Here's another post about the great character actress Margaret Dumont and whether or not it's true that, as Groucho often said, she never understood the jokes in their scenes together. Weighing in is my buddy Steve Stoliar, who knew Groucho well in the last years of that great comedian's life and worked for him…
Here's my take on the Dumont question: I think it's altogether possible that she was a skilled comic actress who didn't really understand the sophisticated wordplay in the Marx scripts. In other words, I don't see this as either/or. It's possible Groucho's getting a bum rap with everyone saying he was spreading false rumors about her lack of a sense of humor. The example he would often give is, "I said, 'Remember, we're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did.' And she'd say, 'Julie — What does that mean?'" Understanding a line like that requires an understanding of puns and double-entendres and the serpentine workings of clever wisecracks. That's an entirely different comic mechanism than funny situations, funny physical bits, funny characters, funny expressions/reactions.
The idea that Groucho would intentionally malign Dumont seems dubious, because I always found him to be eminently fair in how he sized people up. Given the fact that Groucho appeared with Dumont in two Broadway plays — and their road tours, with all the traveling — plus half of their films, it doesn't seem possible that she could've "fooled" him into thinking she didn't understand his jokes. Groucho wasn't very foolable, even in a short amount of time, never mind all those years of live performances and films.
So isn't it possible that both tenets are valid? She had a lengthy comic career and had splendid timing, but verbal wordplay wasn't her strong suit?
Quite possible. And I have worked around experienced comedians who were somewhat lost as to what a joke was when they were working in a soundstage with no live audience present. And someone else wrote in to suggest that maybe Ms. Dumont did such a good job playing a stuffy dowager who doesn't know about the world outside her mansion that folks around her thought she was that character…and the legend grew to the point where even Groucho went along with the myth.
Thanks, Steve — and I note that someone has recently come across a kinescope (alas, in German) of Buster Keaton's 1951 TV show. Most episodes of that series are lost but this one that turned up has Lady Dumont in it, thereby expanding her list of great comedians she appeared with. It already included not only the Marx Brothers but also Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, Abbott & Costello, Danny Kaye, Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Martin & Lewis and — if you want to count Wheeler and Woolsey — Wheeler and Woolsey. I tend to think you couldn't continue for so many years to appear worthy of sharing the screen with such folks if you didn't understand your own scenes.