Two Fab New Books For YOU

Little birds that tweet have told me of two new books that are coincidentally both being released today, which readers of this blog in particular should be interested in.

As we told you back in March, the world’s greatest Marx Brothers scholar (and, as it happens, the boss of Marx Brothers, Inc) Robert S. Bader has given the world something it didn’t know that it needed — a biography of Zeppo. I have been cheered by the very notion of its existence for months, but mostly in a kind of arch way — I plainly love everything about the Marx Brothers, including Zeppo, but there’s a kind of built-in joke to the idea of an entire book about one of the least interesting actors in Hollywood history in terms of what he actually did on movie screens. In three of his five films, Zeppo is a virtual bit player, in spite of his nepo baby status.

Yet…we forget that he lived a colorful life to rival Chico’s: he ran with gamblers and gangsters, he had a LOT of women, and one of them was Barbara Marx before she became Barbara Sinatra. The book includes insights into Zeppo’s personality by scores of people who have never been interviewed, since no one ever thought to do it. He didn’t die until late 1979 so lots of folks who worked with him as underlings are still around — young then, old folks now. And of course his children are still with us. He was a high end agent for a lot of years, so there will be good show biz stories in connection with that. And let’s not forget that he joined the Marx Brothers act in 1918, a decade before the film version of The Cocoanuts. No doubt there are still countless Marx Brothers stories still to be told, from his perspective.

Anyway, that’s what I’m gleaning. I still haven’t read it. But I want to put it out there that I do have a birthday and Christmas coming up! Get your copy of Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brotherhere.

Also being released today: The Magnificent, Magical, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: The Authorized Companion to the Making of the Iconic Series. We are thrilled that one of the contributors is our good friend Lauren Milberger, who gave us a three part series of guest posts on that self-same show here on Travalanche in 2017 and 2018. There have been many seasons of the show since then, so we know she, and the many other contributors (not to mention the show’s creators and cast, who are interviewed for the book extensively) will have tons more to say about this delightful period program, set in a time and a place many of us wish we had inhabited! Order the Mrs. Maisel companion book here.