Making Groucho history
1988 Snowdown attempted Guinness Book world record, in complete Durango fashion.

The year was 1988 – floppy disks were still a thing, Rick Astley had just released “Never Gonna Give You Up,” Lunchables redefined what is “food” and “Die Hard” premiered and kicked off the never-ending “Is this a Christmas movie” debate.

And denim. God, so much denim.

But did you also know 1988 was the year the fine organizers of Snowdown in Durango attempted to make history in the Guinness World Book of Records for the most people gathered wearing Groucho Marx glasses, noses and bushy mustaches?

Yes, it happened.

“Oh god, the things we did,” Geoff Wolf, a longtime Durango resident who was there that fateful day, said. “I remember the chaos of just trying to take the picture. Plus, half of the people there were inebriated. Well, maybe in those days, all of them.”

Oh Snowdown, Durango’s beloved and debaucherous winter festival that features whacky contests and events, bizarre themes (Yabba Dabba Do? Roman Around?) and a Herculean effort from most attendees to balance partying with work and sanity.

The first Snowdown, as lore goes, happened in 1979 after a few locals started scheming ways to break up the tedium of the long, cold winter while at the same time livening up the town’s winter economy. And obviously, the idea stuck, with the winter celebration now bringing visitors from all over to our smallish mountain town.

How Durango attempted to set the world record for people wearing Groucho masks in one place at the same time, however, is a story all its own. Albeit parts are lost in time and memory and umm… insobriety.

“Where did the idea come from?” Peg Ochsenreiter, a longtime Snowdown devotee who serves on the Board of Directors, said. “Oh, who knows?”

After looking through some old Snowdown archives, as well as randomly calling people who now live as far away as the Midwest about an event that happened 33 years ago, the story does somewhat start to piece together, though.

For the three Snowdown Follies prior to ’88, one of the MCs dressed up as Groucho Marx. That man was Rick Armstrong, who now lives in Missouri.

“In thinking of inspiration for the Follies, we were looking at different characters, and it just fell together,” Armstrong said. “It was just a lot of fun.”

Armstrong moved away before the 1988 Snowdown and the Groucho record attempt, but, needless to say, Groucho was on the mind of locals. As the 1988 Snowdown approached, with the theme “Still Crazy After All 10 Years” (a nod to Paul Simon’s song) and the theme product the Groucho disguise, someone got the idea to go for the Guinness record. Who that person was, however, is now lost to Snowdown mythology.

“It was just a thing people in town thought would be fun to do,” Dave Culver, who has seen his fair share of Snowdowns, said. “I’m sure that’s probably how it happened. I mean, that’s how most things happen with Snowdown.”

For a festival known for its jokes, pranks and overall absurdity, Snowdown organizers sure did take the record-setting attempt seriously. In the weeks leading up to the event, a media blitz went as far as newspapers and TV stations in Albuquerque. An ad in The Durango Herald, too, summoned all would-be Grouchos to the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad train depot at noon on Fri., Jan. 29, 1988.

“This man wants you!” the ad reads with a picture of the iconic comedian. “With your help, we will assemble 1,000 people all wearing Groucho noses and glasses for an official photograph which will be submitted to The Guinness World Records to claim the record for ‘most people ever assembled wearing Groucho noses.’”

The effort, hilariously, did not stop there. The day of the event, Ochsenreiter said buses drove all around town, recruiting people walking on the street or just going about their daily lives. Bus drivers told the passersby to come on in, they were about to set a world record. It was Snowdown, it was the 80s, people got in. Oh, and the buses were adorned with massive Groucho masks.

“Those buses went down north Main Ave. to pick people up – housekeepers from motels, anyone,” Ochsenreiter said. 

An event held in the middle of the day also forced some people to slip out of work. Jon Sherer, another longtime Durangoan, was fortunately his own boss, and therefore needed no excuse.

“I just said I’m going,” Sherer said. “So I just went down there, put on my nose and went in for the photo.”

Wrangling hundreds of Groucho-wearing, mostly intoxicated revelers was no easy task, either. Susan Lane, among the ranks that day, said that responsibility fell to a hapless photographer who had climbed on a manlift to take an aerial shot of the crowd.

“He was directing us all to squeeze in together, and we were all just laughing,” Lane said. “It was so hilarious and absurd. Like so many things in Snowdown, people just dropped work to come out there. I’ve always wondered how offices continue to function the week of Snowdown.”

Indeed, that’s a question for another day. But as far as the photo, it went off without a hitch. Uncovered from deep within the Herald archives, the headline the next day ran: “Durango still goes crazy for Snowdown ’88” with a timeless photo of the crowd in Groucho disguises.

How many people were exactly there remains another unknowable question. The Herald, in the article, tallied 462 Groucho lookalikes (not sure how they got that number down to a T). Others interviewed for this story said the event drew up to 800 people. Suffice to say, it was a decent turnout, at least 500 or more.

And here’s where the big, and of course most important, question comes into play: Did Snowdown set the record? Unfortunately, like all mysteries posed in this story, the answer remains elusive.

No one interviewed remembered if anyone actually submitted the record to Guinness, and since it’s unclear who was the lead organizer (if there was one), it’s hard to say to whom that responsibility would have even fallen. (I mean, how many times have YOU made a promise when drunk that you haven’t followed up on? Yeah, so don’t judge). Coverage in the Herald, too, appears to have gone dark after Snowdown came and went. 

So, that’s that. End of story.

Except we here at The Durango Telegraph couldn’t help but follow up with our newfound friends at Guinness World Records.

Unfortunately, Amanda Marcus, a spokeswoman for Guinness, said the records within their database didn’t show any mention of the ‘88 Snowdown. But, it appears large crowds gathering wearing Groucho disguises, for some reason, have become a thing.

Over the ensuing years, groups as farflung as Australia have attempted and succeeded in shattering the record. The current title belongs to an event organized by the city of Chicago’s Outdoor Film Festival, where, in July 2009, a total of 4,436 people put on their Groucho gear.

For our purposes, however, the first documented instance Guinness has on record of the most people simultaneously wearing Groucho glasses and noses at one location happened on a tennis court in Pittsfield, N.H., in 2001. The number? 522.

So, would it be fair to assume that 13 years earlier Snowdown set the record with about 500 people or so? And, would it be safe to say that before the ’88 Snowdown, no one would have even drummed up the idea of making this a thing people did?

We’ll leave that to readers to decide.

“I’d like to think Snowdown was the one that started all these Groucho gatherings,” Linda Mannix, one of Snowdown’s original founders, said. “There’s a lot of firsts in Snowdown’s history – some we don’t want to talk about – but this was just a fun, silly thing to get everyone involved. And it’s astounding to me how people in this community jump right in.”