Now we've hit on something that's in my extremely limited wheelhouse. The Marx Brothers film in question is "Horse Feathers" (1932), and Groucho, as college professor Quincey Adams Wagstaff, strums the guitar while serenading the delightful Thelma Todd. If you knew those secrets words, the duck will fly down and give you absolutely nothing. "Horse Feathers" is the film that contains Groucho's immortal line to Zeppo, cast as his son: 'I married your mother because I wanted children. Imagine my disappointment when you arrived." Groucho picks up the guitar in only two of the brothers' 13 films, "Horse Feathers" and the film that directly preceded it, "Monkey Business" (1931). I don't know about Twain, but Groucho took the guitar very seriously. He taught himself to play by ear in vaudeville, then took lessons with the great guitar teacher Bill Mathes and cultivated a friendship with classical guitarist Andre Segovia. He kept to a rigorous schedule of practicing two hours a day. For those wondering if I'm stringing them along, the preceding is submitted largely because I always thought there was a strong comedic kinship between Groucho Marx and Mark Twain. There are the wit and wisecracks. There is the preeminence in American humor. There is the trademark cigar. There is the often-scathing view of the damned human race. Maybe Twain didn't have a guitar to pass along, but from Mark to Marx there seems to be a passing of the cigar in American humor -- the Marx Brothers forming their earliest vaudeville act in 1909, just as Twain is preparing to depart the scene. And when Twain was preparing to leave on his round-the-world lecture tour, he could have used another of my favorite Groucho lines: "I've worked my way up from nothing to state of extreme poverty."