Sacred Clowns, Noble Dogs
by Walter Foley
art by Christopher Spencer
EXCERPT //
It’s said that Plato once came upon a stream and saw Diogenes the Cynic washing some greens for dinner.
“My good Diogenes,” the philosopher said, “if you knew how to pay court to kings, you wouldn’t have to wash vegetables.”
“If you knew how to wash vegetables,” Diogenes replied, “you wouldn’t have to pay court to kings.”
A Greek word meaning “doglike” (κυνισμός) is the root of our word cynic, which came to be associated with this strange person, Diogenes of Sinope. He seems at first to be a sort of crude performance artist, going out of his way to embarrass himself and others while insulting the ruling class, living on the street in a barrel among dogs, biting people (as he was fond of emulating his companions), urinating on strangers, and fornicating in public.
Look at him another way, and he’s a serious philosopher in his own right, one who argues through action rather than theory. Choosing to live in poverty and alienate polite society—while still genuinely exhibiting joy, humor, and ethical commitment on the things that matter most—is Diogenes’ stance against conformity and artifice.
Alexander the Great had many interactions with Diogenes, the most famous of which involves Alexander approaching him on a street corner in Corinth while Diogenes was getting a tan, surrounded by his dogs. When the mighty warlord expressed intrigue at Diogenes’ bizarre but cogent reputation and asked if there was anything in the world that the empire might provide for him, Diogenes said, “Yes. Stand out of my sunlight.”
There are many stories of Diogenes taking Alexander down a peg and ridiculing him, while not only avoiding a death sentence but somehow being commended for his gumption.
Alexander: If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.
Diogenes: If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes.
The Cynic wasn’t merely interested in shock for the sake of it. He wanted to show us something.
“Other dogs bite only their enemies,” he said, “whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.”
Shh…
The silent Marx brother, Harpo, reflected on his life in Vaudeville and later success in Hollywood:
I’ve played piano in a whorehouse. I’ve smuggled secret papers out of Russia. I’ve spent an evening on the divan with Peggy Hopkins Joyce. I’ve taught a gangster mob how to play Pinchie Winchie. I’ve played croquet with Herbert Bayard Swope while he kept Governor Al Smith waiting on the phone. I’ve gambled with Nick the Greek, sat on the floor with Greta Garbo, sparred with Benny Leonard, horsed around with the Prince of Wales, played Ping-pong with George Gershwin. George Bernard Shaw has asked me for advice. Oscar Levant has played private concerts for me at a buck a throw. I have golfed with Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. I’ve basked on the Riviera with Somerset Maugham and Elsa Maxwell. … The truth is, I had no business doing any of these things. I couldn’t read a note of music. I never finished the second grade. But I was having too much fun to recognize myself as an ignorant upstart.
Touring with his brothers as the Four Nightingales, Harpo describes his early days on the Vaudeville circuit in terms of panicked survival, constantly reinventing their act and learning to flip scripts and improvise on a moment’s notice to ensure enough money for a meal, a room for the night, and a train ticket to their next show.
During these early performances, Harpo managed to disguise his lack of singing ability by lip-synching next to his brothers. During at least one show, he was so nervous he pissed himself. Sometime later, he read a review in which a critic summed him up as a talented slapstick artist who only stopped being funny once he opened his mouth—and Harpo decided from that point forward to perform in silence. He’d been getting clues for a while: His uncle and co-writer, Al Shean, had already stopped writing lines for him out of frustration with his poor delivery.
According to Marx Brothers lore, they dropped much of their saccharine singing bits and reinvented themselves as a raucous comedy act after being upstaged in Texas by livestock: Their audience walked out of the theater to instead check out a mule that had escaped from a nearby farm.
Their new act would catapult them to fame after a successful run at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre. Then, in New York, they received career-making approval from the critic Alexander Woollcott, whose 1924 article began with the headline, “Harpo Marx and Some Brothers: Hilarious Antics Spread Good Cheer at the Casino.”
From the moment he saw him onstage, Woollcott was captivated by Harpo and began inviting him to parties where he would rub shoulders with the likes of Noël Coward, Tallulah Bankhead, Dorothy Parker, and Salvador Dali. Though by his own admission Harpo didn’t understand many of the literary or political references continuously dropped among these cohorts, he was viewed as a feral kind of oddity by the upper crust during the Roaring Twenties and was encouraged to flavor these occasionally snobbish gatherings with anarchy, often involving nudity and throwing food around in fancy dining halls. //
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