Monkey Business

Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers by Simon Louvish

Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (September 25, 2001)
ISBN-10: 0312283822

Amazon: From Publishers Weekly
Told with tremendous style and sparkle, Louvish's composite portrait of the Marx Brothers offers an indispensable overview of the actors' saga. Decked out with photographs and sprinkled with excerpts from reviews, interviews, memoirs, film dialogue and hitherto unpublished skits and scripts, this biography captures the sheer exuberance of the foursome as they conquered vaudeville, Broadway and Hollywood. Louvish gives equal billing to all the brothersAJulius (Groucho), Leonard (Chico), Arthur (Harpo), Herbert (Zeppo), plus Milton (Gummo), who left the act to become a Hollywood agentAand vibrantly re-creates a supporting cast of characters that includes George Kaufman, Irving Berlin, Irving Thalberg, S.J. Perelman and Margaret Dumont. Yet the biographer of W.C. Fields (The Man on the Flying Trapeze) maintains critical detachment in assessing the brothers' onstage/onscreen antics and their often messy private lives. Groucho, for one, comes off as a lot more likable than in Stefan Kanfer's Groucho (Forecasts, Mar. 20). While Louvish fully acknowledges the abusive behavior that drove Groucho's first wife to alcoholism, Julius Marx seems more forgivably human here, and Louvish depicts Groucho's relationship with daughter Miriam as loving and solicitous. His fresh research clears up all manner of myths, embellishments and omissions in previous biographies and in the brothers' autobiographies. In this invigorating reappraisal, the Marx Brothers, more than "Minnie and Sam's boys who never grew up," are timeless satirists of pretension, folly, privilege and snobbery, in the tradition of Cervantes, Rabelais and Mark Twain. The "Four Horsemen of theApoplexy," they embody an authentic acceptance of life's absurdity as well as a desperate need to leave one's mark.

I recently read another book by this author and liked it so much I wondered if it was really as good as I thought, and so I thought I'd try a second book by Simon Louvish.

The first book was "Stan and Ollie". I knew I enjoyed Laurel and Hardy when young, but I also know I seem to be hit and miss on Biographies and Autobiographies. Most of the time I just get a book on a celebrity that I absolutely love, but Laurel and Hardy were just a fun memory. ... I loved the book!

This one, Monkey Business, is about The Marx Brothers. One of the things I think I like about both books is that they are about more than one person, and so the author not only talks about the people involved but what it was like in the past in the vaudeville and movie industry and even a bit of "name dropping" mentioning other stars that, if you are into old movies, you recognize.

Although these books are by no means cliff hangers, I have found them very interesting indeed.

But let me have the book do a little speaking for itself... here are some quotes right out of the book...

Quote 1: The three movies the Brothers made at Paramount- Monkey Business 1931, Horse Feathers 1932, and Duck Soup 1933- are, to many, the acme of their cinematic are, though their first two MGM movies, A Night at the Opera 1935 and A Day at the Races 1936, jostle for a place on the podium. Here are the Marx Brothers unbound, freed from the limitations and necessities of the stage and unleashed upon an unsuspecting mankind.

Quote 2: Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel abounded with lines and bits of business taken from earlier Marx scripts, like the entire musicians' dialogue from Animal Crackers in episode 1:

"What do you get and hour?"

"Well for playing I get ten dollars an hour"

"What do you get for not playing?"

"Twelve dollars and hour... Now for rehearsing I make a special rate, fifteen dollars and hour"

"What do you get for not rehearsing?"

"Oh, you can't afford it"

Quote 3: ....The funny man with the fake moustache was in turmoil over the fate of his country, and no doubt the grisly state of the country his grandparents had emigrated from, the Germany his mother had always considered her Fatherland. War in Europe deepened Julius Marxs's (Groucho) concerns with American democracy, leading him to suggest to Sheekman that he might vote for the Repubican candidate Wendell Wilkie in 1940, as a protest against any President, even Roosevelt, holding power for a third term in office. "I think the only reason Roosevelt wants to run again," Groucho wrote his friend, "is th at it prevents Mrs Roosevelt from getting him alone. He can always say, "Eleanor, you know I'm crazy about your body, but I have to meet the Spanish ambassador tonight and discuss the Czechoslovakia situation."

I found both Simon Louvish books very well written, informative and enjoyable. Though if I had to choose one over the other I think I enjoyed Stan and Ollie just a little more than Money Business. Maybe because I liked Laurel and Hardy more than the Marx Brothers... maybe. I do know that this author knows how to keep things moving and keep them interesting.

I know most who read my blog are not big into old movies or movie stars, but if you do have an interest you should give a try to any of Simon Louvish's books.

Here's a little Marx Brother's moment for you to enjoy.