Zeppo Marx

Herbert Manfred "Zeppo" Marx (February 25, 1901 – November 30, 1979) was an American actor, theatrical agent, and engineer. He was the youngest of the five Marx Brothers. He appeared in the first five Marx Brothers feature films, from 1929 to 1933, but then left the act to start his second career as an engineer and theatrical agent. Zeppo Marx was a multi-millionaire due to his engineering efforts.

Spouses:

Marion Benda (m.1927-1954; divorced)
Barbara Blakeley (m.1959-1973; divorced)

Children:

Timothy Marx (1944, adopted)
Thomas Marx (1945, adopted)

Early life

Marx was born in New York City. His parents were Sam Marx (called "Frenchie" throughout his life), and his wife, Minnie Schoenberg Marx. Minnie's brother was Al Shean. Marx's family was Jewish. His mother was from East Frisia in Germany; and his father was a native of France, and worked as a tailor.

Name

There are different theories as to where Zeppo got his stage name: Groucho said in his Carnegie Hall concert in 1972 that the name was derived from the Zeppelin airship. Zeppo's ex-wife Barbara Sinatra repeats this in her 2011 book, Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank. His brother Harpo offers a different account in his 1961 autobiography, Harpo Speaks!, claiming (p. 130) that there was a popular trained chimpanzee named Mr. Zippo, and that "Herbie" was tagged with the name "Zippo" because he liked to do chinups and acrobatics, as the chimp did in its act. The youngest brother objected to this nickname, and it was altered to "Zeppo."

Career

Marx appeared in the first five Marx Brothers movies, as a straight man and romantic lead, before leaving the team. According to a 1925 newspaper article, he also made a solo appearance in the Adolphe Menjou comedy A Kiss in the Dark; although no copy of the film is known to exist, according to newspaper reviews, he does appear in a minor role.

In Lady Blue Eyes, Barbara Sinatra claims that Marx was considered too young to perform with his brothers, and it wasn't until Gummo joined the Army that Marx was asked to join the act as a last-minute stand-in at a show in Texas. Marx was supposed to go out that night with a Jewish friend of his. They were supposed to take out two Irish girls, but Marx had to cancel to board the train to Texas. His friend went ahead and went on the date, and was shot a few hours later when he was attacked by an Irish gang that disapproved of a Jew dating an Irish girl.

As the youngest and having grown up watching his brothers, Zeppo could fill in for and imitate any of the others when illness kept them from performing.

"He was so good as Captain Spaulding [in Animal Crackers] that I would have let him play the part indefinitely, if they had allowed me to smoke in the audience," Groucho recalled. However, a comic persona of his own that could stand up against those of his brothers did not emerge. As critic Percy Hammond wrote, sympathetically, in 1928:

"One of the handicaps to the thorough enjoyment of the Marx Brothers in their merry escapades is the plight of poor Zeppo Marx. While Groucho, Harpo and Chico are hogging the show, as the phrase has it, their brother hides in an insignificant role, peeping out now and then to listen to plaudits in which he has no share."

Though Marx continued to play straight in the Brothers' movies for Paramount Pictures, he did occasionally get to be part of classic comedy moments in them—in particular, his role taking dictation from Groucho in Animal Crackers (1930). He also played a pivotal role as the love interest of Ruth Hall in Monkey Business (1931) and of Thelma Todd in Horse Feathers (1932).

The popular assumption that his character was superfluous was fueled in part by Groucho. According to Groucho's own story, when the group became the Three Marx Brothers, the studio wanted to trim their collective salary, and Groucho replied "We're twice as funny without Zeppo!"

Offstage, Zeppo had great mechanical skills and was largely responsible for keeping the Marx family car running. He later owned a company which machined parts for the war effort during World War II, Marman Products Co. of Inglewood, California, later known as the Aeroquip Company. This company produced a motorcycle, called the Marman Twin and the Marman clamps used to hold the "Fat Man" atomic bomb inside the B-29 bomber, Bockscar. He also founded a large theatrical agency with his brother Gummo, and invented a wristwatch that would monitor the pulse rate of cardiac patients and give off an alarm if the heartbeat became irregular.

During his time as a theatrical agent, he and Gummo, although primarily Gummo, represented their brothers, among many others.

Personal life

On April 12, 1927, Marx married Marion Benda. The couple adopted two children, Timothy and Thomas, in 1944 and 1945, and later divorced on May 12, 1954. On September 18, 1959, Marx married Barbara Blakeley, whose son, Bobby Oliver, he wanted to adopt and give his surname, but Bobby's father would not allow it. Bobby simply started using the last name "Marx".

Blakeley claims in her book, Lady Blue Eyes, that Marx never made her convert to Judaism. Blakeley was of Methodist faith and claims that Marx told her she became Jewish by "injection".

Blakeley also claims in her book that Marx wanted to keep her son out of the picture, adding a room for him onto his estate, which was more of a guest house as it was separated from the main residence. It was also decided that Blakeley's son would go to military school which, according to Blakeley, pleased Marx.

Marx owned a house on Halper Lake Drive in the Rancho Mirage, California, which was built off the fairway of the Tamarisk Country Club. The Tamarisk Club had been set up by the Jewish community, which rivaled the gentile club called "The Thunderbird". His neighbor happened to be Frank Sinatra. Marx would later attend the Hillcrest Country Club with friends like Sinatra, George Burns, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, and Milton Berle.

Blakeley became involved with the Cedars-Sinai hospital, and had arranged to show Spartacus (featuring Kirk Douglas) for charity, selling tickets, and organizing a post-screening ball. At the last minute, Blakeley was told she could not have the film, so Marx went to the country club and spoke to Sinatra, who agreed to let him have an early release of a film he had just finished called Come Blow Your Horn. Sinatra also flew everyone involved to Palm Springs for the event.

Marx was a very jealous husband, and hated for Blakeley to talk to another man. Blakeley claims that Marx grabbed Victor Rothschild by the throat at a country club because she was talking to him. Blakeley had caught Marx on many occasions with other women; the biggest incident was a party Marx had thrown on his yacht. After the incident, Marx took Blakeley to Europe, and accepted more invitations to parties when they arrived back in the States. Some of these parties were at Sinatra's compound; he often invited Blakeley and Marx to his house two or three times a week. Sinatra would also send champagne or wine to their home, as a nice gesture.

Blakeley and Sinatra started to see one another behind Marx's back. The press eventually caught up to Blakeley, snapping photos of her and Sinatra together, or asking Blakeley questions whenever they would spot her.

Marx and Blakeley divorced in 1973. Marx let Blakeley keep the 1969 Jaguar he had bought her, and agreed to pay her $1,500 a month for ten years. Sinatra upgraded Blakeley's Jaguar to the latest model. Sinatra also gave her a house to live in. The house belonged to Eden Hartford, Groucho Marx's third wife. Blakeley and Sinatra continued to date, and were constantly hounded by the press until the divorce between Marx and Blakeley became final. Blakeley and Sinatra were married in 1976.

Marx became ill with cancer in 1978. He sold his home, and moved to a house on the fairway off Frank Sinatra Drive. The doctors thought the cancer had gone into remission, but it returned. Marx called Blakeley, who accompanied him to doctor's appointments. Marx spent his last days with Blakeley's family.

Death

The last surviving Marx Brother, Zeppo died of lung cancer at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage on November 30, 1979 at the age of 78. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.

In his will, Marx left Bobby Marx a few possessions and enough money to finish law school. Both Sinatra and Blakeley attended his funeral.

Legacy

Marx bought a yacht after he and Blakeley were married and named it the "Barbara Ann".

Marx played golf, and loved gin rummy. Blakeley claims in her book Lady Blue Eyes that Marx liked to go to bed early, often using the phrase "I'm off to the disco now" when he wanted to leave a party.

Marx introduced Jack Benny to his wife Mary Livingstone.

Several critics have challenged the notion that Marx did not develop a comic persona in his films. James Agee considered Marx "a peerlessly cheesy improvement on the traditional straight man." Along similar lines, Gerald Mast, in his book The Comic Mind: Comedy and Movies, notes that Zeppo's comedic persona, while certainly more subtle than his brothers', is undeniably present:

[He] added a fourth dimension as the cliché of the [romantic] juvenile, the bland wooden espouser of sentiments that seem to exist only in the world of the sound stage. [... He is] too schleppy, too nasal, and too wooden to be taken seriously.

Danél Griffin, film critic for the University of Alaska Southeast, elaborates on Mast's theory:

Zeppo's parts were always intended to be a parody of the juvenile role often found in sappy musicals of the 1920s-30s era. Sometimes, he would just have a few lines, and he would otherwise be reduced to standing in the background with a big smile on his face. In these roles, he was a lampoon of the infamous extra, always grinning widely as a needless decoration, and always stiff and wooden. In other films, Zeppo would have a more significant role as the romantic lead, but he would still always be stiff, wooden, and, yes, with a big smile on his face. Either way, he could never be considered a real straight man. He was a sappy distortion of the real thing, and sort of the gateway through which we connected with the other Brothers. We perceived him as the "normal, good-looking" one of the bunch, but was he really? Wasn't there something about that line from The Cocoanuts, 'You can depend upon me, Mr. Hammer,' that was a little too ... happy? Roger Ebert called Zeppo 'superfluous,' and that is the point of his character in the five Paramount films. He was the straight man only in pure Marxian sense—while his Brothers spat on movie clichés, he imitated them, proving in his own way to be quite a brilliant comedian.

While this seemingly modern reconsideration of Marx's comedic contributions could be interpreted as merely a contemporary examination of his role in the Paramount pictures, film reviewers were apparently in on the joke as far back as the release of The Cocoanuts in 1929. The New York Times review of the movie, for example, ranks all four Marx Brothers equally—"When the four Marx brothers are on the screen, it's a riot" [emphasis added] and goes on to specifically describe each of the brothers' unique style of comedy, and specifically praises Zeppo as "the handsome but dogged straight man with the charisma of an enamel washstand."

In her book Hello, I Must be Going: Groucho & His Friends, Charlotte Chandler defends Marx as being "the Marx Brothers' interpreter in the worlds they invade. He is neither totally a straight man nor totally a comedian, but combines elements of both, as did Margaret Dumont. Zeppo's importance to the Marx Brothers' initial success was as a Marx Brother who could 'pass' as a normal person. None of Zeppo's replacements (Allan Jones, Kenny Baker and others) could assume this character as convincingly as Zeppo, because they were actors, and Zeppo was the real thing, cast to type".

Marx's comic persona is further highlighted in the "letter scene" of Animal Crackers. In his book Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo, Joe Adamson analyzes the scene, showing how it reveals Marx's ability to one-up Groucho with simple, plain-English rebuttals. In the scene, Zeppo is told to take a letter to Groucho's lawyer. Adamson notes,

There is a common assumption that Zeppo = Zero, which this scene does its best to contradict. Groucho dictating a letter to anybody else would hardly be cause for rejoicing. We have to believe that someone will be there to accept all his absurdities and even respond somewhat in kind before things can progress free from conflict into this genial mishmash. Groucho clears his throat in the midst of his dictation, and Zeppo asks him if he wants that in the letter. Groucho says, 'No, put it in the envelope.' Zeppo nods. And only Zeppo could even try such a thing as taking down the heading and the salutation and leaving out the letter because it didn't sound important to him. It takes a Marx Brother to pull something like that on a Marx Brother and get away with it.

In the same book, Adamson goes on to note Marx's position as the campy parody of the juvenile romantic in his analysis of Horse Feathers. This tongue-in-cheek observation bolsters the theory of Marx's stiffness as a deliberate comic persona:

Each Marx Brother has his own form of comedy. Zeppo is at his funniest when he opens his mouth and sings. It has taken forty years, of course, for the full humor to come across. For a normal comedian this may be bad timing, but for a Marx Brother it's immortality. Almost every crooner of 1932 looks stilted and awkward now, but with Zeppo, who was never very convincing in the first place, the effect crosses the threshold into lovable comedy. "I think you're wonderful!" he oozes charmingly to Thelma Todd, and we know he never met her before shooting started.

Allen W. Ellis writes in his article "Yes, Sir: The Legacy of Zeppo Marx":

Indeed, Zeppo is a link between the audience and Groucho, Harpo and Chico. In a sense, he is us on the screen. He knows who those guys are and what they are capable of. As he ambles out of a scene, perhaps it is to watch them do their business, to come back in as necessary to move the film along, and again to join in the celebration of the finish. Further, Zeppo is crucial to the absurdity of the Paramount films. The humor is in his incongruity. Typically he dresses like a normal person, in stark contrast to Groucho's greasepaint and 'formal' attire, Harpo's rags, and Chico's immigrant hand-me-downs. By most accounts, he is the handsomest of the brothers, yet that handsomeness is distorted by his familial resemblance to the others—sure, he's handsome, but it is a decidedly peculiar, Marxian handsomeness. By making the group four, Zeppo adds symmetry, and in the surrealistic worlds of the Paramount films, this symmetry upsets rather than confirms balance: it is chaos born of symmetry. That he is a plank in a maelstrom, along with the very concept of 'this guy' who is there for no real reason, who joins in and is accepted by these other three wildmen while the narrative offers no explanation, are wonderful in their pure absurdity. 'To string things together in a seemingly purposeless way,' said Mark Twain, 'and to be seemingly unaware that they are absurd, is the mark of American humor.' The 'sense' injected into the nonsense only compounds the nonsense.

In a eulogy for Marx written in 1979 for The Washington Post, columnist Tom Zito writes:

Thank goodness for Zeppo, who never really cracked a joke on screen. At least not directly. He just took it from Groucho, in more ways than one. ... If Groucho, Chico and Harpo were the funny guys, Zeppo was the Everyman, the loser who'd come running out of the grocery store only to find the meter maid sticking the parking ticket on his Hungadunga.

Marx performances did produce this tribute from a prominent fan, as revealed in Marc Eliot's 2005 biography of Cary Grant. Grant, a teenager performing in Vaudeville under his real name, Archie Leach, loved the Marx Brothers. And as Eliot puts it,

While the rest of the country preferred Groucho, Zeppo, the good-looking straight man and romantic lead, was Archie's favorite, the one whose foil timing he believed was the real key to the act's success.

In his book The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes, noted filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder includes Marx on his list for the ten greatest film actors of all time.