Why I’m a Marxist, Part III: Harpo

Today we look at the most beloved of the Marx Brothers, Harpo Marx.  We must also pause for an unpleasant confession: when we here at The Jade Sphinx first became enamored of the Marx Brothers, we not only disliked Harpo, we loathed him.

Strong words, we know, but let us explain.  While growing up, comedy was for me a verbal exercise – a concentration of wit and wordplay.  Comedy came down to the written word and its skillful delivery.  Comedy was something said.  Slapstick, pantomime and clowning did not possess the elements of wit and intelligence, to our minds, and were simply degraded … funniness.

Fortunately, with age comes wisdom (or a distant relative of it, in my case), and now Harpo is perhaps my favorite of the team.  Not simply because I have been able to overcome my linguistic prejudices and finally recognize his comic genius, but, more importantly, because I see the real and elemental sweetness of the man shining through his work.

Of all of the Brothers Marx, Harpo had much the happiest life.  Groucho said Harpo had a talent for happiness, and that comes through in everything he does.

Harpo was born Adolph Marx in 1888.  He supplemented the family income with piano and harp playing, and joined the act as a comic.  Though he originally spoke in his onstage appearances, reviewers were quick to praise his skills as a pantomime and physical comic.  Knowing a strength when it was pointed out to him, he became a mute act and comedy history was made.

If the Marx Brothers movies are studies in surrealism, then Harpo is the most surreal of them all.  It is no surprise that he was loved by Salvador Dali (1904-1989) and other absurdists.  Like a character from a Looney Tunes cartoon, the rules of time, space and dimension that rule all of us do not seem to apply to Harpo.  He is able to pull lit cigarettes, candles or steaming cups of coffee from the pockets of his pendulous jacket.  Dogs lean out of tattoos and bark at the audience; he can make a payphone payoff a jackpot.  He is virtually indestructible, and though he can be hurt, it seems as if his corporeal self is made of stronger stuff than are we.

But for all of the invincibility – he is the only Marx Brother who is vulnerable.  Harpo is capable of great acts of kindness, self-sacrifice and sweetness that are impossible to the more self-absorbed Groucho and Chico.  In more ways than one, Harpo was the soul of the act – the most outlandish of them all was also the most human.

If Harpo was undisguised ID, it was the ID of a basically good child.  He was ruled by lust, hunger and enthusiasm, but never self-interest, enmity nor malice.  We may wish for Chico’s wiliness, or Groucho’s Olympian wit, but we long for Harpo’s soul.

Harpo married Susan Fleming in 1936.  He was the only one of the performing brothers who married once and married happily.  They adopted four children: Bill, Alex, Jimmy and Minnie.  He is recorded as having told fellow comedian George Burns: I would like to adopt as many children as I have windows in my house.  So when I leave for work, I want a kid in every window waving goodbye.

Though Harpo received very little formal schooling, he was good friends with most of the Algonquin Round Table, including critic Alexander Woolcott (1887-1943), who may have had a homosexual passion for the comic.  Groucho thought spending time with the Round Table was “like swimming in a shark pool,” but Harpo seemed to hold his own, mostly by being such a good audience.  When Woolcott was parodied in the 1939 comedy The Man Who Came Dinner, by George S. Kaufman (1889-1961) and Moss Hart (1904-1961), Harpo was transformed into the character Banjo, memorably played by Jimmy Durante (1893-1980) in the film version.  Harpo and Woolcott, however, both played their fictional selves on the Los Angeles stage – and what your correspondent wouldn’t have given to have seen that!

Later in life, Harpo published his autobiography, Harpo Speaks.  And did he ever, at long last.  His final public appearance was in 1964, when he appeared onstage with comedian Allan Sherman (1924-1973) to announce his retirement.  Once he started talking, it seemed as if he would never shut up.

Harpo died just six months later from a heart attack following open heart surgery.  Many people have recorded that it was the only time they saw brother Groucho cry.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Harpo was not mute and spoke with an old, New York accent.  If it does not destroy too much of the illusion, you can hear him here: 

http://www.marx-brothers.org/biography/harposp.htm.

Watch any of the Marx Brothers films, but especially those from Coconuts (1929) to A Night at the Opera (1935).  It’s enough to make you a Marxist, too.

Harpo With His Real-Life Children

Why I’m a Marxist Part II: Chico

We continue our look at advanced Marxism with a profile of perhaps the most underrated Marx Brother, Chico Marx.  (For all intents and purposes, we will consider Zeppo, handsomest of the Marxes, as interchangeable leading man.)

Chico is often dismissed as a one-joke character: a zany Italian immigrant accent waiting for a misunderstanding to happen.  That is only true as far as it goes; Chico’s art was much more subtle than one would think.

First, there is the question of Chico’s ethnicity.  Is he represented “as” an Italian, or some mad simulacrum of one?  I, for one, am never sure.  I am reminded of a scene in Animal Crackers (1930), where Chico recognizes a fellow conman in disguise:

Ravelli (Chico):    How is it you got to be Roscoe W. Chandler?

Chandler:             Say, how did you get to be Italian?

Ravelli:                 Never mind—whose confession is this?

Chico has often been dismissed as “the third one,” or, more ridiculously, as Groucho’s straight man.  What both assessments fail to consider is that Chico could be screamingly funny with the right material.  In Duck Soup (1933), Chico is a spy snooping on President Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho).  Here is his report to the foreign ambassador:

Monday we watch Firefly's house, but he no come out. He wasn't home. Tuesday we go to the ball game but he fool us: he no show up. Wednesday he go to the ball game and we fool him. We no show up. Thursday was a double-header; nobody show up. Friday it rained all day. There was no ball game, so we stayed home and we listened to it over the radio.

Chico has his best moment in A Night at the Opera (1935).  There, he, Harpo and the Zeppo stand-in (Allan Jones) are disguised as famous aviators who travel to America … by steamship.  At the reception welcoming our heroes Chico recounts:

Friends, how we happen to come to America is a great story. But I don't tell that... The first time we started, we get-a halfway across when we run out-a gasoline and we gotta go back. Then I take-a twice as much gasoline. This time we-a just about to land. Maybe three feet. When whaddya think? We run out-a gasoline again. And a-back we go again to get-a more gas. This time I take-a plenty gas. Well, we get-a halfway over when what-a you think-a happened? We forgot-a the aeroplane. So we gotta sit down and we talk it over. Then I get a great idea. We no take-a gasoline. We no take-a the aeroplane. We take a steamship! And that, friends, is how we fly across the ocean!

However, it is now time to put down the notion that Chico was Groucho’s straight man once and for all.  Very often the verbal highlight of a Marx Brothers film is the duologue between Groucho and Chico.  What is amazing about these verbal fisticuffs is that…. Chico usually wins.

We have become so accustomed to Groucho being the genuine wit of the group, and that his verbal dexterity was so powerful that mountains would fall before him, but simply watching the films demonstrates that Chico almost always gets the better of Groucho.  And that is because Chico wields his own version of Groucho’s greatest weapon against him:  he is impervious to logic.

These set pieces often start on a very prosaic level and become increasingly more surreal and absurd, often because Chico is either taking everything Groucho says literally, or his own brand of absurdity is more impervious.  Here, for example, is Chico guarding a speakeasy when Groucho comes to the door.  The password to get in is “swordfish,” and Chico lets Groucho have three guesses:

Baravelli:    Who are you?

Wagstaff:   I'm fine thanks, who are you?

Baravelli:    I'm fine too, but you can't come in unless you give the password.

Wagstaff:   Well, what is the password?

Baravelli:    Aw, no! You gotta tell me. Hey, I tell what I do. I give you three guesses. It's the name of a fish.

Wagstaff:   Is it Mary?

Baravelli:    Ha-ha. That's-a no fish.

Wagstaff:   She isn't, well, she drinks like one. Let me see. Is it sturgeon?

Baravelli:    Hey you crazy! Sturgeon, he's a doctor cuts you open when-a you sick. Now I give you one more chance.

Wagstaff:   I got it! Haddock!

Baravelli:    That's-a funny. I gotta haddock, too.

Wagstaff:   What do you take for a haddock?

Baravelli:    Well-a, sometimes I take-a aspirin, sometimes I take-a Calamel.

Wagstaff:   Say, I'd walk a mile for a Calamel.

Baravelli:    You mean chocolate calamel. I like that too, but you no guess it. Hey, what-sa matter, you no understand English? You can't come in here unless you say 'swordfish.' Now I'll give you one more guess.

Wagstaff:   (to himself: Swordfish. Swordfish) I think I got it. Is it 'swordfish'?

Baravelli:    Hah! That's-a it! You guess it!

Wagstaff:   Pretty good, eh?

Chico was the oldest surviving of the Marx children (brother Manfred died in infancy) and the first to pass away.  He was born Leonard Marx in 1887 in New York.  He was, in many ways, the wild Marx.  A gambler and hustler, he never met a card game or a chorus girl he could resist.  And though he was a chronic philanderer, his two wives and daughter doted on him.

Though a disaster as a gambler (eventually his brothers had to take his financial matters in hand themselves … mainly to keep Chico from being killed over gambling debts), he was a wonderful manager and schmoozer.  He managed the act after mother Minnie Marx died, and his connections at MGM got the team out of Paramount and over to Metro, where they made two masterpieces, A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937), under the auspices of wunderkind Irving Thalberg (1899-1936).  Between films, Chico toured with a Big Band, The Chico Marx Orchestra, with singer Mel Torme.

The Brothers Marx seem to run true to form onstage and off.  When Chico died in 1961, his funeral was held in the Wee Kirk O’ the Heather Chapel at Forest Lawn Memorial Park.  A rabbi officiated for a Jewish fake Italian in a replica Scottish chapel.  At the funeral, one of the speakers described Chico in terms unrecognizable to both friends and family, prompting Harpo to lean over to his surviving brothers and say, “when I go, do me a favor and hire a mime.”

Why I’m a Marxist Part I: Groucho

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’m a Marxist.  I’ve been a Marxist for as long as I can remember, dating back to my earliest years of grade school.  And I don’t see it changing any time soon.  I’m a Marxist for life.  (Note to the NSA: this is an old, venerated American tradition called humor.  Just go with it.)

Hard as it is to believe now, but at one time it was possible to be young in the US and have aesthetic and emotional attachments to cultural artifacts of previous generations.  When I grew up in the 1970s, it was just as easy to be a rabid fan of The Marx Brothers or, say, Bela Lugosi, as it was to appreciate Elton John or The Beatles.  Culture was a more amorphous stew of new and old, good and bad, the tried-and-true and the newly emerging.  Radio dramas from the 1940s could still be heard in reruns on radio along with Top 40 programs, and late night television was awash in classic American cinema.  It was a wonderful time to grow up, if one was awake, because the great kaleidoscope of American culture was spread out before you.

That has largely changed.  Our culture has become too fragmented, our viewing and listening habits too balkanized, and our deep and abiding suspicion of anything remotely challenging has shrunken the offerings of our cultural landscape.  It is, I believe, the sneaking suspicion that something not contemporary may be too challenging -- too slow, too much story, not loud enough – that has consigned so much of American culture, both high and pop, to the contemporary dustbin.

Not so just a few decades ago.  And no figures from the Golden Age of American pop culture loomed larger – in college campuses or grade school playgrounds – than the comedy team The Marx Brothers.  It is arguable that the Marx Brothers were more popular in the 1970s than they were in their heyday of the 1930s.  It is a success story that has no real equal in American entertainment, except, of course, for the continuing popularity of the more proletarian Three Stooges.

During this reclamation, the aging and increasingly frail Groucho Marx (1890-1977) managed a one-man show at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and appeared on just about every television venue that would have him.  It was a wonderful coda to a remarkable career, and one that, we hope, made up for many real-life disappointments and setbacks.

Born Julius Henry Marx in New York, Groucho was pushed into show business by his mother, Minnie.  She was convinced that a family act would be a hit, and all five brothers would eventually work onstage as a team or separately.

Chico, the oldest brother, was a compulsive gambler and womanizer who seemed, oddly enough, to be mother’s favorite.  Things came easily to Chico, and Groucho resented that.  Harpo, who clearly had some kind of undiagnosed learning disability, was often the subject of Groucho’s most condescending jokes.  However, Harpo was a genuinely happy man – he had a talent for happiness that Groucho lacked.  (Indeed, Groucho was deeply suspicious of happiness.)  The two younger brothers, Zeppo and Gummo, never really embraced show business, but Groucho felt a responsibility towards them, and often made arrangements to further their careers and businesses.

In fact, Groucho played father to his brood of brothers, something that their real-life father Sam could never quite pull off.  It is perhaps this early imposition of responsibility and obligation that soured Groucho so early in life, and made his private relationships so fraught.  He married three times, twice to women young enough to be his daughter, and spent his sunset years with a conniving adventuress who sucked away his energy and cash while trying to establish herself as a Hollywood player.

But, whatever messiness of his private life, Groucho was probably the most gifted comedian of the 20^th Century.  He had all the gifts: he looked funny, his voice was funny, his walk and mannerisms were funny; he was a gifted physical comedian and a comedic lord of language.

Groucho’s métier was the insult; this has been much degraded of late, but with Groucho it was an art form.  Groucho’s insults relied on real wit, not merely funniness, which is, in the final analysis, the ultimate indication of intelligence.  We could easily fill up multiple pages with examples, but here is one delirious scene from Horse Feathers (1932).  Groucho, as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, romances college widow Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd) in a rowboat while she tries to steal information on the upcoming college football game:

Wagstaff:   This is the first time I've been out in a canoe since I saw The American Tragedy.

Connie:       Oh, you're perfectly safe, Professor, in this boat.

Wagstaff:   I don't know. I was going to get a flat bottom but the girl at the boat house didn't have one.

Connie:       Well you know, Professor, I could go on like this, drifting and dreaming forever. What a day! Spring in the air.

Wagstaff:   Who, me? I should spring in the air and fall in the lake?

Connie:       Oh, Professor, you're full of whimsy.

Wagstaff:   Can you notice it from there? I'm always that way after I eat radishes.

The football team's signals fall out of Wagstaff's coat pocket into the water and drift by Connie. He boasts that he has a second set of signals in his other pocket: Luckily, I've got a duplicate set in my pocket. I always carry two of everything. This is the first time I've only been out with one woman. Then, she attempts to use baby talk on him to divulge Huxley's football signals:

Connie:       Do you know, Professor, I've never seen football signals? Do you think a little girl like me could understand them?

Wagstaff:   I think a little girl like you would understand practically anything.

Connie:       Is gweat big stwong man gonna show liddle icky baby all about the bad footbawl signals?

Wagstaff (startled): Was that you or the duck? 'Cause if it was you, I'm gonna finish this ride with the duck.

Connie:       If icky baby don't learn about the footbawl signals, icky baby gonna cwy.

Wagstaff:   If icky girl keep on tawking that way, big stwong man gonna kick all her teef wight down her thwoat.

The Marx Brothers made some 13 films in all; some brilliant (Duck Soup, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races), some awful (At the Circus), but all worth seeing, even if for only occasional glimpses of genius.

In the 1950s, Groucho became a solo act, serving as quiz master for You Bet Your Life on both radio and television.  Here was Groucho in his element – talking to a broad cross-section of people and deploying his killer wit.  Oddly enough, this was Groucho’s most celebrated star turn before his great revival in the 1970s, and though amusing, You Bet Your Life was never as inventive, transgressive or fall-down funny as his classic films.

If you have not seen the early Marx Brothers films – particularly the films made at Paramount: The Coconuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup – do so without delay.  They are among the most wonderful artifacts of American pop culture.

Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx by Stefan Kanfer

Few figures throw a mightier shadow over the 20^th Century cultural landscape than Groucho Marx (1890-1977), born Julius Henry Marx to assimilating German Jews in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  With three of his four brothers – Chico, Harpo and Zeppo – he created several of Hollywood’s greatest comedies, and, as a single act later on, became a celebrated wit, humorist and game show host.  His eyebrows, mustache and eyeglasses have become shorthand for comedy and his insouciant, insulting delivery is echoed to this day in comedians as diverse as Adam Sandler and Woody Allen.

Sadly, Groucho Marx was like many other great comedians before and since, a deeply sad, melancholy and difficult man.  Groucho is revealed, warts and all, in a stunning biography by Stefan Kanfer called Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx.  Kanfer details Groucho’s troubled relationship with his mother, Minnie, who pushed all of her sons into show business and drove them on until they were successful, no matter the cost.  It was Minnie who took the quiet, bookish Groucho out of school and insisted that he go on the road – a move that the would-be doctor Groucho never forgot nor ever forgave.

Kanfer also looks at Groucho’s relations with his brothers.  Chico, the oldest, was a compulsive gambler and womanizer who seemed, oddly enough, beloved by everyone who knew him.  Things came easy to Chico, and Groucho resented that, along with the fact that Minnie loved Chico best.  Harpo, who clearly had some kind of undiagnosed learning disability, was often the subject of Groucho’s most condescending japes.  However Harpo was a genuinely happy man – it could be said Harpo had a talent for happiness – and this was inexplicable to the suspicious, touchy and often abrasive Groucho.  The two younger brothers, Zeppo and Gummo (who never really embraced show business) were never a significant part of Groucho’s life, but he did feel a responsibility for them, and often made arrangements to further their careers and businesses.  (Groucho often behaved as if he were the oldest brother – and was indeed the only brother upon whom a level of maturity rested.  It did nothing to improve his happiness.)

Kanfer shows that Groucho was equally inept in his romantic life.  He married three times, twice to women young enough to be his daughters.  All three marriages ended with Groucho emotionally pushing these women away from him – all three of them finding solace in alcohol.  His relations with his children were also messy – neither of his two daughters nor his son had much to do with the old man in later life, citing countless putdowns, oppressions, disappointments and casual brutalities as the reason.  One frightful illustration of Groucho’s child-rearing capabilities is evident in a bedtime story he told his daughter:

Tommy was a poor little boy.  He got up one morning and his mother said, “There is no food in the house, so you better go out and get some money.”  Tommy went out and he was hungry.  As he was walking along he saw a little girl run across the street just as a car was coming along.  He dashed out on the street and saved the little girl’s life.  The little girl’s nurse said, “Oh, you have saved the little girl’s life.  Her father is rich and he will reward you.”  So they wet to the little girl’s house and the nurse told the father that Tommy had saved the little girl’s life.  And the father said to Tommy, “You have saved my little girl’s life and I will reward you.  Here is $4,000.”  And Tommy said, “Oh, good, now I can buy some food.  I have not eaten anything all day.”  And the father said, “Wait a minute.  Here are some cookies and a glass of milk.”  So Tommy drank the whole glass of milk and ate all the cookies.  He was really hungry.  When he finished, the father said, “You better go home now and here is your money: $3,500.”  He had reconsidered.

Groucho Marx did not love people and always expected the worse.  To him people in general, and women in particular, were parasitic, scheming and untrustworthy.  This makes the tragedy that was the final act of Groucho’s life even more heartbreaking.  In his dotage, after driving his family and many of his friends away, Groucho became entangled with a deranged adventuress named Erin Fleming (1941-2003), who spent the last few years of Groucho’s life alternately abusing him and siphoning off his cash.  The family descended and a series of legal battles began, ending only 11 years after Groucho’s death.  Fleming spent the next two decades in and out of mental hospitals before committing suicide.  This final relationship seemed curiously fated for Groucho … he expected the worst in people, and found it only by seeking out the worst people.

Kanfer’s book is wonderfully written and he has a clean, clear prose style.  Despite this, his book is alternately delightful and depressing – Groucho’s early salad days, when the Marx Brothers were crystalizing and taking Broadway by storm are exhilarating, but the tales of his middle-and-old age were ghastly laundry lists of bad behavior, paranoia, jealousy and emotional self destruction.

However interesting the personal life of Groucho Marx – and serious Marxists are encouraged to seek out Kanfer’s book – what really matters is the body of work he left behind.  Horse Feathers (1932), Duck Soup (1933) and A Night at the Opera (1935) are among the finest movie comedies ever made, and if we must remember what an unhappy man Groucho Marx was in real life, we must temper that sad realization with the generations of happiness he has created.