Boasting about his new live-in lover, young enough to be his grand-daughter, Groucho said rather a strange thing. "First time I've been with a woman who's good-looking and intelligent." That's quite a clue to the shallowness of his character and his failure to build good relationships.
About the only good relationship seems to have been with his only son Arthur, who acknowledges that he was a good, conscientious father, and was allowed to become his official biographer - quoting another unexpected confession: "There must be something wrong with me. Because every woman I touch starts drinking."
This is one episode of A. J. Benza's 'Mysteries and Scandals' series that does not score very high on either mystery or scandal, but still told me a few things I didn't know about Groucho and his brothers. One is that their mother had originally trained them as a singing act - so bad that it earned high applause as a comedy act! Another is that 'Duck Soup' was (surprisingly) a box-office failure, and they were out of work until Irving Thalberg, boy-wonder of MGM, decided to give them another chance, leading to two of the classics ('A Day at the Races' and 'A Night at the Opera'). It was on Thalberg's premature death that they had to deal direct with the stroppy Louis B. Mayer, who fell out with Groucho, in an anecdote related by another of his biographers, Stefan Kanter - which will be lost to us forever, as the recording of his interview was so dim.
The last years were about as anti-climactic and unfunny as they could be. Into his eighties, he can be heard trying to bluff it out by saying "A man is as young as the woman he feels", which I'm fairly sure was coined by the dodgy 60's financier Bernie Cornfeld (unless Bernie had been plagiarising Groucho!). But that young girlfriend turned out to be a deranged stalker, who made his last years a misery, and was too-obviously after his fortune, which she never got, dying penniless and sectioned in a psychiatric ward.
Couple of things unaccountably missing from the story. Groucho losing everything in the stock-market crash of '29, which was fortunately the year when the brothers made their first movie. And the irony of his famous quip about club membership - definitely not echoed in his real-life experience. For he was distinctly put-out at not being invited to the Algonquin lunches, at which Harpo was such a popular attender. Apparently they just didn't think he was a very nice man.
About the only good relationship seems to have been with his only son Arthur, who acknowledges that he was a good, conscientious father, and was allowed to become his official biographer - quoting another unexpected confession: "There must be something wrong with me. Because every woman I touch starts drinking."
This is one episode of A. J. Benza's 'Mysteries and Scandals' series that does not score very high on either mystery or scandal, but still told me a few things I didn't know about Groucho and his brothers. One is that their mother had originally trained them as a singing act - so bad that it earned high applause as a comedy act! Another is that 'Duck Soup' was (surprisingly) a box-office failure, and they were out of work until Irving Thalberg, boy-wonder of MGM, decided to give them another chance, leading to two of the classics ('A Day at the Races' and 'A Night at the Opera'). It was on Thalberg's premature death that they had to deal direct with the stroppy Louis B. Mayer, who fell out with Groucho, in an anecdote related by another of his biographers, Stefan Kanter - which will be lost to us forever, as the recording of his interview was so dim.
The last years were about as anti-climactic and unfunny as they could be. Into his eighties, he can be heard trying to bluff it out by saying "A man is as young as the woman he feels", which I'm fairly sure was coined by the dodgy 60's financier Bernie Cornfeld (unless Bernie had been plagiarising Groucho!). But that young girlfriend turned out to be a deranged stalker, who made his last years a misery, and was too-obviously after his fortune, which she never got, dying penniless and sectioned in a psychiatric ward.
Couple of things unaccountably missing from the story. Groucho losing everything in the stock-market crash of '29, which was fortunately the year when the brothers made their first movie. And the irony of his famous quip about club membership - definitely not echoed in his real-life experience. For he was distinctly put-out at not being invited to the Algonquin lunches, at which Harpo was such a popular attender. Apparently they just didn't think he was a very nice man.