He attended Pomona College and Harvard University, where he studied with the eminent Shakespearean scholar George Lyman Kittredge and obtained a Ph.D. in English philology.
Virginia Woolf cited this work in an essay stating, "Two pious American editors have collected the comments of this various company [Coleridge's acquaintances], and they are, of course, various.
Armour also wrote satirical books, such as Twisted Tales from Shakespeare, and his ersatz history of the United States, It All Started With Columbus.
These books were typically filled with puns and plays on words, and gave the impression of someone who had not quite been paying attention in class, thus also getting basic facts not quite right, to humorous effect.
During the bombardment, a young lawyer named Francis "Off" Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner, and when, by the dawn's early light, the British heard it sung, they fled in terror."
His book The Classics Reclassified includes take-offs on works such as The Iliad, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, etc.
Armour's books are typically written in a style parodying dull academic tomes, with many footnotes (funny in themselves), fake bibliographies, quiz sections, and glossaries.
After introductions, host Groucho Marx repeated the show's famous catch-phrase, "Say the secret word, win a hundred dollars."
To Groucho Most poets write of Meadowlarks I sing instead of Groucho Marx His lustrous eyes, each like a star His noble brow, his sweet cigar His manly stride, his soft moustache His easy way with sponsors' cash His massive shoulders, brawny arms His intellect, his many charms In short, unless the truth I stray from A man to keep your wife away from.