Book: 'Flywheel, Shyster And Flywheel' edited by Michael Barson, from the radio series by Perrin and Sheekman [1989] (1932-1933)

How many half hour scenarios can you squeeze Groucho and Chico Marx into on radio in a season, with no apparent effort, while also producing material that would be incorporated into several later movies, and recycling some from earlier efforts? As it turns out, the answer is twenty-six if your lead writers are Nat Perrin and Arthur Sheekman and the season is 1932-1933. Twenty-six golden half hours, only one of which survives in any aural form. Was the show any good? It's difficult to say. There is one entirely surviving episode, but we'll never know if it's representative. Nat Perrin did pretty well with 'The Addams Family' several decades later, so he had reverse precedent.

Fortunately, twenty-five of the twenty-six scripts for the show were rediscovered in 1988, so we at least know how the show was on the written page. Unsurprisingly, it was very Marx Brothers-ish, except without Harpo, who couldn't possibly appear in a radio show in any meaningful way. Personally, I think they could at least have had his horn, but it might not have been cost effective. It's a great show on the written page, sometimes repetitive on a script-by-script basis, but it would have been great in a weekly radio series. The ghost house sequence alone would have been priceless.

Despite being printed on the page, Groucho and Chico's voices spring into your mind, whether you want them to or not. You can't help but hear Chico's awful puns and gags in that mock Italian patois and groan in sympathy, nor can you read nonsensical Groucho dialogue and imagine any voice but his, grousing away in lyrical excellence. It's just a shame that you can't hear them in actuality, or find out who played any of the other roles. It would be nice if Margaret Dumont had played any of the Dumont-ian characters in the show, or if Zeppo had popped up playing any of the random bit parts. Maybe Harpo was in it? We would never have known, never having seen him speak on screen! Who played Miss Dimple, the ever dependable secretary of Groucho's law firm? How did any of it work?

Teasing out twenty-six episodes was probably not the easiest thing to do. Groucho's lawyer Flywheel (originally called Beagle before a real lawyer called Beagle complained) and Chico's inept and corrupt sidekick character Ravelli encountered mock haunted houses, robberies, adulteries, dogs, temporary tenures as judges, several rambles over America, and even a revival of most of the movie 'The Cocoanuts', and then stopped due to an unimpressed network. Sadly, the Marx Brothers were of their time, and when their time came they were badly behind it due to weariness, and the death of screenwriting due to censorship.

'Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel' may well have been excellent. The scripts are pretty good. All together now: 'Good night ladies, good night ladies...'

O.