Duration: 3 to 5 minutesGender: MaleAge: Older AdultGenre: Comedy

Context: Old comedy writer Bryce tells the audience he isn't going bald. Well, he is.

Bryce: (To the audience.) I know what you’re thinking. Soon I’m going to be bald. Hah, hah, well I’m not …. O K, so I’m going to be, but what’s that to you? That’s why I stay in bed all day-so that if my hair falls out, I’ll know where it is. It’s going to be right here in bed with me. I wake up in the morning, grab a handful of my hair, and toss it over my head. I always shower with my hair in the morning. Don’t you wish everybody did? (He crawls down to the edge of the bed and turns down the television set.) I don’t know why I don’t get one of those remote control units, so I don’t have to crawl from one end of the bed to the other just to change the channels … I keep saying to myself: Jimmy Bryce, old boy … Jimmy Bryce, you might have heard of me. I used to write some of the gags for the Marx Brothers’ comedies. Horsefeathers. Night at the Opera, A Day at the Circus, A Day and A Night at the Circus Opera with Horsefeathers … I worked them all. Did all their funniest bits. Naaah. What am I thinking of? You’ve never heard of me. You guys don’t read credits. It’s the title and the stars, that’s all you ever look at. Of course, I didn’t always write under my real name. I used Dostoyevski a lot, and that might also fool you … After all, I don’t expect you to know everything …. But I’ll never forget …. Harpo came up to me one time and told me that the Marx Brothers would be nothing without me. Nothing. He took that horn of his and went BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP — I mean when you see Harpo honking away in the movies that’s what he’s saying — “Jimmy Bryce, the Marx Brothers would be nowhere without you.” (He crawls back beneath the covers.) But anyway, I keep saying to myself — “Jimmy Bryce, if you had one of those remote control clickers, You could sit back in bed and change the channels, like a pascha, a sultan, insultin a Sultan … You wouldn’t have to crawl back and forth like some miserable slave.” (He takes up a paper and fans himself.) Could use some air-conditioning in this hotel. Air conditioning, that’s what I could use. But who can afford it nowadays? I hardly have enough money to get buried with … Besides if everyone runs his air-conditioning at the same time, all the electricity will go off. Brown-outs, blackouts, pink-outs. The way I look at it is that it’s my civil duty to sit here in my undershorts and sweat like a pig.

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The Last of the Marx Brothers' Writers