![]() He wasn't comfortable with that, so that's when he made it his business to join the Army." "The act was changing from a song-and-dance act, where he was the star, into a comedy act with a lot of lines. "At that time the government was inscripting one member of a family and he felt he was the least needed in the act," said Bob Marx. Gummo later left the act to join the military. Harpo was added to their act in 1910 and was encouraged to become a silent comedian. But his mother, Minnie, decided he and Groucho should perform together. Groucho's uncle, Harry Shean, brother of a vaudeville star, soon recruited Gummo for a singing act. Groucho actually started in show biz in 1905, at age 14, when he answered an ad in the old New York World to sing with a vaudeville group called the Leroy Trio. Barbara Sinatra said in her autobiography, "Lady Blue Eyes: My Life With Frank," he was named after World War I zeppelins, which Groucho also said at his 1972 Carnegie Hall concert. Harpo said in his autobiography "Harpo Speaks!" he was named after an acrobatic chimpanzee named Zippo. There are two versions of why the youngest brother, Herbert, was nicknamed Zeppo. Gus Mager had a popular comic strip then called "Sherlocko the Monk" and Fisher gave each brother a nickname related to their personalities.Ĭhico (pronounced Chick-o) chased women, Harpo played the Harp, Gummo wore gumshoes and Groucho wore a "grouch" bag around his neck to keep his money and personal items. The story goes that Leonard, Adolph, Julius and Milton Marx got their nicknames - Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Gummo, respectively - in 1914 while playing poker with vaudevillian Art Fisher in Galesburg, Ill. "She went over to him and said, 'What were you doing kissing that girl?' He said, 'I wasn't kissing that girl. "He was back stage kissing one of the girls in the show when his wife walked in," said Bob Marx, son of Gummo. His nephews still tell tales of his pursuit of showgirls. Along with their eldest brother, Chico, they golfed, played cards and enjoyed the sun - Harpo often in the nude.Ĭhico, the only brother who didn't own a desert home, was the group's womanizer. Groucho, Harpo, Gummo and Zeppo Marx all had homes at Tamarisk. act, launched with their well-known stage names 100 years ago this spring, it's hard to believe the leering, acerbic Groucho and his siblings led relatively normal, domestic lives in Rancho Mirage from the 1940s through the 1970s. Looking back at the zany, anarchic Marx Bros. A Rancho Mirage resident recalled driving down Palmdale Road near Tamarisk Country Club in the 1960s and seeing the one, the only Groucho Marx on a bicycle. ![]()
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