MARX BROTHERS

American comedy team that was popular on stage, screen, and radio for 30 years. They were celebrated for their inventive attacks on the socially respectable and upon ordered society in general. Five Marx brothers became entertainers: Chico (Leonard; b. March 1887, New York, N.Y., U.S.d. Oct. 11, 1961, Hollywood, Calif.), Harpo (Adolph Arthur; b. Nov. 23, 1888, New York Cityd. Sept. 28, 1964, Hollywood), Groucho (Julius Henry; b. Oct. 2, 1890, New York Cityd. Aug. 19, 1977, Los Angeles, Calif.), Gummo (Milton; b. Oct. 23, 1892, New York Cityd. April 21, 1977, Palm Springs, Calif.), and Zeppo (Herbert; b. Feb. 25, 1901, New York Cityd. Nov. 29, 1979, Palm Springs). Encouraged by their mother, Minnie, the brothers formed vaudeville acts such as The Four Nightingales (190810), The Six Musical Mascots, and later The Four Marx Brothers. They adopted their distinctive nicknames in 1914, the same year they began their successful comedy show Home Again. Zeppo replaced Gummo in the act in 1918. Their first play on Broadway, I'll Say She Is (1924), was a huge success and was followed by The Cocoanuts (1925) and Animal Crackers (1928). The brothers initiated a series of screen comedies in the late 1920s. These, at first film versions of their stage successes, soon developed into a skillful cinematic blend of visual and verbal humour. Among their best-known pictures were The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Duck Soup (1933), A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), and Room Service (1938). These films were characterized by perfect comic interplay between the brothers, with Groucho supplying a running commentary of pungent asides to the audience as counterpoint to the frantic activities of the silent Harpo and the Italian-accented Chico. Groucho, a master of the wisecrack and the non sequitur delivered in an anarchic, unpredictable style, customarily walked with bent knees, gliding across the floor with a furtive air and casting predatory looks at women. The actress Margaret Dumont, who was most often the recipient of these looks, played a statuesque lady whose aplomb was seldom ruffled by the amorous attacks of her admirer or by the chaos that the brothers created. Harpo played the harp (with great skill) and Chico the piano, on at least one occasion demolishing it as he played. In the late 1930s Zeppo became a theatrical agent, and Chico was a band leader during World War II. In 1947 Groucho began the radio show You Bet Your Life. After the brothers' last film together, Love Happy (1950), Groucho appeared independently in several motion pictures, wrote his memoirs, and achieved success as the quiz master on a long-lived television version of You Bet Your Life.