Who was the best Marx Brother?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Early_marx_brothers_with_parents.jpg/640px-Early_marx_brothers_with_parents.jpg

Tough call between groucho and harpo

Fassbinder included Zeppo in a list of his top ten favourite movie actors, I don't know if he ever expanded anywhere on what it was about Zeppo that appealed to him.

In Harpo's autobiography he lists about 25 different line-ups they presented over the years. Quite amazing - the Spinal Tap of Vaudeville.

chico gets me every time

gave a challopsy vote to Ms. Dumont.

Dumont rules. apparently she really didn't find them funny at all, so she's acting naturally in the films.

this is really tough. pretty much impossible!

Chico seems like the one that would be the most fun to just kick it with, go bar hopping, etc. plus his piano skills are sick. maybe my favorite scene of every movie is him playing piano.

Harpo is so bizarre and unique he's like the starchild or something. dude taught himself harp using his own custom tuning.

Groucho is like the drummer for the band. you can always count on him to keep things moving. Bug Bunny running rings around Dumont's Elmer Fudd.

i have always had a weird emotional attachment to / resonance with harpo that i can't explain or really articulate but suffice to say he's my favorite marx.

also, when i was a kid a friend's cat had a litter of kittens and they were named for the marx brothers and the runt was harpo and it seemed fitting.

Dumont rules. apparently she really didn't find them funny at all, so she's acting naturally in the films.

apparently Groucho never told a theatrical anecdote or joke or exaggeration in his life, and every utterance from his voice or pen can be taken as incorrigible reportage.

he really did shoot an elephant in his pajamas

That Harpo Speaks was a great read. Must get a new copy since it has been a while since I read it.
There's a Groucho that's pretty good too I think.

Chico no question.

Had no idea Harpo's wig was pink!?

Fassbinder included Zeppo in a list of his top ten favourite movie actors, I don't know if he ever expanded anywhere on what it was about Zeppo that appealed to him.

German humour. Love 'em all - well Zeppo, not really, and Gummo, not at all - but Groucho has to be the winner. Zeppo looks uncannily like my cousin Jim.

I always got most excited when Harpo came on as a kid, and Groucho works the best as an individual (& dancer), but I vote Chico bc his seriousness and logic make him the most beautifully weird of all. Also his voice, hat, and piano playing, especially that glorious looping inane tune which gets in my head all the time. just thinking about these guys makes me happy.

Amazon.co.uk has the Groucho autobio for £0.01 at the moment. Groucho and me.

Didn't one of the less famous siblings get rich from inventing some now everyday object?

Actually not sure about got rich from, but looks like Zeppo was an inventor who came up with the clamps that kept fat man the atomic bomb in its bomber bay. Thought I'd heard some story about something famous done totally coincident to his more famous family members.

Also seems to have invented a wristwatch like monitor for heart patients.

I'd like to vote for Groucho, in many ways, but harpo is certainly my favourite.

Also, didn't dumont say that she got the jokes just fine, but she just didn't laugh? I don't know whether for professionalism or by temperament, though.

Pro tip, if you meet someone named Lydia, it's not absolutely necessary to sing her that song

Another recommendation for Harpo Speaks. There's also a 80s biog of SJ Perelman with good behind the scenes gossip on the movies - the rest of it ymmv depending on how much you care about Perelman.

Choosing between them is essentially pointless but, I guess, Groucho is clearly the best onscreen (better timing than Chico, for sure) and Harpo wrote the best book about them after their careers were over (and seemed like the nicest brother, if that's important).

Not sure why Groucho kept repeating that line about Dumont not getting the jokes - he even mentions it in during the lifetime achievement award speech he have at the Oscars in the seventies. It seems flagrantly unlikely to be true.

http://www.marxbrothers.nu/book17b.JPG

fwiw this was my source for the Dumont story. didn't know it was some Groucho thing, wouldn't put it past the writers to run with that.

It's a widely told story. The bio I read of the Marx brothers included dumonts refutation of it. But anyway, it's like picking your favourite part of the circulatory system: it doesn't work without them all.

Plus you can see Dumont corpsing occasionally in certain scenes (bridge routine in Animal Crackers if memory serves)

Pro tip, if you meet someone named Lydia, it's not absolutely necessary to sing her that song

― Brad C., Tuesday, August 30, 2016 7:08 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol I know someone who heard that waaaay too much because lydia was her stripper name and she is tattooed

There are definitely some really abrupt cuts where Margaret Dumont was completely losing it but they loved the take. She has a really knowing smirk a few times when playing against Groucho where she was trying to hold back laughter.

https://sistercelluloid.com/2015/08/14/heres-to-margaret-dumont-who-always-got-the-joke/

^^ article gets it

Chico

Had no idea Harpo's wig was pink!?

― piscesx, Tuesday, August 30, 2016 11:25 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Colour doesn't convey in b+w unless it's blood red apparently.

I keep seeing pictures of Harpo where he looks a lot like Rotten era John Lydon. He didn't invent punk did he?

Seems to be one of those characters that was Punk way before the fact like Bugs Bunny or somebody.

Pink seems to be one of the colors they used in b/w films to get a certain kind of white. The set in Passion of Joan of Arc was apparently pink as well.

One story around Zeppo was that he'd occasionally sub as Groucho on stage and the audience wouldn't know the difference.

Didn't he sub for all of them? I thought that was his thing, he was their understudy on Broadway, so he could do any of their parts (but didn't have a real part of his own)

btw the fans are losing their shit over the new cut of Animal Crackers that has maybe a minute of long-lost footage

I know Duck Soup was, according to a number of writers, underappreciated in its time. When did that reappraisal happen? I've always wondered if it was while the family was around and what they thought about that.

obviously i know harpo didn't stay in character off-camera but i still always slightly double-take that he was the one who was a roundtable regular at the algonquin (apparently its spitefulness always slightly saddened him)

Duck Soup was most unappreciated bcz it was a box-office flop and led to Paramount dropping the Marxes.

Groucho praised it in his dotage, repeatedly, saying "it turned out to be a satire on war" and that he attributed this to Leo McCarey.

Voted Dumont but if pressed on actual brothers I would go for the Harpster.

One of my father's lamest dad jokes was to say "As the great Harpo Marx once said..." and then remain silent.

Harp would be #1 in any act that didn't contain Groucho.

I think the most likely truth re Dumont is that she didn't like/get SOME of the jokes, but Groucho spun this into a taller tale.

Harpo was on the stage for almost 20 years before their first film, i seem to recall his theatrical wig being described as red.

One of my father's lamest dad jokes was to say "As the great Harpo Marx once said..." and then remain silent.

stealing this dad joek thx

Yeah, that's a good one. Voted Chico, btw.

really you should have one of those horns with a rubber bulb under your coat and go "wah-waaaaah" to complete the effect

Chico's piano bit in "Animal Crackers" is one of favourite things ever.

"I can't think of the finish".
"That's strange, I can't think of anything else".

If only Harpo had been in Silent Movie.

What's that story about Groucho telling Richard Pryor not to be like Jerry Lewis on the Mike Douglas show again?

that's the story, but it was after a Merv Griffin show that the conversation occurred, i believe at a party at Bobby Darin's house circa 1966. (in the Nesteroff book)

i'm nor surprised that Groucho didn't like Lewis's crudity, he has a streak of prudishness that comes through in the '60s and '70s ("I took off my clothes in front of the mirror and saved myself the cost of a ticket to Hair")

Ah, I flipped a coin that had Mike's face on one side and Merv on the other.

musta been in yr pocket with a 35-cent subway token

Correct, complete with the Y-shaped hole in it

Harpo was on the stage for almost 20 years before their first film, i seem to recall his theatrical wig being described as red.

For a time in vaudeville all the brothers performed using ethnic accents. Leonard, the oldest, developed the Italian accent he used as Chico Marx to convince some roving bullies that he was Italian, not Jewish. Arthur, the next oldest, donned a curly red wig and became "Patsy Brannigan", a stereotypical Irish character. His discomfort speaking on stage led to his uncle Al Shean's suggestion that he stop speaking altogether and play the role in mime. Julius Marx's character from "Fun In Hi Skule" was an ethnic German, so Julius played him with a German accent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZyhosgpS48

i have tried doing that sweeping key thing, it is tough if you are not a piano player! the keys are heavy and there's a whole proper form to it. yet Chico's just playing this thing like a stick of button.

butter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkCiRSDPIzk I like his playing in 'Night at the Opera' better.

http://www.animated-gifs.eu/category_leisure/leisure-cinema-marx-brothers/0018.gif

https://media.giphy.com/media/jLaez64RHqIBq/giphy.gif

the chico marx piano-technique explainer pages never explain how he plays the piano with an apple

somebody hadda go there

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/08/31/what_the_marx_brothers_duck_soup_can_teach_us_about_trump.html

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The Marx Bros were an ensemble. It defeats the purpose to elevate one as the "best". Obviously, Groucho's shtick was more separable as a solo act than the others' characters were, but that speaks more to the nature of his chosen character than to its superiority over the rest.

Apparently Gummo was the naturally funny one, just didn't come over on stage.

I thought Zeppo was the funny one?

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