What we have for you today is an excerpt from Frank Ferrante's show, An Evening with Groucho — although I was at this particular performance and it was in the afternoon so I think Frank should be sued for false advertising. And yes, I know: I write more on this blog about his career than about my own. That's because I'm more interested in his career than in my own.
Here he is performing the classic Groucho tune, "Dr. Hackenbush," which was written for A Day at the Races and then dropped before they even started filming A Day at the Races. Actually, I believe it was originally called "Dr. Quackenbush," which is what Groucho's character in that film was originally named. The studio legal department determined that there were way too many real Dr. Quackenbushes in America and that they all had lawyers.
I read somewhere that they decided to change Groucho's handle in the film to something else that suggested quackery but then realized that the name they'd chosen — what it was, I dunno — had the wrong number of syllables for the song. So to not damage the song, they changed his name to Hackenbush instead…then cut the song. It makes about as much sense as anything about a Marx Brothers movie. (At the end of A Day at the Races, they sing reprises of a couple of other songs that aren't really being reprised because their earlier appearances in the film were also cut.)
So now here's Frank out at the Pasadena Playhouse in, surprisingly, Pasadena. He'll be there again in January and he'll probably be singing this song there again, too…