“My most concise, and memorable, lesson on editing came one day in 1958 when Groucho took me with him to visit George S. Kaufman in his New York apartment. For me, it had the aura of a visit to a tall, thin guru. I remember his being seated in a chair with his long legs seeming to be entwined at least twice around each other.
“‘Here’s a young director,’ Groucho said. ‘Tell him how to direct.’
“‘Well,’ Mr. Kaufman said, ‘if you have a script, and it says, “Sit down, I want to talk to you,” cut that out.'”
“End of instruction.”
Robert Dwan, As Long as They’re Laughing!: Groucho Marx and You Bet Your Life