This is a tour of American music — jump blues, slow blues, rockabilly, Tin Pan Alley ballads, Country Swing — that evokes the sprawl, fatalism and subversive humor of Dylan's sacred text, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, the pre-rock voicings of Hank Williams, Charley Patton and Johnnie Ray, among others, and the ultradry humor of Groucho Marx.

For example, the Marx Brothers ' classic film Duck Soup, at the climax of the film, the camera shows a shot of Groucho Marx speaking a line, followed by a shot of something else happening, followed by another shot of Groucho.

) She also performed some acrobatics while trying to steal a wallet from Groucho Marx in the Marx Brothers film At the Circus ( 1939 ).

The FBI has generated files on numerous celebrities including Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, John Denver, John Lennon, Jane Fonda, Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin, MC5, Lou Costello, Sonny Bono, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Mickey Mantle, and Gene Autry.

Julius Henry " Groucho " Marx ( October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977 ) was an American comedian and film and television star.

Marx Brothers | The Marx Brothers ( from top, Chico Marx | Chico, Harpo Marx | Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo Marx )

Groucho Marx made 26 movies, 13 of them with his brothers Chico and Harpo.

Marx Brothers | The Marx Brothers ( clockwise: Groucho, Chico Marx | Chico, and Harpo Marx | Harpo ) by Yusuf Karsh in 1948.

Once, at a restaurant ( the most common location of Groucho's antics ), a fan came up to him and said, " Excuse me, but aren't you Groucho Marx?

The family was going through customs and, while filling out a form, Groucho listed his name as " Julius Henry Marx " and his occupation as " smuggler.

Irving Berlin quipped, " The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl ", In his book The Groucho Phile, Marx says " I've been a liberal Democrat all my life ", and " I frankly find Democrats a better, more sympathetic crowd ....

Groucho Marx's classic joke depends on a grammatical ambiguity for its humor, for example: " Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

Bovril is served at the Groucho Club and is associated with football culture, being commonly drunk on the terraces from thermos flasks in winter.

In a 1950 radio episode of You Bet Your Life, Groucho stated that he was born in a room above a butcher's shop on 78th Street in New York City.

By the time the Marxes made their first movie, they were major stars with sharply honed skills, and when Groucho was relaunched to stardom on You Bet Your Life, he had already been performing successfully for half a century.

Similar anecdotes are corroborated by Groucho's friends, not one of whom went without being publicly embarrassed by Groucho on at least one occasion.

Much of his personal correspondence with those and other figures is featured in the book The Groucho Letters ( 1967 ) with an introduction and commentary on the letters written by Groucho, who donated his letters to the Library of Congress.

In the mid-1940s, during a depressing lull in his career ( his radio show Blue Ribbon Town had failed, and the Marx Brothers as film performers were well past their prime ), Groucho was scheduled to appear on a radio show with Bob Hope.

Annoyed that he was made to wait in the waiting room for 40 minutes, Groucho went on the air in a foul mood.

Groucho said, " Well, I've had no success in radio, and I can't hold on to a sponsor.

Another recording made by Groucho during this period was " The Funniest Song in the World ", released on the Young Peoples ' Records label in 1949.

By the time You Bet Your Life debuted on TV on October 5, 1950, Groucho had grown a real mustache ( which he had already sported earlier in the films Copacabana and Love Happy ).

In 1960, Groucho, a lifelong devotee of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, appeared as Koko the Lord High Executioner in a televised production of The Mikado on NBC's Bell Telephone Hour.

Another TV show, Tell It To Groucho, premiered January 11, 1962 on CBS, but only lasted five months.

In the early 1970s, largely at the behest of companion Erin Fleming, Groucho had a live one-man show, including one recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1972 and released as a double album, An Evening with Groucho, on A & M Records.

He also made an appearance in 1973 on a short-lived variety show hosted by Bill Cosby, who idolized Groucho.

Groucho developed friendships with rock star Alice Cooper — the two were photographed together for Rolling Stone magazine — and television host Dick Cavett, becoming a frequent guest on Cavett's late-night talk show.

His health was noticeably worsening by the following year and when Gummo died, aged 84, on April 21, 1977, in Palm Springs, California, the death of his younger brother was not reported to Groucho because it was thought too detrimental to his health.

" When Groucho himself was on his deathbed, and a nurse came around with a thermometer, explaining that she wanted to see if he had a temperature, he responded, " Don't be silly — everybody has a temperature.

* In his autobiography, Groucho and Me, Groucho Marx talks about playing whist with an ex-girlfriend during a chapter on her husbands insomnia.

( Joe Adamson, in Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo, observed that this scene disproved the common notion that Zeppo was the least of the Marx Brothers: " It takes a Marx Brother to pull something like that on a Marx Brother and get away with it.

In 1958 Bergen appeared with his 12 year old daughter Candice on an episode of You Bet Your Life starring Groucho Marx.

Groucho was the subject of an urban legend about a supposed response to a contestant who had nine children which supposedly brought down the house.

During the early 1950s, Groucho described his perfect woman: “ Someone who looks like Marilyn Monroe and talks like George S. Kaufman .”

" Groucho continued to ignore the script, and although Hope was a formidable ad-libber in his own right, he could not begin to keep up with Groucho, who lengthened the scene well beyond its allotted time slot with a veritable onslaught of improvised wisecracks.

* Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly who, at Mrs. Teasdale's insistence, becomes the leader of Freedonia.

Marlowe meanwhile is miserable — she thinks she is falling in love with Hunter, but her one real true love is the man who discovered her — George Schmidlap ( Groucho Marx ).

Fictional interviews are interspliced throughout, especially those of Starkwell's parents who wear Groucho Marx noses and moustaches.

Unlike most of his brothers ( bar Gummo ), who were unlucky with love ( Groucho was divorced three times, Chico once, and Zeppo twice ), Harpo's marriage to Susan was lifelong.

His death was never reported to Groucho, who by that time had become so ill and weak that it was thought the news would be of further detriment to his health.

A master ad libber, Allen often tangled with his network's executives ( and often barbed them on the air over the battles ), while developing routines the style and substance of which influenced contemporaries and futures among comic talents, including Groucho Marx, Stan Freberg, Henry Morgan and Johnny Carson, but his fans also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and novelists William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Herman Wouk ( who began his career writing for Allen ).

By 1993 he had become involved with Deborah Bosley, a former head waitress at the Groucho Club and an author, who is his junior by several decades.

Charlotte Chandler ( the pen name of Lyn Erhard ) is an American biographer and playwright who has written biographies of Groucho Marx, Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Alfred Hitchcock.

The presenters in question here were Janie Mann, who did dynamic combustion shows dressed as a witch circa 1977-78, and Dan Cox, who did physics demos as Groucho Marx in the same era.

The song was extremely popular and well remembered: a pastiche was included in The Cabaret Girl, a 1922 musical produced in London, a parody of it was recorded by Bing Crosby and Johnny Mercer in the late 1930s, another parody was performed by Jackie Gleason and Groucho Marx ( who was Al Shean's nephew ) on television in 1967, and Lenny Bruce was able to make an offhanded reference to it in his nightclub act of the 1960s, all of them confident that audiences would recognize it right away.

Hood was a guest on such TV shows of the early 1960s as Tell It to Groucho and The Jack Benny Show, where she appeared on October 30, 1962 as " Darla " in a spoof of the Our Gang comedies with Jack Benny ( who appeared as Alfalfa ).

Hugo Z. Hackenbush ( Groucho Marx ) is a veterinarian who is hired as chief of staff for the Standish Sanitarium, owned by Judy Standish ( Maureen O ' Sullivan ), at the insistence of her most important patient, the rich Mrs. Upjohn, ( Margaret Dumont ), who insists on being treated only by Dr. Hackenbush.

The " 400 of Newport " are delighted with the circus ; when Jardinet arrives, Groucho, who also delayed Jardinet by implicating him in a " dope ring ," disposes of the Frenchman and his orchestra by having them play on a floating bandstand down at the water's edge.

During production, the skin was switched from a gorilla to an orangutan, which perplexed some viewers who would ask Groucho about it if they happened to meet him.

Groucho, who usually displayed little tolerance for extremists, admired Bootzin's rugged individualism and said so, on camera.