Marx Brothers

Godfathers of screwball comedy
"The surprising thing about this film was that I succeeded in not going crazy," said director Leo McCarey about working with the manic Marx Brothers on Duck Soup. The madcap antics of Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and (sometimes) Zeppo have driven audiences wild with laughter in such unforgettable films as A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. Whether it's wise-cracking Groucho with his big cigar and bushy eyebrows, street-smart Chico with his fake Italian accent, or skirt-chasing Harpo honking his horn, the Marx Brothers' inimitable and irrepressible humor continues to inspire us today.

The Movie Icon series: People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, TASCHEN shows you. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life.