33 ways to . . .

Benny Green on the genius of Groucho

Ever since the day Julius Marx arrived at the momentous decision that insulting people was better than going to work, and that he might as well masquerade under the name of Groucho, he has wrecked every known system of logic, mocked at beloved concepts, annihilated time and space more brutally than Einstein ever did, made a hopeless mess of the English language, danced on the grave of every ideal, reduced love to a leer, business to burglary and good manners to a bad joke. The Grouchovian system includes the following contributions to Western philosophy: that all education is a fraud, that all reputations are bogus, that everyone else is mad, and that even the best of us can never really be sure who we are: That's why I'm sitting here with you, Emily. Because you remind me of you. Your eyes, your throat, your lips, everything about you reminds me of you. Except you. How do you account for that?

Being the true Artist-Philosopher, Groucho is always ready to concede that perhaps he too is totally imaginary. He and Chico are sitting together when a telephone caller asks for Groucho: Chico He's not here.

Groucho I wonder whatever happened to me?

Admittedly the dialectical tables are soon turned: Chico You know what? He told me I look alike.

Groucho That's tough on both of you.

No wonder that in this world where people and things co-exist in mad equality, Groucho, posing as a doctor, should take his brother Harpo's pulse and admit his own indecision: Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.

Further, if nobody is anybody, it follows that anybody can be somebody, merely by announcing the fact. Imposture is one of the cornerstones of Groucho's world, and his gallery of fakes shines through the century, as he himself once said, like the seat of your blue serge pants. C' That's no reflection on you. That's on the pants.") The phoney impresario Otis B. Driftwood, the quack doctor Hackenabush, the shyster lawyer J. Cheever Loophole, the purblind private eye Wolf J. Flywheel, are all perfectly integrated characters, each with his own line of professional ethics. While Loophole asserts, "If he's guilty, he's gotta prove it," and Flywheel tries to drum up business by announcing, "Fingerprints manicured, bloodhounds given free transfusions," it has to be stressed that these impersonations are not undertaken just for the sport. There is always a woman to be duped, and when to comes to women, Groucho's contempt for a faded blossom is positively Gilbertian. It is true that he sometimes employs the armoury of gallantry on yesterday's beauty, but only when it costs him nothing:

Send two dozen roses to Room 424, and put 'Emily I love you' on the back of the bill.

He can wine and dine a lady, pick up the tab at the end of it, look at her and say: Nine dollars? This is an outrage. If I were you I wouldn't pay it.

It might seem at times that Groucho is after all capable of defending a woman's honour, but always there is the anticlimax of the payoff line to restore the lunatic balance:

In my day a college widow stood for something. She stood for plenty.

And when it comes to the sorest point of all, a woman's age, there is nobody who can place a woman in her period with more deadly accuracy: Her mother saw her first, but there's no need to bring the Civil War into this.

Even the slinkiest adventuress is crushed with a single blow: Vamp Won't you join me?

Groucho Why, are you coming apart.

And when you are caught behind closed doors with a blonde, there is always a way of throwing snoopers off the track:

Chico You gotta woman in there?

Groucho She's my aunt.

Chico I wish I had an aunt like that. Groucho Well, take it up with your uncle.

This is a formidable man indeed, who knows the value of everything and the price of everything too: You mean you're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can buy a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. For a buck and a quarter you can get Minnie.

In their reaction to the law, Chico is servile, Harpo evasive. Neither of them dare deploy Groucho's sheer effrontery: Cop I'm Henderson, plain-clothes man. Groucho You look more like an old-clothes

man to me.

The odd thing is that Groucho is hard put to impose his superior intellect on his brothers. Chico in particular usually gives almost as good as he gets:

Groucho What would you want to fall down an open manhole?

Chico Just the cover charge.

Groucho Well, drop in any time.

With this kind of wordplay, Groucho's Big City background usually sees him through, but when it is Chico's imbecile logic he is fighting against, it can become very difficult: Chico Maybe the jewels are hidden in the house next door.

Groucho But there isn't any house next door. Chico All right, so we build one.

Chico can keep up this kind of thing more or less indefinitely. Asked to sign a contract, he admits he cannot read:

Chico You read the contract to me.

Groucho All right, I'll read it to you. Can yoU hear?

Chico I haven't heard anything yet. Did yoU say anything? Groucho Well, I haven't said anything worth hearing.

Chico That's why I didn't hear anything. Groucho Well, that's why I didn 't say anything.

In the early days Groucho had tried to instil some conventional knowledge into Chico's head, but the results were so disastrous that he never tried again: Grouch() What's the shape of the world? Chico Square.

Groucho Look, what's the shape of tnY cufflinks? Chico Square. Groucho No, the ones I wear on Sundays. Chico Round. Groucho All right. Now what's the shape of the world?

Chico Square on weekdays, round on Sundays.

It is the same Chico who barges into Groucho's love life with the most fatuouS questions, only to be rebuffed by even

Chico The garbage man's outside. Groucho Tell him we don't want any.

Where Groucho does finally leave his Partners behind is in his war against all sacred cows. High finance, for instance. As a man who in real life went to the cleaners in the Wall Street crash, Groucho is understandably bitter about the various South Sea Bubbles which cast their iridescent glow over modern American history: Groucho Three years ago I came to Florida and I didn't have a nickel. Now I have a nickel.

Next comes the medical profession, for Which Groucho shows his contempt by Posing as an expert. As a veterinary surgeon, he deliberately confuses animals with People: Lady Will this help the, doctor?

Groucho The last patient I gave one of these won the Kentucky Derby.

And who but an anti-medic would make such a mockery of terms as Groucho does When explaining away Harpo's tendency to narcolepsy?

Stranger What happened to him?

Groucho He's got insomnia and he's sleeping it off.

Groucho then takes the process a stage further by lampooning language itself. Sometimes he turns a compliment into an insult merely by a slight amendment to the order or the sound of the words: Groucho Ever since I met you, I've svApt you off my feet. • On the other hand, he can deliver pure nonsense so that we feel it must mean something profound, if only we can figure out what it was: Groucho Believe me, you gotta get up early if you want to get out of bed.

And see how, as Rufus J. Firefly the dictator, he sells the listener a dummy in his very last phrase: Groucho There were Fireflys on the Mayflower. There were horseflies too. The horseflies were on the lower deck and the Fireflys were on the horseflies.

And yet he can be pedantic when the situation demands it: Young Divorcee It was awful. Four years of neglect, four years of battling. Four years of heartache.

Groucho That makes twelve years. You must have been married in rompers.

The curious thing is that though he loves a cliche himself, he will not tolerate it from anyone else: Secretary Excuse me sir, but Cohen's outside waxing wroth.

Groucho Well, tell Roth to wax Cohen and see how he likes it.

With which joke we arrive back at the central point of Groucho's rebellion, 'the assault on identity. Obstinately he refuses to concede that physical presence can be taken for granted, or indeed means anything at all: Admirer My I have your autograph? Groucho No, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks.

Love-play is all very well, but just because a woman is besotted with him, it does not follow that he will recognise her in a crisis:

Grouch() Just think. Tonight, when the moon is sneaking round the clouds, I'll be sneaking round you. I'll meet you tonight under the moon: Oh, I can see you now, you and the moon. You wear a necktie, so I'll know you.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that because Groucho spurns conventional logic, he has dispensed with logic altogether. He has his own brand, which gives him an odd insight into the mysteries of business efficiency: Groucho There are two fellows trying to attack you, and two fellows trying to defend you. Now that's fifty per cent waste. Why can't you be attacked by your awn bodyguard? You life will be saved and that's a hundred per cent waste. You've still got me, and I'll attack you for nothing. Now, in case I'm going to attack you, I'll have to be there to defend you too. Let me know when you want to be 'attacked and I'll be there ten minutes later to defend you.

He is the consummate master of false logic:

Ah, three ear-rings. Now who do I know with three ears?

of the pun: Ah, the 'Mayonnaise.' The French Army must be dressing.

of the transferred epithet:

Last night I shot a bear in my pajamas. Can't imagine how it got into my pyjamas.

of the simile: Josephine, your love is as true as a three dollar cornet.

of lunacy for its own sake: Waiter, do you have any stewed prunes? Well give them some black coffee. That should sober them up.

and even of market gardening:

Opera Singer They threw apples at me. Groucho Well, melons are out of season.

He has made an undying contribution to the litany of abuse. Perhaps S. J. Perelman composed it, George F. Kaufman stagemanaged it, and Irving Thalberg produced it, but it was Groucho who actually delivered it. Groucho, of course, is not his real name. As he once put it, "I'm breaking it in for a friend."