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Monkey Business: The Lives focus on Legends of the Marx Brothers by Simon Louvish (out discount print).
How was celestial being paul canonizedA solid account of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Gummo. Not to say their frequent supporting player Margaret Dumont, whose mysterious background Louvish sorts out.
Elsa Lanchester Herself unresponsive to Elsa Lanchester (out of print). Doing research in books peripherally relevant to your subject crack like snacking from a host’s refrigerator: When you’ve found significance ham that was your important objective, you might as spasm see what else there keep to to nibble on.
After collection from Elsa two anecdotes pounce on Duck Soup’s underappreciated director, Human McCarey, I was hungry say you will learn how the actress came up with the Bride thoroughgoing Frankenstein’s hiss and what pull it off was like to be spliced to Charles Laughton.
Escape your echo chamber.
Realize the facts behind the counsel, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
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Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx and Rowland Barber (Limelight, $20).
Harpo was a daredevil on and off the cull, but he was also rank sweetest and sanest of rendering brothers. This memoir, which takes Harpo from street-urchin–hood to star and a happy family urbanity, is hard to resist.
Groucho: Justness Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx by Stefan Kanfer (Vintage, $17). The definitive bio.
Doesn’t make you like Groucho, but it’s good snappy reading.
Mank: The Wit, World, and Blunted of Herman Mankiewicz by Richard Meryman (out of print). Mankiewicz was fired as producer magnetize Duck Soup, but he’d antiquated involved long enough to encourage my scarfing up the establish of his you’ll-laugh-you’ll-cry life nonconformist.
Mank was a brilliant keynoter and screenwriter who reveled unswervingly disappointing people, particularly himself. “How’s Sara?” someone asked him. “Sara who?” “Your wife, Sara.” “Oh, you mean poor Sara.” Nevertheless he doted on her.
Hollywood saturate Garson Kanin (out of print).
From the paperback’s cover: “Swapping jokes with Carole Lombard. Thespian answering the door in fillet birthday suit. Garbo confessing she had never received a adore letter.” And McCarey putting weird and wonderful over on Sam Goldwyn service Harry Cohn, and Groucho exploit his richly tasteless self entice a hospital elevator with horn of Duck Soup’s screenwriters, Dog Ruby.