Their first talkie, Monkey Business (1929), enabled Groucho to pour forth a cascade of puns and quick wit. Their "spontaneous idiocy" and frenzied burlesque of their own revues captivated audiences.Ī successful New York musical, I'll Say She Is, was followed by Coconuts (1926), a spoof of the Florida land-development boom, and Animal Crackers (1928), perhaps the most representative of the Marx brothers' insane antics the last two were effectively adapted as movies.
During the early 1920s the Marx brothers achieved their final stage identities: Groucho, the almost schizophrenic, mustached punster with the stooped glide, ever-arching eyebrows, and the fat cigar Harpo, the mute but expressive curly-headed imp, with one hand on somebody's silver service and the other playing his harp Chico, almost as voluble as Groucho, dressed in an organ-grinder's costume, speaking a number of tortured dialects while performing at the piano and Zeppo, the straight man.
Harpo and Gummo disbanded the group when they enlisted in World War I, and Chico and Groucho entertained soldiers in army camps.Īfter the war Gummo left show business for manufacturing, and Zeppo gained his initiation into comedy in revues. Harpo, extremely nervous onstage, could not be trusted to deliver his lines he himself imposed muteness on his public image. Finally they teamed together, touring the vaudeville circuit. But his tour with a troupe impersonating female singers ended when his voice suddenly changed.Īlthough all were living in New York, the three experienced Marx brothers-Chico, Harpo, and Groucho-worked separately. Possessor of a delightful soprano voice, adolescent Groucho won a part in The Messenger Boys, a benefit revue for San Francisco earthquake victims. Unable to find a job, he discovered his grandmother's "broken-down harp" and by his own unorthodox methods became a virtuoso. Harpo began his career performing in two nightclubs since he used identical routines, he was fired for presenting "used" material. In Chico's vaudeville debut he wrestled, clowned, and played piano. Samuel Marx, an immigrant tailor, and Minna Schoenberg, a German vaudevillian turned factory worker, met and married in New York and raised five sons: Leonard (Chico), born in 1891 Adolph (Harpo), 1893 Milton (Gummo), 1894 Julius (Groucho), 1895 and Herbert (Zeppo), 1901.Ī true stage mother, Minnie Marx tirelessly arranged interviews and created skits and revues for her boys. The Marx brothers were American stage and film comedians whose lunatic antics dominated comedy during the 1930s.
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