Chico Marx Dies, Aged 70

Press, Volume C, Issue 29643, 13 October 1961, Page 15

Chico Marx Dies, Aged 70

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copvright)

HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 11. Chico Marx, the pianoplaying member of the famous comedy team, the Marx Brothers, died at his home in Hollywood today, aged 70. He entered hospital last May with what was then described as a chest ailment. Born in New York, he was the eldest child of Samuel and Minna Marx, Jewish immigrants from Alsace and Germany respectively. From the time he was able to cope with the keyboard, Leonard Marx showed a fondness and exceptional ability for playing the piano and he was the first of the five Marx brothers to become a vaudeville entertainer. He was

joined in the early 1910 s by his brothers Adolph (Harpo), Milton (Gummo) and Julius (Groucho) in a variety act entitled the Four Marx Brothers, which soon became a recognised comedy team on the major vaudeville circuits. Service in the United States Army in World War I for Gummo and Harpo interrupted the brothers’ career for a time. When he came out of the army, ‘Gummo decided he had had enough of vaudeville and went into business. His place in the act was taken by the youngest brother, Herbert (Zeppo). During this period the brothers developed the stage characters which were later to become familiar to a worldwide film audience: Chico, the piano-playing Italian; Groucho, the mustachioed, leering wisecracker; Harpo. the tow-headed mute; and Zeppo, more or less a straight actor.

Their zany, surrealistic style of comedy is reputed to have grown from two incidents in Texas—when they succeeded in retrieving their audience (it was outside watching a mule kick its cart to pieces) by frenziedly burlesquing their own act, and when they were obliged to go in for “spontaneous idiocy” because their stage properties were seized by a town sheriff. From vaudeville they went into musicals on Broadway, beginning in 1924 with "I’ll Say She Is.” Affter this success came “The Coconuts” and “Animal Crackers.” The last two were adapted for films of the same name in 1929. More films followed: “Monkey Business,” “Horse Feathers” (1932) and “Duck Soup” (1933). Chico adopted the garb which became his trademark —the pointed hat, seedy velvet jacket and garish twotone shoes—in “Horse Feathers.” He combined this with a deadpan face broken now and again by a sly leer, the “Italian” accent and gestures, and the deft fingerwork of a pickpocket and an accomplished musician to produce the more substantial basis of the team’s crazily improbable and wickedly irreverent antics. After “Duck Soup,” Zejppo decided that acting was not his vocation and left the act to join Gummo in operating an actors’ agency. The first film to contain only Chico, Groucho and Harpo was “A Night at the Opera.” Then appeared “A Day at the Races” (1936). “Room Service” (1938), “A Day at the Circus” (1938), “Go West” (1940) and “The Big Store” (1941), which brought the brothers’ professional partnership to an end for five years. Groucho explained their retirement from the screen to the public thus: “When I say we’re sick of the movies, what I mean is that the people are about to get sick of us. By getting out now we’re just anticipating public demand by a very short margin. Our stuff is stale. So are we.” Chico returned to vaudeville, displaying his piano “finger ballets” and dialect routine, until 1946. when the three Marxes again joined forces for another film—“A Night in Casablanca.”' Their last film together was “Love Happy” in 1946. Chico had been in poor health for the last few years and made only rare appearances in night clubs while Groucho and Harpo added to their lustre on television.