The Ides Of Marx

"Beware the ides of Marx." It was a bad pun, sure, but worthy of Groucho nevertheless. Why then, did it irritate him so, every time Josef Von Sternberg, the stylish melodramatist responsible for the career of Marlene Dietrich, cracked it? Perhaps ol' Grouch was simply miffed that he didn't think of it first. It was a line I would have appreciated, though, had Joe directed it at me - advice, in fact, I sorely could have used.

The national longing for all things '30's-'40's, born out of the three-tragedy- pile-up of Oswald, Vietnam, and Watergate, had yet to die. Revival houses continued to proliferate, like clichés in a Barbara Stanwyck movie. Ours, for better or worse, was the Towne Cinema, the firetrap with the colonial name, on the edge of - why, God, why? - the roughest neighborhood in the city.

It was a Sunday triple bill: one film for each Marx Brother (at least each funny Marx Brother). Hoping at long last to see the comic personas my father so fondly recalled, I ventured - my 13-year-old frame wiry with trepidation - to the theatre.

I sat discreetly at the back, away from anyone potentially dangerous - anyone taller, older or bigger. The first film, At The Circus, rolled. We all laughed - all of us, that is, but him: the lanky, half-seen presence a row or two ahead of me, enveloped in a curious blue smoke. Groucho leered, Harpo mugged, Chico played, and Mr. Mysterio smoked...smoked, in fact, until all he was laughing at, and heartily at that, were the set ups. Was this what marijuana (for by now I had figured it out) did to you? This indulgence I had vowed, no matter how much the 'stoners' at my school made fun of me, never to partake in?

But my vow, despite my best efforts, was not to last. Halfway through The Big Store, I too, like the subversive corruptor of model youth slumped strategically ahead of me, had stopped laughing at the punch lines. Shit, I thought, it's getting to me! I tried holding my breath, my nose...my breath and my nose. Finally, when Love Happy failed to illicit a single chortle from me, I left, convinced that I was now no better than the lowest element in the school yard.

It wasn't until Duck Soup,a few weeks later on television, that I stopped experiencing a guilt-ridden sense of kinship every time I passed those kids in the hall with the red eyes and the bad report cards. I had simply been a victim, I had finally figured out, of late era Marxiana, not of contraband Mexicana.

Beware the ides of Marx indeed.