Postby Richard M Roberts » Tue Jun 02, 2009 4:40 pm
The irony here is one of the things not listed, unless it has been blacked out for some reason or another, is one of "Graucho's" activities for a genuine communist front. In the late 40's (1947 I think), Groucho made a childrens record titled "The Funniest Song in the World " for a company called Young Peoples Records. The song is, in typical ironic fashion, one of the un-funniest songs in the World, in which a monkey tries to make up the funniest song in the World by making up insulting lyrics about all the other animals in the jungle, and the animals mentioned taking offense to it. So the monkey makes up gibberish lyrics that are meaningless, and everyone's happy. Groucho singing a song about politcal correctness, go figure. In any event, Young Peoples Records indeed turned out to be a genuine communist front, and was closed down a year or two later.
Thinking about the "Graucho" misspelling, I was actually listening to a Rudy Vallee Radio show featuring Groucho and John Barrymore yesterday, and Vallee mispronounces Groucho's name as "Graucho" or "Gaucho" during the show, causing Groucho to ad-lib "I like it better that way". Maybe the FBI heard that show and decided he had changed it.
RICHARD M ROBERTS