50 Years Ago Today: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo

September 15, 1973 is the most frequently given pub date of the first edition of the book Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo,by Joe Adamson — 50 years ago today.

Many or most die-hard Marx Brothers will name this book as their favorite one about the team. It came out at the height of the Marx Brothers revival in the early ’70, was thus one of the first, and remains one of the best: critically insightful, engagingly written, sophisticated, and funny. It is especially strong on the topic of the films themselves. Adamson’s analyses are still sort of the last word in many respects. He just nailed it. My favorite part of the book has always been Adamson’s archival research on the earlier drafts of some of the team’s more imperfect movies. In almost every case those earlier drafts would have been pictures Marx Brothers fans would have vastly preferred to see, much zanier and much funnier than what the corporate bureaucrats at MGM delivered to theatres. We wuz robbed, I tells ya!

The book was begun as a UCLA Masters thesis and was the work of many years, written under conditions most modern authors would find primitive, if not prohibitive. It was difficult to see the films back then: you had to wait until they were being screened someplace (i.e. at a theatre or a museum or on television) or arrange your own private screenings (not always possible). All communication was by mail or telephone. The actual manuscript was typed on a typewriter. Adamson has said that he moved 10 times during the composition of the book, which meant lugging around his physical notes and typewritten drafts with handwritten notes in boxes. This will all be obvious to those of us of a certain age, but I’m not sure younger readers will automatically register what such an undertaking involved back then. It makes the book’s existence all the more impressive. It appears to have been the work of five or six years.

Adamson went on to many professorships, to contribute to numerous documentaries about classic comedy, and to pen books about screen animation, such as Tex Avery, King of Cartoons; Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare; and The Walter Lantz Story. This subject area makes perfect sense for me — there are many apt comparisons to be made between the Marx Brothers comedy and Warner Brothers cartoons, especially ones starring Bugs.

Joe Adamson was the first guest ever on The Marx Brothers Council Podcast in the very second episode of this long-running show, which recently celebrated its 60th episode (congratulations, boys!) But they didn’t ask him the question I’ve always wanted to ask him: don’t people ever mix you up with the lady who wrote Born Free? You can hear that interview here.