‘I had no idea you were so handsome,’ Groucho Marx wrote to T.S. Eliot in 1961 on receiving from him a signed studio portrait. The Missouri-born Eliot was the Marx Brothers’ devoted fan; three years later, in June 1964, Groucho called on the 75-year-old poet at his home in London. Eliot was interested in the Marx Brothers’ first undisputed film masterpiece, Animal Crackers (1930), while Groucho wanted only to quote from ‘The Waste Land’; however, the men agreed that they shared a love of cats and fine cigars.
Winston Churchill was another who admired the Marxes and their deliciously mad repartee. During an air attack on London in May 1941 he found himself watching Monkey Business (1931), and was ‘glad of the diversion’. The Marx Brothers season this month at the British Film Institute includes Monkey Business as well as the other, glorious Paramount productions Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933).
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