from:
http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_An_Evening_With_Groucho_Singles
An Evening with Groucho is a look at the life of Groucho Marx and the Marx Brothers, as told by Groucho.
Groucho Marx Biography:
Born: October 2, 1890 in New York City, New York
Died: August 19, 1977 in Los Angeles, California
Groucho was born Julius Henry Marx on October 2, 1890 in New York. He was the third of the five surviving sons of Sam and Minnie Marx. He was the first of the brothers to start stage career aged 15 in an act called The Leroy Trio. Other acts followed, but none of them was a great success. Twice the other members of the act disappeared overnight and left him penniless in a town far away from home.
When his brothers came on stage, they finally had a success with the musical comedy called I'll Say She Is. It was at one of the performances of this show that Groucho got his painted moustache. He arrived late at the theater and used greasepaint to create a moustache. He found this so much easier than a glued on moustache that he insisted on using this technique from then on.
Always being a liberal, Groucho sometimes made critical remarks about politics and had friends which were regarded as communist by the US of the 1950s. This led to Groucho being investigated by the FBI.
When Marx Brothers became popular again in the last sixties/early seventies Groucho made a comeback with a show in Carnegie Hall in 1972. At the film festival in Cannes in 1972, he was made Commandeur des Arts et Lettres and in 1974 he received a special Academy Award for the achievements of the Marx Brothers.
Groucho died on August 19th, 1977 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. His ashes are at Eden Memorial Park, San Fernando, California.
