Groucho Marx (1890 – 1977)
Primarily known as Groucho Marx, was an American comedian and actor, famous for his work in the Marx Brothers comedy team, and his solo film and television career.
[Variant:] "Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member".
I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.
Groucho Marx is the only actor I ever allowed to ad-lib in a show I wrote. That was because I couldn't stop him.
I got $25 from Reader's Digest last week for something I never said. I get credit all the time for things I never said. You know that line in You Bet Your Life? The guy says he has seventeen kids and I say: "I smoke a cigar, but I take it out of my mouth occasionally"? I never said that.
I did a bond tour during the Second World War... We were raising money, and we played Boston and Philadelphia and most of the big cities. And we got to Minneapolis. There wasn't any big theater to play there, so we did our show in a railroad station. Then I told the audience that I knew a girl in Minneapolis. She was also known in St.Paul, she used to come over to visit me. She was known as "The Tail Of Two Cities." I didn't sell any more bonds, but eh... they didn't allow me to appear anymore.
Here's to our wives and girlfriends... may they never meet! (Variation on an old Royal Navy wardroom toast: "Wives and Sweethearts! May they never meet!")
I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
A likely story — and probably true.
Die, my dear? Why that's the last thing I'll do!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.
George Kaufman and I wrote a lot of funny lines for Groucho, some of which he occasionally used... but it was Groucho who by his innate sense of timing and his inimitable delivery, added the ingredient that brought the house down.
Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation. When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication.
I sent the club a wire stating, "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER".
They say Allen got something from the Marx Brothers. He got nothing. Maybe twenty years ago, he might have been inspired. Today he's an original. The best, the funniest.
To write an autobiography of Groucho Marx would be as asinine as to read an autobiography of Groucho Marx.
No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.
Some years back, after a childhood of preoccupation with comedy that led me to observing the styles of all the great comedians, I came to the conclusion that Groucho Marx was the best comedian this country ever produced. Now I am more convinced than ever that I was right. I can't think of a comedian who combined a totally original physical conception that was hilarious with a matchless verbal delivery. I believe there is a natural inborn greatness in Groucho that defies close analysis as it does with any genuine artist. He is simply unique in the same way that Picasso or Stravinsky are, and I believe his outrageous unsentimental disregard for order will be equally as funny a thousand years from now.
In addition to all this, he makes me laugh.
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I don't have a photograph. I'd give you my footprints, but they're upstairs in my socks.