Zeppo, p.8
Zeppo, page 8
Girls: Mr. Hammer, Mr. Hammer, we have some news for you. Mr. Lee has packed his trunk and said that he was through. He leaves for home today.
Hammer: Are you sure he went away? Well, believe me when I say he was the worst one in the play.
Girls: Mr. Hammer, Mr. Hammer, he doesn’t like the plot.
Hammer: No one’s going to worry about the little plot we got.
Detective: (enters)
Hammer: (to Detective) Goodbye, goodbye, I hate to see you go.
Detective: Goodbye, goodbye, and what a terrible show.
(Enter Bobby and Dorothy)
Bobby and Dorothy: What’s the matter, what’s the matter?
Hammer: He doesn’t like your act.
Detective: I like the patter.
Bobby and Dorothy: Well, what’s the matter?
Detective: I didn’t like the way your story ended.
Bobby and Dorothy: What did he say?
(Chico enters)
Detective: And I don’t like your dialect.
Chico: For twenty a week, what do you expect?
Detective: It sounded good when you first read it to me. Now here’s the only remedy that I can see. You’ll have to go into a great big dance, and they’ll forget about the rest.
Company: Give us a chance and we’ll do our best.
Hammer: (to orchestra leader) Say, leader, play feather your chest.
Detective: I’ve even played a part for you.
Hammer: That’s what made the show so good.
Company: We thank you, Mr. Lee.
Hammer: What do you think of me?
Detective: I don’t use that kind of language.
(Harpo enters)
Detective: Who is the guy that plays the harp? He should have more to say.
Hammer: Once we let him say two words and they pinched us right away.
Detective: You’ll have to go into a great big dance, and I’ll come up and help you out.
Company: Thank you, Mr. Lee. Play a dancing melody and we’ll go over with a shout.
Zeppo’s romantic interest in the show was played by Herman Timberg’s sister, Hattie Darling. She was an accomplished violinist, so Timberg wrote a specialty for her. Chico hypnotizes her, and she is suddenly able to play the violin. The show was filled with bits of business like that. It was essentially a series of vaudeville turns linked by dialogue sequences concerning the arranged romance. The main deviation from Home Again was the inclusion of key scenes involving Zeppo’s character. He even gets a few jokes of his own. When asked to play Mendelsohn’s “Spring Song,” he asks who wrote it. Since On the Mezzanine Floor was also conceived as a starring vehicle for Herman Timberg’s sister, the show has scenes featuring only Zeppo and Hattie Darling.
Bobby: Oh, Dorothy. I’m so glad we’re alone. I want to tell you something.
Dorothy: That you are not a musician.
Bobby: How did you know?
Dorothy: Mendelsohn’s “Spring Song.” Mother wants me to marry that red-headed boy.
Bobby: You just do as she tells you.
Dorothy: I don’t understand you. What do you mean, Bobby?
Bobby: Just this. I want them to try to marry you to him. He can’t even speak two words. He can’t even say “I do,” and I know your mother would not allow you to marry a man who can’t talk. Oh, Dorothy, you do love me, don’t you?
Hammer: (sticks head out of center room and interrupts) Quinine, did you shine my shoes with my nightgown?
One of the features of On the Mezzanine Floor was a two-tiered set with several windows from which Groucho would occasionally pop out with a wise crack or non sequitur. This afforded him many opportunities to throw in new lines when he wasn’t featured prominently. Reviewing the new act in Variety’s March 18, 1921, issue when it played at the Palace in New York, critic Bell noticed the new approach without necessarily attributing it specifically to Zeppo’s increased role. “Arthur Marx, the silent comic of the family, hasn’t as much to do in a comedy way as in the former Marx turn, the meat being more evenly distributed. Julius, the eldest, shines as usual with a constant flow of wise cracks, apparently for the most part, impromptu, but all distinctly funny.”
If there was any doubt that Zeppo’s role in On the Mezzanine Floor remained the least consequential among the brothers despite it being the best role the fourth brother ever had, it was removed when Harpo became ill and was unable to perform for three weeks in June and July of 1921. Cast member R. C. McClure effortlessly filled Zeppo’s role and the versatile and capable Zeppo was called upon to fill in for Harpo, which he did without incident in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston. The harp solos were removed, but Zeppo still had to display enough rudimentary harp skill to play the bits that advanced the plot. Reviews were good and no one noticed Harpo’s absence.
Zeppo had been with the act long enough to have learned how to fill in for each of his brothers, which over the years would occasionally become necessary. When this happened just about anyone from the chorus could become the temporary Zeppo. The least valuable Marx Brother occasionally saved them from disaster. By the time Zeppo played Harpo’s part in the summer of 1921, his biggest problem in the show had resolved itself when the very pregnant Ruth left the company in the spring to await the July birth of Groucho’s first child.
After an extended stay on the East Coast, On the Mezzanine Floor—sometimes billed as On the Balcony—headed out on the Orpheum circuit, covering the western half of the United States and Canada for the fall 1921 season, concluding with a return to New York and another engagement at the Palace Theatre. Had they just gone home to rest after the Palace, their lives would have been much easier. But they accepted a month-long engagement in London in June and July of 1922 and that was complicated. The Four Marx Brothers had become one of the highest paid acts in vaudeville. Their 1920 Orpheum circuit salary of $1,500 per week had ballooned to $2,750 by early 1922. The Orpheum and its eastern partner, the Keith-Albee circuit, crafted carefully worded contracts that required performers to get their permission to work for anyone else. The expectation was that if they wanted to work in the summer, it should be for the circuit that was paying their handsome salary all year. They played London without permission and came home to find themselves blacklisted by the two major circuits.
Zeppo, still on salary and not a decision maker in the act’s business, could only watch in frustration as the act could not find sufficient bookings in the fall of 1922. They ultimately settled for the new renegade vaudeville circuit formed by the Shubert brothers, who dominated the legitimate theater business, but were ill-equipped to operate a vaudeville circuit. The Four Marx Brothers salary would be $2,000 per week from an organization that teetered on the brink of bankruptcy on a regular basis. How the act’s finances affected Zeppo’s salary is not documented, but his lack of involvement in the decisions that made the act’s price plummet had to make Zeppo wonder what sort of position he would have had at Ford had he never joined the act. Since joining the Four Marx Brothers, Zeppo had experienced some major disasters: The Cinderella Girl, “Humor Risk,” the London trip that got the act blacklisted, and the Shubert vaudeville debacle that was now crashing down on them. If the reason for keeping Zeppo from being a partner was that Gummo had endured the hard times and Zeppo joined a successful act that didn’t struggle, the reasoning was certainly flawed.
The Marx Brothers had purchased the Herman Timberg and Benny Leonard interests in On the Mezzanine Floor for $10,000 to become the sole owner of the act. Again, Zeppo was not involved in this transaction. He remained an employee of the show, which was retitled The Twentieth Century Revue for its one season on the Shubert vaudeville circuit. The show was perpetually in financial trouble—as was the case with most of the Shubert vaudeville shows. The Twentieth Century Revue limped along for months before being put out of its misery by the sheriff in Indianapolis, who attached the box office receipts and confiscated the scenery and costumes to cover some of the show’s debts. When it was all over, the Four Marx Brothers were still blacklisted by Keith-Albee and Orpheum. Unemployment loomed, and the brothers briefly considered careers outside of show business. Only one of them possessed any marketable job skills, but things had not quite reached the point where Zeppo needed to ask Ford for his old job.
With no other options, the Four Marx Brothers took a job in a summer revue in Philadelphia. To the great surprise of all involved, this show facilitated the rebirth of the Four Marx Brothers. I’ll Say She Is left Philadelphia after a summer of sold-out performances and continued to pack theaters around the country for nine months. The only place to go from there was Broadway, where I’ll Say She Is opened at the Casino Theatre on May 19, 1924. Suddenly the formerly blacklisted, unemployable vaudeville act known as the Marx Brothers was the toast of the town. And Zeppo seemed much less like the expendable Marx Brother. Starting with The Cinderella Girl and On the Mezzanine Floor, he was a much more important part of the act. He may not have been as funny on stage as his brothers, but he was on stage—with and without them—quite a lot in I’ll Say She Is.
The show opened with the now familiar “Theatrical Manager’s Office” sketch, which had opened On the Mezzanine Floor and The Twentieth Century Revue. A new comedy scene written for the quartet, and featuring Groucho as Napoleon, was the highlight of the show. Zeppo had vastly improved the plight of the fourth Marx Brother since Gummo’s days of struggling to spit out his lines. Getting banished from vaudeville turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to the Four Marx Brothers. Long train rides were replaced by luxurious Manhattan apartments and invitations to dinners and parties with people like George Gershwin, columnist Franklin P. Adams, and future New York Mayor Jimmy Walker. Almost overnight, the Four Marx Brothers were among New York’s most in-demand celebrities, and they rubbed elbows with New York’s elite. Prohibition was in full swing and being roundly ignored in speakeasies all over town. The nightlife after the shows let out began at midnight, and the fun usually lasted until sunrise. Groucho, now a husband and father, did not partake. Chico, also a husband and father, was not going to pass up this much fun. Along with Harpo and Zeppo, he enjoyed his celebrity status—including the fringe benefits of chorus girls and flappers who were anxious to meet the Marx Brothers.
As one of Broadway’s newest stars, Zeppo was invited to visit the Paramount studio in Astoria and ended up with a bit part in an Adolphe Menjou film. His brief appearance in A Kiss in the Dark was in a garden party scene featuring several other Broadway personalities.1 After closing on Broadway, I’ll Say She Is went back on the road for another five months. The tour began in Boston, where Zeppo made some news. On February 25, 1925—his twenty-fourth birthday—The Boston Globe reported that Zeppo was engaged to a twenty-year-old local woman. “Announcement was made yesterday of the engagement of Miss Kay Austin of 42 Warren Street, Roxbury, to Herbert Marx, one of the Four Marx Brothers featured in I’ll Say She Is at the Majestic Theatre.” The newspaper item claimed they met because the young woman had read an interview in which Herbert proclaimed himself a “woman hater” and wrote to him insisting he was wrong. Miss Austin clearly did not have any insight into how Herbert entertained himself in his spare time while I’ll Say She Is was on Broadway for almost nine months. Whatever relationship they had did not outlast the seven weeks the show spent in Boston. But Miss Austin recovered quickly enough. In April 1926 she married an actor and seven months later gave birth to a daughter.
The tour ended in June and the brothers enjoyed a much-needed summer vacation as a new show produced by Sam H. Harris went into preparation for the fall season. The success of I’ll Say She Is earned the Four Marx Brothers a chance to work with the best playwright in the business—George S. Kaufman. But according to Kaufman biographer Scott Meredith, he wasn’t the first choice.
When Harris phoned the comedians to say that he would produce their show, he told them at the same time he was sending a blackout writer right up to do some new sketches for them. A blackout writer was the last thing in the world the Marxes wanted. They had plenty of comedy sketches and bits of their own, and furthermore, the employment of a blackout writer sounded as though Harris was contemplating a revue, whereas they wanted a genuine, plotted play and a real playwright to write it. They decided to deal with the blackout writer in their own way.
When the man arrived, they insisted he remove his coat, and Zeppo, who was a bodybuilding enthusiast at that time and had bulging, rippling muscles, stepped up close to him. “I’ll wrestle you to a fall,” said Zeppo threateningly. “You write two shows for us or none.” The writer, a small man, retrieved his coat and disappeared into the night, and it was after Harris heard of this that he called Kaufman.
Kyle Crichton identifies Zeppo’s wrestling opponent as Richard Atteridge, who had worked on several successful Shubert-produced shows during the period. Kaufman’s oft-quoted line suggesting he’d rather write a show for the Barbary apes may have been inspired by Zeppo’s wrestling challenge. But Kaufman came on board and brought in Morrie Ryskind, who in this instance would be an uncredited collaborator. Both writers recognized that I’ll Say She Is was really a vaudeville show—a series of sketches with a story so unimportant to the proceedings that audiences would be hard pressed to describe it after seeing the show. In his autobiography Ryskind noted,
Zeppo was a continuing problem. There just wasn’t any way to squeeze another comedic personality into an act that already had Groucho, Harpo, and Chico. Zeppo couldn’t sing or dance or play a musical instrument, and although he was the best looking of the brothers, he still fell short of matinee-idol status. So, with all the avenues closed to him, there wasn’t anything left for him except to play the straight man. George and I tried our best to invent some business that would more fully incorporate him into the act, but we were being pressed for a late fall opening which stopped us cold. The best we could do for Zeppo was give him the thankless role of a hotel clerk. It was the smallest role he ever played with the team, but he accepted the role without complaint.
Zeppo’s brief period of near equality on stage had begun with The Cinderella Girl and would end with I’ll Say She Is. It would all be downhill from there. Rys-kind’s assessment of Zeppo’s abilities may have been extreme since he acquitted himself well in the shows where he had a chance to do more than a handful of straight lines. But in the world of Broadway and the musical theater of the 1920s, being adequate was not enough. Kaufman and Ryskind marginalized Zeppo because when they looked at the Four Marx Brothers, they saw a very talented trio with a lot of possibilities. According to Ryskind, the odd man out was a good sport about the whole thing. While Zeppo “might have been one comedian too many on stage, off stage he was by far the wittiest of the brothers. This would have given him a valid reason for brooding about his fate, but until he made his break from the act, he deferred to the best interests of the group. But that would have never been true of Harpo and Chico, who demanded that every one of each other’s musical solos be matched by one of his own.”
Everyone around the Marx Brothers accepted that Groucho would get the most to do and would be the favorite of the writers. But Chico’s wife Betty warned her husband about the risk of being marginalized by Groucho. In a 1981 interview Betty said,
Groucho was very selfish about his work. I said to Chico one day, “Look, you’re busy running around playing the horses and playing cards, and Groucho’s around with the writers. And Groucho’s fighting for his part to be bigger and bigger. And pretty soon you’ll be a Zeppo and have nothing to do because he’ll write you out.” So, I said, “Be smart and go and protect yourself. You go in and sit in with the writers.”
In Growing Up with Chico, Maxine Marx shared the disastrous result of Chico following Betty’s advice.
The next day he came home in a rage. “Betty, don’t ever interfere with me and my brothers again! Just remember one thing: There’s only room for two prima donnas in the act. Not three. Groucho and Harpo need the limelight. I just need the act to be good.” “I didn’t mean any harm,” Betty said. “I just thought you deserved better.” “Well, next time keep your ideas to yourself. You almost broke up the Marx Brothers.”
About her Uncle Zeppo Maxine added, “He was funny. Everyone knew that, yet his humor was too much like Groucho’s to fit into the act. Groucho never liked that particular comparison—he hated to share the spotlight with anyone. So, Zep was left out and had to play the banal romantic leads that we all knew he was much too good for.” In The Cocoanuts he didn’t even get that much. The role of a hotel clerk relegated the importance of the fourth Marx Brother back to the Gummo era. But Zeppo was a good soldier, and he accepted the lifestyle of a Broadway star without really being one. In The Cocoanuts he truly was carried along by his brothers, but no one seemed to have any problem with it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Love and the Fourth Marx Brother
THE COCOANUTS OPENED ON BROADWAY ON DECEMBER 8, 1925, AFTER six weeks of fine tuning in Boston and Philadelphia. To no one’s surprise it was a smash hit in New York and would head out on the road in the fall of 1926. Three days before the final Broadway performance at the Lyric Theatre, the New York Times on August 4 reported that Zeppo was engaged.
Herbert Marx, the youngest of the four brothers of that name and the one known as Zeppo in The Cocoanuts, has become engaged to Marion Bimberg, actress who goes by the stage name of Marion Benda. The engagement, it is said, will be formally announced on Sunday at the home of Mr. Marx’s brother Julius in Great Neck.
Miss Benda succeeded Fania Marinoff in Tarnish and has been in pictures for Famous Players-Lasky. Mr. Marx has long appeared with his brothers in vaudeville and musical shows. Miss Benda said last night that the marriage would probably not take place until after The Cocoanuts has closed its road tour, which starts in September. She will continue on the stage, having been engaged for a Chicago company of Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em.
