Zeppo Marx facts for kids
Learn Zeppo Marx facts for kids
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"Zeppo" redirects here. For the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, see The Zeppo.

Herbert Manfred "Zeppo" Marx (February 25, 1901 – November 30, 1979) was an American comedic actor, theatrical agent, and engineer. He was the youngest and last survivor 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.

Early life

Zeppo was born in Manhattan, New York City, on February 25, 1901. His parents were Sam Marx (called "Frenchie" throughout his life), and his wife, Minnie Schönberg Marx. Minnie's brother was Al Shean, who later gained fame as half of the vaudeville team Gallagher and Shean. Marx's family was Jewish. His mother was from East Frisia in Germany and his father was a native of Alsace, France, and worked as a tailor.

Name

As with all of the Marx Brothers, different theories exist as to where Zeppo got his stage name: His older brother Groucho said in his Carnegie Hall concert in 1972 that the name was derived from the Zeppelin airship. Zeppo's ex-wife Barbara Sinatra repeated this in her 2011 book, Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank. His older brother Harpo offered a different account in his 1961 autobiography, Harpo Speaks!, claiming there was a popular trained chimpanzee named Mr. Zippo, and that "Herbie" was tagged with the name because he liked to do chin-ups and acrobatics like the chimp did in its act. The youngest brother objected to being likened to a chimpanzee and it was altered to "Zeppo." In a rare TV interview years later, Zeppo said that Zep is Italian-American slang for baby and as Zeppo was the youngest or baby Marx Brother, he was called Zeppo (BBC Archives).

Career

Early career and The Marx Brothers

Zeppo replaced brother Gummo in the Marx Brothers' stage act when the latter was drafted into the Army in 1918. At that time, Zeppo was employed as a mechanic for the Ford Motor Company. He had no desire for a show business career, but the team's mother, Minnie, insisted he replace Gummo because she wanted to maintain the act as a foursome. Zeppo remained with the team and appeared in their successes in vaudeville, Broadway, and the first five Marx Brothers films as the straight man and romantic lead until 1933. He also made a solo appearance in the Adolphe Menjou comedy A Kiss in the Dark (1925) as Herbert Marx. It was described in newspaper reviews as a minor role though his performance was praised by the New York Sun.

In Lady Blue Eyes, Barbara Sinatra, Zeppo's second wife, reported that Zeppo was considered too young to perform with his brothers, and when Gummo joined the Army, Zeppo was asked to join the act as a last-minute stand-in at a show in Texas. Zeppo was supposed to go out that night with a Jewish friend of his. They were supposed to take out two Irish girls but Zeppo had to cancel to board the train to Texas. His friend went on the date and was shot a few hours later 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. Groucho suffered from appendicitis during a Chicago engagement, and Zeppo filled in for him ably.

"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.

The popular assumption that Zeppo's 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!"

Zeppo had great mechanical skills and was largely responsible for keeping the Marx family car running. He later owned a company that machined parts for the war effort during World War II, Marman Products Co. of Inglewood, California, later acquired by 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 obtained patents for a wristwatch that monitored the pulse rate and alarmed if the heartbeat became irregular and a therapeutic pad for delivering moist heat to a patient.

He also founded a large theatrical agency with his brother Gummo. During their time as theatrical agents, Zeppo and Gummo represented numerous screenwriters and actors, including their brothers.

Personal life

Zeppo introduced his cousin Mary Livingstone to Jack Benny during a Passover seder. Livingstone and Benny would marry in 1926.

On April 12, 1927, Zeppo married Marion Benda (birth name Bimberg). 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 wrote in her book, Lady Blue Eyes, that Zeppo never made her convert to Judaism. Blakeley was of Methodist faith and said that Zeppo told her she became Jewish by "injection".

Blakeley also wrote in her book that Zeppo 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 Zeppo.

Zeppo owned a house on Halper Lake Drive in 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. Along with brothers Groucho and Harpo, Zeppo later attended the Hillcrest Country Club with friends such as Sinatra, George Burns, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar, and Milton Berle.

Blakeley became involved with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center 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 Zeppo 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 named Come Blow Your Horn. Sinatra also flew everyone involved to Palm Springs for the event.

Sinatra began to invite Blakeley and Zeppo to his house two or three times a week. He would also send champagne or wine to their home, as a friendly gesture. Blakeley and Sinatra began a love affair, unbeknownst to Zeppo. The press eventually got wind of it, snapping photos of Blakeley and Sinatra together or asking her questions whenever she was spotted. Both she and Sinatra denied the affair.

Zeppo and Blakeley divorced in 1973. Zeppo let Blakeley keep a 1969 Jaguar and agreed to pay her $1,500 (equivalent to $9,900 in 2022) a month for 10 years. Sinatra upgraded Blakeley's Jaguar to the latest model. Sinatra also gave her a house which had belonged to Eden Hartford, Groucho Marx's third wife. Blakeley and Sinatra continued to date and were constantly hounded by the press until her divorce became final. Blakeley and Sinatra were married in 1976.

Zeppo was accused of beating up 37-year old Jean Bodul, the future wife of mobster Jimmy Fratianno, in 1973; a jury awarded her $20,690 in 1978.

Zeppo became ill with cancer in 1978. He moved to a house on the fairway off Frank Sinatra Drive. The doctors thought the cancer had gone into remission but it returned. An ailing Zeppo turned to Blakeley for support and she accompanied him to doctor's appointments and treatment. Zeppo 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, Zeppo left stepson Bobby Marx a few possessions and enough money to finish law school. Both Sinatra and Blakeley attended his funeral.

Legacy

Several critics have challenged the notion that Zeppo did not develop a comic persona in his films. James Agee considered Zeppo "a peerlessly cheesy improvement on the traditional straight man".

While this interpretation of Zeppo's comedic contributions could seemingly be considered a contemporary reappraisal of his role in the Paramount pictures, more astute film reviewers were apparently in on the joke as far back as the release of I'll Say She Is, the team's 1924 Broadway hit. In its review of the play, The New York Daily News called Zeppo "the obliging audience of the family – the feeder who helps his brothers be funny by playing straight himself". When The New York Times reviewed their debut film The Cocoanuts in 1929, it ranked all four Marx Brothers equally – "When the four Marx brothers are on the screen, it's a riot" [emphasis added] – and went on to describe each of the brothers' unique style of comedy, and praised Zeppo as "the handsome but dogged straight man with the charisma of an enamel washstand".

In his essay "The Marx Brothers: From Vaudeville to Hollywood," Roger S. Bader observes that the films that the Marx Brothers made as a trio after Zeppo left the group should generally be considered a different comedy team altogether, noting that "changes in the Marx Brothers’ screen personas [were] immediate and apparent," with less of vaudevillian-inspired anarchy and more in tune with standard Hollywood comedies where "love stories [were] injected in the plots [to] make their films more palatable to female moviegoers".

In her book Hello, I Must be Going: Groucho & His Friends, Charlotte Chandler defended Zeppo as being "the Marx Brothers' interpreter in the worlds they invaded. He was neither totally a straight man nor totally a comedian, but combined 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" (562). Chandler's appraisal of Zeppo's role in the films – as an interpreter for his older brothers to the audience – was essentially confirmed by Groucho himself, who once noted that Zeppo's role was "handsome, obtuse, slightly wooden," and that he "brought logic to a basically illogical story," acting as "an intrusion" to their otherwise complete anarchy.

Zeppo's comic persona was further highlighted in the "dictation scene" of Animal Crackers. In his book Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo, Joe Adamson analyzed the scene, showing how it revealed Zeppo's ability to one-up Groucho with simple, plain-English rebuttals. In the scene, Groucho dictates a letter to his lawyer, which Zeppo takes down.

In the same book, Adamson noted Zeppo's position as the campy parody of the juvenile romantic in his analysis of Horse Feathers.

Critic Danél Griffin, who praises Zeppo as "that great comic parody of the schleppy juvenile role of the 1920s/30s musicals", believes that the onscreen dynamic between Groucho and Zeppo is one of the "key relationships between the individual Marx Brothers [that] shape their comedic strategy, not counting when the four of them are onstage together."

Allen W.

Zeppo's performances produced this tribute from a prominent fan, written 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.

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

Awards and honors

In the 1974 Academy Awards telecast, Jack Lemmon presented Groucho with an honorary Academy Award to a standing ovation. The award was also on behalf of Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo, whom Lemmon mentioned by name. It was one of Groucho's final major public appearances. "I wish that Harpo and Chico could be here to share with me this great honor," he said, naming the two deceased brothers (Zeppo was still alive at the time and in the audience). Groucho also praised the late Margaret Dumont as a great straight woman who never understood any of his jokes.

Filmography

Film

Year Title Role Notes 1921 Humor Risk The Love Interest Short, lost 1925 A Kiss in the Dark unknown role 1929 The Cocoanuts Jamison 1930 Animal Crackers Horatio Jamison 1931 The House That Shadows Built Sammy Brown 1931 Monkey Business Zeppo 1932 Horse Feathers Frank Wagstaff 1933 Duck Soup Lt. Bob Roland, Firefly's secretary (his last role)

See also