Now that’s comedy

I just finished the truly wonderful column on the DVD sets of the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields (“Their Timing is Just Perfect ... as Usual,” Dec. 5). Robert Lloyd captured their wit and art with great skill. These comics used the power of language brilliantly. At the end of “Duck Soup,” Margaret Dumont sings an operatic aria toasting war, while Groucho savages the enemy. When someone asks him what he’s doing, he points to Margaret and says, “I’m fighting for her honor, which is more than she ever did.” Glorious!

Fields and Groucho would have responded with a barb, but they would have loved the column as much as I did.

Ron Christensen

San Francisco