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: Born in Germany, actor Sig Rumann studied electro-technology in college before returning to his native Hamburg to study acting. He worked his way up from bits to full leads in such theatrical centers as Stettin and Kiel before serving in World War I. Rumann came to New York in 1924 to appear in German-language plays. He was discovered simultaneously by comedian George Jessel, playwright George S. Kaufman, and critic Alexander Woollcott. He began chalking up an impressive list of stage roles, notably Baron Preysig in the 1930 Broadway production of Grand Hotel (in the role played by Wallace Beery in the 1932 film version). Rumann launched his film career at the advent of talkies, hitting his stride in the mid 1930s. During his years in Hollywood, he whittled down his stage name from Siegfried Rumann to plain Sig Ruman. The personification of Prussian pomposity, Rumann was a memorable foil for the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), and A Night in Casablanca (1946). He also was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch, appearing in Ninotchka (1939) as a bombastic Soviet emissary and in To Be or Not to Be (1942) as the unforgettable "Concentration Camp Ehrardt." With the coming of World War II, Ruman found himself much in demand as thick-headed, sometimes sadistic Nazis. Oddly, in The Hitler Gang (1944), Rumann was cast in a comparatively sympathetic role, as the ailing and senile Von Hindenburg. After the war, Rumann was "adopted" by Lubitsch admirer Billy Wilder, who cast the actor in such roles as the deceptively good-natured Sgt. Schultz in Stalag 17 (1953) and a marinet doctor in The Fortune Cookie (1966); Wilder also used Rumann's voice to dub over the guttural intonations of German actor Hubert von Meyerinck in One, Two, Three (1961). In delicate health during his last two decades, Rumann occasionally accepted unbilled roles, such as the kindly pawnbroker in O. Henry's Full House (1952). During one of his heartier periods, he had a recurring part on the 1952 TV sitcom Life with Luigi. Rumann's last film appearance was as a shoe-pounding Russian UN delegate in Jerry Lewis' Way... Way Out (1967).

Trivia: Upon graduating from Nichols College, Charles Ruppert entered the professional world as a salesman. When he decided to switch to acting, Ruppert changed his name to Drake. In films from 1939, Drake was signed to a Warner Bros. contract and appeared in such films as The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Now, Voyager (1942), Dive Bomber (1942), Air Force (1943), and Mr. Skeffington (1944). Freelancing in the mid-'40s, he played the romantic lead in the Marx Brothers flick A Night in Casablanca (1946). Once he moved to Universal in 1949, Drake proved that the fault lay not in himself but in the roles he'd previously been assigned to play. He was quite personable as Dr. Sanderson in Harvey (1950) and thoroughly despicable as the cowardly paramour of dance-hall girl Shelley Winters in Winchester '73 (1950). One of his most unusual performances was as the ostensible hero of You Never Can Tell (1951), who after spending two reels convincing the viewer that he's a prince of a fellow, turns out to be the villain of the piece. Drake did some of his best work at Universal as a supporting player in the vehicles of his offscreen pal Audie Murphy. In 1955, Drake turned to television as one of the stock-company players on Robert Montgomery Presents; three years later, he was star/host of the British TV espionage weekly Rendezvous. Charles Drake prospered as a character actor well into the early 1970s.

Trivia: The unofficial "Fourth Mesqueteer" in seven of Republic's Three Mesqueteers Westerns during 1941-1942, diminutive, dark-haired Lois Collier had been Madelyn Earle when appearing in such films as Monogram's Women Must Dress in 1935. She later played a character named Lois Collier on the CBS radio show Hollywood in Person and retained the moniker performing with various stock companies when she returned to films in 1938. Never a major name, Collier popped up in scores of B-Movies in the 1940s, including the action serials Jungle Queen (1945 -- Ruth Roman played the eponymous title character while Collier essayed the standard heroine role) and Flying Disc Man From Mars (1950). Collier is perhaps better remembered for portraying Mary Westley on the 1951-1953 television mystery series Boston Blackie. Working opposite Kent Taylor and Whitey the Dog was, she later stated, "the most pleasant experience of my career." Retiring from performing after the series' cancellation, Collier spent her final years at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA. She died from Alzheimer's disease in 1999 at the age of 80.

Trivia: Described bluntly as "yeccch" in a 1968 book on movie villains, porcine Dan Seymour has certainly played more than his share of slimy bad guys. Seymour started out as a nightclub comedian, then decided to give movies a try. He was almost immediately cast in heavy roles due to his girth and sinister features. Seymour's career has in many ways been inextricably linked with the 1942 classic Casablanca. He played the small role of Abdul the doorman in that film, went on to a larger part in Warners' Casablanca clone To Have and Have Not (1944), graduated to chief of police in the Marx Brothers spoof A Night in Casablanca (1946), and, coming full circle, was cast in the old Sidney Greenstreet role of Ferrari in Warners' weekly TV series version of Casablanca in 1955. Dan Seymour continued to play small roles in films like The Way We Were into the 1970s, and was frequently seen on TV comedy series of the same era, usually cast as a self-indulgent Middle Eastern potentate.

Trivia: Looking like the very picture of a sly Nazi agent, German-born character actor Frederick Giermann plied his insidious trade in scores of Hollywood pictures during World War II. He played the escaped Nazi spy Kurz in British Intelligence (1940), the inventor of a device that can alter a phonographic record in the action serial Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943), and Heinrich Himmler, the head of the feared SS, in the speculative The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943). Giermann could also be the victim of German atrocities, as in the-then incendiary Beasts of Berlin (1939), in which he was Father Pommer, one of the decent citizens attempting to overthrow the demonic regime. Like so many of his compatriots, Giermann's screen career waned in the post-war era.

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.

Trivia: A thin, weasel-like Russian stage actor, David Hoffman made his mark in Hollywood films of the 1940s, chiefly at Universal where, as the spirit, he opened the first five Inner Sanctum films: Calling Dr. Death (1943), Weird Woman (1944), Dead Man's Eyes (1944), The Frozen Ghost (1945), and Strange Confession (1945). Hoffman was also an effective Hawaiian-based Nazi spy in a couple of chapters of the 1943 serial The Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943) and portrayed yet another furtive Axis agent in the Marx Brothers comedy A Night in Casablanca (1946). Often unbilled, Hoffman continued in films until the late '50s. He should not be confused with the later director of the same name.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the popular radio commentator of the same name, American stage actor Paul Harvey made his first film in 1917. Harvey appeared in a variety of character roles, ranging from Sheiks (Kid Millions [34]) to Gangsters (Alibi Ike [35]) before settling into his particular niche as one of Hollywood's favorite blowhard executives. Looking for all the world like one of those old comic-strip bosses who literally blew their tops (toupee and all), Harvey was a pompous target ripe for puncturing by such irreverent comics as Groucho Marx (in A Night in Casablanca [46]) and such down-to-earth types as Doris Day (April in Paris [54]). Paul Harvey's final film role was a typically imperious one in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (55); Harvey died of thrombosis shortly after finishing this assignment.

Trivia: Roman studied acting at the Bishop Lee Dramatic School and worked on stage before becoming a leading lady of Hollywood films in the mid '40s. (She later moved into character roles.) The film for which she first received good reviews and critical attention was Champion (1949). She tended to play determined, strong-willed characters who are cold externally but inwardly passionate. She is best remembered for her starring role in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) opposite Farley Granger. During the rest of the '50s she primarily appeared in routine films. She has also done much TV work, including the series The Long Hot Summer.