On View : On the Marx : A&E; ‘BIOGRAPHY’ GETS A HANDLE ON THE ONE CALLED GROUCHO

This week, Arts & Entertainment’s “Biography” series examines the life and career of the most famous Marx Brother--the one, the only, Groucho.

Groucho, who was born in 1890 and died in 1977, and his siblings aren’t exactly fresh topics when it comes to documentaries. And this hourlong history does have the requisite clips from the Marx Brothers’ movies “The Coconuts,” “Animal Crackers,” “Monkey Business,” “Duck Soup,” “Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races,” as well as excerpts from Groucho’s 1950-61 quiz show “You Bet Your Life.”

But producer Alison Guss believes the documentary offers surprises and insights into Groucho. “People tend to talk about Groucho and the Marx Brothers and they take it from, ‘Isn’t this movie funny? Let’s look at the funny bits.’ ”

So Guss focused more on Groucho’s life. “It’s incredibly interesting when you look at the beginnings of it, because there are certain things that are extremely consistent about the kind of comedian he was,” she says. “I just see his character changing, yet remaining consistent.”

Groucho, Guss says, “put a lot of attention and energy into his act, which I think a lot of comedians do.”

But in Groucho’s case, “he didn’t seem to have a lot left over for the people around him, whom he truly loved. He didn’t know how to approach them. He didn’t know how to be a husband and a father in a loving way.”

The documentary examines Groucho’s three failed marriages and the fact he drove his wives to drink. Groucho’s son Arthur Marx and daughter Miriam Marx Allen candidly discuss their father’s stormy marriage to their mother, Ruth Brown.

Arthur Marx says his parents’ disastrous marriage probably affected his sister more than it did him. “I guess it was bad for both of us,” Marx says. “I was older. They got divorced while I was already living out of the house and working in New York. But my sister was still part of it. It was hard, though. I remember thinking, ‘I wish they would get divorced and get it over with so we didn’t have to listen to them fighting every night.’ ”

Still, Marx says, he had a good childhood and Groucho, whose real name was Julius, was a good father. And though he was often serious--he was given the nickname Groucho for his less-than-sunny disposition--his son says he could be very funny, “especially in situations where you weren’t expecting him to be funny. He would like to put people on and pretend to be someone else. They didn’t recognize him in those days in civilian clothes because he didn’t wear a mustache. So he would go out among the people and sort of go into little routines. They wouldn’t know who the hell he was.”

Besides the two eldest Marx children, the documentary also features Dick Cavett; “You Bet Your Life” announcer George Fennemann; Harpo’s son, Bill Marx, and Groucho biographers Wes Gehring and Charlotte Chandler.

“Everyone I approached was happy to talk about him,” Guss says. “They may have had painful memories like his daughter, but . . . people really have a reverence about him and were happy to share their memories.”

Wes Gehring, who teaches film at Indiana’s Ball State University, offers insight into Groucho’s persona in the movies. “Groucho was usually a big-time huckster within the Establishment, but a lot of people don’t usually pick up on that,” Gehring says. “They think that Groucho is anti-Establishment. Well, he is, but he is usually part of it. He is usually ripping off the Establishment as he is part of it.”

Gehring’s favorite Marx Brothers movies are the early comedies--”Coconuts,” “Monkey Business,” “Horse Feathers,” “Animal Crackers” and “Duck Soup”--made at Paramount from 1929 to 1933. “For years everyone said ‘Night at the Opera’ and ‘Day at the Races’ (made at MGM) are the classics,” he says. “But since the ‘60s, the ones that are really popular are the Paramount films because they are so energetic and anti-everything. ‘Duck Soup’ is now considered the classic.”

Guss managed to unearth some interesting TV clips featuring Groucho, including the 1959 pilot “Deputy Seraph” starring Groucho, Harpo and Chico. The comedy was supposed to be a comeback for the team, but the project was scrapped when Chico took ill. Two years later he died. Also featured is Groucho singing in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado.”

“We dug pretty deep for those,” Guss says.

Though not a Groucho fan when she began the documentary, Guss now thinks he was a comedic genius. “The more you see those movies, the funnier they become,” she says. “The gags just take on new meaning. It’s like poetry.”

“Biography: Groucho Marx” airs Tuesday at 5 and 9 p.m. on A&E; it repeats Saturday at 3 a.m.