Groucho's Sox-Life
From a time when literacy was common and advertisers thought nothing of loading their magazine ads with a novella's worth of copy comes this 1932 Realsilk ad featuring Groucho Marx. Although it's unthinkable that Groucho really bothered to write this himself, it does have the feel of something written by one of his circle of regular scribes, peppered as it is with pre-Code sexual suggestiveness (that scabbard looks suspicious, too). A good reminder that, before MGM and the Hays office sanitized them into oblivion, the Marxes were the edgiest comics on the screen, unfettered Id masked with puns.Labels: cinema, Groucho Marx
posted by Aaron Neathery at 6:27 AM
3 Comments:
This is the better than the ad he "wrote" for Old Gold Cigarettes circa 1927. From what I've read, he actually wrote very little he was credited for, whether they be ads, essays or books. They were usually the work of Arthur Sheekman.
Even to the end. I had thought that Beds, at least, was written by Groucho.. until I learned otherwise. I wonder how much of Groucho's style was inspired by his writers rather than the other way around.
It's funny, for a guy who considered himself a writer who got sidetracked into acting, how little writing he really did. Obviously, it was the image he wanted to project. Kind of like Jennifer Lopez calling herself an actress who also sings. (Wait -- did I just compare J-Lo to Groucho? Yeesh.)
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