Nah, it’s more like a “sponger.” Remember house-guest Spaulding’s line in “Hello, I Must be Going:” “I’ll stay a week or two…I’ll stay the summer throooooooo…”
Ahh, that’s a better translation. Thanks.
Marley, they have it at Amazon.com. I have it myself, bought it at a library booksale in my hometown. The librarian said I might as well buy it, because I was the only one who ever checked it out! That’s depressing, but not suprising. Get it now, It’s awesome!
Interesting thread. Jack Benny, one of my favorite old comedians, was also Jewish. (His wife, Mary Livingstone, nee Sadie Marks, was actually a relative of the Marx Brothers.) But I have never found any hint of Judaism in his routines; in fact, his show did a Christmas special every year, and often an Easter special as well. The only hint of Judaism I remember from his career was his role in “To Be or Not To Be,” and even that was pretty neutral.
But such was the way of the world back then. I’m sure Dinah Shore sang Christmas songs too.
It’s interesting how some of the best art can result from these cross-cultural mixings. Most of the composers of the Great American Songbook were Jewish; Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote about very non-Jewish characters in “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel;” Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade.” Cole Porter, the only gentile among the top tier of the old composers, was said to have been the one who wrote the most “Jewish” music (which I guess means borrowing from klezmer music and specific uses of the minor key). The opening verse of “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” has been cited as an example of this.
Well . . . he play off the miser thing a whole lot . . .
He was an ACCOUTANT! :eek:
Groucho said he danced on Hitler’s grave, once. That count for anything?
Oh yeaaaahhh…hmm. But somehow the way he did it it never seemed like a rip on the Jewish stereotype; there were some jokes about him being Scottish, but never any about him being Jewish.
(There was an occassional character on the show, Mr. Kitzel, who was supposed to be a Jewish character – he used a lot of Yiddishisms, etc. But he always contrasted very sharply with Jack’s all-American mid-Western-ness.)
Groucho must have done that metaphorically.
Wasn’t Hitler’s body burned in a ditch and only a piece of skull recovered by the Russians who took Moscow?
Harpo did change his real name from Adolph to Arthur.
It’s said that a hotel clerk once told (Irish Catholic) George Cohan that “this hotel doesn’t allow Jews.” Cohan supposedly replied “You thought I was Jewish and I thought you were a gentleman. We were both mistaken.”
He lived at home until age 35, which would definitely put him in the “troubled loner” category today.
Barry Goldwater, denied entry to the golf course of an “exclusive” country club, protested, “But I’m only half Jewish! Can’t I play nine holes?”
Well, he also danced before Napoleon…or maybe Napoleon danced before him.
The miser stereotype isn’t only Jewish – you might remember Ebenezer Scrooge and Silas Marner, for instance.
On behalf of both of us who caught this allusion, I thank you. 
That’s a good one boss!
Honk!
Make that three hard boiled eggs.
The Russians recovered his (charred) body, and carted it around East German KGB bases for a few years (I think it was buried in a former auto garage repair pit, for awhile), until finally destroying what was left in the 70s. They do keep a chunk o’ skull and part of his jaw in Moscow, to this day, though.
And I did a little checking…according to this account, Groucho danced on the ruins of the Führerbunker, though not Hitler’s grave itself. (Though I imagine there were at least some bits of Hitler’s dead body under where Groucho danced—splattered fluids, ash, etc.)
Had to go to Penn State for a Stooges Jewish reference:
http://www3.la.psu.edu/jst/default.aspx?pageid=12§ionid=7