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A couple of weeks ago, you may recall, I referenced Groucho Marx’s correspondence after Warner Brothers, producers of the film Casablanca, contemplated suing the Marx Brothers for titling an upcoming film A Night In Casablanca.
The Marx Brothers were, of course, Jewish and it got me thinking about the outstanding contribution that Jewish writers and performers have made, and make, to our lives. So, although we can’t say that the news got any brighter this week, I thought it might be an opportunity to remind ourselves how brilliantly funny and profound the most put-upon people in the world often are.
One of the writers on two of the Marx Brothers movies - Monkey Business and Horsefeathers - was Sidney Joseph (S.J.) Perelman (1904-1979). He also wrote for The New Yorker and here’s a snippet from a piece about pulp fiction where he outlines the formulaic work of a series featuring a detective called Dan Turner:
Take ‘Veiled Lady’, in the October 1937 number of Spicy Detective. Dan is flinging some woo at a Mrs Brantham in her apartment at the exclusive Gayboy Arms, which apparently excludes everybody but assassins:
‘From behind me a roscoe belched ‘Chow-Chow!’ A pair of slugs buzzed past my left ear, almost nicked my cranium. Mrs Brantham sagged back against the pillow of the lounge … She was dead as an iced catfish.’
Or this vignette from ‘Falling Star’, out of the September 1936 issue:
‘The roscoe said ‘Chow!’ and spat a streak of flame past my shoulder … The Filipino cutie was lying where I’d last seen her. She was dead as a smoked herring.
And again, from ‘Dark Star of Death’, January 1938:
‘From a bedroom a roscoe said: ‘Whr-r-rang!’ and a lead pill split the ozone past my noggin … Kane Fewster was on the floor. There was a bullet-hole through his think-tank. He was dead as a fried oyster.’1
Catfish, herrings, oysters - fish and crustaceans seem to be reliable references to raise a smile! Here’s Woody Allen:
Laws and Proverbs
Doing abominations is against the law, particularly if the abominations are done while wearing a lobster bib.2
If you will permit me to stretch the idea beyond its breaking point, I’ll sign off this piece with a fragment from Saul Bellow’s Herzog where Herzog arrives at Martha’s Vineyard and looks out over the ocean:
His heart was greatly stirred by the open horizon: the deep colors; the faint iodine pungency of the Atlantic rising from weeds and mollusks; the white, fine, heavy sand; but principally by the green transparency as he looked down to the stony bottom webbed with golden lines. Never still. If his soul could cast a reflection so brilliant, and so intensely sweet, he might beg God to make use of him. But that would be too simple … The actual sphere is not clear like this, but turbulent, angry. A vast human action is going on.3
Now, ain’t that the truth!
Thanks for reading.
The New Yorker, reprinted: Somewhere a Roscoe, from Crazy Like a Fox.
Allen, Woody. Without Feathers (1976)
Bellow, Saul. Herzog (1964)