Lost Groucho show discovered

A lost Marx Brothers radio programme that has not been heard for more than 70 years has been unearthed by a British fan.

Groucho and Chico Marx made 26 episodes of Flywheel, Shyster And Flywheel from November 1932 to March the following year. But no recordings were known to exist – until now.

Scripts of all but one of the long-lost programmes were discovered in the Library of Congress in 1988, and re-recorded for the BBC by Mark Brisenden.

But now he has pieced together a complete episode of the show from original recordings, which will be aired on Radio 4 this Christmas.

He told Chortle: ‘It came to me in two halves. Chico’s daughter Maxine discovered half an episode which had been recorded off the radio in 1932.

‘Then a collector came to be with another half an episode – and by sheer chance it was the same show as Maxine had.’

‘The shows went out live, and although there was the technology to record programmes to be transmitted at different times in different time zones or for the performers’ own purposes, nothing else has been found.

‘Of course, my biggest hope is  that the broadcast of this episode might lead to more.’

Radio 4 will air the 15 or so minutes of comedy from the original NBC Radio show, which starred  Groucho Marx as wise-cracking lawyer Waldorf T. Flywheel and Chico as his subversive assistant Emmanuel Ravelli.  The rest of the episode comprised music and sponsors messages.

‘We’ve but it back for time constraints,’ Brisenden added. ‘But used the rest of the half-hour to introduce the footage and to play part of an interview I did with the show’s writer Nat Perrin in the early Nineties.

‘There’s also new interview with Gloria Stuart, the widow of Nat’s co-writer Arthur Sheekman.’ Stuart was herself a close friend of Groucho’s.

Published: 23 Nov 2005