Two worlds collide: Groucho Marx and Jack Nicholson hanging out together.
Well, I was kind of lazy this weekend. But since it (in Sweden anyway) rains cats and dogs and I slept to 2 PM, I consider it still a weekend. Feels like a hung over Sunday, know what I mean? Nudge, nudge! Know what I mean!? (Inkipinkie, klikken and knipogen, etc... Nice subtitled version I found.)
Make your own Groucho to celebrate the 120-year old! You get the Groucho kit for free here at Lolita's Classics! Just follow these easy steps:
Choose a gorgeous picture of yourself.
Save the Groucho mustache-glasses-eyebrows picture to your computer.
Save the cigar picture to your computer.
Open the gorgeous picture of yourself in an editing program, like Photoshop.
Open the Groucho picture in the program. Click ctrl+a (marks all), click ctrl+c (copy), go to the gorgeous picture of yourself and click ctrl+v (paste). Change the size of the Groucho picture until it fits your face.
Repeat the same process with the cigar picture. Rotate the cigar into a preferred angle. Don't forget to save.
Voilà! You like just as amazing as the Lolita/Groucho transgender original!
One thing I love about studying film is that I encounter interesting people all the time, just when I thought that there were so few of them. Yesterday was the last school day for the summer, and a few of us sat down in the grass - sharing beer, wine and cigarettes and enjoying the rainy Swedish summer weather.
After a while I find myself talking to a girl that obviously has been in the same class with me for half a year without me noticing. (Perhaps an effect of me always thinking that women are whiny bitches I don't care to spend any time with.) Suddenly she asks me if I had heard about some guys called the Marx brothers. After a minor shock I regained consciousness enough to reveal my Groucho Marx tattoo on my upper arm, and got following reaction: "Oh my God! Is it...? No! Is it... It's Groucho!" And there I had a new friend. I just love when getting to know people takes less than three minutes.
Of course I had to send an email to her with the url to the top two Marx Brothers blogs: The Marx Brothers Council of Britain and The Marx Brothers (aka Minnie's Boys), and of course a link to Salvador Dalis Marx Brothers script "Giraffes on Horseback Salads". We Marxists have to stick together.
People will probably hate me for this, but I will share some pictures from the lovely beer picnic. Just look adore the film nerds and the cloudy Swedish summer. Hopefully I will have the energy to be more active on both my blog and yours now that I can take a break from school a few weeks. Cheers!
The Marx Brother girl and a good friend of mine,
who will also be our wedding photographer.
Happy happy fun time!
Beer and pizza - probably the only masculine features these two boys have. I like them, though.
To celebrate the birthday my favorite Marx brother, and possibly my favorite man of all time, Groucho Marx (1890-1977), I will share some more alternative photos of him and his brothers. Let's all put on greasepaint moustaches, round glasses and smoke Havana cigars to honor the one, the only - "Groucho!"
The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead was an american actress and talk-show hostess with a deep, raspy and sultry whiskey voice, born in Alabama into a powerful Democratic political family consisting of both senators and a Congressional Speaker of the House of Representatives. Unfortunately for her, she is more remembered for her wild and exhibitionistic way of living rather than for her stage performances or political activities.
Bankhead's mother died of blood poisoning only a month after her birth. At fifteen, Tallulah won a movie-magazine beauty contest and moved to New York, the town were she would spend her last days in life.
In New York she got some smaller parts in silent movies, but what soon made her infamous was her habit of partying all night, having lots of affairs (with both men and women) and even made frequent appearences at the Algonquin Round Table. Even though she started using both cocaine and marijuana during this time, she didn't consume any heavy amounts of alcohol, and she was soon well known for her wit, intelligence and sometimes uncomfortable outspokeness. A quote from a member at the Algonquin Round Table, Anita Loos, concerning Bankhead:
"She was so pretty that we thought she must be stupid."
A story is told by talk show host Dick Cavett about a party Bankhead attended, where she met the humouristic and forward version of Don Juan, Chico Marx. According to Cavett, the dialouge went as follows:
- Miss Bankhead. - Mr. Marx. - You know, I really want to fuck you. - And so you shall, you old-fashioned boy.
In 1923 Bankhead went to London and made her theatre debut. Next year she played the leading lady in the Pulitzer Price winning play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard. Her fame as a stage actress competed with her infame for promiscuos behaviour, and by the end of the decade she was one of London's most notorious celebrities.
1931 she went back to the States to be introduced to Hollywood as "Paramount Picture's next Marlene Dietrich", but audiences wasn't too entusiastic in her first four movies in the 1930's. Alas, those misfortunes didn't keep Bankhead from having fun. She rented a house in Hollywood and began hosting parties that were said to have "no boundaries". After all, Bankhead stated, she didn't enjoy making movies.
"The only reason I went to Hollywood was to fuck that divine Gary Cooper."
1933 Bankhead nearly died during a five-hour emergency hysterectomy for an advanced case of gonorrhea. She would later claim that Gary Cooper was responsible for it, and added to her doctor "Don't think this has taught me a lesson!".
In 1944 Alfred Hitchcock casted Bankhead as the cynical reporter in his film adoption of John Steinbeck's Lifeboat. Her performance in this film is considered by many to be her best role, and won her a New York Film Critics Circle Award. When she received her prize, she announced in her typical way:
"Dahlings, I was wonderful!"
In the 1950's Bankhead became hostess of a radio show on NBC, called The Big Show. She was introduced as "the glamorous, unpredictable" Tallulah Bankhead, and had guests like Marlene Dietrich, Groucho Marx (see picture below), Judy Garland and Gloria Swanson. She also made a guest appearance as herself in Lucille Ball's the Lucille Ball-Desi Amaz Show in December 1957.
Tallulah Bankhead died the 12th of December, 1968, at a hospital in New York due to double pneumonia, complicated by emphysema at the age of 66. Her last words were:
- Codeine... bourbon.
Groucho Marx on The Big Show (11-12-1950).
Personal quotes:
I've tried several varieties of sex, all of which I hate. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic; the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.
Say anything about me, dahling, as long as it isn't boring.
Cocaine isn't habit-forming. I should know - I've been using it for years.
I'm as pure as the driven slush.
I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.
Don't think I don't know who's been spreading gossip about me . . . After all the nice things I've said about that hag (Bette Davis). When I get hold of her, I'll tear out every hair of her mustache!
Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman and Groucho. Anyone who knows the occasion?
Groucho and his daughter Melinda (b. 1946).
Re-inventing Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush.
With Erin Fleming and an honorary Oscar in 1974.
The Marx family. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that L-R is: Groucho, Gummo, mother Minnie, Zeppo, Father Sam, Chico and Harpo. 
On the stage: Groucho, Zeppo, Harpo in his original red wig and a Chico painted to look like Edward G. Robinson.
Aren't they pretty? Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo "Hefner" Marx.
With proud father Sam "Frenchie" Marx to the right.
All five of them! L-R: Harpo, Zeppo, Chico, Groucho and Gummo.
Judy Garland and Vincente Minelli.
Gloria Swanson and Michael Farmer (1933).
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (ca 1950).
Groucho Marx and Eden Hartford (1954).
Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman.
Veronique Passani and Gregory Peck.
Gene Tierney and Oleg Cassini.
Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe (ca 1956).
Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn
Marlon Brando and Tarita (1962).
Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon (1966).
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford (1924).
Groucho Marx on The Big Show (11-12-1950).
