Standup Comedy - An Evening With Groucho

An Evening with Groucho - 1972



Review by Bruce Eder



In the early 1970s, Groucho Marx took his one-man show -- which, essentially, he'd been doing, in one form or another, for more than a decade, either on You Bet Your Life or whatever other venue he happened to be working in -- on the road. The culmination was this recording (sometimes referred to as An Evening with Groucho Marx) from his appearance at Carnegie Hall in New York, in front of an adoring audience, introduced by Dick Cavett, and accompanied by Marvin Hamlisch at the piano, with his companion Erin Fleming providing the female vocals where necessary. With the Marx Brothers' movies, it was easy to forget that they had some of the best writers in the business providing them with lines, but as the material was generally built upon their stage personalities, their movie work was representative of the Marxes as artists -- by the time Groucho did this performance, at age 81, he had pretty much become his public persona, so this is an honest representation of Groucho Marx unchained, as it were. His voice creaks a little bit, and one sometimes wishes that he could have made this career move five years or so earlier (if not sooner), but what is here is dazzling in its cleverness and wit, and also as a document of an era of life that was fading away in our midst, and a tradition in entertainment, sometimes coarse but always clever and very ethnic (and Jewish) that was already unknown to most of the people present in the audience. The record became a best-seller as a double LP and later became a highly prized CD before going out of print sometime in the 1990s. From his pronunciations to his details of daily life embodied in his stories, and the fragments of vaudeville entertainment quoted and sprinkled throughout his stories, the recording is priceless. Despite his age, Groucho's energy picks up as the performance rolls along, so that by the middle of the disc, it's easy to forget most of the time that it's an octogenarian that we're listening to, charming, clever, witty, and acerbic all at once.

http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:0zftxqehldaeGroucho Marx - 01 - Overture- Medley From Marx Bros. Films (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)

Groucho Marx - 02 - Introduction (Dick Cavett intro)

Groucho Marx - 03 - Hello, I Must Be Going (w Erin Fleming)

Groucho Marx - 04 - Violin Solo, Jack Benny Tribute

Groucho Marx - 05 - My Family, How We Got Our Names

Groucho Marx - 06 - Strange RelativesUncle Julius

Groucho Marx - 07 - Chico At Klauber Horn Co.

Groucho Marx - 08 - Uncle Herman, Chiropodist

Groucho Marx - 09 - Timbuctoo (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)

Groucho Marx - 10 - Annie Berger

Groucho Marx - 11 - World War One, Vaudeville In Toronto

Groucho Marx - 12 - Oh, How That Woman Could Cook (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)

Groucho Marx - 13 - Toronto Song (Irving Berlin Denies He Wrote It)

Groucho Marx - 14 - London Stories Polish Officer Story

Groucho Marx - 15 - Churchill & 2nd World War

Groucho Marx - 16 - Tough Chicago Critic Story

Groucho Marx - 17 - Palace Theatre Sarah Bernhardt

Groucho Marx - 18 - Fanny BriceSwain's Rats & Cats

Groucho Marx - 19 - Poem From The Play Animal Crackers

Groucho Marx - 20 - T.S. Eliot Memorial Laurence Olivier's Lap

Groucho Marx - 21 - 2nd World War Bond Tour

Groucho Marx - 22 - Houdini Story

Groucho Marx - 23 - Music In Cocoanuts- AlwaysGeorge Kaufman & Morrie Ryskind Story

Groucho Marx - 24 - Stay Down Here Where You Belong (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)

Groucho Marx - 25 - Otto Kahn Story

Groucho Marx - 26 - W.C. Fields BB GunProhibitionBaby Leroy

Groucho Marx - 27 - Heavens Above

Groucho Marx - 28 - Everybody Works But FatherFathers Day (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)

Groucho Marx - 29 - Margaret Dumont, The Dowager In Our Films (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)

Groucho Marx - 30 - Thalberg Story- Garbo

Groucho Marx - 31 - Sampson & Delilah Story

Groucho Marx - 32 - Will Rogers, Baseball In Baltimore

Groucho Marx - 33 - Priest's Stories Plaza HotelMontreal

Groucho Marx - 34 - Rome

Groucho Marx - 35 - Show Me A Rose (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)

Groucho Marx - 36 - Lydia The Tatooed Lady (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)