Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American comedy troupe who achieved success in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in 14 motion pictures. The five brothers were Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Groucho Marx, Gummo Marx, and Zeppo Marx, though Gummo and Zeppo both left the group over time, leaving Chico, Harpo, and Groucho as a trio. They are considered by critics, scholars and fans to be among the greatest and most influential comedians of the 20th century, a recognition underscored by the American Film Institute selecting five of their fourteen feature films to be among the top 100 comedy films and including them as the only group of performers on AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of the 25 greatest male stars of Classical Hollywood cinema.
Their performing lives, heavily influenced by their mother, Minnie Marx, started with Groucho on stage at age 14, in 1905. He was joined, in succession, by Gummo and Harpo. Chico started a separate vaudeville act in 1911, and joined his brothers in 1912. Zeppo replaced Gummo when the latter joined the army in World War I. The brothers performed in vaudeville until 1923, when they found themselves banned from the major vaudeville circuits owing to a dispute with E. F. Albee. Failing in an attempt to produce their own shows on the alternate Shubert circuit, they transitioned to Broadway, where they achieved success with a series of hit musical comedies, including I'll Say She Is, The Cocoanuts, and Animal Crackers.
In 1928, the Marx Brothers made a deal with Paramount Pictures to appear in a screen version of The Cocoanuts, which was filmed at Paramount's Astoria Studios during the Broadway run of Animal Crackers. The Cocoanuts was released in 1929, followed the next year by a film version of Animal Crackers. They then moved to Los Angeles, where they starred in three more films for Paramount: Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup.
When their contract expired following the production of Duck Soup, Zeppo left the team and the Marx Brothers left Paramount. Groucho, Chico and Harpo were signed by Irving Thalberg at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where they starred in A Night at the Opera, which they considered to be their best film. Shortly after filming began on their follow-up movie, A Day at the Races, Thalberg died of pneumonia at the age of 37. While they continued to appear in films, they felt that the quality of their work, as well as their interest in it, was waning.
After starring in Room Service for RKO Pictures, the brothers returned to MGM for At the Circus and Go West. Although they announced that their next MGM film, The Big Store, would be their farewell picture, they returned to the screen in A Night in Casablanca, reportedly because Chico needed money. In 1949, they starred together in their final film, Love Happy.
Groucho went on to a successful career as host of the quiz show You Bet Your Life, while Harpo and Chico continued to make guest appearances on television and on the stage.
Family background and early life
The Marx Brothers were born in New York City, the sons of Jewish immigrants. Their mother Miene Marx was from Dornum in East Frisia, then a part of the Kingdom of Hanover. She came from a family of performers. Her mother was a yodeling harpist and her father a ventriloquist; both were funfair entertainers. Around 1880, the family emigrated to New York City. Their father, Samuel Marx, was a native of Mertzwiller, a small village in Alsace, France, and worked as a tailor. Minnie and Sam married on January 18, 1885.The family lived in New York City's Upper East Side in the Yorkville district centered in the Irish, German and Italian quarters. The eldest child in the household was their cousin Pauline, or "Polly", whom they often referred to as an adopted sister. The Marxes' firstborn son, Manfred, died aged seven months, on July 17, 1886, of enterocolitis, with asthenia contributing. He is buried in Washington Cemetery, beside his grandmother, Fanny Sophie Schönberg, who died on April 10, 1901. Leonard Joseph "Chico" Marx was born on March 22, 1887; Adolph "Harpo" Marx was born on November 23, 1888; Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx on October 2, 1890; Milton "Gummo" Marx on October 21, 1892; and the youngest, Herbert Manfred "Zeppo" Marx, on February 25, 1901.
Stage beginnings
1905-1914: Rise in independent vaudeville
Early performances
Minnie helped her younger brother Abraham Schönberg enter show business; he became successful in vaudeville and on Broadway as half of the musical comedy double act Gallagher and Shean. His success, and the family's theater background, inspired her to encourage her children to follow in his footsteps. Using the name Minnie Palmer - so that agents did not realize that she was also their mother - she acted as the brothers' manager. All the brothers said, at various points, that Minnie Marx had been the head of the family, the driving force in getting the troupe launched, and the only person who could keep them in order; she was also said to be a hard bargainer with theater management.Groucho made his stage debut as a singer in 1905. In 1907, Minnie approached vaudeville director Ned Wayburn to produce Groucho in a singing act with Gummo; together with his own discovery, Mabel O'Donnell, they went on the road as "The Three Nightingales". By November of that year, Wayburn had moved on, and the act continued under Minnie's direction. She replaced O'Donnell with a singer named Lou Levy.
The next year, having accidentally booked the act as a quartet at a Coney Island venue, and being short a fourth member, Minnie went to a movie theater where Harpo was working, and demanded that he quit his job and join the act immediately. In spite of the fact that he didn't know the songs they were supposed to sing, Harpo went along, later remembering an inauspicious beginning: "With my first look at my first audience, I reverted to being a boy again. I wet my pants. It was probably the most wretched debut in show business." Harpo had become the fourth Nightingale. By 1910, he officially changed his name from Adolph, which he had never liked, to Arthur. The same year, the troupe, renamed "The Six Mascots", briefly expanded to include Minnie and the brothers' Aunt Hannah.
One evening in 1909, a performance at the Opera House in Nacogdoches, Texas was interrupted by shouts from outside about a runaway mule. The audience hurried out to see what was happening. Groucho was angered by the interruption and, when the audience returned, he made snide comments at their expense, including "Nacogdoches is full of roaches" and "the jackass is the flower of Tex-ass". Instead of becoming angry, the audience laughed. The family then realized that it had potential as a comic troupe.
Over time, the act evolved from singing with comedy to comedy with music. The brothers' comedy sketch Fun in High School featured Groucho as a German-accented teacher presiding over a classroom that included students Harpo, Gummo, and, after he joined the act in 1912, Chico. The brothers toured successfully with Fun in High School for several years, sometimes alternating with a comedy billed as Mr. Green's Reception, a similar production in which the schoolmaster and his students were portrayed as older characters.
In early 1911, Chico was working at music publishing firm Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., when the founder of that company, Maurice Shapiro, died. Chico quit immediately, convincing a young tenor, Aaron Gordon, to tour with him in vaudeville. At the time, there was a successful vaudeville act called The Two Funny Germans, starring Bill Gordon and Nick Marx; with Minnie's encouragement, Aaron Gordon and Chico Marx adopted Italian accents and toured as Marx and Gordon. Gordon left the act in the fall of that year, and, after failing to break through with two other partners, Chico finally joined his brothers' comedy act in September 1912.
Origin of their stage names
It was during their early years in vaudeville that the brothers received their stage names, which were given to them by monologist Art Fisher during a poker game. The nicknames were influenced by Gus Mager's comic strip Sherlocko the Monk, which featured a character named "Groucho", reflecting the "O" nickname fad of the era. As Fisher dealt each brother a card, he addressed them, for the first time, by the names they kept for the rest of their lives.Most accounts attribute Julius's nickname "Groucho" to his notably moody temperament. Alternative theories suggest that it derived from the Groucho character in Sherlocko the Monk, or from the "grouch bag" he carried, containing money and necessities. Leonard was named "Chicko" because of his reputation for chasing women. "Chicko" was eventually shortened to "Chico", but still pronounced "Chick-o" rather than "Cheek-o." Arthur was dubbed "Harpo" because he played the harp.
Milton's nickname "Gummo" stemmed from his habit of wearing rubber-soled shoes, although the details varied depending on who was telling the story. Harpo claimed that Milton earned the name by sneaking around theaters like a gumshoe detective. Other sources reported that Gummo was the family's hypochondriac, and therefore wore rubber overshoes whenever he thought it might rain, or that he was the troupe's best dancer, and dance shoes tended to have rubber soles.
1914-1922: ''Home Again'', World War I, and failure in Vaudeville
''Home Again''
The Marx Brothers' early vaudeville shows often received mixed reviews; while critics were generally kind to the performers themselves, they frequently noted the low quality of the material. When the Marxes attempted to play larger venues, audiences were often unreceptive. One Chicago critic, for example, wrote: "The so-called Marx Brothers do well, but in the worst kind of vaudeville. In other words, they are so good that they stink." Eventually, even local reviewers began to find the jokes stale, with one in Hammond, Indiana, describing them as "musty." Faced with dwindling appeal, the brothers turned to their uncle, Al Shean, a veteran vaudeville performer, to help them develop new material. Shean responded by writing Home Again, an expanded version of their earlier act, Mr. Green's Reception.Home Again proved to be a pivotal production, solidifying the Marx Brothers' distinctive comedic personas. Shean, who had portrayed a fast-talking German character in his own act, created a similar role for Groucho. This character began to incorporate Groucho's trademark greasepaint mustache and a stooped walk. For Harpo, Shean intentionally wrote few lines, contributing to the decision for him to stop speaking on stage. Explanations for this varied: Shean attributed it to Harpo's lisp, while Harpo himself stated that positive reviews of the act often said that he was better when he did not speak. It was during this period that Harpo also adopted his signature wig and horn. Gummo, and later Zeppo, assumed the role of the romantic straight man, a part James Agee famously described as "peerlessly cheesy."
The reception to Home Again was overwhelmingly positive, with the show playing to packed audiences. Confident in its success, the brothers even guaranteed that if theaters did not surpass their average revenue, they would perform for free. A review in Billboard hailed it as "a good meaty character comedy," adding that "the company's work fully entitle them to their six ."
By the end of 1914, Home Again had become popular enough to secure a contract with the United Booking Office, which controlled the highest-paying theaters in the country. This allowed them to begin sharing bills with more prominent acts, such as Jack Benny and W.C. Fields. Fields, reportedly concerned about unfavorable comparisons, once feigned a broken wrist to avoid following them on stage.
In 1915, the Home Again tour reached Flint, Michigan, where 14-year-old Zeppo joined his four brothers for what is believed to be the only time that all five Marx Brothers appeared together on stage. The September 3, 1915, edition of The Flint Daily Journal documented this performance, noting that Zeppo sang "four or five songs" and "gives promise of becoming as much of a favorite as the rest of the family."