Tag Archives: The Marx Brothers

Harpo Plays! ► Monday Musical Appreciation

November 23, 2015Harpo Marx, Monday Music, Monday Musical Appreciation, The Marx BrothersHeadly Westerfield

He never said a word in the movies, but Harpo Marx never had a problem getting his point across. At a time when Talkies were all the rage, Harpo remained gloriously mute.

Adolph Marx — he later changed his name to Arthur — was born on this day in 1888, the 2nd oldest of the 5 Marx Brothers. With his older brother Chico (Leonard) and his younger brother Groucho (Julius), The Marx Brothers became one of the greatest comedy teams of all time. [Gummo never appeared with his brothers on film and Zeppo left after the first five.]

Much to Groucho’s regret, because he was considered the “smart one,” Harpo was a member in good standing of The Algonquin Round Table, an exclusive club that included such notables as Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, George S. Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross (The New Yorker editor), Robert E. Sherwood, Alexander Woollcott, Tallulah Bankhead, and Noel Coward.

However, it’s not Harpo’s mime shtick or his intelligence Not Now Silly wants to commemorate today; it’s his harp playing, for which he got his nickname. According to the WikiWackyWoo:

Harpo gained his stage name during a card game at the Orpheum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois. The dealer (Art Fisher) called him “Harpo” because he played the harp.[5][6] He learned how to hold it properly from a picture of an angel playing a harp that he saw in a five-and-dime.
No one in town knew how to play the harp, so Harpo tuned it as best he
could, starting with one basic note and tuning it from there. Three
years later he found out he had tuned it incorrectly, but he could not
have tuned it properly; if he had, the strings would have broken each
night. Harpo’s method placed much less tension on the strings.[citation needed]
Although he played this way for the rest of his life, he did try to
learn how to play correctly, and he spent considerable money hiring the
best teachers. They spent their time listening to him, fascinated by the
way he played.[6]

Here are some of Harpo’s greatest musical performances:

Packing for the Road Trip ► Unpacking The Writer

July 10, 2014Ace Theater, Aries Development, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Gino Falsetto, Grand Avenue, IRONY ALERT, The Cocoanuts, The Marx Brothers, Trolley Folly, Trolleygate, Unpacking The Writer, unpacking-coconut-groveHeadly Westerfield

I’m writing and posting this month’s Unpacking The Writer a little early to get it posted before I leave on Monday for the 2nd Annual Sunrise to Canton Road Trip for Research. For the uninitiated, Unpacking The Writer is the monthly series in which I give my readers a look inside the mind of a writer, such as it is. And, in case you haven’t clued in yet, I am that writer. HI THERE!

NO CLICKING: I also used to use this monthly essay to beg my readers to click on the adverts here. However, I have been told I can’t do that anymore, even though it only returns a fraction of a penny per click. So I won’t. But, if you’re one of my smarter readers, you are already way ahead of me and clicking on the adverts anyway. You know there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop you.

SO SORRY: I owe my faithful readers an apology. More than one reader (two!) has noticed that I’ve not posted much new material at Not Now Silly lately, other than the regular Headlines Du Jour. I’m truly sorry, folks. While I have been researching a number of topics, nothing has gelled enough yet to be written up. I have also started a number of blog posts, some of which I still need to finish and others which (are crap and) will never see the light of day.

When I first began this blog I was given advice to post something every
day. Do you know how hard that is? Especially if you want a blog post to
have some weight? Especially if that added weight requires hours upon hours of research? Especially if it’s not your full-time job?

Despite that, I have published 583 posts in the last 27 months, not including this one. That averages 21.5 posts a month, a record I’m proud of. I’m also quite proud of many of the posts because I think I am mining important topics. As of this writing the Not Now Silly Top Ten is as follows:

[The Top Ten posts, always updated, always current, is in the column to the right of this one. It may have changed since this was published.]

In the early days of Not Now Silly I used to do a lot of one-off Day in History-type dealies. Maybe I should get back to doing some more of that after the 2nd Annual Sunrise to Canton Road Trip For Research. We’ll see.

Those one-offs were popular. They can also be pulled out of the archives on the appropriate dates in subsequent years. Conversely, Headlines Du Jour is pretty much stale the minute you read it. Yet Headlines Du Jour gets great numbers. Despite the simplicity, Headline Du Jour is time-consuming to post. It takes me 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours to format, even though the headlines themselves are compiled as they come in over the Not Now Silly Newsroom transom. Headlines Du Jour is the first thing I do when I wake up at 5:30 AM. As the first pot of coffee is brewing I sort the headlines collected since the last time. I decide which are keepers and which I should toss. Then they’re put into a running order that makes sense only to me. Some days, by the time it’s published, I feel totally wrung out and the pot of coffee is finished. However, I’ll try to add to the number of new posts (and pots of coffee?) on a regular basis while I also keep Headlines Du Jour going. My readers have that promise.

TO MY COCONUT GROVE READERS: While I never meant for Not Now Silly to be a blog solely about Coconut Grove, there have been times when it feels like that’s what it’s become. I’m thrilled that so many people in the West Grove have shared their personal stories with me. Oral histories are so important.

I’m still researching The Colour Line and will have new chapters in that series soon. While in Michigan, I will also be visiting the 8 Mile Wall for a blog post on The Colour Line in Detroit, ‘Merka’s first throwaway city. Meanwhile, there has been some news in the Grove, but nothing that seemed to deserve a blog post all on its own. In no particular order some of that is as follows:

Part of the Coconut Grove Playhouse parking lot will become a drive-in movie dealie on July 14th. The web site for the Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive In promises “Car hop service by TAURUS,” so we now know how Aries Development and Gino Falsetto plan to profit off this new arrangement. To remind readers: Aries is the company that secured a 50-year lease on the historic 120-year old E.W.F. Stirrup House 9 years ago and has allowed it to undergo Demolition by Neglect ever since.

A reminder why the E.W.F. Stirrup House is culturally
important to Coconut Grove can be found in the Not Now Silly
post Happy Birthday Coconut Grove!!! Now Honour Your Past

I had hoped to go to opening night of the Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive In, but the June opening was delayed a month. Now it won’t open until the day after I leave for the 2nd Annual Sunrise to Canton Road Trip For Research. This is actually one of those posts mentioned above, partially written in advance. I started it last month, just before the delay was announced. It would have become a full-blown blog post in the fullness of time. I had even considered delaying my Road Trip 2 days to go, take notes, take pictures, and finish writing that blog post, but, yannow what? I’ve seen The Cocoanuts, the first Marx Brothers movie, so many times I can recite entire scenes by heart. [Same with the 2nd movie in the opening night double feature, The Blob.] So, there’s another draft post consigned to the dustbin of history.

IRONY ALERT I: The Cocoanuts take place in Cocoanut Grove (the original spelling of Coconut Grove before it was illegally annexed by Miami in 1925).

IRONY ALERT II: The Cocoanuts satirizes the utter collapse of the Cocoanut Grove real estate market of the 1920s. Selling Florida swamp land had became such a a national joke that one of the top playwrights of the day, George S. Kaufman, and one of the country’s most famous composers, Irving Berlin, would write a musical about it. The Marx Brothers would first take it to Broadway, where it was a smash hit, and then make it their first movie extravaganza, launching a long career on film.

IRONY ALERT III: Miami has had several booms and busts since then. “Some people say” the current Miami building boom is just the beginning edge of the next bubble to bust.

IRONY ALERT IV: Bringing movies back to the Coconut Grove Playhouse, albeit outside, would be funny, if it weren’t so sad. When the currently-boarded up Coconut Grove Playhouse was originally built, it was to bring movies and culture to Coconut Grove. The land had been owned by E.W.F. Stirrup and sold to developers to build the Coconut Grove Theater, as it was called when it opened in 1927. It was renovated in the 1950s to become a legitimate theater, with the 1956 premier of “Waiting For Godot” as its first offering.

IRONY ALERT V: Even though the Coconut Grove Theater anchored the east end of Charles Avenue — the oldest neighbourhood in Miami, as well as the oldest Black neighbourhood — those folks had to go north to the smaller Ace Theater on Grand Avenue, which was not segregated. Earlier this month Miami’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board designated the Ace a historic site. According to the Miami Herald’s Jackie Salo:

For residents in the West Grove, the ACE Theater is a relic of the years of segregation. The movie theater, which was built circa 1930, was the only one to serve the black community in the Grove in the 1950s.

The building has since lost its luster, and stands as a shell of what it once was. The marquee has not lit up for years, and the pink facade that once distinguished the theater was painted white.

Plans to restore the theater never came to fruition and the rooms that housed sold-out audiences remain abandoned.

But the theater, albeit empty, has not been forgotten.

Having walked past the Ace many times, I’ve always thought it would make a great Indie/Revival movie house. Grand Avenue has been struggling for years. Opening a movie house on that stretch of Grand would go a long way towards revitalizing what was once the thriving Black business strip of Coconut Grove.

TROLLEYGATE: Still waiting for a settlement in the Trolleygate Scandal. The last word from my super-duper secret sources was that an offer was on the table and being considered. Consequently, all parties to the lawsuit asked the judge to give them 60 days to see if they could hammer out an agreement. That expired at the end of June, but I’ve heard nothing further. Basically the broad outline of the potential deal is this: A brand new Coral Gables diesel bus garage will be built right where the current Coral Gables diesel bus garage is. This despite the brand-spanking new [allegedly] illegal diesel bus garage built in West Grove. That’s the garage that’s the subject of multiple lawsuits, which even the Federal Department of Transportation ruled contravened the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The only decision left to be made is whether the brand-spanking new bus garage in West Grove can be used for the next 2-3 years while a newer diesel bus garage is built in Coral Gables.

Here’s how small West Grove really is: The [allegedly] illegal diesel bus garage is, more or less, just around the corner from the Ace Theater. Gibson Plaza, which I have also written about, is just across the street from the Ace Theater. Grand Avenue still has a long way to go before one could call this a revival, but it’s another baby step on the road to recovery for a business strip that’s seen better days.

Known all the world over, The Johnny Dollar Depreciation Society is
YOUR place for snark about Fox “News and crazy Fox “News” defenders

THE JOHNNY DOLLAR WARS: I couldn’t be more thrilled with the progress of The Johnny Dollar Wars up the Not Now Silly Top Ten Hit Parade. It justifies all the time I put into documenting those crazy cyber-stalking MoFos these last few years. Since being published on May 6th, The Johnny Dollar Wars has jumped to become the #4 most popular post at Not Now Silly, with 1,233 hits as we go to press. The only Not Now Silly post that ever rose faster and higher than that has now been relagated to the #5 position. Aries Development Continues To Rape Charles Avenue, about the E.W.F. Stirrup House had a good run, but it’s been leapfrogged in the ratings.

THE JOHNNY DOLLAR DEPRECIATION SOCIETY: I’ve migrated most of my Fox “News” snark from my timeline over to The Johnny Dollar Depreciation Society on the facebookery. I’m open to suggestions on how to make it more interactive. While membership has hit 120 people, only a few interact with the page at all, and only then by clicking LIKE. I’m thinking of holding a contest, but I’ll wait until I get back from Michigan to put that together.

LASTLY: Starting next Monday blog posts at Not Now Silly will be sporadically sporadic. My laptop has bought the farm and I’m not planning to get it fixed before I go away. I may look at a new device when I get back from the road trip, but it’s not in the budget at the moment.

The 2nd Annual Sunrise to Canton Road Trip for Research will be twice as long as last year’s. Last year’s research was productive, but, sadly, I had just a week to drive to Michigan, conduct my research, and drive back to FloriDuh. Despite mining some interesting veins of information, I had to cut the research short because I simply ran out of time. This year I will be meeting with some of the same people who fed me documents last time. I will also have more time to pour over some microfiche that one of my correspondents has uncovered. It may go a long way to provide greater context for the book I am writing.

Be good to your neighbours because you never know
when a journalist will come sniffing around for information.

~~~~~Headly Westerfield, The 1st Annual Sunrise
to Canton Road Trip For Research, June 2013

While I may be able to log into certain accounts while I am gone, last year I was unable to log in to facebook from strange computers because I was locked out of everything that wasn’t my home computer or my phone. Hopefully this year I have solved this problem. However, two things to keep in mind: 1). I don’t exactly know where and when I might encounter a computer, not to mention a computer owner who will allow me to take over their computer for a few hours to compose a blog post. Consequently, just like last year, it may just be updates from the Windows Phone. However, I won’t abandon you entirely. Also: Check my Twitter and Facebookery for updates from the road

And, speaking of computers along the way, I have twice as many visits with readers, fans, and friends scheduled for the 2nd Annual Sunrise to Canton Road Trip for Research. The intinerary is now locked. Stops are scheduled for (in order) Ave Maria University, in Ava Maria, Florida; Bonita Springs, Florida, which is just down the road from the University; Tallahassee, Florida‘s capital, after which I leave the state; Miamisburg, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Canton, Michigan, where I will stay for almost a week to conduct research and visit old haunts; Elyria, Ohio; Cleveland, Ohio, which looks to be the ~~scene of the crime~~ city chosen to host the 2016 GOP Convention; Dean Martin’s home town of Steubenville, Ohio; and Morgantown, West Virginia, where I will be given a privately-conducted Don Knotts Memorial Tour. Then it’s home by — no later than — the 28th of July.

A couple of people have asked me why I don’t just fly up to Canton, which would give me more time to research my book. There are 2 things that compel me to drive: 1). I love to drive. One of my favourite things to do is to be behind the wheel of a car, heading down the road, with the stereo cranked to 11; 2). It allows me to meet and greet some people that I’ve gotten to know thru’ the innertubes. Getting out, looking people in the eye, and debating the big stories of the day — or bullshitting over a coffee — is just a big bag of fun.

Some More Coconut Grove(s) History

October 26, 2013Cocoanut Grove, Coconut Grove, E.W.F. Stirrup House, EmTV, History Is Complicated, The Marx Brothers, unpacking-coconut-groveHeadly Westerfield

Cocoanut Grove is a 1938 movie, made well
after Coconut Grove lost the “A” in its name

I’ve been collecting historic pictures of Coconut Grove as long as I’ve been researching and taking pictures of the E.W.F. Stirrup House. For the past several years whenever I stumbled over a new old picture of Coconut Grove on the innertubes, I save it to my hard drive. I have built up a pretty fair collection, but I am always looking for more.

Direct searches for pictures, or articles, on historic Coconut Grove, Florida can be an exercise in frustration. All searches are complicated by how many things have been named Coconut/Cocoanut Grove over the years, how often the generic term “coconut grove” has appeared in print over the years, and how often things have been misspelled on the internet over the years.

The candy bar is not the village

There’s the candy bar, of course, but that’s just the beginning. High up on any Googalizer list is the famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. During Hollywood’s heyday the nightclub drew celebrities and Hollywood royalty to witness shows that featured performers such as Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Dorothy Dandridge, Benny Goodman, and Sammy Davis, Jr., just to name a few. Long before the Oscars were ever televised, six Academy Award ceremonies were held at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. Incidentally, Robert Kennedy gave his last speech at the Ambassador Hotel and was gunned down in the kitchen on his way out of the hotel. The kitchen, the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, and the Ambassador Hotel no longer exist, but they live on on the internet.

The Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador
Hotel during happier and kitchier times:

Another Cocoanut Grove nightclub was built as a roof garden atop the Century Theatre by impresario Florenz Ziegfeld — who had taken over the struggling theater built a mile north of the actual Theater District — with partner and Broadway producer Charles Dilligham. Even this couldn’t save the building, which also suffered from poor acoustics, and it was knocked down to build the Art Deco Century Apartments in 1931.

The aftermath of the horrific Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston, 1942

While there’s a Cocoanut Grove ballroom and conference center on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, the most famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub was the site of the deadliest nightclub fire in history. On that night in 1942, 492 people were killed, and hundreds injured,as a fire tore through the Boston nightclub during Thanksgiving celebrations. From the WikiWhackyWoo:

As is common in panic situations, many patrons attempted to exit through the main entrance, the same way they had entered. The building’s main entrance was a single revolving door, rendered useless as the panicked crowd scrambled for safety. Bodies piled up behind both sides of the revolving door, jamming it to the extent that firefighters had to dismantle it to enter. Later, after fire laws had tightened, it would become illegal to have only one revolving door as a main entrance without being flanked by outward opening doors with panic bar openers attached, or have the revolving doors set up so that the doors could fold against themselves in emergency situations.

A lot of laws were changed in the wake of the Cocoanut Grove fire and whenever there’s another fire in a nightclub, newspapers have to make reference to the tragedy in Boston. It’s in their contract.

At least on Google video searches I’ll always stumble across one of my favourite Marx Brothers movies. While the first Marx Brothers release, “The Cocoanuts” took place in Cocoanut Grove, Florida, it was filmed in Astoria, Queens between performances of their smash hit musical Animal Crackers. It was based on the earlier Broadway hit, The Cocoanuts, something that also crops up in many Google searches; which always find Gus Arheim and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra; Judy Garland’s opening night at Cocoanut Grove; Mercury at the Cocoanut Grove; not to mention Phil Harris and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra. Adding to the confusion is an episode of The First 48, called Gangs of Little Havana/Execution in Coconut Grove, which pops up; as does an episode of Sell This House, when Cesar and Lisa Verde tried to unload their Coconut Grove house. Both get posted on the YouTubery occasionally, but are always removed by a copyright take-down order.

Liverpool had a nightclub called Coconut Grove; as does Sacramento; as did Dundee, Scotland; and Buffalo, New York; while a cartoon I’ve never been able to find is called The Coo-Coo Nut Grove, and spoofs the famous Hollywood nightclub; a suburb of Darwin, in the Northern Territories of Austrailia, is called Coconut Grove; not to mention a song I have yet to hear, written for the Fred McMurray movie Cocoanut Grove [poster above] by Harry Owen, of Harry Owen and his Royal Hawaiians, who also wrote one of my favourite tunes, “Sweet Leilani.” [A long time ago I created a Spotify playlist with about 100 versions of Sweet Leilani.]

Which brings us full circle. Harry Owen was able to write music for and appear in a Fred McMurray movie was because Hawaiian Music was a hot a craze in “Merka at one time. From there the interest went World Wide and now there are many several whole bucketfuls of stuff named Coconut Grove all around the world, from carpet cleaners to hole-in-the-wall diners to motels. Sometimes they make the news. Sometimes my Google ‘As It Happens’ Alerts go haywire for nothing to do with the Coconut Grove I’m monitoring. F’rinstance, remember that recent crazy FloriDuh story, that broke national, because the two convicts escaped using forged release papers, like recently when those two escaped convicts were nabbed at the Coconut Grove Motor Court.

If you think all of that makes a search for Coconut Grove complicated, I have been adding my own to the Googleopolis. All my Not Now Silly posts on Coconut Grove rank fairly high on the Googalizer now andI have to weed through those now to find anyting worthwhile.

ANd, Because I have been trying to become more multi-media savvy here at Not Now Silly, for the last week I have been learning how to use a movie making program. When I realized I had all the makings for a pretty little montage, I created my latest entry to the Google Coconut Grove search engine confusion.

Play this movie full screen for the best effect

If I still have your attention, here are a couple of other montages I’ve put together:

As always, comments welcome.

Groucho Marx ► Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be

October 2, 2012Chico Marx, Cocoanut Grove, Coconut Grove, Groucho Marx, Gummo Marx, Harpo Marx, Nostalgia Ain't What It Used To Be, The Marx Brothers, Vaudeville, Zeppo MarxHeadly Westerfield

Dateline October 2, 1890 – Julius Henry Marx is born in NYC. Later he is nicknamed Groucho and, along with his brothers Chico, and Harpo, became one-third of the greatest comedy team of all time: The Marx Brothers.

The Marx boys started in Vaudeville as singers. The Four Nightingales were Julius, Milton (also called Gummo), Arthur, and another boy named Lou Levy. They were always near the bottom of bill. After one performance in which the audience was more interested in a mule kicking up a fuss in Nacodoches, Texas, they started cracking wise onstage. Among the ad libbed gems: “Nacogdoches is full of roaches” and “The jackass is the flower of Tex-ass.” As it turned out, they were better comedians than singers. Instead of getting angry, the audience loved them. The Marx Brothers completely rewrote the act (read: borrowed a skit about a schoolroom and had it rewritten to suit themselves) and toured in variations of it for the next seven years or so, adding Chico along the way.

There were actually 5 Marx Brothers. 1938: Front L-R:
Harpo, Chico, Groucho; Back L-R: Zeppo, Gummo

Each of the brothers played upon a comedy trope popular at the time. Harpo played a “Patsy Brannigan:” An Irish ruffian. He was uncomfortable speaking onstage, so he took the advice of his show-biz uncle Al Shean to remain silent and mime. Chico used an Italian accent that had, in real life, helped him avoid some bullies who were looking for a Jewish kid. Groucho played the teacher in this “Fun In Hi Skule” skit with a German accent. However, after the Lusitania was sunk a German accent was no longer funny to ‘Merkins. Groucho dropped the accent and became the character we know today: a rapid-fire, joke-cracking Lothario.

After seven years The Marx Brothers found themselves at the top of the bill and starring in their own Broadway shows, two of which became their first two movies: “The Cocoanuts” and “Animal Crackers.”

FUN TRIVIA: The action in “The Cocoanuts” takes place in Coconut Grove, Florida, during the land boom of the 1920s. Coconut Grove is also the location of the E.W.F. Stirrup House, which I am trying to save from a rapacious developer. Take a few minute to read about my ongoing series dedicated to the campaign to save this 120-year old house, which is currently undergoing Demolition by Neglect.

In all, The Marx Brothers made 13 movies together and Groucho made another 13 movies without his brothers. By the time Groucho became a radio show host for “You Bet Your Life,” which he later took to tee vee, he had already been in show biz for nearly half a century.

Here are some highlights of Groucho’s long career.

This was Phyllis Diller’s first appearance on national tee vee:

Just think: Had it not been for that mule in Texas all those years ago, we might have never heard of The Marx Brothers. We are lucky to have had them.

***