Groucho Marx

• Some years back, after a childhood of preoccupation with comedy that led me to observing the styles of all the great comedians, I came to the conclusion that Groucho Marx was the best comedian this country ever produced. Now I am more convinced than ever that I was right. I can't think of a comedian who combined a totally original physical conception that was hilarious with a matchless verbal delivery. I believe there is a natural inborn greatness in Groucho that defies close analysis as it does with any genuine artist. He is simply unique in the same way that Picasso or Stravinsky are, and I believe his outrageous unsentimental disregard for order will be equally as funny a thousand years from now.
  In addition to all this, he makes me laugh.
  • Woody Allen on the liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972)

• Groucho appeals on so many levels at once that you could go nuts trying to figure out whether it's the funny movement, the incomparable tone of voice, what he is saying, or that keenly witty face that hits you the hardest. I swear that if he never existed, we would sense a lack in the world of comedy, like that planet in the solar system that astronomers say Ought to be there.
  For me he is The Master.
  • Dick Cavett on the liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972)

• Groucho Marx is the only actor I ever allowed to ad-lib in a show I wrote. That was because I couldn't stop him.
  • George S. Kaufman on the liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972)

• George Kaufman and I wrote a lot of funny lines for Groucho, some of which he occasionally used... but it was Groucho who by his innate sense of timing and his inimitable delivery, added the ingredient that brought the house down.
  • Morrie Ryskind on the liner notes of An Evening With Groucho (1972)