1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9911141708403321

Autore

Koestenbaum Wayne

Titolo

The Anatomy of Harpo Marx / / Wayne Koestenbaum

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, CA : , : University of California Press, , [2012]

©2012

ISBN

9786613520838

9781280116544

1280116544

9780520951983

0520951980

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (311 p.)

Disciplina

792.702/8092

B

Soggetti

Comedians - United States

Comedians -- United States -- Biography

Marx, Harpo

Marx, Harpo, 1888-1964

Motion picture actors and actresses - United States

Motion picture actors and actresses -- United States -- Biography

Music, Dance, Drama & Film

Drama

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- I. Early Ecstatic Emptiness -- II. Later Astonishments -- III. The Idiot Tumbles Back to the Beginning of Time

Sommario/riassunto

The Anatomy of Harpo Marx is a luxuriant, detailed play-by-play account of Harpo Marx's physical movements as captured on screen. Wayne Koestenbaum guides us through the thirteen Marx Brothers films, from The Cocoanuts in 1929 to Love Happy in 1950, to focus on Harpo's chief and yet heretofore unexplored attribute-his profound and contradictory corporeality. Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing



range of Harpo's body-its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, "cute" pathos, and more. In a virtuosic performance, Koestenbaum's text moves gracefully from insightful analysis to cultural critique to autobiographical musing, and provides Harpo with a host of odd bedfellows, including Walter Benjamin and Barbra Streisand.