Groucho Marx Triumphs in ‘An Evening With Groucho’ at Carnegie Hall

‘100 Funniest Comedy Albums’ Book Excerpt

Frank Mastropolo

A&M

An Evening with Groucho compiles performances by Groucho Marx at Carnegie Hall in New York, Stephens Auditorium at Iowa State University in Ames, and Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco.

Equal parts comedy and music, the 1972 double album featured anecdotes about Groucho’s family and highlights of his career on stage, film, and TV. The Carnegie Hall show was introduced by talk show host Dick Cavett, who feared that Groucho, at 81, was too old and frail to perform.

“I went backstage, went up to the dressing room, and Groucho looked like a half-dead man,” Cavett told NPR. “I thought, how in hell are we going to get through this? I just thought this is going to be a theatrical nightmare. It wasn’t. The night was a success.

“The audience went wild when Marx stepped on stage. That audience saw nothing wrong with him. They seemed to see no difference between the old and tired gentleman on the stage who read his evening off 3x5 cards — which I thought might even turn off that audience — they ate it up. He seemed no different than the cavorting madman on the screen in the Marx Brothers movies.”

Accompanied by pianist Marvin Hamlisch, Marx performed “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady” from 1939’s At the Circus and Marx favorites “Show Me a Rose,” “Father’s Day,” and “Hello, I Must Be Going.”

Marx told stories about his days in vaudeville, his crazy relatives, and his friends Jack Benny and W.C. Fields.

Now we get to W.C. Fields. He was a friend of mine. He was a great drunk. And if they’d have had marijuana in those days, I’m sure he would have been using it.

And he lived in San Fernando Valley. And he always carried a BB gun. And he sat in the bushes and when the tourists would go past, he would shoot at them.

One day, he allowed me in his house. He had a ladder there. And it led up to an attic. And in this attic, he had $50,000 worth of whiskey. Unopened cases of whiskey. And I said to him, “Bill, what do you got that booze there for? We haven’t had Prohibition in 25 years.”

He says, “It may come back.”

Fields was doing a picture many years ago with a kid named Baby LeRoy. And in those days, you had to have a nurse on the set. This was one of the rules in the movie industry. So the nurse had to go to the bathroom. Even nurses do that occasionally.

And Fields said, “Look, I’ll take care of the kid, you just go to the bathroom.” And when she had gone, he took a bottle of booze out of his back pocket and he got Baby LeRoy dead drunk.

And they had to close the movie for three days until he sobered up.

The album sleeve included quotes from Marx’s friends including George Burns, who wrote, “This album could make a big star out of Groucho Marx. There’s nothing going to stop this kid.”

An Evening with Groucho was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Groucho Marx died five years after his Carnegie Hall performance in 1977 at the age of 86.

Frank Mastropolo is the author of 100 Funniest Comedy Albums from the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.