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Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx, -- 1891-1977

Groucho Marx proved that comedy could be raucous, sophisticated, and wildly unexpected – all at once.  But Groucho Marx was much more than just jokes.  Underneath the most famous Marx brother’s one-liners and carefree attitude was a life dominated by deep sadness, professional dissatisfaction, and personal turmoil. Groucho: A Life In Revue is the story of that life told by his son Arthur. 

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Stefan Kanfer is Groucho Marx's most conscientiuous biographer.  He chronicled Marx's life through a clear lens, nearly 20 years after his passing.  As a postlude to the biography Kanfer wrote the following. 

In an essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler discusses the centerpieces of the modern detective story.  About the most durable of them he observes, “Sherlock Holmes after all is mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue.”  Chandler might have been describing Groucho.  Like Sherlock, he endures because of an attitude, and because of lines that keep popping up in anthologies, dictionaries, and the national consciousness.  And like Sherlock, he is one of a handful of characters who are instantly recognizable worldwide, even in silhouette.  (Don Quixote and Chaplin’s tramp are two others; Groucho is in rare and good company.)  Since his heyday other comic artists have enjoyed a vogue, made films and records, became adored objects of popular culture, and moved on.  They are forgotten now; the appetite for the new has rendered them obsolete.  Yet Groucho remains.  For more than any other comedian he represents the history of twentieth-century entertainment:  vaudeville, theater, film, radio, TV, and even CD-ROMs.  Many an entertainer, if the truth were told, has tumbled from his clawhammer coat.  A new century has begun, with fresh faces and new routines.  Let them come; above the general tumult will continue to float the whiff of a large cigar and the reverberating echo of the last laugh. 
 

-- Kanfer, Stefan, “Groucho, The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx.”  Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2000, pages 436-437.