Walter Kerr on Chico Marx
Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2026 9:10 am
CHICO MARX, THE LINK FOR ACT AND AUDIENCE
by Walter Kerr
The New York Times, February 23, 1981
I'VE always wanted to sponsor a Chico Marx film festival. The only thing is, I've never been able to figure out how to do it. Those other two busybodies keep getting in the way.
The problem, you see, is that audiences won't look directly at Chico if they have either Harpo or Groucho to look at, and since they always have either Groucho or Harpo to look at (or both at once) there's never time or space left over to take stock of what Signor Ravelli (or whatever pasta-based title Chico's acquired for the moment) may be up to.
But this is not only unfair, it's unintelligent. We really do suppose that the glory of the Marx Brothers - a glory that is obviously going to go marching on, courtesy not only of the films but of the theater's determination to bring them back alive in such entertainments as ''Minnie's Boys'' and ''A Night in the Ukraine'' - depends mainly, if not entirely, on the gleeful muteness of Harpo as he munches on a telephone mouthpiece for his dinner or upon the compulsive garrulousness of Groucho as he continues to upend the language in an effort to make it say what he means (''One false move and I'm yours''). And who would venture to subtract an ounce of praise from either? Not I.
But Chico - ah, there's a strange one. We think of him, if we bother at all, as something like a straightman, a handy fellow for setting up Groucho's puns and Harpo's efforts to rest his knee in someone else's available paw. He's a presence that comes and goes usefully but without altering our focus very much, a kind of steady occupant of our peripheral vision. We like him, but we don't feel the act would disappear if he did. In fact, he can walk right out of a beginning scene - as he does in ''The Cocoanuts,'' which I happen to have seen again recently - and leave the surreptitious theft of Groucho's tie, teeth and underwear to Harpo alone. Unneeded, he vanishes without so much as an exit line. And yet, if he didn't return - and in pretty short order - the act would disappear. Chico is the unobtrusive indispensable man.
His daughter, Maxine Marx, has made that pointedly and pleasantly clear in an attractive, often surprisingly informative short memoir, ''Growing Up With Chico,'' that slipped into the bookstores - almost as unobtrusively as its hero might have - during the fall (PrenticeHall, 177 pages, $9.95). The book contains a number of interesting oddball snippets that have little to do with Chico. Do you know, for instance, why Zeppo became the act's juvenile? No doubt you have always supposed it was because he was the handsomest of the group or because he could do nothing better, or funnier.
But, Miss Marx confides in us, Zeppo was as funny as his brothers. Unfortunately for him, his comic temperament and style precisely duplicated Groucho's, and, since Groucho had got there first, Zeppo had to settle for pursuing the girl. (I ought to have guessed as much. Once, at the Palace in Chicago, I saw Zeppo play Groucho for an entire performance - I later learned that Groucho was ill - and I doubt that more than 10 people in a crowded house tumbled to the substitution.) 'An Essential Ingredient’
And on the subject of her father's indispensability, Miss Marx is most persuasive. Practically everyone who's followed the career of the Marxes knows that it was Chico, over the bridge table, who talked Irving Thalberg into taking them on at Metro after they'd run out of inspiration at Paramount. But the legend that mother Minnie was the guiding genius of the vaudeville act, training her charges until they were in trim for the big-time, is convincingly - if gently - erased. Minnie, obviously, was much beloved and irredeemably an amateur. The boys at their early best were defying rather than obeying her; Chico had even left the act. Though the remaining members of the vaudeville troupe were doing moderately well, it was only Chico's unexpected return - announced by a gunshot trill on the piano keys and a barrage of apples hurled from the pit - that provided ''the necessary catalyst to get the Marxes rolling in a big way.''
Catalyst? Yes, if you think about it. And not only in a managerial sense. Chico did take over the management of the act, arranging its business deals thereafter. But his essential function was performed onstage, maintaining communication between the other brothers. As Miss Marx sensibly insists, ''Daddy was much more of an essential ingredient than most people ever realize.'' Harpo couldn't talk, and Groucho needed to work off (that is to say, insult) somebody. But Groucho couldn't work off Harpo because he couldn't get a response out of him no matter how much he might needle, and what, pray tell, could Harpo do with Groucho? Strum him?
The upshot was that Chico would work with Harpo and then Chico would work with Groucho, a practice that kept him occupied virtually all of the time, busy the night long. Almost surreptitiously, Chico had become the act's dynamo, or at least its permanent fulcrum.
But not as a straightman. Not the creature whom Groucho refers to, within a single two-minute span, as Hiawatha, Peter Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh (personally, I've always thought of him as Pinocchio; it's that cap). True, he plays in dead earnest, listening with his eyes, head lowered in concentration. When he speaks, he means to be informative and/or helpful. He Means to Make Friends
If, as he goes to the piano, Margaret Dumont asks him what his first number is to be and he replies with a majestic ''No. 1!,'' he could not be more accommodating. If, during a moment of great discontent with his impoverished state, he announces that he has killed for money, adding, to Harpo, ''I kill you for money, ah, no, you my friend, I kill you for nothing,'' he is being genuinely considerate.
Whereas Groucho always knows that a joke is a joke and is even willing to discuss the matter, Chico never means to make a joke at all. He is a social being, and he means to make friends. When he glances over his shoulder at us while playing the piano, his smile suddenly brightens into the most innocent leer I have ever been surprised by. He is confiding, even conspiratorial, but always congenial. His emotions are often inappropriate: he is apt to scowl at good news and beam at bad. And he is stubborn, God knows, stubborn enough to make a mule blush with embarrassment. But he is a sweet, sullen soul, and must never be confused with a straightman. He is not straight, he is stupid - like us.
I wonder if you see what that does for everybody concerned? Chico is not only the necessary link between Harpo and Groucho. He is the necessary link between Harpo, Groucho and those of us who sit out front. We do need an arbiter, a spiritual middleman no more untrustworthy than we are, an occasionally victorious numbskull with whom we can wistfully identify. We may love Harpo, but we can't identify with him: too otherplanetary. We may admire Groucho, but we can't possibly cope with him: his headlong assault - very often into the camera, at us - is so overwhelming that our collapse into helpless laughter is really a form of self-defense. Kept Us All in Touch
With Chico, we can breathe. He is our only intimate among the three, resident of a universe that is almost recognizable, everlastingly prepared to take steps that are practical, logical and utterly useless. I first saw the Marx Brothers in the stage version of ''Animal Crackers,'' and, oddly, it's Chico's voice that comes back to me from that unthinkably distant time. Chico had decided that a stolen painting was hidden in the house next door. He was informed that there was no house next door. ''All right,'' he said, getting right down to business, ''we build one.''
He was not only a good builder, he was an expert maintenance man, keeping us all in touch. Daughter Maxine has done nicely by him, I think, being candid about his failings (he had some, another point of contact!) and acute about the special nature of his work (well, perhaps she didn't have to be acute, all she had to do was ask him). ''Growing Up With Chico'' is casual and chatty and altogether unpretentious, and I should think its bits of special information - along with a couple of important insights - would make it essential reading for your true Marx Brothers buff. I mean, it's got something of Chico in it.
by Walter Kerr
The New York Times, February 23, 1981
I'VE always wanted to sponsor a Chico Marx film festival. The only thing is, I've never been able to figure out how to do it. Those other two busybodies keep getting in the way.
The problem, you see, is that audiences won't look directly at Chico if they have either Harpo or Groucho to look at, and since they always have either Groucho or Harpo to look at (or both at once) there's never time or space left over to take stock of what Signor Ravelli (or whatever pasta-based title Chico's acquired for the moment) may be up to.
But this is not only unfair, it's unintelligent. We really do suppose that the glory of the Marx Brothers - a glory that is obviously going to go marching on, courtesy not only of the films but of the theater's determination to bring them back alive in such entertainments as ''Minnie's Boys'' and ''A Night in the Ukraine'' - depends mainly, if not entirely, on the gleeful muteness of Harpo as he munches on a telephone mouthpiece for his dinner or upon the compulsive garrulousness of Groucho as he continues to upend the language in an effort to make it say what he means (''One false move and I'm yours''). And who would venture to subtract an ounce of praise from either? Not I.
But Chico - ah, there's a strange one. We think of him, if we bother at all, as something like a straightman, a handy fellow for setting up Groucho's puns and Harpo's efforts to rest his knee in someone else's available paw. He's a presence that comes and goes usefully but without altering our focus very much, a kind of steady occupant of our peripheral vision. We like him, but we don't feel the act would disappear if he did. In fact, he can walk right out of a beginning scene - as he does in ''The Cocoanuts,'' which I happen to have seen again recently - and leave the surreptitious theft of Groucho's tie, teeth and underwear to Harpo alone. Unneeded, he vanishes without so much as an exit line. And yet, if he didn't return - and in pretty short order - the act would disappear. Chico is the unobtrusive indispensable man.
His daughter, Maxine Marx, has made that pointedly and pleasantly clear in an attractive, often surprisingly informative short memoir, ''Growing Up With Chico,'' that slipped into the bookstores - almost as unobtrusively as its hero might have - during the fall (PrenticeHall, 177 pages, $9.95). The book contains a number of interesting oddball snippets that have little to do with Chico. Do you know, for instance, why Zeppo became the act's juvenile? No doubt you have always supposed it was because he was the handsomest of the group or because he could do nothing better, or funnier.
But, Miss Marx confides in us, Zeppo was as funny as his brothers. Unfortunately for him, his comic temperament and style precisely duplicated Groucho's, and, since Groucho had got there first, Zeppo had to settle for pursuing the girl. (I ought to have guessed as much. Once, at the Palace in Chicago, I saw Zeppo play Groucho for an entire performance - I later learned that Groucho was ill - and I doubt that more than 10 people in a crowded house tumbled to the substitution.) 'An Essential Ingredient’
And on the subject of her father's indispensability, Miss Marx is most persuasive. Practically everyone who's followed the career of the Marxes knows that it was Chico, over the bridge table, who talked Irving Thalberg into taking them on at Metro after they'd run out of inspiration at Paramount. But the legend that mother Minnie was the guiding genius of the vaudeville act, training her charges until they were in trim for the big-time, is convincingly - if gently - erased. Minnie, obviously, was much beloved and irredeemably an amateur. The boys at their early best were defying rather than obeying her; Chico had even left the act. Though the remaining members of the vaudeville troupe were doing moderately well, it was only Chico's unexpected return - announced by a gunshot trill on the piano keys and a barrage of apples hurled from the pit - that provided ''the necessary catalyst to get the Marxes rolling in a big way.''
Catalyst? Yes, if you think about it. And not only in a managerial sense. Chico did take over the management of the act, arranging its business deals thereafter. But his essential function was performed onstage, maintaining communication between the other brothers. As Miss Marx sensibly insists, ''Daddy was much more of an essential ingredient than most people ever realize.'' Harpo couldn't talk, and Groucho needed to work off (that is to say, insult) somebody. But Groucho couldn't work off Harpo because he couldn't get a response out of him no matter how much he might needle, and what, pray tell, could Harpo do with Groucho? Strum him?
The upshot was that Chico would work with Harpo and then Chico would work with Groucho, a practice that kept him occupied virtually all of the time, busy the night long. Almost surreptitiously, Chico had become the act's dynamo, or at least its permanent fulcrum.
But not as a straightman. Not the creature whom Groucho refers to, within a single two-minute span, as Hiawatha, Peter Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh (personally, I've always thought of him as Pinocchio; it's that cap). True, he plays in dead earnest, listening with his eyes, head lowered in concentration. When he speaks, he means to be informative and/or helpful. He Means to Make Friends
If, as he goes to the piano, Margaret Dumont asks him what his first number is to be and he replies with a majestic ''No. 1!,'' he could not be more accommodating. If, during a moment of great discontent with his impoverished state, he announces that he has killed for money, adding, to Harpo, ''I kill you for money, ah, no, you my friend, I kill you for nothing,'' he is being genuinely considerate.
Whereas Groucho always knows that a joke is a joke and is even willing to discuss the matter, Chico never means to make a joke at all. He is a social being, and he means to make friends. When he glances over his shoulder at us while playing the piano, his smile suddenly brightens into the most innocent leer I have ever been surprised by. He is confiding, even conspiratorial, but always congenial. His emotions are often inappropriate: he is apt to scowl at good news and beam at bad. And he is stubborn, God knows, stubborn enough to make a mule blush with embarrassment. But he is a sweet, sullen soul, and must never be confused with a straightman. He is not straight, he is stupid - like us.
I wonder if you see what that does for everybody concerned? Chico is not only the necessary link between Harpo and Groucho. He is the necessary link between Harpo, Groucho and those of us who sit out front. We do need an arbiter, a spiritual middleman no more untrustworthy than we are, an occasionally victorious numbskull with whom we can wistfully identify. We may love Harpo, but we can't identify with him: too otherplanetary. We may admire Groucho, but we can't possibly cope with him: his headlong assault - very often into the camera, at us - is so overwhelming that our collapse into helpless laughter is really a form of self-defense. Kept Us All in Touch
With Chico, we can breathe. He is our only intimate among the three, resident of a universe that is almost recognizable, everlastingly prepared to take steps that are practical, logical and utterly useless. I first saw the Marx Brothers in the stage version of ''Animal Crackers,'' and, oddly, it's Chico's voice that comes back to me from that unthinkably distant time. Chico had decided that a stolen painting was hidden in the house next door. He was informed that there was no house next door. ''All right,'' he said, getting right down to business, ''we build one.''
He was not only a good builder, he was an expert maintenance man, keeping us all in touch. Daughter Maxine has done nicely by him, I think, being candid about his failings (he had some, another point of contact!) and acute about the special nature of his work (well, perhaps she didn't have to be acute, all she had to do was ask him). ''Growing Up With Chico'' is casual and chatty and altogether unpretentious, and I should think its bits of special information - along with a couple of important insights - would make it essential reading for your true Marx Brothers buff. I mean, it's got something of Chico in it.