Washington with a Mustache

After a recent spate of Marx-Brothers-movie-watching, I went and found Monkey Business, by Simon Louvish to read more about them. Fascinating. I had never even realized there was a fifth brother, Gummo Marx, who never went so far in show biz with the others. The most fun bit, though, may be reading bits of scripts that never made it into movies. I especially loved this quote, from a show called "On the Balcony" in the '20's, before their movie days. Groucho is trying to get some musicians to stand in for his unmusical sons, for reasons hopefully relevant to the plot:

Groucho (on the telephone): Hello, Gumchewer, give me two wrong numbers, then give me the Musicians' Union. "Union," u-n-u-n. Hello Une. Say, have you got a couple of men who are out of work? Oh, they're all out of work? Oh, it's a union. Well, send me a couple of men who look like me. What do I look like? Did you ever see Lincoln without a beard? Well, I look like Washington with a mustache.

(Quoted in Monkey Business, pg. 126)

Good stuff.