Five brothers, thirteen films, one anarchic grammar
The Marx Brothers—Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo—carried vaudeville chaos onto Broadway and into thirteen movies. Gummo and later Zeppo stepped away, leaving the classic trio whose Paramount and MGM features still define American absurdist comedy.
The brothers were born in New York City to Jewish immigrants; their mother Minnie came from Dornum in East Frisia, the daughter of a yodelling harpist and a ventriloquist who worked funfairs. Her own brother, Al Shean, found vaudeville fame as half of Gallagher and Shean, and his success convinced her to push her sons onstage. In 1907 Ned Wayburn put Groucho and Gummo on the road as The Three Nightingales; the following year Minnie, having booked a quartet by mistake, marched into a cinema and ordered Harpo to quit his job and join that night. The family relocated to Chicago, a hub of vaudeville agencies, in 1909. That same year a runaway mule emptied a theatre in Nacogdoches, Texas, and Groucho's insults to the returning crowd drew laughs, nudging the act from singing toward comedy. Their stage names came from monologist Art Fisher during a poker game, riffing on a comic strip called Sherlocko the Monk; Gummo's reportedly came from rubber-soled shoes. Minnie kept driving the act. Groucho hit the stage at fourteen in 1905; Gummo and Harpo followed; Chico ran a separate vaudeville turn from 1911 and joined in 1912; Zeppo replaced Gummo when the latter entered the army in World War I. Broadway hits led to a 1928 Paramount deal: The Cocoanuts was shot at Astoria during the Animal Crackers stage run, reaching screens in 1929, with the Animal Crackers film the next year, before a move to Los Angeles.
After Duck Soup ended the Paramount contract, Zeppo left and the remaining three signed with Irving Thalberg at MGM. A Night at the Opera (1935) became the film they ranked as their best. Room Service (1938) for RKO interrupted the MGM run; At the Circus, Go West, and The Big Store followed, the last announced as a farewell before money needs pulled them back for A Night in Casablanca (1946) and later work.
Groucho reinvented himself hosting You Bet Your Life; Harpo and Chico kept guesting on television and stage. Critics still place the brothers among comedy’s essential anarchists: harp solos, painted moustaches, and contracts read aloud into nonsense. Thirteen features proved enough to outlast the studios that tried to contain them.
Source: Marx Brothers
