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Groucho Marx

1890–1977 · 87 years

Minnie Marx's third son, who made the insult an American form

Portrait of Groucho Marx — ABC Photo — circa 1940 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Minnie Marx wanted her sons on the stage and was not fussy about whether they could do anything. She had come over from Dornum in northern Germany at 16, married a tailor her boys called Frenchie, and raised five of them in a building on East 93rd Street on money that never arrived. Her brother was the vaudeville headliner Al Shean, which was proof enough that it could be done. Julius Henry Marx meant to be a doctor. The family's need for income took him out of school at 12, and at 14 he was a boy singer working Grand Rapids. Minnie assembled the brothers into a singing act, booked it herself, and sent it out to die in front of Midwestern audiences who had not asked for it.

By family account, the comedy started as damage control. Booed as singers in Texas, the brothers clowned and the audience preferred it. After the Lusitania sank in 1915 his German accent got him hissed off, so he built the hustler instead — greasepaint moustache, cigar, crouch, and a mouth aimed at whoever had the most money. Three Broadway hits followed, five Paramount pictures through Duck Soup in 1933, then two for Irving Thalberg at MGM. At 57 came You Bet Your Life, a quiz show that ran 14 years and is where most Americans met him.

In October 1929, six weeks after Minnie died, the crash took it all. He and Harpo had borrowed heavily to buy stock and had to liquidate everything. He put the loss at about 240,000 dollars, a figure that moved in retelling, and he traced to that autumn an insomnia that never left. Money frightened him for good. All three marriages ended in divorce, to women 10, 33 and 39 years younger than he was. The resignation letter he printed in Groucho and Me — he would not belong to any club that would accept him as a member — is the most quoted thing he wrote, and not entirely a joke. In his last years, weakened by a run of small strokes, he was the subject of a court fight between his children and his companion Erin Fleming.

He died of pneumonia at Cedars-Sinai on August 19, 1977, three days after Elvis Presley, and the obituaries had to share the week. The estate case ran to 1988, when his children prevailed and Fleming was ordered to repay 472,000 dollars. What he made lasted better. Screen comedy before him was mostly physical and mostly on the side of the little man. Groucho made it verbal and made it hostile — a college president opening Horse Feathers by singing that whatever it is, he is against it, then breaking off mid-scene to talk straight past the plot to the audience. Woody Allen opened Annie Hall with one of his lines. American comedy that wins by talking descends from him.

Lifespan

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Groucho Marx's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Animal Crackers film
Captain Spaulding, from the Kaufman and Ryskind stage hit of 1928 1930
Duck Soup film
The last Paramount picture — added to the National Film Registry in 1990 1933
A Night at the Opera film
The first of two made under Irving Thalberg at MGM, and the one the brothers rated best 1935
You Bet Your Life television
Radio from 1947, then 11 television seasons — mostly ad-libbed and prerecorded so the network could cut him 1947
Groucho and Me book
His autobiography — he said he would rather be remembered as a writer 1959
The Groucho Letters book
Correspondence with Eliot, Sandburg and others, donated to the Library of Congress 1967

Life in brief

with age at each point

July 16, 1905 aged 14 Debuts as a boy singer in Grand Rapids, Michigan With the Gene Leroy Trio at the Ramona Theatre, three years after the family took him out of school.
1915 aged ~25 Drops the German accent after the Lusitania sinking Audiences booed the character. He replaced it with the fast-talking wise guy he used for the rest of his life.
May 19, 1924 aged 33 The Marx Brothers reach Broadway with I'll Say She Is It ran 313 performances at the Casino Theatre and got them adopted by the Algonquin set.
September 13, 1929 aged 38 Minnie Marx dies as the Animal Crackers tour is being prepared Alexander Woollcott wrote a full page in The New Yorker saying she had invented her sons.
November 17, 1933 aged 43 Duck Soup released, the last of the five Paramount films It underperformed Horse Feathers at the box office and is now the highest rated of them.
October 27, 1947 aged 57 You Bet Your Life debuts on ABC radio He was 57 and his film career with his brothers was effectively over.
October 1950 aged 59 The show moves to television and he grows a real moustache He refused to put the greasepaint back on. Sources differ on whether the first telecast was October 4 or 5.
April 2, 1974 aged 83 Jack Lemmon hands him an honorary Academy Award It covered the whole act. Frail at 83, he dedicated it to Harpo, Chico and Margaret Dumont.
August 19, 1977 aged 86 Dies of pneumonia at Cedars-Sinai, aged 86 He had been hospitalised since June 22. Nat Perrin had been appointed his conservator in May.