THE GROUCHO LETTERS

That bug eyed, beetle browed member of the Marx brothers is as handy with a pen as he is with that out-sized cigar. And he wrote. . . to everyone. They usually replied, and this is the best of the correspondence destined to be preserved in the Library of Congress as a prime example of the comic viewpoint at work. Take the letters to Warner Brothers during a legal battle when they insisted on receiving a story line: ""Dear Brothers: Since I last wrote you, I regret to say there have been some changes in the plot of our new picture, 'A Night in Casablanca.' In the new version I play Bordello, the Sweetheart of Humphrey Bogart. Harpo and Chico are itinerant rug peddlers who are weary of laying rugs and enter a monastery just for a lark. This is a good joke on them) as there hasn't been a lark in the place for fifteen years."" etc. There are letters to and from eminents in all walks of life, from Fred Allen to T. (Tom) S. Eliot to Harry S. Truman. An entertainment? You Bet Your Life.