Marx Brother Zeppo fought for attention
Many Marx Brothers’ fans admit that they have a favourite Marx brother. Some love the cigar puffing Groucho, who delivers rapid fire wisecracks. Others think Chico, the fake Italian with his misunderstandings and mispronunciations of English, is the funniest. While a significant number find Harpo’s absence of words the most hilarious part of the act.
But nobody ever says Zeppo, the youngest Marx brother, who only appeared in their first five films.
Yet some stories suggest Zeppo was the funniest Marx. He understudied the others and could play their characters as well or better than the originals. But he left because he was forced to play straight man to the strong personas that Groucho, Chico and Harpo became.
Few people know, once he left, he had a remarkable career as an agent, and later a mechanical whiz and an inventor who ran his own engineering company.
Zeppo grew up watching his brothers becoming performers, getting their start as part of a music act with their uncle Abraham Schonberg, whose stage name was Al Shean. It is said Zeppo’s mother Minnie got him into the act, when he was 14, to keep him out of trouble.
In the 1920s, the Marx Brothers became one of the biggest stage acts in the US. But while Groucho, Chico and
Harpo hogged the spotlight, Zeppo was given little to do in their shows.
In the sibling comedy team’s first Hollywood film
Cocoanuts, in 1929, Zeppo played a hotel desk clerk.
In later films, he was useful as a romantic lead in the obligatory subplot Hollywood had to balance the comic chaos. But after Duck Soup, in 1931, Zeppo decided he had enough of being “the stooge” and he became a theatre agent. He was mechanically minded and began an engineering business called Marman Productions, which produced clips for bombers in WW2. In 1967, Zeppo invented a heartbeat monitor for cardiac patients.
He survived his brothers and died of cancer in 1979.