Groucho glasses

Woman wearing a pair of Groucho glasses

Groucho glasses (also known as the beaglepuss[1]) are a humorous novelty disguise which function as a caricature of the stage makeup used by the comedian Groucho Marx in his movies and vaudeville performances. They typically consist of black frames without lenses (either round or horn-rimmed) with attached features including bushy eyebrows, a large plastic nose, bushy moustache, and sometimes a plastic cigar.

Considered one of the most iconic and widely used of all novelty items in the world, Groucho glasses were marketed as early as the 1940s[2] and are instantly recognizable to people throughout the world.[3] The glasses are often used as a shorthand for slapstick[4] and are depicted in the Disguised Face (🥸) emoji.[5][6]

  1. ^ Buhle, Paul (2007). Jews and American Popular Culture: Sports, leisure, and lifestyle. Praeger Publishers. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-275-98796-1.
  2. ^ Giddins, Gary (18 June 2000). "There Ain't No Sanity Claus". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
  3. ^ Giddins, Gary (2001). The New York Times Book Reviews 2000, volume 1. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. ISBN 1579580580. "The most enduring mask of the 20th century—likely to take their place alongside Comedy and Tragedy or Pulcinella and Pierrot..."
  4. ^ Pritzker, Steven R. (1 September 1999). "The Effect of Groucho Marx Glasses on Depression". Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers. Archived from the original on 19 April 2013. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
  5. ^ Hy, Mo. "Proposal for New Emoji: Disguised Face" (PDF). Unicode. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  6. ^ "Disguised Face". Emojipedia. Retrieved 18 January 2022.