Just A Rip Roaring Zionist : April 2017

Saturday, April 29, 2017

All 100 US Senators sign letter asking for equal treatment of Israel at the U.N.

United Nations U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley address the Security Council after a vote on a resolution condemning Syria's use of chemical weapons failed on April 12. (Bebeto Matthews/AP)

All 100 U.S. senators signed a letter released Friday asking U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to address what the lawmakers call entrenched bias against Israel at the world body.

The unanimous message notes that the United States is the largest contributor to the United Nations but does not threaten the withholding of U.S. dues. Still, it uses strong language to insist that the United Nations rectify what the senators said is unequal treatment of Israel on human rights and other grounds.

“Through words and actions, we urge you to ensure that Israel is treated neither better nor worse than any other U.N. member in good standing,” the letter said.

The letter was obtained Thursday by The Washington Post.

“As both the U.N.’s principal founding member and its largest contributor, the United States should insist on reform,” the letter read. “We are deeply committed to international leadership and to advancing respect for human rights. But continued targeting of Israel by the U.N. Human Rights Council and other U.N. entities is unacceptable.”

The senators asked Guterres, who assumed leadership of the world body in January, to seek such institutional changes as the removal of a standing agenda item for the U.N. Human Rights Commission sessions that has been used as a forum to denounce Israel. The senators also want a change to the rules for membership on the human rights panel to broaden participation beyond what U.S. officials have said is often a narrow and self-interested group of countries.

The unusual unanimity expands on the fierce denunciation of U.N. treatment of Israel mounted by Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, this year. The letter praises Haley for that effort, which she has said is intended to show that the United States will not “put up with” the bashing of its close ally.

The United States has long been Israel’s chief defender at the United Nations, including regularly vetoing measures at the Security Council that were critical of Israel.

In December, the lame duck Obama administration chose to abstain on such a resolution, allowing it to pass. The measure addressed Jewish home building in the occupied West Bank, and the U.S. action was a sign of President Barack Obama’s deep frustration with what he saw as Israeli action that threatened an eventual peace deal.

The Trump administration opposes the measure and has been highly critical of the previous administration’s action. It cannot be quickly reversed, however.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon thanked the senators Friday.

“Once again, America has stood strongly by Israel, and stood up for truth and justice. It is time to finally put an end to the UN’s biased approach toward Israel,” Danon said through a spokesman.

The Senate letter reflects what the letter’s authors, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), said are encouraging signs that Guterres may be willing to change some U.N. procedures that Israel and the United States say amount to discrimination.

Guterres yanked and disavowed a U.N. report last month likening Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to apartheid. His spokesman said the report had been published without Guterres’s permission.

“If you continue to build on your recent action, we stand ready to work with you to eliminate the organization’s anti-Israel bias, and to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms,” the senators wrote.

On Sunday, Guterres told a pro-Israel audience that he cannot police all anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, but he said Israel should not be singled out for special scrutiny.

“A modern form of anti-Semitism is the denial of the right of the state of Israel to exist,” the news service JTA quoted Guterres as saying at a meeting of the World Jewish Congress. “As secretary general of the United Nations, I can say that the state of Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules.”

“We’re glad every single senator decided to sign onto this letter,” Rubio spokesman Matt Wolking said. “That doesn’t happen often.”

The letter comes ahead of the first meeting between President Trump and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who will visit the White House next week.

“Since it is rare for all 100 senators to agree on an issue, this letter sends a powerful bipartisan message to the U.N. that its anti-Israel bias must end,” said Marshall Wittmann, spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

#OyVeyDonaldTrump's Sean Spicer and a few other people People Who Could Use a History Lesson About This "Hitler" Guy and half a dozen Problems With Time-Traveling To Murder Hitler As a Baby

1. Sean Spicer

Sean Spicer, everyone's favorite Dippin' Dots complainer and occasional White House Press Secretary, spent a portion of today's press conference to make a few things clear: Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad violated international human rights laws by using Sarin gas on his own people, and also Hitler wasn't even that mean (also concentration camps are called "Holocaust centers"?).

This is a wildly wrong statement for....well, countless reasons. He literally says "even Hitler didn't gas his own people," despite "gassing his own people" being pretty much Hitler's main deal. That's what he's most famous for! In case you didn't know this (Hi Sean!), Hitler perpetrated the Holocaust - the purposeful genocide enacted primarily against Jewish people (in addition to homosexuals and various other groups of "unwanted" citizens), and primarily done so with gas. None of this is to excuse the actions of Assad in Syria, but to claim he's worse than Hitler is a pretty big stretch.

So as a reminder: GASSING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WAS HITLER'S MAIN THING. IT'S WHAT HE WAS ALL ABOUT.

2. George H.W. Bush

Holding 300 civilians against their will is definitely a very bad thing, but it is also definitely not as bad AS THE ACTUAL HOLOCAUST AND WORLD WAR II.

3. The Daily Mirror

As much as you may dislike Angela Merkel or disapprove of her actions as Chancellor of Germany, it's hard to imagine she's done a worse job than Hitler, who WAS LITERALLY ADOLF HITLER, THE GUY BEHIND THE HOLOCAUST AND WORLD WAR II.

Reminder: THIS IS HITLER. HE WAS A PRETTY BAD DUDE. LIKE, PROBABLY THE WORST DUDE OF MODERN TIMES, IF NOT ALL-TIME. HE GASSED MILLIONS. HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TENS OF MILLIONS OF DEATHS. HE ALSO HAD NASTY FARTS AND SUCKED AT PRANKS. PLEASE KEEP THESE THINGS IN MIND WHEN MAKING COMPARISONS.

1.. What the fuck are YOU gonna do in Braunau am Inn, Austria?

That's where you'll find Baby Hitler - do you speak German? Do you know how to say "where is baby Adolf Hitler?" in German? Do you know the local customs of that place and time period? Do you have any clothing that won't look wildly out of place? The point is, murdering Hitler isn't all fun 'n games ('n infanticide) - there's a LOT of homework you gotta do first.

2. How are you gonna get alone time with a stranger's baby?

Hell, even if you DO manage to blend in mildly with late 19th century Austrians, what kind of answer are you expecting from Hitler's parents? Go up to a stranger right now and ask them if you can see their baby. Odds are they will NOT let you - a complete stranger - see their baby (let alone be in a position to MURDER IT), but they'll probably call the cops on you for being a creepy weirdo who seems way too interested in trying to be alone with a specific baby.

3. How're you gonna murder that baby, tough guy?

Oh yeah, it sounds all noble and simple to say you'll kill baby Hitler. But then - assuming you're actually able to get yourself in a position where you can actually do it - you realize you're just killing A BABY. A harmless, cute lil baby, who still has all the potential in the world to do or be anything. Are you gonna strangle a baby? Shoot a baby? Drown a baby? Are you gonna look that baby in the eyes and CHOKE THE LIFE OUT OF IT?

Ever had to finish off a mouse in a mouse trap? It's horrifying. Now multiply that feeling by, let's say, TWO.

Suddenly, you're just some guy who murdered a fucking innocent baby. Say what you will about Adolf Hitler, but he didn't go around personally drowning babies.

4. Yo, you have time travel - maybe you could just change things enough so that Baby Hitler doesn't grow up to be Genocidal Dictator Hitler?

Assuming you fold like a cowardly bitch upon the realization that you're about to strangle a 6 month old in its crib (AS YOU SHOULD, YOU FUCKING MONSTER), think about this - murder isn't really the only option here! YOU CAN TIME TRAVEL. YOU HAVE THE STEALTH SKILLS TO GET IN A ROOM ALONE WITH A BABY. All you need to do is adjust Baby Hitler's life enough that he does something else instead of murdering millions of people and starting the largest war in history.

Like, just sneak into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and move his application into the 'Accepted' pile. That's it. He applied there twice and was rejected each time, despite obviously having some talent and passion for painting. That way we'll get Mediocre Artist Hitler, which is a hell of a lot better than Evil Comic Book Villain Hitler.

Plus, you don't have to personally murder a baby! Win-win.

5. Welp, now you've kinda established yourself as THE GUY who deals with genocidal dictators.

Here's the thing - Hitler's not the ONLY brutal murderous dictator in history. You've also got Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, Pol Pot, Hideki Tojo, and countless other authoritarian monsters to deal with. You can't JUST take out Hitler - you've established yourself as the guy who takes care of this kinda thing, so NOW you've got to either murder A WHOLE BUNCH of babies, or find ways to get all of these dictators into art school as teens (or whatever other non-murderous hobbies they had).

And worse, because you're fucking with the timestream, ENTIRELY NEW evil dictators are going to rise up and fill the voids left when you got Stalin into Med School and Pol Pot into Sherlock Holmes fanfiction. Basically, you're stuck on an endless quest to permanently distract dictators in their teenage years, or murder an endless stream of babies.

You coulda just stayed home and watched Netflix, but you just haaaaaaaaaad to be a time travel hero, didn'tcha?

6. If time travel is readily available to the point where some nobody like YOU has access to it, guess what? Some Nazi supporters are ALSO going to go back in time to PROTECT Baby Hitler.

Hope you're skilled in combat, because you're going to have a bunch of neo-Nazi assholes to contend with if you wanna get EVEN CLOSE to Baby Hitler. Hell, they'll probably grab Baby Hitler and hide him somewhere in the timestream where you'd never think to look for him - and they'd bring a bunch of technology from the future to make Hitler even MORE powerful and evil.

The point being, maybe don't treat the idea of combining time travel, Hitler, and baby murder so casually.

6 Things About Hitler That Prove He Was History's Lamest Monster

1. Hitler was constantly farting.

Hitler reportedly had "uncontrollable flatulence" - the cause of which is still unknown, but he and his doctors suspected it may have been the result of his vegetarian diet. How many people do you think referred to him as "Der Farter" instead of "Der Fuhrer" or whatever in the bunker? Probably a lot.

2. He pulled a lot of shitty pranks.

Surprise, surprise - Hitler was bad at winning wars, bad growing full mustaches, and downright terrible at pranks. In the right hands, pranks can be fun and lighthearted - but pranks are the goddamn worst thing with people who don't know what they're doing. Like, imagine Michael Scott trying to pull a prank - it would go badly and he'd either injure or deeply insult someone and it would be awkward and Jim would make that face and we'd all be like "man, remember when this show used to be good?"

Anyways, Hitler was EVEN WORSE at pranks than that - Ernst Hanfstaengl was a high-ranking officer in Germany during World War II who had gotten on Hitler's bad side by making some snide comments about the Spanish Civil War. So Hitler put him on a plane and told him he'd be getting dropped into the WRONG side of the Spanish Civil War (aka the side Germany was fighting against), which basically meant certain death.

After a while, the plane's pilot feigned a malfunction and made an emergency landing...at the Leipzig Airport in Germany. Because the plane was never flying towards Spain to begin with - it was circling Germany the entire flight, but Hitler thought it would be hilarious to make Hanfstaengl think he was being sent on a suicide mission! Oh well, shitty prank, but no real harm done.

Except Hanfstaengl defected to the Allies soon after, and gave them a ton of top secret info he was privy to.

3. Hitler was basically always on some kind of drug.

Hitler was basically a less lovable version of Jesse from Breaking Bad - he used cocaine (for sinuses), meth, and even had bull semen injected into him (thinking it would increase his libido).

Many of Hitler's drugs were provided his personal medical physician, Theodor Morell - a man who had been dismissed by many other high-ranking Nazis as a complete quack. And for good reason! To help Hitler with his morning grogginess, he injected him with a solution comprised of water and meth. Finally, the connection between Hitler and Breaking Bad we were all waiting for.

4. Hitler couldn't handle scenes of violence against animals in movies.

It's pretty well known Hitler was a vegetarian in his adult life (with possibly a few exceptions) - and not for health reasons either (necessarily). It seemed that Hitler felt eating meat was morally wrong, and that the slaughter of animals for food was cruel and disgusting. It's weird where moral lines get drawn, huh?

Anyways, Hitler hated the thought of animals coming to harm so much that when he was watching movies, he would close his eyes or turn away if there were ever a scene depicting violence against animals, and wait for someone to tell him when the scene had ended.

I mean - it's nice that Hitler didn't wanna hurt animals, but what a huge baby. It's a movie, dude! You're responsible for one of the most gruesome genocides ever and the largest war in history, you should be able to handle this stuff.

5. Hitler never got married because he was convinced he was super hot.

Well, to be fair, Hitler and Eva Braun WERE married, about a day or two before they committed suicide as part of the least romantic honeymoon in history. But prior to that, Hitler had been in a romantic relationship with Braun for over a decade - but refused to wed her, or even be seen in public with her, as he felt he would be a more attractive leader to the women of Germany if he remained single.

Sorry to break it to you several decades later, Hitler, but balding guys with dorky mustaches who inject bull cum into themselves are gonna be pretty unattractive all the time, married or not.

6. Hitler was a mediocre painter.

To be fair to Hitler (something no one needs to be, btw), he wasn't terrible at painting - he made some very nice landscapes and did some pretty solid architecture, but everything was markedly plain. But the real knock against his painting skills was that he couldn't paint people.

Most of the time, Hitler would just leave people out of the scenes entirely - and the few times he DID include people, they were basically featureless lumps with no definition to them. His painting skills were so mediocre, that he was rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna TWICE.

So the next time you think about Hitler, remember that he was a farting, drug-addled, self-obsessed, scaredy-cat shitty painter who sucked at pranks.

Friday, April 28, 2017

Groucho Marx- Wisdom , Jewishness ( some) and Zionism ( did on occasional check for JNF Trees count?)

Huh? What? Why'd you wake me up? I was having this wonderful dream about Thelma Todd and Kitty Carlisle and they were...

Oh, a Marx Brothers thread.

There was a "Hebrew" comic stereotype in the early days of vaudeville, just as there were Irish, Italian, "Dutch" (German), black, and others. Groucho did his time as a "Hebrew" with a heavy accent, although he also played Dutch. Weber and Fields and Smith and Dale were probably the most famous Hebrew acts, but there were lots of others.

As immigrants settled in, the heavy stereotypes became less funny in and of themselves. Although Chico kept the Italian accent forever, he did so as part of a larger troupe of comic types. Merely having an accent and being a naive immigrant wasn't as funny to second-generation Americans who grew up speaking English.

Being Jewish remained a selling point in the heart of vaudeville and, later, Broadway, because New York City was as much as one-third Jewish in those days. Yiddish expressions entered show-biz language because everybody used them and the whole audience would understand them. The lines quoted from the Marx Brothers aren't ones they came up with: it was all those Jewish writers of theirs - George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, S. J. Perelman, Arthur Sheekman, Al Boasberg, and on and on. If they ever used a non-Jewish writer, it must have been late in their careers and we all know how that ended.

The problem was that this humor didn't carry over very well when the vaudevillians traveled out of New York City or a few other large eastern cities. It was especially hated in the South and deep Midwest, where anti-Semitic prejudice was rampant. Movies just exacerbated the problem. The heavily Jewish acts never made it out of vaudeville, and the few single stars who tried - Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice - couldn't get a major movie career started. (Brice became a radio star, but mostly because of her Baby Snooks character, not her Jewish adult pose.)

And the movie moguls, every last one of whom were Jewish, were deathly afraid of offending a single person in the audience. They ruthlessly cut out every piece of Jewishness of out their films and their stars. A few lines dropped into the endless babble of the Marx Brothers could go by almost unnoticed in the crowd, but that was it.

Like the Three Stooges, the Marz Brothers started out as literal stooges, plants in the audience who would heckle the star, Ted Healy, and be brought on stage to be abused by him. (Healy was another one who started out doing blackface but gave it up when that stereotype stopped crowd-pleasing.) There was no need for Healy's stooges to be Jewish or anything else: they were there to be slapped around. Eventually, of course, the Howard brothers and Mr. Fine got sick and tired of Healy, his stinginess, his ego, and everything else about him and went off on their own. But they never saw any reason to change the act, nor would their studio bosses have let them.

It's not clear to me just how much the general American audience understood the pervasive Jewishness of the Hollywood hierarchies. The moguls played down their religion to the point of self-loathing, although in their personal lives they all went to synagogue, got married by rabbis, had their kids Bar Mitvahed, and ate Seders at Passover. Same with the stars. Most of that generation were striving to be assimilated Americans, though, and were more nominally Jewish than fervent believers. It's hard to name any Orthodox, kosher-keeping Jews among the stars. And remember that many of them anglo-ized their names, like John Garfield, Edward G. Robinson, Joan Blondell, Douglas Fairbanks, and downplayed any ethnicity.

Zions's Strict Adherence to (Groucho) Marxism
Zion 's policy toward the Palestinians could be summed up by tweak of Groucho's famous credo: 'Anyone who claims to be ready to talk with us proves, by saying so, that he is not worthy to be a negotiating partner.'

Denial, delusion and Jewish settlements are killing the two-state solution.... all I ( that's mean, Stephen Darori now speaking) ... all I can say ... is Hey Ho Go Settlements. Let themmultiply and expand.... and kill the academic Two State Fantasy that no one supports anymore.... and hey this was Groucho Marx's view point as well.

Now we know: the State of Israel has adopted Groucho Marxism as its official policy.
For those with short memories, here is a reminder of the history and main points of the Groucho Marxist philosophy. It originated at the time when country clubs in the United States would not allow Jews to become members. The late Mr. Groucho Marx (one of the greatest Jewish-American humorists) nevertheless received an offer to join one of those anti-Semitic clubs despite the fact that he was Jewish. His (Jewish) answer was: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

This rule has now become the guiding principle for the Israeli government, which has made no changes to it except the ones dictated by circumstances. The new Israeli version of the Groucho Marxist philosophy is as follows: “We don’t want to talk with anyone who is willing to talk with us.” Or, to put it a bit more bluntly: “Anyone who claims to be ready to talk with us proves, by saying so, that he is not worthy to be a negotiating partner” (and, for that reason, deserves to be thrown in prison, deported, blown up, poisoned or removed from the agenda in any way possible).

At a superficial glance, this policy seems nothing more than an amusing paradox. A deeper look will show that it contains quite a bit of truth. After all, who knows the real quality and nature of the Israeli government better than the Israeli government itself? In the inner recesses of its heart, the government knows very well that the lip service it pays here and there to “its indefatigable quest for peace” is nothing but straw and stubble. So anyone stupid enough to buy its hypocritical chatter about peace cannot be considered a serious partner.

Or, as we said above: Anyone who is willing to talk to me proves that he is too stupid for me to talk with him.

We must admit that adopting Groucho Marxism has already gotten the desired result: the prisons are full of people who are willing to talk with us, but from the moment the king of Jordan announced that he had nothing to talk about with us (regarding the West Bank), he has been the only one we are willing to talk to.

Full disclosure: Everything I wrote above — with only technical changes — is pure journalistic plagiarism. It appeared long ago in Haaretz — or, to be more precise, in Haaretz’s weekend supplement, on Friday, August 26, 1988. That was 26 years ago.

Logic would seemingly dictate that a trick exposed 26 years ago would have lost its power and charm. But Israel’s adherence to Groucho Marxism has only grown deeper, more sophisticated and more efficient, trapping the foolish and naïve in its net again and again.

Over and over Zion succeeds in leading both the nation and the world by the nose.And so, thanks only to its enemies who foolishly and naïvely get trapped this time, everybody has sunk once again into the heated and hackneyed dispute over “who is to blame for the failure of the talks.” Zion will never be forced into an agreement that bucks the thinking ofthose who live in Zion. Might it be the violation of the prisoner-release agreement? Lets hope so... these agreement have been pointless and sickeningly one sided. The voracious construction in the territories? Hey Ho Let in continue at an exponential rate .Zions built-in refusal to part with the real estate? The Yiddos around the world are experts at accumulation and part only when superprofits come into pay in a really big way. Heaven forbid! It is the Palestinians’ fault.Of course the Camel Keepers of Greater Israel are their Goats , Donkeys and Camel dung quagmire .The Startup Nation leads the world in terming sewerage waste into drinkable water and making a buck from recycling the Liberal Zionists Two State Shit. So the Groucho Marx Marxism ''By announcing that they were willing to talk with us, they proved once again that they were unworthy of having us talk with them.''

Every true Groucho Marxist understands this.But serious , when it came to Israel and Zionism, Groucho Marx wouldn't have been able to locate Zion even if it was the only country on the map. American Jewishness, Groucho acknowledged...anything out of those wonderful States South and West of Canada .... Groucho Marx couldn't have given a damn . He simply was never asked and never offered an opinion , at least public-ally.

There is nothing more depressing or disheartening, more ludicrous or embarrassing, than having to learn yet again that Groucho Marxism was, is and evidently will remain the most sanctified ideology of (most of) Israel’s governments throughout the country’s history. For 30 years at least, and maybe more.

Julius Henry Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), known professionally as Groucho Marx, was an American comedian and film and television star. He was known as a master of quick wit and is widely considered one of the best comedians of the modern era.His rapid-fire, often impromptu delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers and imitators.

He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born. He also had a successful solo career, most notably as the host of the radio and television game show You Bet Your Life.

His distinctive appearance, carried over from his days in vaudeville, included quirks such as an exaggerated stooped posture, glasses, cigar, and a thick greasepaint mustache and eyebrows. These exaggerated features resulted in the creation of one of the world's most ubiquitous and recognizable novelty disguises, known as "Groucho glasses": a one-piece mask consisting of horn-rimmed glasses, large plastic nose, bushy eyebrows and mustache.
Julius Marx was born on October 2, 1890, in New York City, New York

Marx stated that he was born in a room above a butcher's shop on East 78th Street in New York City, "Between Lexington & 3rd", as told to Dick Cavett in a 1969 television interview.[5] The Marx children grew up on East 93rd Street off Lexington Avenue in a neighborhood now known as Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side of the borough of Manhattan, in New York City. The turn-of-the-century building that his brother Harpo called "the first real home they ever knew" (in his memoir Harpo Speaks) was populated with European immigrants, mostly artisans. Just across the street were the oldest brownstones in the area, owned by people such as the well-connected Loew Brothers and William Orth. The Marx family lived at this location "for about 14 years", Groucho also told Cavett.

Marx's family was Jewish. Groucho's mother was Miene "Minnie" Schoenberg, whose family came from Dornum in northern Germany when she was 16 years old. His father was Simon "Sam" Marx, who changed his name from Marrix, and was called "Frenchie" by his sons throughout his life because he and his family came from Alsace in France. Minnie's brother was Al Schoenberg, who shortened his name to Al Shean when he went into show business as half of Gallagher and Shean, a noted vaudeville act of the early 20th century. According to Groucho, when Shean visited he would throw the local waifs a few coins so that when he knocked at the door he would be surrounded by adoring fans. Marx and his brothers respected his opinions and asked him on several occasions to write some material for them.

Minnie Marx did not have an entertainment industry career but had intense ambition for her sons to go on the stage like their uncle. While pushing her eldest son Leonard (Chico Marx) in piano lessons she found that Julius had a pleasant soprano voice and the ability to remain on key. Julius's early career goal was to become a doctor, but the family's need for income forced him out of school at the age of twelve. By that time young Julius had become a voracious reader, particularly fond of Horatio Alger. Marx would continue to overcome his lack of formal education by becoming very well-read.

After a few stabs at entry-level office work and jobs suitable for adolescents, Julius took to the stage as a boy singer in 1905. Marx reputedly claimed that he was "hopelessly average" as a vaudevillian, but this was typically Marx, wisecracking in his true form. By 1909 Minnie Marx had assembled her sons into a forgettable-quality vaudeville singing group billed as "The Four Nightingales". The brothers Julius, Milton (Gummo Marx) and Arthur (originally Adolph, from 1911 Harpo Marx) and another boy singer, Lou Levy, traveled the U.S. vaudeville circuits to little fanfare. After exhausting their prospects in the East the family moved to La Grange, Illinois, to play the Midwest.

An early photo of the Marx brothers with their parents in New York City, 1915; from left: Groucho, Gummo, Minnie (mother), Zeppo, Frenchie (father), Chico, and Harpo

After a particularly dispiriting performance in Nacogdoches, Texas, Julius, Milton, and Arthur began cracking jokes onstage for their own amusement. Much to their surprise, the audience liked them better as comedians than as singers. They modified the then-popular Gus Edwards comedy skit "School Days" and renamed it "Fun In Hi Skule". The Marx Brothers would perform variations on this routine for the next seven years.

For a time in vaudeville all the brothers performed using ethnic accents. Leonard, the oldest, developed the Italian accent he used as Chico Marx to convince some roving bullies that he was Italian, not Jewish. Arthur, the next oldest, donned a curly red wig and became "Patsy Brannigan", a stereotypical Irish character. His discomfort speaking on stage led to his uncle Al Shean's suggestion that he stop speaking altogether and play the role in mime. Julius Marx's character from "Fun In Hi Skule" was an ethnic German, so Julius played him with a German accent. After the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915, public anti-German sentiment was widespread, and Marx's German character was booed, so he quickly dropped the accent and developed the fast-talking wise-guy character that became his trademark.

The Marx Brothers became the biggest comedic stars of the Palace Theatre in New York City, which billed itself as the "Valhalla of Vaudeville". Brother Chico's deal-making skills resulted in three hit plays on Broadway. No comedy routine had ever so infected the Broadway circuit.

All of this predated their Hollywood career. By the time the Marxes made their first movie, they were major stars with sharply honed skills, and when Groucho was relaunched to stardom on You Bet Your Life, he had already been performing successfully for half a century.

Career

The Marx Brothers in 1931 (from top, Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo) Hollywood

Groucho Marx made 26 movies, 13 of them with his brothers Chico and Harpo.[8] Marx developed a routine as a wisecracking hustler with a distinctive chicken-walking lope, an exaggerated greasepaint mustache and eyebrows, and an ever-present cigar, improvising insults to stuffy dowagers (often played by Margaret Dumont) and anyone else who stood in his way. As the Marx Brothers, he and his brothers starred in a series of popular stage shows and movies.

Their first movie was a silent film made in 1921 that was never released, and is believed to have been destroyed at the time. A decade later, the team made some of their Broadway hits into movies, including The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers Other successful films were Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, and A Night at the Opera.

The film diminished the lawless “do anything for a laugh” mentality of their earlier pictures. But what it gained was a picture with greater emphasis on controlled storytelling. The cast was crafted to have no unnecessary characters, the narrative structure is strong, and each brother manages to shine with their trademark humor. Groucho still verbally assaults most people with whom he shares a conversation, Harpo’s silent boyishness pairs well with his unrestrained mischief, and Chico, ever Harpo’s partner, swindles and tricks his way through the film. It is signature Marx comedy with a more impressive stage.

One quip from Marx concerned his response to Sam Wood, the director of A Night at the Opera. Furious with the Marx Brothers' ad-libs and antics on the set, Wood yelled in disgust: "You can't make an actor out of clay." Groucho responded, "Nor a director out of Wood."

Marx also worked as a radio comedian and show host. One of his earliest stints was a short-lived series in 1932, Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel, costarring Chico. Though most of the scripts and discs were thought to have been destroyed, all but one of the scripts were found in 1988 in the Library of Congress. In 1947 Marx was asked to host a radio quiz program You Bet Your Life. It was broadcast by ABC and then CBS before moving to NBC. It moved from radio to television on October 5, 1950 and ran for eleven years. Filmed before a live audience, the show consisted of Marx bantering with the contestants and ad-libbing jokes before briefly quizzing them. The show was responsible for popularizing the phrases "Say the secret woid [word] and the duck will come down and give you fifty dollars," "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?" and "What color is the White House?" (asked to reward a losing contestant a consolation prize).

Throughout his career he introduced a number of memorable songs in films, including "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" and "Hello, I Must Be Going", in Animal Crackers, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It", "Everyone Says I Love You" and "Lydia the Tattooed Lady". Frank Sinatra, who once quipped that the only thing he could do better than Marx was sing, made a film with Marx and Jane Russell in 1951 entitled Double Dynamite.

Mustache, eyebrows, and walk

In public and off-camera, Harpo and Chico were hard to recognize, without their wigs and costumes, but it was almost impossible for fans to recognize Groucho without his trademark eyeglasses, fake eyebrows, and mustache.

The greasepaint mustache and eyebrows originated spontaneously prior to a vaudeville performance in the early 1920s when he did not have time to apply the pasted-on mustache he had been using (or, according to his autobiography, simply did not enjoy the removal of the mustache every night because of the effects of tearing an adhesive bandage off the same patch of skin every night). After applying the greasepaint mustache, a quick glance in the mirror revealed his natural hair eyebrows were too undertoned and did not match the rest of his face, so Marx added the greasepaint to his eyebrows and headed for the stage. The absurdity of the greasepaint was never discussed on-screen, but in a famous scene in Duck Soup, where both Chicolini (Chico) and Pinky (Harpo) disguise themselves as Groucho, they are briefly seen applying the greasepaint, implicitly answering any question a viewer might have had about where he got his mustache and eyebrows.

Marx was asked to apply the greasepaint mustache once more for You Bet Your Life when it came to television, but he refused, opting instead to grow a real one, which he wore for the rest of his life. By this time, his eyesight had weakened enough for him actually to need corrective lenses; before then, his eyeglasses had merely been a stage prop. He debuted this new, and now much-older, appearance in Love Happy, the Marx Brothers's last film as a comedy team.

Groucho and Eve Arden in a scene from At the Circus (1939)

He did paint the old character mustache over his real one on a few rare performing occasions, including a TV sketch with Jackie Gleason on the latter's variety show in the 1960s (in which they performed a variation on the song "Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean," co-written by Marx's uncle Al Shean) and the 1968 Otto Preminger film Skidoo. In his late 70s at the time, Marx remarked on his appearance: "I looked like I was embalmed." He played a mob boss called "God" and, according to Marx, "both my performance and the film were God-awful!"

The exaggerated walk, with one hand on the small of his back and his torso bent almost 90 degrees at the waist was a parody of a fad from the 1880s and 1890s. Fashionable young men of the upper classes would affect a walk with their right hand held fast to the base of their spines, and with a slight lean forward at the waist and a very slight twist toward the right with the left shoulder, allowing the left hand to swing free with the gait. (Edmund Morris, in his biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, describes a young Roosevelt, newly elected to the State Assembly, walking into the House Chamber for the first time in this trendy, affected gait, somewhat to the amusement of the older and more rural members.)[citation needed] Groucho exaggerated this fad to a marked degree, and the comedy effect was enhanced by how out of date the fashion was by the 1940s and 1950s.

Personal life

Groucho's three marriages all ended in divorce. His first wife was chorus girl Ruth Johnson. He was 29 and she 19 at the time of their wedding. The couple had two children, Arthur Marx and Miriam Marx. His second wife was Kay Marvis (m. 1945–51), née Catherine Dittig,former wife of Leo Gorcey. Groucho was 54 and Kay 21 at the time of their marriage. They had a daughter, Melinda Marx. His third wife was actress Eden Hartford.She was 24 when she married the 63-year-old Groucho.

During the early 1950s, Groucho described his perfect woman: “Someone who looks like Marilyn Monroe and talks like George S. Kaufman.”

Groucho was denied membership in an informal symphonietta of friends (including Harpo) organized by Ben Hecht, because he could play only the mandolin. When the group began its first rehearsal at Hecht's home, Groucho rushed in and demanded silence from the "lousy amateurs". The musicians discovered him conducting a recorded performance of Tannhäuser in Hecht's living room. Groucho was allowed to join the symphonietta

Later in life, Groucho would sometimes note to talk show hosts, not entirely jokingly, that he was unable to actually insult anyone, because the target of his comment would assume that it was a Groucho-esque joke, and would laugh.

Despite his lack of formal education, he wrote many books, including his autobiography, Groucho and Me (1959) and Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1963). He was a friend of such literary figures as T. S. Eliot and Carl Sandburg. Much of his personal correspondence with those and other figures is featured in the book The Groucho Letters (1967) with an introduction and commentary on the letters written by Groucho, who donated[14] his letters to the Library of Congress.

Groucho made serious efforts to learn to play the guitar. In the 1932 film Horse Feathers, Groucho performs the film’s love theme “Everyone Says I Love You” for costar Thelma Todd on a Gibson L-5.

Irving Berlin quipped, "The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl". In his book The Groucho Phile, Marx says "I've been a liberal Democrat all my life", and "I frankly find Democrats a better, more sympathetic crowd.... I'll continue to believe that Democrats have a greater regard for the common man than Republicans do". Marx & Lennon: The Parallel Sayings was published in 2005; the book records similar sayings between Groucho Marx and John Lennon.

Later years
You Bet Your Life
Groucho's radio life was not as successful as his life on stage and in film, though historians such as Gerald Nachman and Michael Barson suggest that, in the case of the single-season Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel (1932), the failure may have been a combination of a poor time slot and the Marx Brothers' returning to Hollywood to make another film.

In the mid-1940s, during a depressing lull in his career (his radio show Blue Ribbon Town had failed, he failed to sell his proposed sitcom The Flotsam Family only to see it become a huge hit as The Life of Riley with William Bendix in the title role, and the Marx Brothers as film performers were well past their prime), Groucho was scheduled to appear on a radio show with Bob Hope. Annoyed that he was made to wait in the waiting room for 40 minutes, Groucho went on the air in a foul mood.

Groucho as host of You Bet Your Life, 1953
Hope started by saying "Why, it's Groucho Marx, ladies and gentlemen! (applause) Groucho, what brings you here from the hot desert?" Groucho retorted, "Hot desert my foot, I've been standing in the cold waiting room for forty minutes!" Groucho continued to ignore the script, and although Hope was a formidable ad-libber in his own right, he could not begin to keep up with Groucho, who lengthened the scene well beyond its allotted time slot with a veritable onslaught of improvised wisecracks.

Listening in on the show was producer John Guedel, who had a brainstorm. He approached Groucho about doing a quiz show, to which Groucho derisively retorted, "A quiz show? Only actors who are completely washed up resort to a quiz show!" Undeterred, Guedel explained that the quiz would be only a backdrop for Groucho's interviews of people, and the storm of ad-libbing that they would elicit. Groucho said, "Well, I've had no success in radio, and I can't hold on to a sponsor. At this point, I'll try anything!"

You Bet Your Life debuted in October 1947 on radio on ABC (which aired it from 1947 to 1949), sponsored by costume jewelry manufacturer Allen Gellman;[18] and then on CBS (1949–50), and finally NBC, continuing until May 1961—on radio only, 1947–1950; on both radio and television, 1950–1960; and on television only, 1960–1961. The show proved a huge hit, being one of the most popular on television by the mid-1950s. With George Fenneman as his announcer and straight man, Groucho entertained his audiences with improvised conversation with his guests. Since You Bet Your Life was mostly ad-libbed and unscripted—although writers did pre-interview the guests and feed Groucho ready-made lines in advance—the producers insisted that the network prerecord it (instead of it being broadcast live).[citation needed] There were two reasons for this: prerecording provided Groucho with time to fish around for funny exchanges and any intervening dead spots to be edited out; and secondly to protect the network, since Groucho was a notorious loose cannon and known to say almost anything. The television show ran for 11 successful seasons until it was canceled in 1961. Automobile marque DeSoto was a longtime major sponsor. For the DeSoto ads Marx would sometimes say: "Tell 'em Groucho sent you", or "Try a DeSoto before you decide".

The program's theme music was an instrumental version of "Hooray for Captain Spaulding", which became increasingly identified as Groucho's personal theme song. A recording of the song with Groucho and the Ken Lane singers with an orchestra directed by Victor Young was released in 1952. Another recording made by Groucho during this period was "The Funniest Song in the World", released on the Young People's Records label in 1949. It was a series of five original children's songs with a connecting narrative about a monkey and his fellow zoo creatures.

The show's most infamous remark supposedly occurred as Groucho was interviewing Charlotte Story, who had borne 19 children. When Marx asked why she had chosen to raise such a large family, Mrs. Story is said to have replied, "I love my husband"; to which Marx responded, "I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in awhile." The remark was judged too risqué to be aired, according to the anecdote, and was edited out before broadcast.[19]

Marion and Charlotte Story—parents of 20 children, not 19—did in fact appear as contestants on the radio version of the show, in 1950. Audio recordings of the interview exist, and a reference to cigars is made ("With each new kid, do you go around passing out cigars?"), but there is no evidence of the famous line. Marx and Fenneman both denied that the incident took place. In a 1972 Esquire interview, Marx told Roger Ebert, "I never said that." Marx's 1976 memoir recounts the episode as fact,] but co-writer Hector Arce relied mostly on sources other than Marx himself — who was by then in his mid eighties and mentally compromised — and was probably unaware that Marx had specifically denied making the legendary observation.

Other work
By the time You Bet Your Life debuted on TV on October 5, 1950, Groucho had grown a real mustache (which he had already sported earlier in the films Copacabana and Love Happy).

During a tour of Germany in 1958, accompanied by then-wife Eden, daughter Melinda, Robert Dwan and Dwan's daughter Judith, he climbed a pile of rubble that marked the site of Adolf Hitler's bunker, the site of Hitler's death, and performed a two-minute Charleston.[26] He later remarked to Richard J. Anobile in The Marx Brothers Scrapbook, "Not much satisfaction after he killed six million Jews!"

Groucho as Koko, 1960
In 1960, Groucho, a lifelong devotee of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, appeared as Koko the Lord High Executioner in a televised production of The Mikado on NBC's Bell Telephone Hour. A clip of this is in rotation on Classic Arts Showcase.

Another TV show, Tell It To Groucho, premiered January 11, 1962 on CBS, but only lasted five months. On October 1, 1962, Groucho, after acting as occasional guest host of The Tonight Show during the six-month interval between Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, introduced Carson as the new host. In 1965, a weekly show for British TV titled Groucho was poorly received and lasted only 11 weeks.

In 1964, Marx starred in the "Time for Elizabeth" episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, a truncated version of a play that Groucho Marx and Norman Krasna wrote in 1948.

Groucho appeared as a gangster named God in the movie Skidoo (1968), directed by Otto Preminger, and costarring Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing. It was released by the studio where the Marx Brothers began their film career, Paramount Pictures. The film received almost universally negative reviews. As a side note, writer Paul Krassner published a story in the February 1981 issue of High Times, relating how Groucho prepared for the LSD-themed movie by taking a dose of the drug in Krassner's company, and had a moving, largely pleasant experience. Four years later came Groucho's last theatrical film appearance, a brief, uncredited cameo in Michael Ritchie's The Candidate (1972).

Groucho developed friendships with rock star Alice Cooper—the two were photographed together for Rolling Stone magazine—and television host Dick Cavett, becoming a frequent guest on Cavett's late-night talk show, even appearing in a one-man, 90-minute interview.[27] He befriended Elton John when the British singer was staying in California in 1972, insisting on calling him "John Elton." According to writer Philip Norman, when Groucho jokingly pointed his index fingers as if holding a pair of six-shooters, Elton John put up his hands and said, "Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player," thereby naming the album he had just completed. A film poster for the Marx Bros. movie Go West is visible on the album cover photograph as an homage to Groucho. Elton John accompanied Groucho to a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar. As the lights went down, Groucho called out, "Does it have a happy ending?" And during the Crucifixion scene, he declared, "This is sure to offend the Jews."[citation needed]

Groucho's previous work regained popularity; new books of transcribed conversations were published by Richard J. Anobile and Charlotte Chandler. In a BBC interview in 1975, Groucho called his greatest achievement having a book selected for cultural preservation in the Library of Congress. As a man who never had formal schooling, to have his writings declared culturally important was a point of great satisfaction. As he passed his 81st birthday in 1971, however, Groucho became increasingly frail, physically and mentally, as a result of a succession of minor strokes.

In 1972, largely at the behest of his companion Erin Fleming, Groucho staged a live one-man show at Carnegie Hall that was later released as a double album, An Evening with Groucho, on A&M Records. He also made an appearance in 1973 on a short-lived variety show hosted by Bill Cosby. Fleming's influence on Marx was controversial. Some close to Marx believed that she did much to revive his popularity, and the relationship with a younger woman boosted his ego and vitality. Others described her as a Svengali, exploiting an increasingly senile Marx in pursuit of her own stardom. Marx's children, particularly Arthur, felt strongly that Fleming was pushing their weak father beyond his physical and mental limits.[29] Writer Mark Evanier concurred.

On the 1974 Academy Awards telecast, Marx's final major public appearance, Jack Lemmon presented him with an honorary Academy Award to a standing ovation. Noticeably frail, Groucho took a bow for his deceased brothers. "I wish that Harpo and Chico could be here to share with me this great honor," he said. He also praised the late Margaret Dumont as a great straight woman who never understood any of his jokes.[27][31] Groucho's final appearance was a brief sketch with George Burns in the Bob Hope television special Joys in 1976. His health continued to decline the following year; he was never told of his brother Gummo's death, at age 84 on April 21, 1977, for fear of eliciting still further deterioration.

Groucho maintained his irrepressible sense of humor to the very end, however. When a nurse approached him with a thermometer during his final hospitalization, explaining that she wanted to see if he had a temperature, he responded, "Don't be silly—everybody has a temperature." George Fenneman, his radio and TV announcer, good-natured foil, and lifelong friend, often related a story of one of his final visits to Groucho's home: When the time came to end the visit, Fenneman lifted Groucho from his wheelchair, put his arms around his torso, and began to "walk" the frail comedian backwards across the room towards his bed. As he did, he heard a weak voice in his ear: "Fenneman," whispered Groucho, "you always were a lousy dancer."] Actor Elliott Gould recalled a similar incident: "I was privileged to be Groucho Marx’s friend in his latter days," he said. "And I recall the last time I saw Groucho, he was in the hospital, and he had tubes in his nose and what have you. And when he saw me, he was weak, but he was there; and he put his fingers on the tubes and played them like it was a clarinet. Groucho played the tubes for me, which brings me to tears."

Death

Marx was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with pneumonia on June 22, 1977 and died at the age of 86 on August 19, four months after Gummo.

Marx was cremated and the ashes were interred in the Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Groucho had the longest lifespan of all the Marx Brothers and was survived by his children and younger brother Zeppo, who outlived him by two years. His death was somewhat overshadowed by the death of Elvis Presley, three days earlier. His gravestone bears no epitaph; but in one of his last interviews, he suggested one: "Excuse me, I can't stand up."

Protracted court battles over the disposition of his estate lasted well into the 1980s. Eventually, Arthur Marx was awarded the bulk of the estate's assets, and Fleming was ordered to repay $472,000 Fleming died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2003

Legacy

Marx and Lennon on a 1994 Abkhazia stamp parodying Marxism-Leninism
Groucho Marx was, and remains, the most recognizable and well-known of the Marx Brothers. Groucho-like characters and references have appeared in popular culture both during and after his life, some aimed at audiences who may never have seen a Marx Brothers movie. Groucho's trademark eyeglasses, nose, mustache, and cigar have become icons of comedy—glasses with fake noses and mustaches (referred to as "Groucho glasses", "nose-glasses," and other names) are sold by novelty and costume shops around the world.

Nat Perrin, close friend of Groucho Marx and writer of several Marx Brothers films, inspired John Astin's portrayal of Gomez Addams on the 1960s TV series The Addams Family with similarly thick mustache, eyebrows, sardonic remarks, backward logic, and ever-present cigar (pulled from his breast pocket already lit).[citation needed]

Two albums by British rock band Queen, A Night at the Opera (1975) and A Day at the Races (1976), are named after Marx Brothers films. In March 1977, Groucho invited Queen to visit him in his Los Angeles home; there they performed "'39" a cappella. A long-running ad campaign for Vlasic Pickles features an animated stork that imitates Groucho's mannerisms and voice. On the famous Hollywood Sign in California, one of the "O"s is dedicated to Groucho. Alice Cooper contributed over $27,000 to remodel the sign, in memory of his friend.

Actor Frank Ferrante has performed as Groucho Marx on stage for more than two decades. He continues to tour under rights granted by the Marx family in a show entitled An Evening with Groucho in theaters throughout the United States and Canada with supporting actors and piano accompanist Jim Furmston. In the late 1980s Ferrante starred as Groucho in the off-Broadway and London show Groucho: A Life in Revue penned by Groucho's son Arthur. Ferrante portrayed the comedian from age 15 to 85. The show was later filmed for PBS in 2001. In 1982, Gabe Kaplan filmed a version of the same show, entitled Groucho.

Woody Allen's 1996 musical Everyone Says I Love You, in addition to being named for one of Groucho's signature songs, ends with a Groucho-themed New Year's Eve party in Paris, which some of the stars, including Allen and Goldie Hawn, attend in full Groucho costume. The highlight of the scene is an ensemble song-and-dance performance of "Hooray for Captain Spaulding"—done entirely in French.

The BBC remade the radio sitcom Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel, with contemporary actors playing the parts of the original cast. The series was repeated on digital radio station BBC7. Scottish playwright Louise Oliver wrote a play named Waiting for Groucho about Chico and Harpo waiting for Groucho to turn up for the filming of their last project together. This was performed by Glasgow theatre company Rhymes with Purple Productions at the Edinburgh Fringe and in Glasgow and Hamilton in 2007–08. Groucho was played by Scottish actor Frodo McDaniel.