Discovering the Mount Rushmore of classic film comedy
I first saw them not on a movie screen, not on television, not even in a photograph but in my mind's eye.
My inner paint brush, if you will, was guided by the hand of my father, who lovingly described their physical appearances and manic energy, though his personal penchant was for their idiot sons, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis and Bowery Boys, who followed in their footsteps, only to trip up and in failing, develop rhythms for younger, less sophisticated generations.
A little while later, I at last a saw a photo of them; movie books were all the rage back then, as the twin whammies of Vietnam and Watergate sent us scurrying for the escapism of more innocent times. Lushly illustrated R.I.P.s of the Studio Era were finding their way on to coffee tables across the continent, and in one of them, there they were, revealed to my 11 year old eyes: those hitherto mythic Marxes.
One afternoon, while scanning the TV Times, the long tease came to its climax. One of their films was going to be playing on one of the four channels that we got, only - yikes! - at four in the morning! And on a Wednesday night no less, with school looming the next day.
I secretly set a small alarm clock I had discovered in our new apartment. I slept with it under my pillow, in order to muffle the ring, so that, when the time came, there would be no cranky stepfather to order me angrily back to bed
Shortly before four, the pillow vibrated. I was out of my bed like Harpo on a blonde. In moments, I was eagerly perched on our living room couch, desperately trying to adjust my sleepy eyes to the scratchy, black and white images that were beginning to form before me like a photo being developed.
The film - lucky me! - was Duck Soup, the Marxes in their purest form - no harp solos, no piano solos, no boy singers or soggy love story; nothing that might have otherwise interfered with a genuine appreciation of their art.
The film ended, too soon, and I made my way, reluctantly, back to bed, throwing the sheets over my head to create the illusion of a full night's sleep. Behind my closed eyes, every comic highlight was hastily replaying: Groucho's schizophrenic rants, Chico's smart stupidity, Harpo's high-energy childishness.
That weekend, I went to a book store, in search of yet another book on cinema's faded heyday. I found one, and began looking desperately through it for any image of the famed Marxes, any stimuli that might reconjure those moments from that film.
What I saw instead devastated me.
There, tucked away in some corner of some anonymous MGM or Paramount set, sat their unattended trademarks: Chico's hat, Harpo's wig, Groucho's greasepaint and eyeglasses.
They were not real, these three crazy characters; they did not exist beyond the boundaries of their movies; there was no magic parallel universe somewhere that I could some day spend my time in, where characters that manic and crazy got away with indulgent behaviors of all kind. There was just this earth, this lowly existence - the break-up of my parents' marriage, mom's new and difficult husband, our undersized apartment, grade 6 - and its futile attempts, like moviemaking, to create something crazier and more fun and better.
Years later, my birth father died. My mother and I cleaned out his closet, and I was sent home to my wife and child carrying a small bag of clothes. I stopped to sit on a park bench, overlooking a scenic body of water - but found myself staring more at the bag than the lake. That lowly looking bag, garments spilling from its mouth: a shirt sleeve, an inch or two of old tie, a moth eaten sweater sleeve. Dad had shed his skin. This was all that was left of him.
Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Roger.
