Actors - Groucho Marx

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	Actors - Groucho Marx

Julius Henry Marx, known as Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), was an American comedian, working both with his siblings, the Marx Brothers, and on his own.

Childhood

The Marx family grew up on the Upper East Side of New York City, in a small Jewish neighborhood sandwiched between Irish-German and Italian neighborhoods.

Accent

For a time in vaudeville, all the brothers performed in ethnic accents; Leonard Marx, the oldest Marx brother, developed the "Italian" accent he used as "Chico" to convince some roving bullies that he was Italian, not Jewish. Groucho did a German accent. However, after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915, public anti-German sentiment was widespread, and Groucho's "German" character was booed, so he quickly dropped the accent and developed the fast-talking wise guy character he would make famous.

Career highlights

Groucho developed a routine as a wise-cracking hustler with a distinctive chicken-walking lope and an exaggerated greasepaint mustache, improvising insults to stuffy dowagers (often played by Margaret Dumont) and anyone else who stood in his way. He and his brothers starred in a series of extraordinarily popular movies and stage shows, often departing from the scripts they were using. (See: Marx Brothers)

The use of greasepaint originated spontaneously before a vaudeville performance when he did not have time to apply the pasted-on mustache he had been using.

In the 1930s and 1940s Groucho also worked as a radio comedian and show host. In the late 1940s, he hosted the popular radio program You Bet Your Life, which moved over to television in 1950. The show consisted of Groucho interviewing the contestants and "ad libbing" jokes. Then they would play a brief quiz. The show was responsible for the phrases "Say the secret woid and divide $100" (that is, each contestant would get $50); and "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?" or "What color is the White House?" (asked when Groucho felt sorry for a contestant who had not won anything). It would run 11 years on television.

Throughout his career he introduced a number of memorable songs in films, including "Hooray for Captain Spaulding", "I'm Against It", "Hello I Must be Going", "Everyone Says I Love You" and "Lydia the Tattooed Lady". Crooner Frank Sinatra once quipped that the only thing he could do better than Marx was sing.

Personal life

Groucho was married three times, and all of his marriages ended in divorce. His first wife was a chorus girl named Ruth Johnson, by whom he had two children, Arthur and Miriam. He had a daughter, Melinda, by his second wife, Kay Gorsey, former wife of Leo Gorcey, one of the Bowery Boys.

Later years

Off-stage he was bookish and stated late in life that he lamented the fact he had never finished school or gone to college. Despite his lack of formal education he wrote several books, including the autobiographical Groucho and Me (1959) (Da Capo Press, 1995, ISBN 0306806665) and Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1964) (Da Capo Press, 2002, ISBN 0306811049).

In later years he grew a real moustache, the lack of which had earlier been an effective means of hiding himself from fans.

His stage name was said to have been bestowed on him by another performer during a back-stage card game at the Orpehum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois, because while in vaudeville he kept his money in a bag around his neck known as a "grouch" bag. An alternate story is that he was grouchy. The comedian himself wrote that he did not know the nickname's origin, but in his autobiography he wrote that it was not from the money-holding grouch-bags. In any case, he was a master at improvising clever insults and became well known for this. One of his frustrations in later years was that when he insulted people who annoyed him they tended to laugh, thinking it was just part of the famous comedian's act.

In the early 1970s, Groucho made a comeback of sorts doing a live one-man show, including one recorded at Carnegie Hall and released as a double album, An Evening with Groucho, on A&M Records. His previous works once again became popular and were accompanied by new books of interviews and other transcribed conversations by Richard J. Anobile and Charlotte Chandler. He had become quite frail by this time and his last few years were accompanied by controversy over a companionship he had developed with Erin Fleming which consequently raised disputes over his estate.

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