“Everyone I approached was happy to talk about him,” Guss says. They wouldn’t know who the hell he was.”īesides the two eldest Marx children, the documentary also features Dick Cavett “You Bet Your Life” announcer George Fennemann Harpo’s son, Bill Marx, and Groucho biographers Wes Gehring and Charlotte Chandler. So he would go out among the people and sort of go into little routines. They didn’t recognize him in those days in civilian clothes because he didn’t wear a mustache. He would like to put people on and pretend to be someone else. And though he was often serious-he was given the nickname Groucho for his less-than-sunny disposition-his son says he could be very funny, “especially in situations where you weren’t expecting him to be funny.

Still, Marx says, he had a good childhood and Groucho, whose real name was Julius, was a good father. “I just see his character changing, yet remaining consistent.” “It’s incredibly interesting when you look at the beginnings of it, because there are certain things that are extremely consistent about the kind of comedian he was,” she says. “People tend to talk about Groucho and the Marx Brothers and they take it from, ‘Isn’t this movie funny? Let’s look at the funny bits.’ ”

And this hourlong history does have the requisite clips from the Marx Brothers’ movies “The Coconuts,” “Animal Crackers,” “Monkey Business,” “Duck Soup,” “Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races,” as well as excerpts from Groucho’s 1950-61 quiz show “You Bet Your Life.”īut producer Alison Guss believes the documentary offers surprises and insights into Groucho. Groucho, who was born in 1890 and died in 1977, and his siblings aren’t exactly fresh topics when it comes to documentaries. This week, Arts & Entertainment’s “Biography” series examines the life and career of the most famous Marx Brother-the one, the only, Groucho.

Marx brothers coconuts