Harpo Marx, the Silent Comedian, Is Dead at 70; Blond‐Wigged, Horn‐Tooting Star Scored on Stage and in Films With Brothers
The New York Times
Harpo Marx dies, 70
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HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 28—Harpo Marx, the blond‐wigged, nonspeaking member of the Marx Brothers team, died tonight at 8:30 in Mount Sinai Hospital. He was 70 years old. A hospital official said MT. Marx died after surgery. [According to United Press International, a family spokesman said the comedian had entered the hospital earlier in the day for heart surgery.]

Mr. Marx, whose given name was Arthur, had been in semiretirement for five years. In January, 1963, he announced that he was retiring completely. The harp‐playing comedian was the second of the theatrical brothers to die. Chico, the piano player, died in 1961.

The surviving brothers are Gummo, Zeppo and Groucho.

Mr. Marx leaves also his wife, the former ctress Susan Feming, to whom he was married for 28 years, and four adopted children.

A honking horn, facial expressions and gestures were Continued on Page 52, Column 1 Mr. Marx's only mode of communication as a performer on the stage and in films. He maintained professional silence until the end of his career.

A battered plug hat on his frizzled mop hair, a cretinous grimace on his innocent face, and his baggy pants and oversize raincoat filled with everything from ax handles to zebra skins, Harpo Marx kept audiences laughing for 50 years.

His trademark was his harp, which he played well, and his silence, which was funnier, sweeter and more eloquent than most comedians’ noisiest chatter.

The cigar‐chewing Groucho was the star of the team, but it was Harpo, tooting his horn while in pursuit of an attractive girl, who always seemed to draw the most laughs.

He was a great pantomimist who specialized in direct action. In a moment of peril he could be relied upon to produce from his huge coat pockets some device or tool with which to save the day—many times a scissors to straighten the hem of a woman's skirt or to cut phone lines.

The result was that the Marx Brothers became the most celebrated brother act in the history of motion pictures. Their wild chaotic world of improvisational humor was distinctly their own.

Among the films they made were “The Cocoanuts,” “Animal Crackers,” “Duck Soup” and “A Night at the Opera.” Though they were produced in the nineteen‐thirties, they are still popular and occasionally make the rounds of the art houses.

With his brothers Julius (Groucho), Leonard (Chico), Milton (Gummo) and Herbert (Zeppo), Harpo learned his profession through a childhood in vaudeville.

The team rose the hard way—starting as a musical act called the Six Musical Mascots (their mother was the sixth). Then followed the Three (later Four) Nightingales, until they reached a vaudevillian's peak—playing the Palace in 1918.

The brothers were the sons of an Alsatian tailor, Sam Marx, and the former Minnie Palmer, a German musician whose brother, Al Shean, was a member of the well‐known comedy act of Gallagher and Shean.

Harpo was born in the Yorkville section of New York in a tenement on East 93d Street on Nov. 23, 1893. He attended Public School 86, but never got beyond the second grade.

After their success in the Palace, Gummo dropped out. But the team continued, traveling the vaudeville circuit for the next six years and adding to their popularity at every stop.

In 1924, the brothers made their Broadway debut with “I'll Say She Is,” a revue that brought them praise from Alexander Woollcott, who wrote:

“This man is a great clown. Harpo is the funniest man I have even seen on the stage.”

The critic took a liking to Harpo, and introduced him to the crown of writers, actors, wits and wags that frequented the Algonquin Hotel. An ideal listener, Harpo became a favorite.

The team followed their stage success with “The Cocoanuts,” a satire of the Florida land boom, and in 1928 with “Animal Crackers.” By that time, sound had arrived in motion pictures and the team made one of the first talking pictures from their show “The Cocoanuts.” It was a smashing success. Others soon followed.

In 1936, after a long courtship, Harpo married Susan Fleming, an actress who had the lead in a movie called “Million Dollar Legs.”

Besides performing in films, Harpo made frequent. concert tours. His act consisted of clowning combined with some excellent solos on the harp.

Zeppo dropped out of the team in the late nineteenthirties to become an agent. Chico and Groucho remained with Harpo, and the three went onto new zany heights, starring‐ in such films as “A Night at the Opera,”. “A Day at the Races,” “At the Circus,” “Go West,” “Monkey Business,” “Horsefeathers,” “A Night in, Casablanca,” “Room Service” and “The Big Store.”

In 1941, Harpo broke his silence on the stage by appearing in a summer production of “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” He played the role of Banjo, speaking a line, but also honking his horns and chasing girls about the stage.

The Marx Brothers made their last movie, “Love Happy,” in 1949. Groucho turned to radio as a quizmaster while Chico and Harpo took to the night club route.

Most of Harpo's time, however, was spent on his spacious ranch in California with his four children and assorted pets. He had been financially secure since the early nineteen‐forties.

Occasionally Harpo appeared as a guest on a television show or with a symphony orchestra playing his harp.

In 1961, his autobiography, “Harpo Speaks,” was published by Bernard Geis Associates.