A few words today in celebration of Dick Vosburgh (1929-2007).
New Jersey born and RADA educated, Vosburgh began writing for BBC radio in the 1950s. He then moved up to British television, working alongside all the future Monty Python members on such shows as The Frost Report, That Was the Week That Was, Do Not Adjust Your Set, and At Last the 1948 Show. He appeared as an actor in one episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and narrated the trailer for Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Other shows he worked for included Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, and others.
Vosburgh is chiefly known today as the writer of the book and lyrics to the Marx Brothers re-creation in the show A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine (1979), which opened on the West End and then moved to Broadway. The first half of the show is basically a singing dancing revue of old songs from Hollywood movies. The second act is Vosburgh's creation (with music by Frank Lazarus), consisting of an adaptation of Chekhov's The Bear, as performed by the three Marx Brothers, with a Margaret Dumont stand-in, an ingenue, and a post-Zeppo style schlub in the Allan Jones vein. After many years of curiosity I finally checked out clips of it in on Youtube, and thought the writing was terrific -- better than just about any of the actual Marx Brothers vehicles after A Night at the Opera.
In 1990, Vosburgh got another go and Marx Brothers material when he was part of the cast and creative team of a BBC radio revival of Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel.
For more on show business history please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on classic comedy see Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. And keep an eye peeled for The Marx Brothers Miscellany, coming this fall!
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