At the peak of the Marx Brothers revival of the late 60s–mid 70s, an LP consisting of snippets of Marx Brothers routines was released and became my favorite record of all time…at least during the summer of 1974. The record is narrated by Garry Owens, an announcer who was a once-famous fixture on ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’. It served as a gateway drug for future Marx enthusiasts who had yet to catch more than a glimpse of the Brothers’ films beyond the occaisional late-night TV airings. It’s hard now, in an age where we can see pretty much anything we want at any given moment of the day, to recall how difficult it was once to see old movies, watch old TV shows, collect old jazz recordings etc. The Marx revival hit college campuses at the end of the 60s, interacting perfectly with the fast-rising counter-culture, with the movies becoming regular staples of revival houses. But not all places had such theaters–they were ubiquitous in L.A. and New York as well as other big cities, but if you were from a more typical town anywhere in the heartland you likely didn’t have such a theater. That left television–with all its thirteen stations, only one of which showed the Marx Paramount movies since only one of them controlled the MCA/Paramount library. (In LA it was KTLA, Channel 5). One solution to the scarcity of much-wanted material came with the invention of a strange set of books by a man named Richard J. Anobile, which contained grainy stills (frame captures, not posed) of scenes from the movies with the accompanying dialogue placed underneath them. The Marx/Anobile book, ‘Why A Duck?’ came to school with me regularly, where I thumbed through it whilst sitting in the back of the class, not listening to the teacher. The Marx Brothers LP was an excellent way to fill in the times between TV airings and revival house showings and listening to it just now brought back the smells, tastes and innocence of the summer of ’74, a time of summer school mornings, hot dogs with ketchup and french fries, afternoon swims in the pool and newly installed air conditioning. The unit was in my parents bedroom and I slept on a mattress in front of it the entire summer.