Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo: A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Adamson, Joe

Verlag: Simon & Schuster, New York, 1973

Beschreibung

Fine condition black cloth boards with silver front cover decoration and silver spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped photographic dust jacket. Includes Acknowledgments; Notes; Bibliography; and Index. Profusely illustrated with black-and-white photographs. "Cedric Hardwicke is my fifth favorite actor, the first four being the Marx Brothers." - George Bernard Shaw "What's got four wheels and flies? A garbage truck!" - Chico Marx "Most books about the Marx Brothers are either pious attempts to analyze why they were funny or mere illustrated catalogues of Marxiana. This one is, at last and for all time, a book worthy of the Marx Brothers' oevre itself: a zany, funny, brilliant, definitive and idiosyncratic account of the lives, the early careers and the final flowering of the Brothers Marx - told in their own words, the recollections of their co-workers, the scripts and dialogue of their movies and, for the most part, in the words of the author, a lifelong Marxist, who takes his subjects seriously but writes about them in a way that is at once startling and funny. Mr. Adamson has interviewed the survivors of the arduous battles that making a Marx Brothers movie represented, and collected every legend, anecdote, story, joke and antic of the Golden Age Marxism; the high jinks on the set, the sudden improvisations before the camera, the incredible story conferences involving such luminaries as Irving Thalberg (once, unable to get an appointment with the Wunderkind of MGM, the Marx Brothers broke into his office, stripped naked, and crouched before his baronial fireplace roasting potatoes until he arrived), S.J. Perelman, Morrie Ryskind ("I'd be crawling along the floor, saying, 'What can Harpo do here?"), Herman Mankiewicz, Harry Ruby ("In a Marx Brothers picture there was no law and order") and Arthur Sheekman. From their early days as a touring vaudeville team (once known as the Four Nightingales) - developing a style which was already recognizable by 1916 (I'd like-a to say goodbye to your wife." "Who wouldn't?) - to the creation of the great Marxist classics, the Marx Brothers' triumphant confrontation with the ordinary world is documented as it has never been before, in a book that has everything, including countless photographs, to give the reader nostalgia, pleasure, any amount of useless knowledge and a lot of laughter.". Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 001686

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo: ...

Verlag: Simon & Schuster, New York

Erscheinungsdatum: 1973

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand: Fine

Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Fine

Auflage: 1st Edition