I’ve had this book sitting on my shelf wiggling its eyebrows at me telling me to read it already so last week I complied and have enjoyed it tremendously.

Groucho Marx was apparently born at an early age and was an undereducated boy having left school around his Bar Mitzvah to get a job, according to this book he had to talk his mother into it and so he got a job; he had to sit in the office, hand the boss the mail and answer the phone, occasionally his boss would ring in to ask if there had been any phone calls and with a negative answer so often Marx started to come in late and leave early which got him the sack. Marx went on to a multitude of varied jobs many of which he received the sack fairly early on and it wasn’t until he conceived the idea of going on the stage that he managed to stay the distance for any length of time.

Marx is one of a number of children and the number seems to change with each book. In the movies we saw Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Zeppo but there was also Gummo and I think I heard of a girl or two, Zeppo and the girls aren’t mentioned in this book. There are discrepancies between this book and another book by him (Memoirs of a Mangy Lover) written a few years later and also a book by his brother, Harpo, called Harpo Speaks! It makes it challenging to get at the facts.

All three books are well written and show the Marx wit and writing style. Groucho and Me is written very much in the style of Groucho Marx we’ve come to know and love; I do suspect some of the anecdotes have been exaggerated in some manner to make it more enjoyable reading. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty or innocent and so many of them have been changed to Delaney, one story got quite confusing as more than one person was called Delaney. I also wonder how much he had to suppress of himself in order to play Groucho Marx on screen and radio.

According to this book Chico was much more confident than the others so he pushed them to get off Vaudeville and to give Broadway a try, they never looked back and from Broadway they were given movie contracts leading to 13 brilliant and much loved movies. My favourite scene of all is the state room scene in A Night at the Opera, if you haven’t seen it then you most definitely should. The movies are full of brilliant wit, hilarious chase scenes and great music, they transcend all generations.

Marx details how he got involved in the stock market and how things went downhill very quickly during the crash of 1929. He also talks about prohibition. These help position the events in time and would be good reading for anyone looking at the history of those times.

I could write forever about the Marx brothers but this is already long enough. I loved the book despite the discrepancies and it made me love Groucho Marx all the more, definitely one to stay on my shelf.