Their sketch "Fun in Hi Skule" featured Groucho as a German-accented teacher presiding over a classroom that included students Harpo, Gummo and Chico. The act slowly evolved from singing with comedy to comedy with music. The family then realized they had potential as a comic troupe. Instead of becoming angry, the audience laughed.
#Marx brothers mirror scene full
When they returned, Groucho, angered by the interruption, made snide comments about the audience, including "Nacogdoches is full of roaches" and "The jackass is the flower of Tex-ass". The audience hurried outside to see what was happening. One evening in 1912, a performance at the Opera House in Nacogdoches, Texas was interrupted by shouts from outside about a runaway mule. Sadye Marks 1905-1983), who married comedian Jack Benny. A cousin of the Marx brothers was Mary Livingstone (b. The troupe was renamed "The Six Mascots". The next year, Harpo became the fourth Nightingale and by 1910, the group was expanded to include their mother Minnie and their Aunt Hannah. By 1907, he and Gummo were singing together as "The Three Nightingales" with Mabel O'Donnell. Groucho's debut was in 1905, mainly as a singer. They got their start in vaudeville, where their uncle Albert Schönberg performed as Al Shean of Gallagher and Shean. Chico was an excellent pianist, Groucho a guitarist and singer, and Zeppo a vocalist. Harpo was hopelessly untalented on the guitar and piano (he boasts in his autobiography that he only knew two songs, and that he could only play them with one finger) however, he became a dedicated harpist, which gave him his nickname. The brothers were from a family of artists, and their musical talent was encouraged from an early age. Manfred died in infancy before any of the performing Marx Brothers were born. Harpo Adolph (after 1911: Arthur) NovemSeptem75Ī sixth brother, Manfred ("Mannie"), was actually the first child of Sam and Minnie to be born, in 1886.
The family lived in the then-poor Yorkville section of New York City's Upper East Side, between the Irish, German and Italian quarters. Their mother, Minnie Schönberg, was from Dornum in East Frisia and their father, Simon Marx (whose name was changed to Samuel Marx, and who was nicknamed "Frenchy") was a native of Alsace and worked as a tailor. Gummo was not in any of the movies Zeppo appeared only in the first five.īorn in New York City, the Marx Brothers were the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany and France. The two younger brothers, Gummo and Zeppo, did not develop their stage characters to the same extent, and eventually left the act to pursue other careers.
The core of the act was the three elder brothers, Chico, Harpo and Groucho each developed a highly distinctive stage persona. Five of the Marx Brothers’ thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy films, with two of them (Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera) in the top twelve. The Marx Brothers were a Jewish-American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950.