Marxfest Diary: Days 8-11

Jonny Porkpie, Tigger-James Ferguson, and Scout
Durwood in The Bawdy House. Photo: Nishell Falcone.

DAY EIGHT: I'm afraid your correspondent let you down on Day Eight, failing to attend both the 2:00 screening of Monkey Business and the first performance of The Pinch Brothers in "The Bawdy House." I was recovering from the first week of Marxfest events, and preparing for the rest.

There are still three chances to see The Bawdy House -- which, as you may know, is a burlesque show written and directed by Marxfest Committee member Jonny Porkpie. I'll catch it this Thursday, May 15, following our Shindig with Bill Marx. The Bawdy House also has performances on May 18 and 22. (Get your tickets right here.) It will be another week before I can report on this event, but perhaps someone who saw it last Thursday will provide more details in the meantime. I'm told it's extremely funny. (Update: Here's Trav S.D.'s commentary on the opening night performance.) Here's a short video Jonny posted yesterday, featuring clips from Thursday's show:



DAY NINE: Friday night was yet another of our tentpole events -- the big Marx Brothers cabaret at 54 Below, produced by Kevin Fitzpatrick, devised by Bill Zeffiro, and fittingly entitled The Music of the Marx Brothers.

The Music of the Marx Brothers company: Marissa Mulder, Dandy
Wellington, Tonna Miller, Bill Zeffiro, special guest, Rebekah Lowin,
Kate Manning, Jesse Gelber, Steve Ross. Photo: Kevin Fitzpatrick.

There's been a good feeling around this event from its earliest stages, which I attribute to the talent and enthusiasm of Bill Zeffiro. If you're familiar with his wonderful "1928 exploitation musical" The Road to Ruin, you won't be surprised to hear that he's a passionate, lifelong fan of the Marx Brothers. Bill has a clear streak of anarchic madness himself.

There was something in the air on Friday, besides mist, but the mist didn't hurt. It was a great, gray New York day. I arrived in the vicinity of 54 Below too early for the noon soundcheck, so I wandered around Broadway in the mist and did something I've never done before -- bought the Wall Street Journal. Because we were in it. (There was a Music of the Marx Brothers item, and a great photograph of our emcee, Dandy Wellington -- and even a nice mention of I'll Say She Is. Trav fears they may revoke it after they see our Wall Street number.)

This was the sign on our dressing
room door at 54 Below.

The soundcheck is when I really started to get excited. 54 Below is a great room, and I felt lucky to be there, and to be working with such fine performers -- though, as I hinted in my last entry, I rehearsed and soundchecked with the awareness that I probably wasn't going to wind up in the show. Bill did everything he could to include me, but in the end showbiz is about status, and I knew that if our celebrity guest showed up I was sacked.

The show itself was spectacular -- owing largely, like other Marxfest events, to the obvious love and enthusiasm of the audience. Imagine a crowd that breaks into cheers and applause when they hear the opening notes of "The Monkey Doodle Doo!" That semi-classic from The Cocoanuts was performed most winningly by Rebekah Lowin in one of the evening's highlights. Some others:

Bill Zeffiro at the piano, rehearsing with Marissa Mulder,
Rebekah Lowin, Dandy Wellington, and Jesse Gelber in
the greenroom before the show. Photo: Kevin Fitzpatrick.

• Bill Zeffiro, head down and fingers fluttering, beginning the show with the deeply evocative medley I call "The Grouchoverture." Also: His conviction on "Stay Down Here Where You Belong."
• Dandy Wellington's "Everyone Says I Love You" softshoe.
• Tonna Miller, delivering "Cosi-Cosa" in a state of operatic splendor, and also of pregnancy, gesturing to her midsection to give subtext to the lyric "Well, yes and no!"
• Marissa Mulder's "Always." Bill introduced her with the anecdote about "Always" being cut from The Cocoanuts: George S. Kaufman told Irving Berlin, "It stinks." Ms. Mulder took the stage, said, "This song really stinks," and proceeded to stop the show.
• The elegance and touching sincerity of Steve Ross, delivering "Love Me and the World is Mine" -- first in a tremulous whisper, then richer and more urgent as the song progressed.
• Gelber and Manning did two sets, both consisting only of highlights, but if I could only tell you about one I'd pick their sweet, winsome, and period-perfect rendition of "Why Am I So Romantic?"

Marxfest Committee member Kathy Biehl,
with special guest. Photo: Amanda Sisk.

Roughly halfway through the show, following Tonna Miller's beautiful rendition of "Alone," Bill Zeffiro announced that there was a very special guest in the house who probably needed no introduction. Then a familiar voice was heard, yammering from a corner of the room -- "Well, well, a worse-looking audience I've never seen!" -- and a familiar figure loped his way through the room and onto the stage. Once there, he casually insulted Zeffiro, the venue, and the audience, and between jokes he warbled "There's a Place Called Omaha, Nebraska." I'm told his turn was well-received.

I'm also told there will soon be video available of a few of the performances from The Music of the Marx Brothers. (On our YouTube channel, incidentally, we've just released some of the vaudeville performances from the May 7 Marxes in Manhattan show.)

UPDATE (6/11): Video of three performances from Music of the Marx Brothers has now surfaced on YouTube:

DAY TEN: On the tenth day of Marxfest, it was out to Queens. The Greater Astoria Historical Society is mere blocks from the Kaufman-Astoria Studios, formerly Paramount's New York production base, where the Brothers filmed Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers. (The GAHS, incidentally, appears twice on our calendar -- they're also offering a free screening of Room Service on May 24.)

Trav S.D. speaking at the Greater Astoria
Historical Society. Photo: Don Spiro.

Marxfest Committee member and showbiz polymath Trav S.D. delivered "Anarchy in Astoria," the second of his three lecture/performances on the Marxfest schedule. At the first, on Coney Island, Trav discussed the evolution of the Marx Brothers from a singing act to a comedy act, during their vaudeville period. In Astoria, he picked up the story twenty years later -- the boys having conquered vaudeville and Broadway, now experimenting with talking pictures.

Trav's entertaining account of the making of Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers ("a backlot backstory," he has said) again achieved the Marxfest Ideal: it provided enough of an overview to be of interest to casual fans, and also plenty of obscure detail and fresh insight for the fanatics to chew on. I might as well confess at this point that I'm in the latter group. I especially enjoyed Trav's reasoned defenses of directors Robert Florey and Victor Heerman against Groucho's frequent criticisms, and his appraisal of the film version of The Cocoanuts as "strangely underwater."

Research project: What was the name and location of the Italian restaurant in Astoria that Chico disappeared to during the filming of the team's first two pictures? Anybody?

For this talk, Trav appeared in a white suit and pith helmet, his appearance suggesting to me that Mark Twain was understudying for Groucho in Animal Crackers. Captain Spalding meets Captain Stormfield. For the Coney Island talk, he donned an academic robe and mortarboard. What will Trav wear at "We're All Mad Here: The Marx Brothers in Context?" Find out at the Mid-Manhattan Library on May 29!

Kat Mon Dieu as Marilyn Monroe, with Jonny Porkpie,
Scout Durwood, and Tigger!, at the Stonewall Inn.

DAY ELEVEN: Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art school, according to its website, "is the world's premier alt.drawing movement. Artists draw glamorous underground performers in an atmosphere of boozy conviviality." On Sunday afternoon at the historic Stonewall Inn, Dr. Sketchy's held a special session with the stars of The Bawdy House as models. I hope someone who attended this event will write about it, here or elsewhere. I couldn't make it, but I did swipe the charming photograph on the left from Jonny's Instagram page: the Pinch Brothers (Also Sisters) with Kat Mon Dieu, who hosted the event as Marilyn Monroe.

Day Eleven of Marxfest was also Mother's Day. For us, of course, this was a day to celebrate not just our own mothers, but also Minnie Schoenberg Marx. She generally emerges from Marx Brothers literature as an amalgam of Mama Rose and Joan of Arc. Some of the most diligent Marx researchers have established that Minnie's management of her sons' career was not as masterful as they liked to say it was. (Simon Louvish's reluctant conclusion is that "being Minnie's boys was a bad career move.") But it all worked out pretty well.

Read Trav S.D.'s appreciation of Minnie here.

Read Alexander Woollcott's appreciation of Minnie here.

Marxfest now goes quiet for a few days, so we can catch our breath and prepare the next course. The festival comes roaring back this Thursday, May 15. That's the International Day of Laughter, so designated by Bill Marx -- and the centennial of the legendary nicknaming, according to Robert Bader. We're marking the occasion with a full day of events. At 2:00, you can choose between free screenings of A Night at the Opera (96th Street Library) or Room Service (Epiphany Library). At 6:00, we have a Marxfest event you can attend no matter where you are -- an online video conversation, in real time, with Bill Marx. This global gathering of Marx Brothers fans is presented in association with the video chat platform Shindig, and all you need to participate is a computer and a webcam. And then at 8:00 at the Players Theatre, the second performance of The Bawdy House. Then, on Saturday, May 17, we've got two Yorkville events during the day (The Barx Brothers Dogwalk and my presentation The Marxes of Yorkville), and another Porkpie-produced burlesque event, "You Bet Your Ass," at 10:00 pm.

And that will have taken us past the halfway point in this miraculous Month of Marx -- with some of our most exciting events still to come. We'll see you there.

Yours in Marx,