The one, the only Groucho on PBS

Son's loving tribute, actor's reverent rendition

Frank Ferrante plays Groucho Marx in "Groucho: A Life in Revue," a play airing this month on PBS

In this story: Impressive performance Kooky songs and loopy dances RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Paul Vercammen
CNN Showbiz Today Reports

LOS ANGELES, California -- Groucho wanted out of the country club. Why?

The club got a reason, and the world got a laugh:

"I would never," he wrote, "join a club that would have me as a member."

GALLERY Images of Groucho     ALSO Read a profile of Groucho Marx Rags to resentment    VIDEO CNN's Paul Vercammen reports on a new show about the career of Groucho Marx Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     THE WIT OF GROUCHO

True story, according to the guy who arguably is the world's most qualified expert on Groucho Marx -- his son, Arthur Marx, who has penned an account of life with father.

The son has written "Groucho: A Life in Revue," a play airing this month on PBS stations across the United States.

"(My father) he would be surprised to know he was still popular today," Arthur Marx recently told CNN. "He told me, when he was quitting the Marx Brothers, (that) their kind of comedy was old-fashioned."

Maybe not as old-fashioned as the comedian, who was 86 when he died in 1977, may have thought. His son has found someone who is helping keep alive the antics of Groucho.

Impressive performance

Arthur Marx discovered Frank Ferrante portraying his father in a performance at the University of Southern California here. The son was so impressed that he recruited the young man to play his father in a much larger theater production.

One year after graduating in 1985, Ferrante, then 23, took to the off-Broadway stage in Arthur Marx's play. It combined the boyish actor's reverence for the comedian and the son's love of his father, and was a hit. The show then went to London, England, where it was just as big as it had been in the states.

"I always think of him (Groucho) as the national comedian," says Ferrante, now 37. "I don't think anyone is better at verbal and physical humor, and he perfectly blends them."

Groucho's son Arthur Marx, left, wrote the theatrical account of his father's life. Actor Frank Ferrante, right, stars as "the natural comedian"

While other actors dreamed of becoming the next Harrison Ford, Ferrante fantasized about adapting Groucho's stooped-over walk and uncorking one-liners in the old funny guy's unmistakable voice.

"(It's) kind of nasal," Ferrante says of Groucho's voice. "Because he had that kind of resonance there."

Kooky songs and loopy dances

Ferrante has a resonance of his own, bending his voice to imitate Groucho from the age of 15 to 85.

The actor does Groucho's kooky songs and loopy dances with such uncanny similarity, you'd think he'd done years of research on the comedian in college. You'd be right, too: Ferrante's senior thesis was on Groucho.

"He's such a good actor and he loves the Groucho character so much he made a study of him," Arthur Marx says.

Arthur Marx so approves of Ferrante's treatment of his dad that the two have produced a book of photographs, which is for sale in conjunction with the PBS special.

Groucho Marx, right, starred with his brothers in "A Night at the Opera" (1935), one of 13 Marx Brothers films

Among the photos: the five brothers from New York's Upper East Side -- Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Gummo and Zeppo -- in one shot. The book also shows Groucho, born Julius Marx in 1890, cutting up with Lucille Ball or looking serious with Bob Hope. He's also seen with his family -- no makeup, unvarnished and seemingly unconcerned with maintaining any sort of public persona.

"People would ask me, 'Is he as funny at home as he is in the movies?'" says Arthur Marx. "I would have to answer, 'Well, he can be funny. But he is also very serious. He has insomnia and if we him up early, he would bawl the hell out of me.'"

Another photograph in the book features Ferrante as a boy, dressed as Groucho.

"I fell in love with Groucho Marx at 9," Ferrante says. "It was just the absolute abandon of Groucho Marx that appealed to me -- the wildness of Groucho."

That wildness, and more of Groucho, is featured this month on a TV near you.

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