The Marx Bros. Musical

Back in 1970, there was a musical on Broadway about the Marx Bros., called Minnie's Boys.  It flopped, and they've tried to revive it over the years, mainly working on the book.  It gets performed every once in a while, but it's never really caught on.  The shame is that the score is wonderful, written by Hal Hackady and Larry Grossman.

By all accounts, the problem was mainly that the book just didn't work well enough, and the lead actress playing their mother, Shelley Winters, wasn't...well, let's just say she apparently wasn't cut out for Broadway.  She's affective on the album, though in a sort of "out-of-breath" way, so it's easy to envision the performance not working on stage. 

The actors playing the brothers, though, are all excellent.  And one of them, Lewis J.Stadlen, who played 'Groucho,' went on to have (and still have) a good career.  He's worked on Broadway (notably starring as 'Dr. Pangloss' in the hugely-successful revival of Candide) and was a series regular on the TV show, Benson.  Plus a whole lot more.  Most recently, he's had a semi-recurring role on TV's Smash, playing the character 'Ralph Masius."

This is one of the particularly enjoyable numbers that has all the boys.  It'll be easy to figure out who is who.  Except for people who only think there were three Marx Bros. who performed in the movies.  The fourth is Herbert, better known as Zeppo, who was the romantic lead in their early films. (There actually was a fifth, Milton, who acted a bit on stage in the early years as "Gummo.")  But this is the four of them, singing, "Where Was I When They Passed Out Luck?"