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Playing Pool with Groucho's Ghost

AMC threw a party tonight at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills, long-ago haunt of showbiz types, especially comedians. Jeff Goldblum's jazz band played to celebrate the cable network's Mad Men series, set on New York's Madison Ave. in 1960, the golden age of advertising (and of the Friars Club, too). It premieres Thursday at 10 p.m.

Pictures clutter the walls, and Groucho Marx appears more frequently than almost anybody else. gcigar.jpg

Groucho wasn't much of a club man. "Why would I want to join a club that would let me in?"
was one of his cracks. "I've got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it," was another.

But he was big in the Friars. Like Groucho, lots of members enjoyed a good cigar, and the upstairs pool room still reeks of them. It has a floor of sand, which serves as a giant ashtray.

Some of the other critics and I played pool. I lost, but you can bet your life the experience was a complete winner.

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Comments (1)

aud:

did you have to say the secret word to get it?
SWORDFISH!

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on July 16, 2007 1:21 AM.

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