When Harpo played his harp

Groucho's my favorite Marx brother, as you know, but that's nothing against Harpo. I just happen to prefer say-funny to do-funny, and Harpo did funny as well as any before or since. And if others could get bigger laughs, none of them could play like Harpo could.

Here he is in Horsefeathers, performing the movie's theme "Everyone Says I Love You." (Elsewhere in the film he whistles it to a horse.)



Fourteen years later, if memory serves, he performed Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody in A Night in Casablanca. MeTubers will remember this melody as sung by Daffy and lip-synched by Jar Jar back in the day.



Finally, here's a tribute to his talents, sung by Jonathan Richman over footage from Monkey Business.

Groucho and Jacko

Jack Benny and Groucho Marx are two of my favorite comedians of all time. They first knew each other from the vaudeville circuit; Groucho (then known as Julius Marx) would get Benny (then known as violinist Benjamin Kublesky) laughing so hard they'd have to hold up the show and wait for him to calm down.

Four decades or so later, they were performing together on TV.



Jack's doing everything he can to win some money, including wearing a disguise that fools absolutely no one. His look of despondence at Groucho's final question is so wonderful - almost as wonderful as Groucho's look of glee as he asks that question. And you'll note that Groucho can still get Jack to break character with almost no effort.

Short Attention Span Theatre 2

Just when you thought it was safe to blink...

Here are six clips that will take you less than a minute to watch altogether.

We have a quick insult from Groucho in A Night at the Opera...



...the highlight of Alex Karras's acting career, from Blazing Saddles...



...one of the great GI Joe PSA parodies...



...a talking thumb...



...an Out of the Past Robert Mitchum being transfigured...



...and a grateful postman.

I'll bet my life - and I'll win, too

Groucho Marx regularly got the best of the contestants on You Bet Your Life. "You're a model?" he asked one of them once. "What do you model - clay?"

But every now and then one would come along that would throw him for a loop. Like this spinster from Suffield, Connecticut.



Or this guy. His size, voice, mannerisms, and eyes completely unnerve Groucho, which is great, because (Groucho being Groucho) his reaction is to make even more jokes. This clip never stops being funny for me.

Say the secret woid and win a hundred dollars.

I'm the sort of person who would rather say funny than do funny. So while I appreciate the visual gags from folks like Chris Farley, Buster Keaton and Harpo Marx, I aspire to the verbal brilliance of Jon Stewart, Woody Allen, and Groucho Marx.

Groucho Marx was my very first favorite comedian. I loved how fast he was with his words, how he could come up with comments in a split second that would never occur to me in a hundred years. The fact that the remarks were scripted dimmed the joy a touch, but then I found out he was just as fast in real life and turned the joy back up again.

Here's a brief clip from "You Bet Your Life," the game show he hosted throughout the '50s. I love the vim with which he delivers the zinger at the end.