Or The Monkees and Frank Zappa. Wait a minute! That did happen.
Not it wasn’t – Kaufmann wasn’t involved in that at all. It was either The Coconuts or Animal Crackers, which did run on Broadway (Opera had a touring stage show to refine the gags).
I like both, but the Marxes were the better comedians. Groucho was verbally ahead by miles; Chico did dumb jokes better than anyone. Harpo’s pantomime was sublime. The Stooges were better with violent slapstick (one of the few who could do it well), something the Marxes didn’t do (and a lot of the Marxes slapstick, especially in chase scenes, was unimpressive).
The Marxes were A-list stars, appearing on the cover of Time, for instance. The Stooges never got out of short subjects until the late 50s, and no one considers any of their features as classics. Some of that was the Stooges’ contract, but they really were never more popular than people like Leon Erroll or Charlie Chase or Edgar Kennedy (who, at least had careers as character actors beyond their short subjects). Shemp is the only one who had a movie career on his own, and that was before he replaced Curley on the team.
The only reason we remember the Stooges was because they were cheap filler for weekday afternoon kid’s TV in the 50s and 60s. In their heyday, they were just what you watched before the feature began.
If it happened it unquestionably was during the theatrical run of The Cocoanuts, the first Broadway show written by Kaufman. The Marxes ran riot throughout the show and contributed new lines and new bits whenever they thought of them. Kaufman, a perfectionist with a large ego, had fought doing it for precisely this reason.
What was said and who was it said to? Stories got told and retold and made into ever better stories, with ever punchier punch lines. And the Marx’s memories were remade by these stories so that their own works may or may not be accurate.
However, if you have to pick one retelling there’s no choice but to get it from a interview quoting Groucho directly. It appears on p. 72 of The Marx Brothers Scrapbook.
This is not a memory of a one-liner. It’s obviously a well-polished story. Woollcott was a notorious fussbudget who hated having the spotlight turned away from him for an instant, so using him as the foil makes it a better story than if it happened to some quiet type.
In fact, this is so obviously a story that I can’t let it sit there.
Howard Teichmann’s George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait came out in 1972, a year before The Marx Brothers Scrapbook. And lo and behold:
Not nearly as polished but still obviously a story.
You might think that recent biographers would try to sort this all out. Hah! The most recent big book retelling is in *Monkey Business *by Simon Louvish. He throws it out this way:
Morrie Ryskind being the now less famous co-writer of the script. And note the lack of “business” in the story, business being a term for non-verbal actions. Kaufman doesn’t walk away, he doesn’t take a long pause, he just makes the quip, something far more likely in reality.
So who was it said to? Who retold the story? Did it ever really happen or was it invented? Perhaps better not to dwell on any show biz anecdote. The truth will likely disappoint you.
Sorry for the overkill on a single quote, but this is a shining example of why show business stories should never be trusted.
This is another example of conflating people and events in search of a better story. Zappa appeared on a Monkees tv show and in their movie, Head. Jimi Hendrix was hired as the opening act for a Monkees tour. But as far as I know, neither ever played together with the Monkees in concert or in any public venue.
According to Wikipedia Kaufman did work on A Night at the Opera, but I think you’re right. I glanced at this page and thought the author was saying the comment was made during work on that movie, but she wasn’t.
Oh, a WISE guy, eh? Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck!
So you make your case on why the Marx brothers are better is because someone sold you a poster for less than what they thought it was worth.
That’s not very convincing.
Exhibit #1837638363673 in the case for leaving humor to professionals.
“My name is Oe-May. Larry here is Arry-Lay. So Curly is…”
“Curlicue! Nyuck-nyuck-nyuck-nyuck-nyuck!”
Let’s put it this way (Soitanly!):
The Marx Brothers act was a major inspiration to Spike Milligan.
Spike’s Goon Show was a major radio show in the 1950s-1960s in the UK and was a major inspiration to Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus is often credited as a major inspiration to many of the players in the early versions of SNL.
So, tell me: what kind of pedigree does The Three Stooges humor have?
I am not going to click on that link.
The Stooges did shorts, and the Marx Brothers did movies. I’m not even aware of Stooges movies until the late '50s or early '60s - and those were low budget. (I saw them as a kid.) The reason for the Night at the Opera tour which was mentioned is that Thalberg put the power of MGM behind them, as can be seen by the production values for Night at the Opera - and his insistence on the love story plot to make it commercial.
I suspect the Stooges would be pretty much forgotten today if they had not made so many shorts that they were perfect fodder for kiddie TV during the '60s, which was when I saw them.
I also doubt the story, but want to note that the version of Animal Crackers in Kaufman’s collected plays comes from the movie since the show one changed so much.
The Kaufmann story seems legitimate, but not literal. The Marx Brothers did ad lib, sometimes furiously, but Kaufmann was probably making a joke about it.
Yes, that bunch was very good at editing reality to make it funnier.
Both Groucho’s and SJ Perelman’s obituaries in the Times gave them credit for the “Waxing Roth” joke, for instance. I’m sure they both claimed it.
The Stooges were in Soup to Nuts, a feature film written by (and featuring) Rube Goldberg. The film sounds much better than it actually is --there aren’t mant Rube Goldberg devices, and the ones that do appear don’t really do much. The Stooges’ personalities hadn’t quite jelled yet, and Larry Fine especially comes off as annoying and slightly threatening.
The Stooges really got into movies after their run in the shorts, and in large part because of their newfound success as TV stars. They made Have Rocket …Will Travel, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, The Three Stooges in Orbit, Snow White and the Three Stooges, The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze, and had their cameos in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Three for Texas after the airing of their shorts on TV (and because the campaigning og Moe Howard’s son-in-law Norman Maurer, Comic Book artist turned movie producer.
It probably was an accident of history that they remained well-known, but you have to give them credit – they cranked out a LOT of those shorts, and they were funny, even if it was a different order than the Marx brothers.
Compare and contrast the following:
“Wake up and go to sleep”
vs.
“You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!”
We also know the Three Stooges were featured in a truly crappy cartoon series, but a quick search for Marx Brothers cartoons seems to only bring up this unfinished animated pilot (excluding cameos in other cartoons like Donald Duck - “The Autograph Hound” - that cartoon included the Ritz Brothers too).
I hate these Stooges vs Marx Bros pissing contests because I truly love both. They are both so fundamentally different that they really cannot be compared. It’s like saying classical music is better than jazz. Maybe one doesn’t float your boat but to dismiss either one is ignorant.
The Stooges were also international stars despite one poster’s claim to the contrary. During their time off from filming shorts they travelled th USA and Europe performing live to sold out houses. This was where they actualy earned most of their money because their contract stipulated that whatever they did on their own time was totally theirs. Columbia deliberately misled them about their own popularity whenever contract time came up and low balled tem for years. These were not sophisticated educated men, they had no agents, they did things on handshakes. You can bet your ass the Marx Brothers had smart people watching their interests.
It is true that just as the need for short films in theatres waned their conrarct with Columbia finally expired and the Stooges were rediscovered as a staple for television. Instantly there was a catalog of 200+ flms that ran a shade under a half hour. TV ate them up and a new generation of fans were created.
Although some of you Marx Brothers-only fans probably wouldn’t lower themselves to read Moe’s autobiography, it is quite a tale.
Why-I-otta!!
One thing about the Stooges was the sound effects. Whomever handled that for them in post-production really nailed it, consistently. I think their gig really relied on the sound effects much more than other acts. Their physical nature and the sounds were an attraction when I was growing up. If I watch them now I understand a lot more of the social commentary they had in the dialogue.
Yes, Saturday mornings when I was a kid were not complete without a dose of the Stooges. I did not get into the Marx Bros because I am too young and they were not as readily available as the Stooges. Perhaps one is favored over the other based on age/generation.
There was also a TV special – The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedian* – that featured animated Marx Brothers in a Napoleon sketch (Groucho played Napoleon), and apparently using dialogue recorded by Groucho, but with an imitator(the great Paul Frees --who also voiced Zeppo) for the dead Chico:
*That’'s one “Mad” fewer than *It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World[/i[