Trivia: Although Groucho Marx was the third-oldest son of "stage mama" Minnie Marx, he was the first to take the plunge into show business. With his mother's blessing, the 14-year-old Marx took a job as a boy soprano with a group called the LeRoy Trio. This first engagement was nearly his last when, while on tour, he was stranded in Colorado and had to work his way back home. Marx was willing to chuck the theater and pursue his dream of becoming a doctor, but the undaunted Minnie organized Groucho, his younger brother Gummo, and a less than talented girl named Mabel O'Donnell into a vaudeville act called The Three Nightingales. Before long, Groucho's older brothers Chico and Harpo joined the act, which, by 1910, had metamorphosed into The Six Mascots (Minnie and the boy's Aunt Hannah rounded out the sextet). Fed up with indifferent audiences, Groucho began throwing jokes and insults into the act, directly addressing the crowd in as hilariously nasty a manner as possible. The audience loved it, and the four Marx Brothers eventually became a comedy team. Through the many incarnations of their vaudeville act, the characters remained the same: Groucho, the mustached, cigar-chomping leader of the foursome, alternately dispensing humorous invectives and acting as exasperated straight man for his brothers' antics; Chico, the monumentally stupid, pun-happy Italian; Harpo, the non-speaking, whirling dervish; and Gummo (later replaced by Zeppo), the hopelessly lost straight man. During the run of their vaudeville sketch Home Again, Groucho was unable to find his prop mustache and rapidly painted one on with greasepaint -- which is how he would appear with his brothers ever afterward, despite efforts by certain film directors to make his hirsute adornment look realistic. After managing to offend several powerful vaudeville magnates, the Marx Brothers accepted work with a Broadway-bound "tab" show, I'll Say She Is. The play scored a surprise hit when it opened in 1924, and the brothers became the toast of Broadway. They followed this success with 1925's The Cocoanuts, in which playwrights George Kaufman and Morris Ryskind refined Groucho's character into the combination con man/perpetual wisecracker that he would portray until the team dissolved. The Cocoanuts was also the first time Groucho appeared with his future perennial foil and straight woman Margaret Dumont. Animal Crackers, which opened in 1928, cast Groucho as fraudulent African explorer Capt. Geoffrey T. Spaulding, and introduced his lifelong signature tune, the Bert Kalmar/Harry Ruby classic "Hooray for Captain Spaulding." Both Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers were made into early talkies, prompting Paramount to invite the Brothers to Hollywood for a group of comedies written specifically for the screen. Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), and Duck Soup (1933) are now acknowledged classics, but box-office receipts dropped off with each successive feature, and, by 1934, the Marx Brothers were considered washed up in Hollywood. Groucho was only mildly put out; professional inactivity gave him time to commiserate with the writers and novelists who comprised his circle of friends. He always considered himself a writer first and comedian second, and, over the years, published several witty books and articles. (He was gratified in the '60s when his letters to and from friends were installed in the Library of Congress -- quite an accomplishment for a man who never finished grade school.) The Marx Brothers were given a second chance in movies by MGM producer Irving Thalberg, who lavished a great deal of time, money, and energy on what many consider the team's best film, A Night at the Opera (1935). The normally iconoclastic Groucho remained an admirer of Thalberg for the rest of his life, noting that he lost all interest in filmmaking after the producer died in 1936. The Marx Brothers continued making films until 1941, principally to bail out the eternally broke Chico. Retired again from films in 1941, Groucho kept busy with occasional radio guest star appearances and a stint with the Hollywood Victory Caravan. Despite his seeming insouciance, Groucho loved performing and was disheartened that none of his radio series in the mid-'40s were successful. (Nor was the Marx Brothers' 1946 comeback film A Night in Casablanca.) When producer/writer John Guedel approached him in 1947 to host a radio quiz show called You Bet Your Life, Groucho initially refused, not wanting another failure on his resume. But he accepted the job when assured that, instead of being confined to a banal script or his worn-out screen character, he could be himself, ad-libbing to his heart's content with the contestants. You Bet Your Life was a rousing success on both radio (1947-1956) and television (1950-1961 on NBC), winning high ratings and several Emmy awards in the process. Except for an occasional reunion with his brothers (the 1949 film Love Happy, the 1959 TV special The Incredible Jewel Robbery), Groucho became a solo performer for the remainder of his career. During the '50s, Marx made occasional stage appearances in Time for Elizabeth, a play he co-wrote with his friend Harry Kurnitz; this slight piece was committed to film as a 1964 installment of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, and in which the comedian looked ill at ease playing an everyman browbeaten by his boss. Working less frequently in the late '60s, Marx returned to the limelight in the early '70s when his old films were rediscovered by young antiestablishment types of the era, who revelled in his willingness to deflate authority and attack any and all sacred cows. By this time, Marx's health had been weakened by a stroke, but through the encouragement (some say prodding) of his secretary/companion Erin Fleming, he returned to active performing with TV guest appearances and a 1972 sold-out appearance at Carnegie Hall. And though he seemed very frail and aphasic in his latter-day performances, his fans couldn't get enough of him. In 1974, with Fleming at his side, Marx accepted a special Oscar. Ironically, it was the increasing influence of Fleming, which some observers insisted gave the octogenarian a new lease on life, that caused him the greatest amount of difficulty in his final years, resulting in the estrangement of his children and many of his oldest friends. In the midst of a heated battle between the Marx family and Fleming over the disposition of his estate, Groucho Marx died in 1977 at the age of 86.

Trivia: Born Adolph Marx (a name he later legally changed to Arthur), New York-native Harpo Marx was the second oldest member of the Marx Brothers comedy team. Dropping out of school in the 2nd grade (literally so -- he was thrown out the window by two older boys), Harpo took odd jobs to help support his family, but his first love was always music. Inheriting a harp from a relative -- hence his nickname -- Marx taught himself how to play, and soon became proficient in several instruments, even though he never learned how to read music. Pressed into service by his stagestruck mother, Harpo joined brothers Groucho and Gummo as part of a vaudeville act called the Four Nightingales. When older brother Chico joined the act, Harpo found that, thanks to the verbosity of Chico and Groucho, his stage role as red-wigged tough kid Patsy Brannigan was being alotted less and less dialogue in each performance. Eventually Harpo stopped talking onstage altogether. Marx would never utter a word while dressed in the top hat and battered raincoat of Harpo; instead, he expressed a wide arrange of emotions through whistles, horn honks and frenetic pantomime, taking time out from his lunatic behavior only when settling down to play his harp. When the Marx Brothers became the toast of Broadway in the '20s, Harpo was befriended by theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, who introduced the wide-eyed comedian to the most brilliant artistic and literary talents of the era. (When asked how he got along so well with such heady company, Harpo always claimed it was because he was the only member of the witty group who kept his mouth shut). Harpo settled down at the age of 48 to marry actress Susan Fleming; thereafter, except for his manic film appearances, he revelled in the life of a loving husband and father, adopting several children and raising them beautifully. While most of his professional work between 1919 and 1949 was done with his brothers, Harpo appeared by himself in the 1925 silent film Too Many Kisses, and spent several weeks filming Androcles and the Lion in 1952 before he was replaced by Alan Young. In 1949, Harpo was supposed to solo in a film comedy titled Love Happy, but the money men wouldn't ante up the budget unless his brothers Groucho and Chico also appeared in the film. Though professionally a "dummy", Harpo was a sharp businessman, instinctively making wise investments that would keep him wealthy for life; and though he was no babe in the woods in terms of life experiences, Harpo was widely regarded as one of the kindest and most even-tempered men in show business. After the Marx Brothers went their separate ways, Harpo continued making TV guest appearances in his traditional wig and costume; the most fondly remembered of these guest stints occured on a 1955 episode of I Love Lucy. He also appeared out of character on the 1960 Jane Wyman Theatre "Silent Panic" -- albeit as a deaf-mute, thereby maintaining his professional silence. In collaboration with Rowland Barber, Harpo Marx hilariously summed up his life in a 1961 autobiography Harpo Speaks, the last sentence of which was a characteristic "Honk! Honk!"

Trivia: The second son of German/Alsatian immigrants Sam and Minnie Marx (the first son, Manfred, died in infancy), comedian Leonard "Chico" Marx was the oldest of the five siblings who would become internationally famous as The Marx Brothers. But when mother Minnie first organized younger brothers Groucho, Harpo and Gummo into a singing vaudeville act, Chico chose to go it alone as a free-lance pianist in orchestras, saloons, and "bawdy houses." Though a limited musician, Marx learned early on how to keep an audience enthralled. When Chico joined his brothers in a "schoolroom" act, he drew upon his expertise with dialects by playing a comic Italian. After their Broadway debut in 1924's I'll Say She Is, the Four Marx Brothers (Zeppo had replaced Gummo) were a big-money act. After their 1937 film A Day at the Races, the Brothers considered retiring from movies, but Chico's financial difficulties were a major factor in their decision to remain active. During the war years, Chico headed his own orchestra, and in the '50s he would pay his bills by headlining state fairs and other such barnstorming endeavors with his brother Harpo. In 1950, Chico made his dramatic TV debut in the half-hour Papa Romani. He was also a regular on the 1950 variety series College Bowl, and appeared briefly as an Italian monk in the Irwin Allen all-star film The Story of Mankind (1957) (Groucho and Harpo also showed up in separate sequences). Chico Marx's final professional appearance was with Harpo and (briefly) Groucho in the 1959 GE Theatre entry "The Incredible Jewel Robbery." Chico's daughter Maxine Marx was a prominent actor's agent, and briefly the wife of animated cartoon director Shamus Culhane.

Trivia: Considered by many to be the "normal" (and most handsome) Marx brother, Zeppo Marx appeared in only five Marx Brothers' films. Generally not the center of attention, Zeppo functioned mainly as a bland romantic distraction to Groucho, Chico, and Harpo's vaudeville-based comic craziness, and as a replacement for older brother Gummo, who left the act to pursue other avenues. Zeppo appeared in The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and what is considered by many to be the best Marx Brothers' film, Duck Soup. After leaving the act, both Zeppo and Gummo became very successful Hollywood talent agents. In addition, Zeppo invented a wristwatch to monitor the pulse-rate of cardiac patients that would ring an alarm if the patient went into cardiac arrest as well as clamping devices used in atomic bomb raids in the mid-'40s. Zeppo's second wife, Barbara, a former Vegas showgirl, divorced him after ten years and later became the last Mrs. Frank Sinatra.

Trivia: Originally an opera singer, American actress Margaret Dumont was engaged in 1925 to act in The Cocoanuts, a Broadway musical comedy starring the Marx Brothers. As wealthy widow Mrs. Potter, Dumont became the formidable stage target for the rapid-fire insults and bizarre lovemaking approach of Groucho Marx. So impressive was her "teaming" with Groucho that she was hired for their next Broadway production, Animal Crackers (1928), in which she portrayed society dowager Mrs. Rittenhouse. Though Groucho would later insist that Dumont never understood his jokes, she more than held her own against the unpredictable Marx Brothers, facing their wild ad-libs, practical jokes and roughhouse physical humor with the straight-faced aplomb of a school principal assigned a classroom of unruly children. Dumont continued appearing opposite the Marx Brothers when they began making motion pictures, co-starring in seven of the team's films, most notably as hypochondriac Emily Upjohn in A Day at the Races (1937). It was for this picture that Dumont won a Screen Actor's Guild award; upon this occasion, film critic Cecilia Ager suggested that a monument be erected in honor of Dumont's courage and steadfastness in the face of the Marx invasion. Although she appeared in many other films (sometimes in the company of other famous comedy teams such as Laurel and Hardy, Wheeler and Woolsey, and Abbott and Costello), it is for her Marx appearances that Dumont--often dubbed "the Fifth Marx Brother"--is best remembered. Dumont made her last professional appearance a week before her death, on the TV variety series Hollywood Palace; appropriately, it was in support of Groucho Marx in a re-creation of the "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" production number from Animal Crackers.

Trivia: Born Katherine Gibbs, Kay Francis was a sophisticated brunette star with a lisp, deep voice, and stylish wardrobe. The daughter of actress Katherine Clinton, she began acting onstage in 1925 after schooling and a couple of jobs; she went on to summer stock and Broadway then in 1929 signed a Hollywood contract. Francis began accepting virtually every role offered her, going for quantity rather than quality in her screen work. Soon she became one of Hollywood's most glamorous and highly-paid stars of the '30s, usually playing stylish, serious-faced heroines in romantic melodramas and occasional comedies. Near the end of the '30s, her position at Warners was gradually taken over by Bette Davis, and in the '40s she appeared mostly in "B"-movies. After co-producing and starring in three films in 1945-46, she spent four years touring with stock companies and then retired from show business. One of her four husbands was actor Kenneth MacKenna.

Trivia: The star of both the 1920 and 1922 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, blonde Mary Eaton was Florenz Ziegfeld's backup in case his biggest star, Marilyn Miller, proved too recalcitrant. Eaton later replaced Miller as Eddie Cantor's leading lady in the phenomenally successful Kid Boots (1923) and again in 1927 in Sunny. A natural for talking picture stardom, Eaton was teamed with aging Broadway juvenile Oscar Shaw in the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts (1929). Due to the enduring popularity of the Marxes, she remains one of the more visible of the early talkie stars. Sadly, Eaton, like old rival Marilyn Miller, failed to make much of an impact in motion pictures. Her only starring vehicle, Glorifying the American Girl (1929), about the travails of a Ziegfeld beauty, was certainly typecasting of the highest order. Although Eaton possessed a pleasing if limited soprano, the unrelentingly downbeat and morose musical proved a notorious dud. Described by a modern historian as "the Follies in purgatory," Glorifying the American Girl was the first East Coast talkie to be filmed partially outdoors and to guarantee healthy box-office returns, Paramount peppered the show with such guest stars as Eddie Cantor, Rudy Vallee, and Helen Morgan. Yet despite all this Broadway luster, the film was considered a jinx, and Mary Eaton's screen career stopped dead in its tracks. Married and divorced from screen director Millard Webb and entertainer Eddie Laughton, her death in 1948 was attributed to a heart attack.

Trivia: A bit long in the tooth to play the juvenile lead by 1929, suave, dark-haired Oscar Shaw did just that in his only memorable film, The Cocoanuts (1929). Shaw (real name Schwartz) and co-star Mary Eaton had recently starred in the Broadway musical The Five O'Clock Girl but both were mercilessly upstaged this time by the four Marx Brothers, who were making their much anticipated screen debuts. Shaw was equally unlucky with Marion Davies, who replaced him with Lawrence Gray for the talkie version of Marianne (1929); his screen career never truly recovered.

Trivia: Bostonian Cyril Ring certainly had the pedigree for a successful show business career; he was the brother of stage luminary Blanche Ring and the less famous but equally busy actress Frances Ring. And Cyril certainly had the right connections: he was the brother-in-law of stage comedian Charles Winninger (Blanche's husband) and film star Thomas Meighan (Frances' husband). All Cyril Ring lacked was talent. He managed to coast as actor on his family ties and his rakish good looks, but his range never matured beyond a tiny handful of by-rote mannerisms and facial expressions. In the early '20s, Ring was briefly married to musical comedy star Charlotte Greenwood. Reasonably busy as a silent-film western villain, Ring was cast as the caddish Harvey Yates in the Marx Bros.' 1929 film debut The Cocoanuts. The subsequent reviews bent over backward to condemn Ring's performance as the stiffest and most amateurish of the year -- and thus his fate was sealed. For the rest of his movie career, Ring would be confined to microscopic bit parts and extra roles, with the occasional supporting parts in 2-reel comedies (he's the fugitive crook who demands a shave from W.C. Fields in 1933's The Barber Shop). One of the few features in which he had more than five lines was RKO's 1945 mystery-comedy Having Wonderful Crime; perhaps significantly, his sister Blanche Ring topped the film's supporting cast. Cyril Ring's last recorded credits occured in 1947, after which he dropped from public view until his obituary was published in the trades twenty years later.

Trivia: Of Russian descent, American actor Basil Ruysdael was a successful opera singer in the 'teens and twenties. Firmly based in New York, Ruysdael made his first screen appearance in the Marx Brothers Astoria-filmed The Cocoanuts (1929). His portrayal of Detective Hennessy in this film was ordinary enough, save for his hilarious vocal rendition of "Tale of a Shirt," an elaborate parody of "The Toreador Song" from Bizet's Carmen. Ruysdael remained in Manhattan for nearly two decades after Cocoanuts, working on the stage, in radio, and in the occasional film short. He moved to California in 1949, showing up in no fewer than six films during his first year in Hollywood. Active until his death in 1960, Ruysdael was invariably cast as orotund authority figures: military officers, judges, governors, college deans. During the early 1950s, Basil Ruysdael was the radio and TV spokesperson for Lucky Strike cigarettes, imparting in pear-shaped tones the vital message "L.S.M.F.T....Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco."

Trivia: Barton MacLane may have been born on Christmas Day, but there was precious little chance that he'd ever be cast as Santa Claus. A star athlete at Wesleyan University, MacLane won his first movie role in the 1924 silent Quarterback as the result of his football skills. This single incident sparked his interest in performing, which he pursued on a serious basis at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He performed in stock, on Broadway, and in bit parts in films lensed at Paramount's Astoria studios (notably the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts). In 1932, MacLane wrote a slice-of-life play titled Rendezvous, selling it to influential Broadway producer Arthur Hopkins on the proviso, that he, MacLane, be given the lead. The play was a success, leading to a lucrative film contract from Warner Bros. Most effectively cast as a swaggering villain ("who never spoke when shouting would do," as historian William K. Everson observed), MacLane played good-guy leads in several Warner "B"s: he played the conclusion-jumping lieutenant Steve McBride in the studio's Torchy Blaine series. Free-lancing in the 1940s, MacLane made an unfortunate return to writing in 1941, penning the screenplay for the PRC quickie Man of Courage; it is reported that audiences erupted in shrieks of laughter when MacLane, reciting his own lines, recalled his childhood days on the farm by declaring "Boy! Did I love ta plow!" He was better served in a brace of John Huston-directed films, beating up Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and being beaten up by Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. MacLane's TV-series work included a starring stint on The Outlaws (1960-62) and the recurring role of General Peterson on I Dream of Jeannie (1965-69). Having come into the world on a holiday, Barton MacLane died on New Years' Day, 1969; he was survived by his wife, actress Charlotte Wynters.

Trivia: When the four Marx Brothers became an overnight sensation on Broadway in I'll Say She Is in 1924, they had already spent 20 years in show business. Their uncle, character actor Al Shean (of Gallagher and Shean), helped them get started in the business, spurred on by their mother Minnie. The boys toured the vaudeville circuits, first as singers and eventually as comedians, until they slowly improved enough to make it to Broadway. Ultimately, the Marx Brothers revolutionized American comedy with their anarchistic, faster-than-lightning, anything-goes approach. By the time of their first film, The Cocoanuts, in 1929 -- which was basically a filmed version of their second Broadway hit -- brother Gummo (Milton Marx, 1897-1977) had retired from the act and been replaced by the baby, Zeppo (Herbert Marx, 1901-1979). Ultimately, Zeppo retired from performing as well, leaving the three Marx Brothers best known today: Chico (Leonard Marx, 1886-1961), Harpo (Adolph Arthur Marx, 1888-1964), and the one and only Groucho (Julius Henry Marx, 1890-1977). Each of these three had his own strong screen persona: Chico was the Italian who mangled the English language and played the piano; Harpo never spoke, chased blondes, created general mayhem, and played the harp; Groucho, with his grease paint mustache and tilted walk, was a fast-talking wisecracker often on the dubious side of the law or morality. The brothers could be just as wild offscreen as they were on, and tended to create chaos wherever they went. Their first five films -- The Cocoanuts; Animal Crackers (1930), based upon their third Broadway hit; Monkey Business (1931); Horse Feathers (1932); and Duck Soup (1933) -- all for Paramount, were particularly anti-social and anti-establishment, which made them well-suited to the mood of the country in the early years of the Depression. By 1935, they were working for Irving Thalberg at MGM (thanks to Chico, who played bridge with the producer and had worked out the deal). Thalberg insisted on better plot structure and romantic subplots, which made the brothers more popular in their day but, in retrospect, detracted from the inspired anarchy of their earlier comedies. After the first two MGM films, A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937), Thalberg died, and the quality of their films began a descent from which they never recovered, culminating in the mostly pathetic Love Happy (1949). The Marx Brothers themselves flourished, however. Even Gummo and Zeppo, who had quit performing years earlier, developed financially successful, albeit tangential, careers in show business. Chico formed his own band in 1942, which included a very young Mel Torme. Harpo made numerous comedy/concert tours, including an early trip to Russia. Numerous books have been written about the Marx Brothers' often turbulent personal lives and their zany comedies. Their influence has been so widespread that many Marx Brothers routines -- particularly Groucho's -- have slipped into the American vernacular ("I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I'll never know"). The character of Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H was strongly influenced by Grouchos screen persona, and the role of Banjo in George S. Kaufman's The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941) was based on Harpo.