Frank Ferrante's Thirty Years as 'The One, The Only... Groucho!'

Every week on the television quiz show, "You Bet Your Life," announcer George Fenneman would introduce the program's star as "The one, the only..." and the audience would respond with "Groucho!"

Though he comprised just one-quarter of show business' most famous brother act, Julius "Groucho" Marx was an original. Beginning with vaudeville, then moving to Broadway, movies, radio and television, his irreverent, wise-cracking style has been a major influence on American comedy for nearly 100 years.

And for thirty of those years, actor Frank Ferrante has been honoring his legacy with stage performances that remarkably mimic the icon's appearance, sound and moxie.

"I'm glad I get to facilitate some awareness of his greatness," Ferrante tells The Guardian. 'The country's been around for 200 years, and for half that time Groucho's humor has been a part of our culture. What he represents as an outsider who tears it all down, takes down authority, it's a beautiful thing to witness. There's something edgy and dangerous about Groucho."

Ferrante's professional association with Groucho Marx began when he first mounted a one-man show, AN EVENING WITH GROUCHO, as part of his USC thesis in 1985.

Though just a student production, the show attracted audience members like Groucho's son and daughter Arthur and Miriam Marx and playwright Morrie Ryskind, who, with George S. Kaufman, co-authored the stage and screen versions of ANIMAL CRACKERS and the screenplay of A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.

After the performance, Arthur Marx asked if he would be interested in a play, GROUCHO: A LIFE IN REVUE, co-written by himself and TV writer Robert Fisher. A year later, the show opened at Off-Broadway's Lucille Lortel Theatre in a run that lasted 254 performances, earning him a Theater World Award.

Though Ferrante wasn't sure how British audiences would react to Marxist humor, he was nominated for an Olivier Award when he brought the play to the U.K.

"I didn't know how the humor would translate, just as Groucho didn't know back in the 1920s. They would adjust their act to fit the sensibility. But we didn't have to make any adjustment. All the papers gave it rave reviews. The audience was effusive. They loved the wordplay and the puns. This is the land that gave us Monty Python, and the Marx Brothers were certainly an influence on that kind of anarchic, surreal humor."

Ferrante has starred in roles Groucho created on Broadway in regional productions of THE COCOANUTS and ANIMAL CRACKERS, but he always comes back to the play that first won him notoriety.

This weekend, he brings his act to the Pasadena Playhouse ahead of tour dates in the U.S. and then off to Britain for a one-night stand in Bath as part of a Marx Brothers festival in April.

Recalling that original off-Broadway run, he says "I was 200 performances into it when that moment washed over me in which I realized I was in the moment. I felt like I was channeling the character. Not a lot of actors get the chance to play a role for 200 shows. I'm one of those really fortunate theatre people in that I've actually worked consistently for the last 30 years in front of different kinds of audiences, trooping around like a vaudevillian."

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