What a dog's dinner of a book this is. (Stay with me through the several paragraphs of griping 'til I get to the part where I say that Groucho is a national treasure.) I don't even know who to blame. Whoever edited this volume is hiding his light under a bushel. Originally published thirty years ago, and recently brought back into print, you'd think somebody would have tidied it up in the meantime. There's an introduction by Arthur Sheekman, who evidently thinks himself a fine fellow; but if you read it, you won't make it as far as Groucho, so better skip on. Sheekman died in 1978, so I can't lay the responsibility at his door.

You have to have a jolly good reason to present letters in anything other than chronological order. This editor hasn't found one. These fragments are divided into categories which seem, to me, arbitrary. 'The Movie Business', 'Friends Abroad', 'Touching on Television', 'For Publication' (and how, pray, does a column for Variety magazine count as a letter?). It's fussy, and it feels like tinkering to me.

There's no index.

There aren't many footnotes; just enough to drive you nuts. Half the names you meet are half-remembered, while many are plain forgotten. You can look them up, of course, but it's an invitation to feel ignorant. That's right, Nunnally Johnson wrote the screenplay for The Grapes of Wrath and The Dirty Dozen—of course he did. I knew that.

And then there's the selection. Letters not only from Groucho, but to him as well. This works only if we find the others mightily amusing. If we wanted to read filler, there must be Groucho filler. It might make sense if we were to follow a correspondence in detail, but we drop into the middle of an exchange and find ourselves wrong-footed by references to matters already under discussion. It were better to put a letter in context with a spot of editorial text. But then, you'd need an editor for that, and he has done a bunk.

And yet, Groucho is such marvelous company. Warm. Generous-spirited. Lively and smart. And sweet. Half the letters here are expressions of sincere admiration for his friends, or applause for their work. He's always reassuring people that they were better than the shows in which they appeared. Or for which they wrote. What comes across most strongly after Groucho's wonderful playfulness is his capacity for friendship and kindness. Groucho was a national treasure. (See. I told you.)

Groucho never meant these letters for publication, and it shows. There are in-jokes and allusions to then-current but now long-forgotten people, plays, and events. He's amusing his friends, not playing to the gallery.

"Dear Elaine (Tynan), I am sending you a photo of myself at the age of seven. You will probably say to yourself, “Why the cigar?” That's a very good question. Actually, the cigar is a phoney. So is the moustache and, to wrap it all up neatly, so am I."

Groucho was only persuaded to publish when it was made clear that the book would include letters to him as well as from him, and it's typical that this consideration swayed him.

He makes it look easy, and most people writing to Groucho seem to have felt compelled to join in the fun, although not many rise to his level of wit and elegance. It's a universal response to Groucho's genius to imitate it. I, myself, have waxed pretty Groucho in my heyday (which was, quite literally, just the one day. Hey, Uncle Julius! See what I did?). Goodman Ace has an effortless Groucho mimesis:

"Dear Groucho, I would have answered your letter sooner, but you didn't send one."

Arthur Sheekman misses the target most of the time. Who? Both writers, my dears.

Sheekman worked with the Marx Brothers on more than one film, but he has a tin ear:

"My plans are still in embryo. In case you've never been there, this is a small town on the outskirts of wishful thinking."

Most of Groucho's friends were writers. Groucho also corresponded with Thurber (he called him 'Jim'; I've never imagined Thurber was ever Jim. I always think of him as 'Mister'), and E. B. White. There aren't many letters to his brothers for the simple reason that they saw quite a lot of each other. There are a couple of fascinating exchanges wherein Groucho is genuinely starstruck. Evesdropping on the courtship between him and T. S. Eliot feels faintly indecent; it's like being at a party with people who you know are going to bed together before they've twigged themselves: They exchange photographs. They make endless plans to meet and have dinner, which are endlessly frustrated, occasioning apologies and promises anew. It's actually a relief when they finally manage to meet.

Groucho was one of the greats, never out of his league—whether corresponding with President Truman or Irving Berlin—and never grand with children and fans. There was, as the English used to say, 'no side to him'.

I have to leave a last word to Groucho. When Warner Brothers complained that the title of the film A Night In Casablanca came too close to their own Casablanca, Groucho dealt with them personally.

"Dear Warner Brothers...

I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers...What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as The Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor's eye, and even before us there had been other brothers—the Smith Brothers, The Brothers Karamazov, Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, can you spare a dime?” (This was originally “Brothers, can you spare a dime?” but this was spreading a dime pretty thin...)"...

and so on through a succession of letters until the legal department of Warner Brothers sank to its knees in exhaustion and yielded to Groucho's unarguable teasing.