By Betsy Sherman
Biographer Robert S. Bader is an engaging writer and meticulous researcher. And, handy here, he’s able to be tactful, but not forgiving, when describing lousy human behavior. Zeppo Marx was a ruthless gambler with deficiencies as a husband and father. Okay, he was a stinker, but a really interesting one.
Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother by Robert S. Bader. Applause, 368 pages, $34.95 (hardback).
It’s a swell time to be a Marx Brothers fan. That’s not only because of the many technologies now available with which to see their movies and media appearances. It’s also because there’s been a boom in Marx Brothers scholarship. There are books to read; the funny, affectionate and informative The Marx Brothers Council Podcast to listen to; and in-person gatherings such as the May 2024 Marxfest, a conference and celebration in New York City (it was a blast!).
Prominent among Marxian scholars is historian-archivist-documentary producer Robert S. Bader. In 2016 he published the hefty masterwork Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage (Northwestern University Press). This sharply written history of the comedy team in the decades before their movie career opened a fuller dimension to Marx Brothers fandom. And that’s important to me, the Brothers having been my gateway drug to a life as a comedy nerd and obsessive watcher of old black-and-white movies.
Now comes Bader’s highly anticipated Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother. It’s the first ever biography of the baby brother, who appeared in the team’s first five features for Paramount Pictures in the years 1929-1933 (their best films, in the opinion of many). After that, the Four Marx Brothers became the Three Marx Brothers: Groucho, Harpo, and Chico, working chiefly for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The book examines why this happened, and recounts what happened to Zeppo over the next four decades.
In 26 chapters and a Zepilogue, Bader shows there’s a lot more than we thought to the professional and personal lives of Herbert Manfred Marx (1901-1979). He places his subject within a story of 20th-century American entertainment (in front of an audience and amongst studio bigwigs), mechanical technologies (used in automobiles, motorcycles and aviation), and the benefits of shrewd investment. There are sojourns in the trenches of vaudeville and the glamorous habitats of Beverly Hills, Palm Springs, and Las Vegas. Bader is an engaging writer and meticulous researcher. And, handy here, he’s able to be tactful, but not forgiving, when describing lousy human behavior. Zeppo was a ruthless gambler with deficiencies as a husband and father. Okay, he was a stinker, but a really interesting one.,
Every worthy story of the Marx Brothers begins with the legendary Minnie, the boys’ mother, manager, and driving force. She was born Miene Schoenberg, to a large Jewish family in Prussia that included show folk. Her brother, Adolf Schoenberg, would take the name Al Shean as half of the American vaudeville team Gallagher and Shean. The Marx Brothers’ father Simon (in America known as Sam, nicknamed Frenchy) was from a Jewish family in Alsace. The immigrant couple married in 1885 in New York. Zeppo was their sixth-born. Their first, Manfred, was born in 1886 and, tragically, died that same year. In 1887 came Leonard (Chico), in 1888 Adolf (Harpo), in 1890 Julius (Groucho), and in 1892 Milton (Gummo). By the time Herbert was 10, the older boys were busy performers, singing, doing comic sketches, and, for Leonard, playing piano.
For the purposes of this biography, the other family members are supporting players. Right away, Herbert had a different experience from the older boys. Whereas they grew up in New York, Herbert came of age in Chicago, which Minnie judged to be a more advantageous home base for the act. The move was in 1909, when Herbert was eight. Left without much supervision, the rambunctious kid barreled toward juvenile delinquency. He never shied away from fistfights (even well into adulthood) and fell in with bad company. He became passionately interested in cars — fixing them, and also stealing them. He liked to hang around at Ford Motor Company’s Chicago Assembly Plant, which opened in 1914.
Zeppo Marx, flanked by Chico and Groucho. Photo: Turner Classics
Minnie saw her progeny as a natural resource for the vaudeville stage. Formal schooling was not a priority, and Zeppo’s, too, was abandoned. He debuted at age 12, but not yet alongside his brothers. In the summer of 1915, Minnie’s dream was realized as the Five Marx Brothers toured. In 1916 and ’17 Minnie put him in an act called The Juvenile Six. Zeppo came home to Chicago in the summer of 1917 and realized one of his dreams — he took a job at Ford in the service department. Job or no job, Minnie knew she had to get him out of Chicago, or he’d end up in jail or worse. The Marxes had so far gotten out of sending one of their boys to the draft for World War I. Gummo, who hadn’t really been bitten by the showbiz bug, became the family’s contribution to the war effort. As of 1918, Zeppo replaced Gummo for good in the Four Marx Brothers.
While honing their seemingly spontaneous and anarchic comic style must have had its highs for the brothers, touring was rough. Diversion came from sex, gambling, and pranks. Chico, whose nickname came from “chicken chaser,” was obsessed with women and gambling (see his daughter Miriam’s book Growing Up with Chico). Zeppo idolized, and emulated, him. The youngster mixed with other future stars working their way up. He became friends with Ben K. Benny, who later took the name Jack Benny. Sorting through a host of vaudeville anecdotes that have been embellished over the decades, Bader separates the straight dope from the exaggerations.
The Four Marx Brothers made their triumphant Broadway debut in 1924 with the show I’ll Say She Is. They solidified their success with two musical comedies written for them by the great George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. These were adapted into their first two films, The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930), both shot in New York’s Astoria Studio. By then, Zeppo had wife; in 1927 he married actress Marion Bimberg, who used the stage name Marion Benda. In early 1931, the Four Marx Brothers and their families, father Frenchy, and various other relatives moved to Hollywood.
Zeppo — the book makes a convincing case for empathy with the youngest Marx, while acknowledging his many flaws.
Bader shines a light into the dark corner where the derivation of the name “Zeppo” was hidden. Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Gummo received their nicknames during a poker game in 1914; they started using them professionally in 1925. Herbert got his later, and his stories about it varied, favoring one involving “zeppelin.” Apparently, though, the older brothers thought Herbert resembled a circus sideshow performer, Zip the Pinhead, and that became “Zeppo.” Herbert rankled at the slight, but used the name personally and professionally his whole life.
To sum up Zeppo’s place in the screen oeuvre of the Four Marxes, he’s the Marilyn Munster: nice-looking, no wig, no signature costume, no fixed persona. He’d play Groucho’s secretary, aide, or son. His delivery is spot-on during the uproarious “take a letter” scene in Animal Crackers (watch the uncensored restored version). In Monkey Business, he’s on equal footing with the other three, as stowaways on a cruise ship, plus he has a romantic subplot. In Horse Feathers he’s a college student who woos an older woman. In my favorite Marx movie, Duck Soup, Zeppo’s role was trimmed, but he does look fetching in an undershirt in the finale.
The book’s use of “reluctant” doesn’t only refer to the facts that Zeppo had other interests, and that his mother pushed him. There’s a cloud over the family business: Chico, Harpo, and Groucho never cut Zeppo in for a quarter of the profits. They only paid him a salary the 16 years he was in the foursome. Frustrated as it made him, he stayed in the act out of loyalty. Perhaps it was Minnie’s force of will that kept him there, even after her death in 1929. He explored ways to gain his independence, such as script-writing, which didn’t pan out. After the Duck Soup shoot, he aimed for success, and a lot more money, as an agent.
Hollywood’s studio system was synonymous with big, powerful personalities. Zeppo, who in 1934 bought into an existing talent agency and then opened his own, was good at standing up to them in the interest of his clients. The book contains much lore about the activities of agents and the labor history of the ’30s. Zeppo’s most important client was Barbara Stanwyck. He and Marion were fast friends with the actress; the Marxes whisked her and second husband Robert Taylor to San Diego for the stars’ secret wedding. In 1937, Stanwyck and the Marxes built and moved into a ranch where they raised thoroughbreds. It was called Marwyck. During this period, Zeppo and Marion, frequently photographed for the society pages, were a formidable couple. The afterthought of the Marx Brothers had become the richest one.
Zeppo retained his passion for tinkering; he always built a machine shop into his homes. Shortly before the US entered World War II, he was at Santa Anita racetrack, kibbitzing with the VP of Douglas Aircraft. Not long after, he and a small staff were turning out made-to-order machinery parts for Douglas. Zeppo opened a factory with A. Dale Herman, spawning another combo name, Marman Products. The firm’s claim to fame was the Marman Clamp. During the war it secured cargo on fighter planes and battleships; it was a coupling device for the nuclear bombs on the Enola Gay. It has been claimed that Zeppo invented the clamp; Bader debunks this, but Marx did hold some patents. This endeavor took him away from the Zeppo Marx Agency, in which Gummo was an agent. He sold the company without first telling his older brother. In 1955, Zeppo sold Marman to another defense contractor; with cunning, he arranged to hide the assets from his wife.
If Zeppo was the richest Marx Brother on a balance sheet, he was not so in character. That fresh-faced youth of the ’30s films was a rascal, but not a warmhearted one like Chico. He cheated on Marion all through their marriage (okay, Chico did that too). Bader notes that Zeppo spent more time in court than he did in front of movie cameras. This involved various lawsuits brought by him or against him, and stints as a subpoenaed witness in criminal cases. Minnie, through her insistence on show business, may have kept the baby brother away from a life of crime and the violent death suffered by some of his running buddies, but Zeppo forever acted the tough guy. He was drawn to gangsters. True crime stories abound in the book, including juicy info on the early decades of Las Vegas (where Zeppo met dancer Barbara Blakeley, who, after being Zeppo’s second wife, became Frank Sinatra’s fourth).
Margaret Dumont and Zeppo Marx in Animal Crackers.
The emotional tug of the book lies in a chapter called The Other Marx Brothers. Marion Marx felt that children could perhaps keep her husband at home and save her foundering marriage. In 1944, she and Zeppo adopted a baby boy and named him Tom; the next year they adopted another and named him Tim. Zeppo, absorbed in his business and extracurricular activities, was indifferent to the children, or, if punishment was thought to be in order, cruel. Marion was neglectful as well. The boys were sent off to military school. Marion and Zeppo divorced in 1954. The boys’ relationship with their father was strained thereafter. Tom was especially bitter. When Zeppo married Barbara in 1959, he wasn’t overjoyed about having her eight-year-old son Bobby around as part of the bargain. Nevertheless, late in Zeppo’s life, he welcomed Bobby’s company.
The Marx Brothers have been a source of joy for people all around the world. For Zeppo, the team was a burden. He didn’t continue as an actor, and rarely gave interviews about the Marxes. The book makes a convincing case for empathy with the youngest Marx, while acknowledging his many flaws. If his elders had treated him as an equal, Bader conjectures, it may have softened his temperament. Anyway, it’s impossible for anyone to call Zeppo Marx an underachiever.
Bader points out with pride that he’s been researching the Marx Brothers since he was a child. In addition to his work in libraries and archives, searching for primary sources, he has longstanding relationships with Marx family members and acquaintances and has received valuable input from them. His frank conversations with Tom, Tim, and Bobby are particularly crucial in giving us perspective on Zeppo and his wives. The book has a wonderful collection of photographs. Even the chapter names are clever, with a foreshadowing of Barbara breaking Zeppo’s heart by using some Sinatra songs as titles (The Night We Called It a Day). It’s a great read, and a necessary puzzle piece in the Marx epic.
Betsy Sherman has written about movies, old and new, for the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, and Improper Bostonian, among others. She holds a degree in archives management from Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science. When she grows up, she wants to be Barbara Stanwyck.
