Word: harpo
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...twelve years in one class. Zeppo is the only Marx who has enjoyed the advantages of a high school education. Mrs. Marx, eager to train her children for the stage, saved money for Chico's piano lessons. Soon he was able enough to play in cheap cinema theatres. Harpo, two years younger than Chico, looked exactly like him. He could play two tunes on the piano. They enabled him to defraud theatre managers who had hired Chico. He went to work in jobs that Chico had secured, four times received a week's wages before he was discharged...
While Chico and Harpo were playing pianos, Groucho was developing his soprano voice. Confirmed in the Jewish faith at 13, he became a choir boy in a Manhattan Episcopal Church, quit when punished for puncturing the organ bellows with an alto's hatpin. He learned to tap dance. His mother persuaded her friend Ned Wayburn to get him a job in a Gus Edwards act (where famed Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, Georgie. Price. Walter Winchell received their histrionic training). When Groucho was 14, he went to Denver to be boy soprano in a trio. Soon after he arrived...
...called "The Three Nightingales." They performed in Atlantic City in a beer garden on a pier. Underneath the pier were fishnets. The manager of the beer garden fed the Marxes only fish, because it was cheapest on his menu. Next season, Mrs. Marx thought that Harpo also was fitted for her act. She recalled him from the Seville Hotel, in Manhattan, where he was a bellhop. Unable to think of anything for Harpo to say, she had him try some of his grandfather's tricks. When the Marxes were performing in Waukegan, Ill., they were surprised to hear...
...Chicago, Harpo Marx bought an old harp. He tuned and played it to suit himself. The harp became so dilapidated that, when his train was wrecked at Mobile, Harpo claimed and received $250 on it although it had been unhurt. With the money, he purchased a new harp. He was amazed when a music store offered him $250 for his old harp, amazed further when the music store sold it for $750, as an antique...
...store. The audience deserted the Marx Brothers to watch the mule. When the audience returned, the Marxes, indignant, burlesqued their act. The audience was delighted. At Abilene, Kan., a manager cancelled their bookings. Put off a train which they had boarded without money, they walked to the next town. Harpo borrowed his first red wig. The Marx Brothers again burlesqued their act. By the time they reached Oklahoma City they were rich enough to stay at a hotel...