HUMOUR

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3270, 10 March 1931, Page 3

HUMOUR

The four Marx brothers—Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo—who have scored as big a success on the stage of the Palace Theatre in London as they enjoy on the screen, had some pertinent remarks to make in an article written for the London Daily Mail. They wrote: — "And now, at the risk of starting a dandy little squabble—Groucho has been married for ten years, so he, at any rate, is no novice at that sort of thing—we feel an inner urge to say several words about the average Londoner's conception of Americans and their slang. For instance, while we were standing in the wings of the Palace Theatre the other night, a boy aged about 18 years came up, took a good, long look, stuck his face close Up to Groucho, and hoarsely growled: " Sez you ! " He then gave a leer — not an unkind leer, mind you, but one of complete triumph—as if to say, "We'll show these Americans that they're not the only ones who can spill slang." Then he swaggered off into the darkness.

Now that, as an odd instance, is all very amusing. But it seems to be the general attitude over here. Just as on an American vaudeville stage the Englishman is portrayed as a complete half-wit, drooling at the mouth, and taking five minutes to solve a joke which a trained horse could grasp immediately, so, on the London stage, an American is shown to be loudmouthed and vulgar, with horn-rim glasses and a nasal voice, mispronouncing all words of more than' one syllable, and in general behaving like a colossal bore and a complete idiot. In the four shows we have seen in London we have heard the expressiosn "Whoopee," "I'll tell the world," "You said it, kid!" "And howl!" more often than we have heard them in a year in the States. That sort of thing is pretty discouraging, and it doesn't bode well for unity among countries when two nations which speak practically the same tongue have such a distorted idea of each other.