The Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers were a team of sibling comedians that appeared in vaudeville, stage plays, film and television.

Born in New York City, the Marx Brothers were the sons of Jewish immigrants from different parts of Germany. (Plattdeutsch was the boys' first language.) Their mother, Minnie Schönberg, originally hailed from Dornum in East Frisia, Germany, and their father Simon "Frenchie" Marrix (whose name was anglicized to Sam Marx) from Alsace, now a part of France. The family lived in the Upper East Side of New York City between the Irish, German and Italian Quarters.

The Marx brothers

All the brothers and their real names were as follows:

• Manfred, born in 1885 and died in infancy

• Chico — Leonard, (March 22, 1887–October 11, 1961)

• Harpo — Adolph (after 1911: Arthur), (November 23, 1888–September 28, 1964)

• Groucho — Julius Henry, (October 2, 1890–August 19, 1977)

• Gummo — Milton, (October 23, 1892–April 21, 1977)

• Zeppo — Herbert, (February 25, 1901–November 30, 1979)

Stage beginnings

Born to a family of artists, the musical talent of the brothers was encouraged from an early age. Harpo was especially talented, and could play nearly any instrument; however, his focus was the harp, from which he derived his nickname, and which he often played on film. Chico was an excellent and histrionic pianist, and Groucho played the guitar.

They got their start in vaudeville, where their uncle Albert Schönberg was performing as Al Shean of Gallagher and Shean. Groucho's debut was in 1905, predominately as a singer. By 1907 he and Gummo were singing together as two-thirds of The Three Nightingales with Mabel O'Donnell. The next year, Harpo became the fourth Nightingale. By 1910, the group was expanded to include their mother and their Aunt Hannah, and the troupe was renamed The Six Mascots.

One evening, a performance at the Opera House in Nacogdoches, Texas was interrupted by shouts from outside about a runaway mule. The audience hurried outside to see what was happening, and when they returned, Groucho, infuriated by the interruption, announced "Nacogdoches is full of roaches," and "The jackass is the flower of Tex-ass." Instead of becoming angry in return, the audience laughed, and afterward the family began to consider the possibility that they had potential as a comic troupe.

Slowly, the act evolved from singing with some incidental comedy to a comedy with some music, like their sketch set in a schoolroom ("Fun in Hi Skule"), featuring Groucho as a German-accented teacher presiding over a classroom which included students Harpo, Gummo and, by 1912, Chico. The last version of the school act, entitled Home Again, was written by Al Shean. Around this time, Gummo left the group to fight in World War I ("Anything is better than being an actor!"); Zeppo would replace him for their final vaudeville years, through their leap to Broadway, and the subsequent Paramount pictures.

During World War I, anti-German sentiments grew, and the family tried to hide their German origin. Harpo changed his real first name from Adolph to Arthur, and Groucho discontinued his "German" stage personality.

By this time the brothers, now "The Four Marx Brothers", had begun to incorporate their unique brand of comedy into their act and to develop their characters. It has been noted in a few of both Groucho and Harpo's memoirs that their now famous on-stage personas were originally created by Al Shean. Groucho began to wear his trademark greasepaint moustache and to use a stooped walk, Harpo began to wear a red fright wig, carried a taxi-cab horn and never spoke, Chico started to talk in a fake Italian accent, developed off-stage to deal with neighbourhood toughs, and Zeppo adopted the schleppy, juvenile role of the straight man. The on-stage personalities of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo were said to have been based on their actual traits (although, in real life, Harpo could talk). Zeppo, on the other hand, was considered the funniest offstage brother, despite his limited, straight stage roles. Being the youngest and having grown up watching his brothers, he was also the one who could fill in for, and nearly perfectly imitate, the others when illness kept them from a performance. "He was so good as Captain Spaulding [in Animal Crackers] that I would have let him play the part indefinitely, if they had allowed me to smoke in the audience", Groucho recalled.

In the 1920s the Marx Brothers became one of America's favourite theatrical acts. With their sharp and bizarre sense of humour, they satirized institutions like high society, and human hypocrisy. In addition, they became famous for their improvisational comedy in their free form scenarios. A famous early example was when Harpo instructed a chorus girl to run across the stage in front of Groucho during his act with him chasing to see if Groucho would be thrown off. However to the audience's delight, Groucho merely reacted with an improvised joke of calmly checking his watch and commenting: "First time I ever saw a taxi hail a passenger", and, when Harpo chased the girl back the other direction, "You can always set your watch by the 9:20".

Under Chico's management and with Groucho's creative direction, the brothers' vaudeville act had become successful enough to make them stars on Broadway, first with a musical revue, I'll Say She Is (1924–1925), followed by two musical comedies, The Cocoanuts (1925–1926) and Animal Crackers (1928–1929). Playwright George S. Kaufman worked on the latter two shows and helped to sharpen the Brothers' characterizations.

Origin of the stage names

The stage names for four of the five brothers were coined by monologist Art Fisher during a poker game on the road, based both on the brothers' personalities and Knocko the Monk, a popular comic strip of the day which included a supporting character named "Groucho". The reasons behind Chico's and Harpo's are undisputed, and Gummo's are fairly well established, while Groucho's and Zeppo's are far less clear. Arthur was named Harpo because he played the harp, and Leonard named Chico (pronounced "Chick-o") after his affinity for the ladies ("chicks").

In his autobiography Harpo Speaks! (Limelight Editions, 1985, ISBN 0-87910-036-2), Harpo explains that Milton became Gummo because he crept about the theater like a gumshoe detective. Other sources report that Gummo was the family's hypochondriac, having been the sickliest of the brothers in childhood, and that he therefore wore rubber overshoes, also called gumshoes, in all kinds of weather. However, since gumshoe detectives were named for the rubber overshoes, the two explanations apparently are minor variations on a definitively established theme.

The reason Julius was named Groucho is perhaps the most disputed. There are three major explanations:

• Julius' temperament. Maxine, Chico's daughter and Groucho's niece, said in the documentary The Unknown Marx Brothers that Julius was named "Groucho" simply because he was grouchy most or all of the time. Robert B. Weide, a director known for his knowledge of Marx Brothers history, said in Remarks On Marx, a documentary short included with the DVD of A Night At The Opera, that among the competing explanations he found this one the most believable.

• The grouch bag. This explanation appears in Harpo's biography, was voiced by Chico in a TV appearance included on The Unknown Marx Brothers, and also offered by George Fenneman, Groucho's sidekick on his TV game show, You Bet Your Life. A grouch bag was a small drawstring bag worn around the neck in which a traveler could keep money and other valuables so that it would be very difficult for anyone to steal them. Most of Groucho's friends and associates went on record publicly with their observations that Groucho was extremely stingy, especially after losing all his money in the 1929 stock market crash, so naming him for the grouch bag may have been a comment on this trait. Groucho, in chapter six of his biography, Groucho and Me, insisted that this was not the case:

I kept my money in a 'grouch bag.' This was a small charmois bag that actors used to wear around their neck to keep other hungry actors from pinching their dough. Naturally, you're going to think that's where I got my name from. But that's not so. Grouch bags were worn on manly chests long before there was a groucho.

• Groucho's explanation. Understandably dissatisfied with being described as perpetually grumpy or excessively stingy, Groucho himself insisted that he was named for a character in the comic strip, Knocko the Monk, which had inspired the craze for nicknames ending in O. And, in fact, there was a character in that strip named "Groucho." However, he is the only Marx or Marx associate who ever defended this theory, and as he is not an unbiased witness, few biographers take the claim seriously.

Herbert was not nicknamed by Art Fisher, as he did not join the act until Gummo had departed. As with Groucho, three explanations exist for Herbert's name, "Zeppo":

• Harpo's explanation. Harpo said in Harpo Speaks! that the brothers had named Herbert for Mr. Zippo, a chimpanzee that was part of another vaudeville performer's act. Herbert disliked the nickname, and when it came time for him to join the act, he put his foot down and refused to be named "Zippo," so the brothers compromised on Zeppo.

• Chico's explanation. Chico never wrote an autobiography, and gave fewer interviews than his brothers, but his daughter, Maxine, in The Unknown Marx Brothers related the story that when the Marx Brothers lived in Chicago, a popular style of humor was the "Zeke and Zeb" joke, which made fun of slow-witted Midwesterners in much the same way Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes mock cajuns, or Ole and Lena jokes mock Minnesotans. One day, as Chico returned home, he found the much younger Herbert sitting on the fence, and Herbert greeted him by saying "Hi, Zeke!" Chico responded with "Hi, Zeb!" and the name stuck. The brothers called Herbert "Zeb," and when he joined the act, they floated the idea of "Zebbo," eventually preferring "Zeppo."

• Groucho's explanation. In a tape-recorded interview excerpted on The Unknown Marx Brothers, Groucho said Zeppo was so named because he was born when the first zeppelins started crossing the ocean. The first zeppelin flew in July of 1900, while Herbert was born seven months later in February of 1901; the first transatlantic zeppelin flight did not happen until 1924, when Herbert was a young man.

Hollywood

The Marx Brothers' stage shows became popular just as Hollywood was making the change to "talkies". They struck a contract with Paramount and embarked on their career in films. Their first two released films (they had previously made – but not released – one short silent film titled Humor Risk) were adaptations of Broadway shows: The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930). Both were written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. Following these two feature-length films, they made a short film that was included in Paramount's twentieth anniversary documentary, The House That Shadows Built (1931), in which they adapted a scene from I'll Say She Is. Their third feature-length film, Monkey Business (1931), was their first that was not based on a stage production. Horse Feathers (1932), in which the brothers satirized the American College system and Prohibition, was their most popular film yet, and won them the cover of Time magazine. It included a running gag from their films where Harpo revealed having nearly everything in his coat. At various points in Horse Feathers Harpo pulls out of his coat: a wooden mallet, a fish, a coiled rope, a tie, a poster of a woman in her underwear, a cup of hot coffee, a sword, and a candle burning at both ends.

Their last Paramount film, Duck Soup (1933) – directed by the most highly regarded director they ever worked with, Leo McCarey – is now considered by many their finest: it is the only Marx Brothers film on the American Film Institute's "100 years ... 100 Movies" list. Common wisdom holds that the film failed, but this was actually incorrect. It did not do as well as Horse Feathers, but was the sixth highest-grosser of 1933. The Marx Brothers left Paramount because of disagreements over creative decisions and financial issues.

Tired of the unrewarding status of playing second (or fourth)-banana to his elder brothers, Zeppo left the act to become an agent. He remained his brothers' agent for the remainder of their career as the Marx Bros. Groucho and Chico did radio, and there was talk of returning to Broadway. At a bridge game with Chico, Irving Thalberg began discussing the possibility of the Marxes coming to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and they signed, now known as "The Three Marx Brothers," or simply "The Marx Bros." Thalberg insisted on a strong story structure, unlike the free-for-all scripts at Paramount. In the rest of their films, their comedy would be interwoven with romantic plots and non-comic musical numbers while the targets of their mischief was largely confined to clear villains. Only their Paramount films represent what is considered their genius in its pure form.

The first film that the brothers shot with Thalberg was A Night at the Opera (1935), a satire on the world of opera music, where the brothers help two young singers in love by throwing a production of Il Trovatore into chaos. The film was a great success, and for decades (until critics and fans took a second look at their Paramount films) was generally considered their best work. The film was a huge success, followed two years later by the even bigger hit A Day at the Races (1937), where the brothers caused mayhem in a sanitarium and at a horse race. However, during shooting in 1936, Thalberg died suddenly, and without him, the brothers didn't have an advocate at MGM.

After a short experience at RKO (Room Service, 1938), the Marx Brothers made three more films before leaving MGM, At the Circus (1939), Go West (1940), and The Big Store (1941). Prior to the release of "The Big Store" the team announced their retirement from the screen, but Chico was in dire financial straits and to help settle his gambling debts, the Marx Brothers made another two films together, A Night in Casablanca (1946) and Love Happy (1949), both of them released by United Artists.

Groucho and Chico appeared together briefly in a short 1957 film promoting the Saturday Evening Post entitled "Showdown at Ulcer Gulch," directed by animator Shamus Culhane, Chico's son-in-law. Then they worked together, but in different scenes, in The Story of Mankind (1957). In 1959, all three acted in a TV pilot, Deputy Seraph, to star Harpo and Chico as blundering angels; Groucho would appear in every third episode as their boss, the "Deputy Seraph" (A seraph is an angel). The pilot was never finished when it was discovered that Chico was seriously ill with arteriosclerosis and was uninsurable. He and Harpo did appear together in a half-hour film shot later that year,The Incredible Jewel Robbery, a pantomime show with the pair as would-be jewel thieves. Groucho made a brief appearance in the last scene.

From the 1940s onward, Chico and Harpo made nightclub and casino appearances, sometimes together. Groucho began a career as a radio and television entertainer. From 1947 to the early-1960s he was the host of the humorous quiz show You Bet Your Life. He was also an author; his writings include the autobiographical Groucho and Me (1959) and Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1964).

The 1957 television talk show Tonight! America After Dark, hosted by Jack Lescoulie, may supply the only public footage in which all five brothers appeared.

In 1970, the Four Marx Brothers had a brief reunion of sorts in the animated ABC television special The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians, produced by Rankin-Bass animation (of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer fame). The special featured animated reworkings of various famous comedians' acts, including W.C. Fields, Jack Benny, George Burns, Henny Youngman, The Smothers Brothers, Flip Wilson, Phyllis Diller, Jack E. Leonard, George Jessel, and the Marx Brothers. Most of the comedians provided their own voices for their animated counterparts, except for W.C. Fields, Chico Marx (who had died), and Zeppo Marx (who left show business in 1933). Voice actor Paul Frees filled in for all three. The Marx Brothers' segment was a reworking of a scene from their Broadway play I'll Say She Is, a parody of Napoleon which Groucho considered among the Brothers' funniest routines. The sketch featured animated representations, if not the voices, of all four brothers. Romeo Muller is credited as having written special material for the show, but the script for the classic "Napoleon Scene" was probably supplied by Groucho.

On January 16, 1977, The Marx Brothers were inducted into the Motion Picture Hall of Fame.

Many TV shows and movies have used Marx Brothers references; such as multiple episodes of Disney's The Suite Life of Zack and Cody have similar jokes, too close to be coincidence. Animaniacs and Tiny Toons have also featured Marx Brothers jokes and skits.

Filmography

Films with the Four Marx Brothers:

• Humor Risk (1926), previewed once and never released; thought to be lost

• The Cocoanuts (1929), released by Paramount

• Animal Crackers (1930), released by Paramount

• The House That Shadows Built (1931), released by Paramount (short subject)

• Monkey Business (1931), released by Paramount

• Horse Feathers (1932), released by Paramount

• Duck Soup (1933), released by Paramount

Films with the three Marx Brothers (post-Zeppo):

• A Night at the Opera (1935), released by MGM

• A Day at the Races (1937), released by MGM

• Room Service (1938), released by RKO

• At the Circus (1939), released by MGM

• Go West (1940), released by MGM

• The Big Store (1941), released by MGM

• A Night in Casablanca (1946), released by United Artists

• Love Happy (1949), released by United Artists

• The Story of Mankind (1957), released by Warner Bros.

Solo endeavors:

• Groucho:

  • Copacabana (1947), released by United Artists

  • Double Dynamite (1951), released by RKO

  • A Girl in Every Port (1952), released by RKO

  • Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), released by 20th Century Fox (uncredited)

  • The Mikado (1960), made for television

  • Skidoo (1968), released by Paramount.

• Harpo:

  • Too Many Kisses (1925), released by Paramount

  • Stage Door Canteen (1943), released by United Artists (cameo)

• Chico:

  • Papa Romani (1950), television pilot

• Zeppo:

  • A Kiss in the Dark (1925), released by Paramount (cameo)