Groucho & Cavett

Year 17, Day 212 - 7/31/25 - Movie #5,096

BEFORE: OK, end of the month, let's get to the accounting and then on with the last film for July. This makes FORTY docs in the Doc Block, with I think 9 to go. We're not going to hit 50 this year, but hey, I watched one doc back in January, so in a way, I kind of got there. 

JULY

12 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): I Am MLK Jr., Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes, Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts - Springsteen E Street Band, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, The Beatles: In the Life, Killing John Lennon. Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, Luther: Never Too Much, Pee-Wee as Himself, Groucho & Cavett

3 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The 100th: Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden, If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd, God Is the Bigger Elvis

5 watched on Netflix: Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, Join or Die, Remastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black, Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall, Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution

1 watched on iTunes: A Disturbance in the Force
4 watched on Amazon Prime: What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?, Claydream, Animation Outlaws, Dear Mr. Watterson
2 watched on Hulu: Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

2 watched on Disney+: Elton John: Never Too Late, Beatles '64

1 watched on Paramount+: Casa Bonita, Mi Amor!

1 watched on Roku: Inside Job

1 watched on a random site: I Am Sam Kinison

32 TOTAL

Update - I had to switch things up a bit, as one of my links was not good - there was just a photo of Frank Sinatra in a certain film, and that's not much to go on, I'm better than that, it's a really weak link. But I did make it ALMOST all the way through the chain before monkeying with it - what I'm going to do is table that film for next year, and I think I already see what else it can connect, and since there are so many redundancies built into this year's chain, when I remove it the chain's just going to close up around where it was, and I'm dropping in one other film that I JUST recorded to fill tomorrow's slot - so you'll never even notice something happened. 

Now Soupy Sales carries over from "Pee-Wee as Himself", as there was archive footage yesterday of that classic comedian implying that Pee-Wee was "a pervert", but Soupy's kids show sometimes came close to being dirty, so that's really hypocritical of him. I met Soupy one day when my Laika boss and I were walking down the street, and there was Soupy, just strolling down Third Ave., possibly coming from Sarge's Deli. My boss had no filter, so he just started chatting with Soupy, I'm guessing maybe Mr. Sales lived somewhere in that part of town? Not sure, it was just one of those weird things that happens. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes" (Movie #5,069)

THE PLOT: The friendship between Emmy Award-winning TV personality Dick Cavett and comedian Groucho Marx, featuring talk-show footage and other rare recordings. 

AFTER: We're back to the late 60's and early 70's, which was a fertile time for docs about rock bands who were trying to follow in the path carved out by the Beatles. This film uses footage from a similar time in TV land, when talk-show hosts were trying to follow in the path carved out by Ed Sullivan, Jack Paar and Steve Allen. Jack Paar was retiring from "The Tonight Show" and some young buck named Johnny Carson was going to take over as host, only he was under contract somewhere else and they had to wait a few months before he could be the new host of the show, so they used other celebrities as hosts, and one of them was Groucho Marx. Dick Cavett was a young writer on that talk show, so he got to write some jokes for one of his comedy idols. 

The real first meeting, however, might have been when Cavett and Woody Allen attended the funeral for the playwright George Kaufman, and they saw Groucho in attendance. Well, in those days people went to funerals all the time, because the internet hadn't been invented yet so there wasn't much else to do. I'm kidding, really it was a different time, and people felt that if you didn't go to other people's funerals, then they wouldn't come to yours - a philosophy I also believe in and quote frequently. That's actually a phrase credited to Yogi Berra, but it also sounds like something that Groucho Marx would have said. Groucho's quips tended to be a bit more mean-spirited, like saying "This has been a great evening, let's do it again soon, only next time, leave me out of it." 

There's footage here from the Tonight Show, and then some Kraft Comedy Special, and then down the road a bit, Dick Cavett got his own talk-show and had Groucho on as a frequent guest. Often Groucho would sing a song, either from one of the Marx Brothers movies, like "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" or "Hello, I Must Be Going". Other times it was a forgotten vaudeville classic song, or one that should have been forgotten, like "Father's Day" or "Show Me a Rose". Then there was this weird Irving Berlin song called "Stay Down Here Where You Belong" which was sung from the P.O.V. of the devil, telling his son to not leave the underworld and go visit the humans, because they're so evil and war-happy that Hell is really a nicer place. Wow, I can't tell if that's a dig at the Vietnam War or humanity in general, but yeah, that's pretty dark. 

Groucho also told stories from the old days, and so it seems Chico was quite the romancer, he slept with more ladies in two days than the other Marx Brothers combined did in two weeks. These guys were like the Beatles of their time, they really only kept making movies so they could get laid. But Chico also was a terrible gambler, so really he spent his money almost faster then he could earn it, while Groucho saved his money, that's why he needed to get paid for his talk-show appearances, or so he said. Gummo was also in a bad way, because he wouldn't go on Cavett's show and give everyone the real dirt on Groucho unless they paid him $5K, and in those days, that was kind of almost a lot of money. 

But you know, Groucho did all right, he brought his third wife, Eden Hartford, to one taping and also his daughter Melinda from his second marriage, and you know, they looked like they might be about the same age. That seems sort of Donald Trump-like to me, always having a younger potential wife waiting in the wings. Then by the next appearance on Cavett's show, Groucho was divorced from Eden and he brought along his new companion, Erin Fleming. She claimed to be his "secretary" but really she was an aspiring actress, and if sleeping with Groucho would get you roles in a Woody Allen movie, well, that's kind of what people did back then. It was a different time (and man, have I been saying that a LOT during this Doc Block...)

But then you can really see in his last appearance on Cavett's show that Groucho wasn't really on the top of his game, he wasn't as quick with the snappy comebacks, and he wasn't up to singing a song (so the doc drops in rare footage of Groucho performing in a TV production of "The Mikado" instead, you know, to drive home the point that he really loved Gilbert & Sullivan (and sometimes both in the same night, if you know what I mean...).  The weirdest moment shown here is probably Groucho essentially proposing on air to Truman Capote, as some kind of takedown of the tax break that a U.S. citizen gets for being married. Possibly Groucho was just upset because he was single at the time and didn't think it was fair that he was paying more income tax as a result. It's doubtful that he really wanted to marry a gay man, but he kind of implies that he knows Mr. Capote is gay and he wouldn't want to be intimate with him, but still willing to marry him to prove a point. But legal gay marriage was still years away in the future, so it's tough to see where Groucho was going with this line of thought. 

This was kind of assembled with purpose, it wasn't just thrown together, but I think it became very sad and even ironic over time, like there's footage of Cavett and Woody Allen complaining that their mutual friend Groucho didn't get a big enough obituary in the press, and both realizing that no matter what anyone accomplishes in the film and TV world, they're still going to get old and they're still going to die. Well, duh, and now Cavett and Allen are both very old, and as we know Woody is 90 years old and married to someone who used to be his step-daughter of sorts, and with the recent wave of celebrity deaths we've had lately, all I can say is that karma is a real bitch, Woody. 

Speaking of that, I totalled up the status of my doc subjects for the year so far, to determine how many are still alive and how many are deceased. I was running at about 50-50 for most of the block, it was 13 each (the Beatles are a "push", since 2 of them are still alive) but then this week of course I hit a streak with Sam Kinison, Paul Reubens and now Groucho Marx. So the dead subjects are ahead right now, 16 to 13. I think I can maybe even the score here and get a bit more positive in the next week, and watch a few more films about living people like Dan Rather and Martha Stewart.  But also right now I've got to figure out where I'm going after the Doc Block ends. 

Directed by Robert S. Bader (director of "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes")

Also starring Dick Cavett (last seen in "Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind")

with archive footage of Groucho Marx (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Woody Allen (last seen in "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes"), Rona Barrett (last seen in "Liza; A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story"), Dinah Shore (ditto), Irving Berlin, George Burns (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Johnny Carson (ditto), Frank Buxton, Truman Capote (last seen in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Erin Fleming (last seen in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask"), Merv Griffin (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Eden Hartford, George Jessel (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Danny Kaye (ditto), Jack Paar (ditto), Dean Martin (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Chico Marx (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Harpo Marx (ditto), Zeppo Marx (ditto), Gummo Marx, Phyllis Newman (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Harry Reasoner (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Dan Rowan (last seen in "Tiny Tim: King for a Day"), Harry Ruby, Rosalind Russell (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Marlene Schmidt, Frank Sinatra (last seen in "The Beatles: In the Life"), Lewis J. Stadlin, Ben Taggart, Shelley Winters (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers")

RATING: 4 out of 10 bad hats worn to cover up an even worse toupee