Family Tree Tuesday – The Marx Brothers Geni Blog Home » Family Tree Tuesday » Family Tree Tuesday – The Marx Brothers Family Tree Tuesday – The Marx Brothers Posted October 11, 2011 by Amanda | No Comment The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act that enjoyed success in vaudeville and film during the early 20th century. While there were five brothers in total, the act mainly consisted of eldest brothers, Chico , Harpo and Groucho . The comedy trio gained enormous fame for their films and were inducted to the Motion Picture Hall of Fame in 1977. Leonard "Chico" Marx Their parents were Simon “Frenchie” Marx and Minnie Marx . Simon was born in Alsace, France and became a tailor. Their mother, Minnie, managed her sons’ careers, taking the name Minnie Palmer so booking agents wouldn’t know she was their mother. She was the sister of comedian and vaudeville star Al Shean , who made up half of the highly successful vaudeville act Gallagher & Shean . Leonard “Chico” Marx was the eldest Marx brother.

His daughter, Maxine , married legendary Disney animator James “Shamus” Culhane , who is credited with animating the dwarfs singing “Heigh-Ho” in the film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Harpo Marx Arthur “Harpo” Marx was the second eldest of the Marx Brothers. He married American actress Susan Fleming . Together, they adopted four children. The third eldest Marx Brother was Julius “Groucho” Marx , who enjoyed a highly successful solo career on radio and television. His son with his first wife, Arthur Marx , was a former nationally ranked amateur tennis player. He later became a successful writer, penning several books on his relationship with his father. His daughter with his second wife, Melinda , enjoyed a brief career as an actress. Groucho Marx Milton “Gummo” Marx briefly worked with his brothers in vaudeville. However, he eventually became a theatrical agent. His grandson, Gregory Marx is an actor, who won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 1987. The youngest Marx brother was Herbert “Zeppo” Marx . Zeppo appeared in the first five Marx films but then left the act to pursue a career as an engineer and theatrical agent.

Zeppo eventually became a multi-millionaire through his engineering efforts. Marxology - One For All And Two For Five ... - The Marx Brothers Marxology - One For All And Two For Five ... Support this site, shop here: search: keywords: [ Main Page ] | [ History ] | [ Vaudeville ] | [ Misc. ] | [ Films & Film Projects] One For All And Two For Five ... "One for all and two for five, we're four of the three musketeers". These lines from Musketeers by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby in the stage version of Animal Crackers expresses the zany, loyal camaraderie that glued the Marx Brothers together. There were of course five musketeers and their loyality engulfed all of their family, both in the past, in the presence and in the future. Their father Sam was born in October 1860 in the French province of Alsace (annexed by Germany after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71), hence Sam's affectionate family nickname of "Frenchie".

Groucho at one point names the town of Strassbourg and Belgian Marx-fan and genealogist Jurgen De Clercq has found that Sam lived in the Alsatian town of Mulhouse, and possibly emigrated to America from there. Maybe he was born in Strassbourg and moved to Mulhouse later. The original first name seems to have been Simon, whose Jewish Yiddish cognomen of Shimen might have mutated into Shmuel, Samuel and finally Sam. The family tale gives him the original last name of Marrix, but there is no verifiable trace of this. His marriage certificate names him Marks and lists his father as Mark Marks and his mother as Hanne. The marriage took place on 18 January 1885, with Simon/Samuel marrying another German immigrant, Minnie Schönberg.

Born in Prussia on 9 November 1864 as Miene, later Minna, she had arrived to the new land with her parents Levy "Lafe" Schönberg (1823-1920) and Fanny Sophie Salomons (1829-1901), sisters Schontje (born 1850), Celine, Sara (born 1858), Jette (1859-1862), Hannchen (alias Hannah, born 1862), and brothers Abraham Elieser Adolph (alias Al Shean , 1868-1948) and Heine/Heinemann/Henry ("Harry Shean", born 1873). The musical and theatrical talents came from the Schönbergs and legend has it that Grandpa Lafe was a famous magician and ventriloquist back in Germany in the 19th century while Grandma Fanny played the harp. Manfred, the first Marx Brother, was born in January 1886 but survived for only a couple of months.

A death certificate of the Borough of Manhattan (unearthed by Simon Louvish) reveals that he died aged seven months on 17 July 1886 of "entero-colitis, with asthenia contributing", i.e., probably a victim of influenza. He is buried at New York's Washington Cemetery beside his grandmother Fanny Schönberg, who died on 10 April 1901. According to Groucho, mother Minnie once said: "Sam can cough all night and I never hear him, but if one of my boys coughs just once, I'm wide awake". With the sad fate of Manfred in mind we can appreciate that statement more fully. It was probably because of Manfred's death that Chico, the eldest surviving son, was showered with his parents' frustrated love. He was born on 22 March 1887 as Leo (a probable Americanization of the name of grandfather Levy), which later mutated into Leonard. Harpo was born on 23 November 1888 and was originally named Adolph after his famous uncle Abraham Elieser Adolph "Al" Shean .

The nickname Ahdie often became Artie, which paved the way for a later change to Arthur. And contrary to popular belief, Harpo made the change from Adolph to Arthur long before that Austrian corporal rose to power in Germany. Next in line was Groucho, born Julius Henry on 2 October 1890, followed by Gummo who was born Milton on 23 October 1892. Zeppo, the late addition born on 25 February 1901, always felt the weight of four living brothers and a dead one (he was even named Herbert Manfred) bearing down on him. The short life of Manfred Marx probably shaped his surviving brothers more than might have been realized before by the way they came to be treated by their parents. As it happened, Chico was a fiercely protected child, favoured over and above the others, and particularly over Groucho, whom Minnie often referred to by uneasy terms like der Eifersüchtige ("the jealous one") or der Dunkle ("the dark one").

"I wonder what would have become of Mannie", Groucho wisely pondered in an interview with Charlotte Chandler in the book Hello, I Must Be Going, and we might as well wonder what would have become of the Marx Brothers if Mannie had survived. Pauline, a daughter born in New York in January 1885 was also listed as one of the children of Sam and Minnie Marx in a city census made on 8 June 1900. She was in fact the daughter of Minnie's sister Hannah, thus a cousin of the Marx Brothers who'd (as Harpo wrote in his autobiography) "been adopted as one of us". The paternity of Pauline is unclear as Hannah, under the name Joanna Lefevre, is listed as a widow in the Manhattan City Directory of 1890-91. In 1881, Hannah had married the grocer Max Lefevre, father of Hannah's first child Louis (who enjoyed a brief career as Lou Shean together with Chico circa 1911). If Max Lefevre was proclaimed dead after the standard vanishment of seven years, this would preclude him from having fathered Pauline.

Also, with Sam and Minnie's marriage revealed as 18 January 1885, instead of the stated year of 1884, they've clearly moved their marriage back a little to accommodate Pauline's birth in January 1885. It was probably a necessary protection if Pauline was illegitimate in an age when that stigma could destroy lives. THE MARX FAMILY Groucho, Gummo, Minnie, Zeppo, Frenchie, Chico and Harpo< Nevertheless, the presence of Pauline (a.k.a. Polly or even Sally, as Groucho named her in his autobiography) meant that the Marx Brothers grew up from their early childhood with an elder sister. This solemn and older foil may in fact have been an embryonic Margaret Dumont for the growing mischief makers, and the character Peerless Pauline in At the Circus may be named after her. In 1903, Polly (still registered as Pauline Marx) married a tailor named Sam Müller.

They had four children and were still in the family fold in 1932, when a panoramic photo-portrait of a family reunion in New York show them present with their eldest daughter Beatrice (another female name that popped up years later in one of the Marxes' films, A Night In Casablanca ). Aunt Hannah (under the name of Johannah Lefever) had married one Julius Schickler in 1892. Groucho claimed to have been named after Schickler, owing to Minnie's misconception that he was a man of means, although (as Groucho later claimed) it turned out that he was not only without funds, but owed Sam Marx thirty-four dollars. The Henry added to baby Julius' name was probably in honour of Minnie's and Hannah's brother Heinie. A possible seventh Marx Brother was discovered by Simon Louvish in a city census of 1905. This census records a younger Marks child after Herbert as "Sam - age three"!

In later years there was said to be a relationship with a Samuel Marx, a 1930s Hollywood story editor and producer for MGM Studios who did claim to be a distant relative of the Marx Brothers in his own book A Gaudy Spree, published in 1987. As this Sam Marx was born in 1902, the possibility that he was the lost seventh brother is delicious but unsupported by the facts which record his father as Broadway theatrical tailor Max Marx. Louvish speculates that baby Sam ("as a distant cousin") may have visited Frenchie's household on that census day of 1905 and got caught up in early Marxian mischief. There was yet another Samuel Marx in New York, a powerful Tammany Hall politician, and according to the Marxian family tale it was in order to get a spurious family relationship with him that Frenchie changed his last name from Marrix to Marx. Louvish has found no real evidence of any blood relationship between all these Marxes, although in his autobiography, Harpo included all of them in the family as "cousins"; "Sam Marx ran an auction house near the Grand Army Plaza, and he was a wheel in Tammany Hall.

Sam's younger brother, Cousin Max, I didn't know so well. He was a theatrical tailor and a good one, so Frenchie was leery of talking shop with him and preferred to remain aloof. I thought 'Max Marx' was about the dandiest name a man could have, with the main exception of 'James J. Jeffries' ". Whose cousins these Marxes were supposed to be is unclear, especially as Harpo in a later passage confuses the relationship further by mentioning that he never got arrested while perusing the streets of New York as a juvenile delinquent because "my Uncle Sam the auctioneer, don't forget, was a wheel in Tammany Hall. Nephews of men in the Organization did not get arrested.". Browse by Reunion: The Marx Brothers entertainers 5 records found Attention:You are browsing our famous burial locations. If you are looking for a non-famous grave, please start from our home page . b. March 22, 1887 d. October 11, 1961 Vaudeville, stage, and motion picture actor/comedian/entertainer.

One of the legendary Marx Brothers along with Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo. Leonard "Chico" Marx was the pianist with a phony Italian accent. He starred in 13 movies with brothers Groucho, Harpo and sometimes Zeppo. Born in New York City as the second-oldest son of Minnie and Sam Marx (the oldest, Manfred, died an infant), Leonard grew up on the streets. He learned various accents and gambling, which became a serious... [Read More] (Bio by: LincolnFan ) Plot: Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Worship b. October 2, 1890 d. August 19, 1977 Legendary Actor, Comedian. Groucho was probably the best known of the Marx Brothers comedy team. He achieved fame in film with his brothers Harpo and Chico and sometimes Zeppo, and went on to radio and TV success with the "You Bet Your Life" program. Groucho was born Julius Henry Marx in New York City, the fourth son of Sam and Minnie Marx. He started out as a boy singer before teaming up with his brother Harpo and Gummo.

Brother Chico joined later, and the boys switched from a musical team to... [Read More] (Bio by: LincolnFan ) Cause of death: pneumonia Plot: In a small room in the large outdoor mausoleum in the middle of the cemetery. His marker is in the middle of the larger indoor wall GPS coordinates: 34.2810287, -118.4671936 (hddd.dddd) b. October 23, 1893 d. April 21, 1977 Actor, Comedian, Talent Agent. Milton "Gummo" Marx was born in New York City and was the fifth son of Minnie and Sam Marx. He joined his brothers Julius "Groucho" and Adolph "Harpo" in 1911 to become the vaudeville singing troupe the Three Nightingales. (He also appeared earlier in his Uncle Julius' ventriloquism act.) When brother Leonard "Chico" joined the group, they became the Four Marx Brothers, with Gummo playing the straight role. (He was nicknamed Gummo by monologist Art Fisher because...

[Read More] (Bio by: LincolnFan ) Plot: Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Brotherhood, Crypt 21057 Marx, Harpo (Adolph Arthur) b. November 23, 1888 d. September 28, 1964 Actor, Comedian. He was part of the immensely popular �Marx Brothers� family comedy team, which consisted of his older brother Leonard �Chico� Marx , and his younger brothers Julius Henry �Groucho� Marx , Milton �Gummo� Marx and [Read More] (Bio by: Iola ) Cause of death: Complications from Heart Surgery Cremated , Ashes scattered , Ashes allegedly sprinkled into the sand trap at the seventh hole of the Rancho Mirage golf course Marx, Zeppo (Herbert Manfred) b. February 25, 1901 d. November 30, 1979 Actor, agent, inventor. The youngest of the Marx Brothers began his performing career in 1918 after the fourth brother, Gummo, joined the Army in World War I, so that there would still be four brothers in the act.

It is also said that their mother Minnie made him join his much-older brothers on the vaudeville circuit because he was getting into a lot of fights (and usually winning, because he had a very well-developed physique) and she wanted to keep him out of trouble. He served the role as... [Read More] (Bio by: Carrie-Anne ) marx brothers | The Oldest Jokes in the World The Oldest Jokes in the World November 10, 2012 § 5 Comments Hey all, sorry it has been over two weeks without a post around here. I’ve been quite busy in every aspect of my life… except blogging. Since my last post: I’ve been buried under a pile of tofurkies, getting ready for Thanksgiving in the Whole Foods frozen aisle; entered the home stretch of the second draft of the novel I’m working on (with my pages today, the protagonist is trapped in the house but hasn’t yet discovered murderer is in there with her); and got engaged to the lovely and talented Jenny McDougal !!!!

I’ve also been hard at work at Red Bird Chapbooks and am proud to announce Shaun Rouser’s A Family Affair will be the first project I’m overseeing as fiction editor. Mr. Rouser has a strong voice and infectious intelligence, and the three stories that will make up the chapbook all have a subtly morbid sense of irony. A Family Affair should be out some time early 2013, but in the mean time you can tease yourself with his short story “The Unfinished Letter” on Colloquium . I hope I don’t hurt any readers’ feelings, but as crazed as I’ve been by all this work, I haven’t really even thought about The Oldest Jokes in the World much recently. I feel a bit like Harpo’s Gookie face as I sink deeper into my work, further from any consciousness of the outside world. In his (surprisingly well-worded) autobiography, Harpo Speaks!, Harpo explains the inspiration for the face that became his first turn as a comedic performer: Gookie worked at a low table, facing the Avenue through the window.

He was a lumpy little man with a complexion like the leaves he used for cigar wrappers, as if he’d turned that color from overexposure to tobacco. He always wore a dirty, striped shirt without a collar, and leather cuffs and elastic armbands. Whether he was at his table in the window or running errands for the cardplayers, Gookie was forever grunting and muttering to himself. He never smiled. Gookie was funny enough to look at when he wasn’t working, but when he got up to full speed rolling cigars he was something to see. It was a marvel how fast his stubby fingers could move. And when he got going good he was completely lost in his work, so absorbed that he had no idea what a comic face he was making. His tongue lolled out in a fat roll, his cheeks puffed out, and his eyes popped out and crossed themselves. I used to stand there and practice imitating Gookie’s look for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, using the window glass as a mirror. He was too hypnotized by his own work to notice me. Then one day I decided I had him down perfect–tongue, cheeks, eyes, the whole bit.

I rapped on the window. When he looked up I yelled, “Gookie! Gookie!” and made the face. It must have been pretty good because he got sore as hell and began shaking his fist and cursing at me. I threw him the face again. I stuck my thumbs in my ears and waggled my fingers, and this really got him. Gookie barreled out of the store and chased me down the Avenue. It wasn’t hard to outrun such a pudgy little guy. But I’ll give Gookie credit. He never gave up on trying to catch me whenever I did the face through the window. (Full account available here ) It feels good to be absorbed in my work, to lose track of everything else, self-conscious doubts included. But rest assured, come December—when this draft is done and the all the tofurkies are cooked—I will look up from my slobbery blunt to chase you guys around some more. September 17, 2012 § Leave a comment I’ve added another “page” to the blog, collecting the last three posts on puns into one easy-to-find, -follow, and -digest location, and titled it Punning in Circles .

I owe a lot of the ideas and all the inspiration for these posts to John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises , and I had a lot of fun searching for the best Marx Brothers routines to use as examples. I’m most grateful, though, for everyone who read my musings and contributed to the discussion. I’m not sure what my next big series of posts will be about—I’ve been sketching some notes on wit and reading a fair amount of satire lately, so those are possibilities—but I’ve got some book recommendations and fun one-shots in mind to finish out the month. Thanks again for reading! August 29, 2012 § 1 Comment Last post , I wrote about how I was glad we modern Americans don’t take puns as seriously as the ancient Sumerians did, but this week I want to argue that we should take them a little more seriously—or at least take ourselves a little less so.

In The Pun Also Rises , the incredibly readable survey of all things punny on which I’ve been basing these extrapolations of the past few weeks, John Pollack posits that puns fell out of fashion in the 1960’s as audiences came to expect something less contrived and more socially relevant out of their humor. He then goes on to explain that it’s continued unpopularity is due to the obsession with irony in our popular culture, quoting Gilbert Gottfried: “People want to show they’re a lot more intelligent or above something.” This ironic stance leads to the knee-jerk groan and the assumption all puns are bad. But we all know from a classic pun what happens when you make an assumption; in his Modern English Usage, Henry Fowler wrote (and this is, again, brought to my attention by the well-read Pollack): “The assumption that puns are per se contemptible, betrayed by the habit of describing every pun not as ‘a pun’ but as ‘a bad pun’ or ‘a feeble pun,’ is a sign at once of sheepish docility and a desire to seem superior.

Puns are good, bad, and indifferent, and only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of the fact.” It should be noted that other attacks against punning throughout history have been based on a fraudulent sense of superiority. For example, in describing the crusade against puns Jonathan Swift fought against in England, Pollack cites growing class consciousness as a reason puns fell out of fashion; the new upper class of London began to mock regional accents and grammatical constructions, stigmatizing the sort of linguistic flexibility puns require by trying to enforce one exact spelling, pronunciation, and meaning for each word . This brings me back to those confusers of conformity, the ultimate dashers of pretension: the Marx Brothers. In each film they bring a different set of self-inflated elites down to an honest level, often using puns to parody their affectations while underlying just how empty their superiority ultimately is. In this hilarious example from Horse Feathers, Groucho skewers academics with a biology lecture full of puns. Pointing at a anatomy diagram as if it is a map: “We now find ourselves among the Alps. The Alps are a very simple people, living on a diet of rice and old shoes.

Beyond the Alps lies more Alps. And The Lord Alps those that Alps themselves. We then come to the bloodstream. The blood rushes from the head, down to the feet, gets a look at those feet, and rushes back to the head again. This is known as auction pinochle. Now in studying your basic metabolism, we first listen to your heart speed. And if your hearts beat anything but diamonds and clubs, it’s because your partner is cheating…or your wife.” Note, please, that I’m not some reactionary saying we should ship all the academics back to whatever communist stronghold President Obama was actually born in to protect all the real Americans. I just think it is important for everyone to be reminded of how arbitrary and fragile most of our conventions are: to invest too much in them, such as basing your sense of worth on your diction, will only lead to stagnation and disappointment. What I think Groucho is doing here is pointing out that while science may aspire to precision, the language it uses is a mess, so it had better take itself less seriously.

To not do so—to continue reading directly from the textbook in a self-assured tone—is hubris that blinds us to the abstractions and imprecisions inherent in human language and the inevitable trouble that will arise from them. Perma-irony is hubris of another sort, the naive belief that you can somehow stay above being human. I think the vain hope inherent in most sarcasm and irony is if you say, “I’m too cool for that,” to enough things, you’ll eventually be too cool for all the ugly things in life—or at least detached enough not to feel them. Do people fear that if they are caught out enjoying a pun they’ll be dragged down into the mess of language? What other good reason could someone have for not enjoying something? As if that a stoic eye-roll might be able to guard them against ever saying the wrong thing or misunderstanding someone again. The problem is, no one can avoid being human. Death, heartbreak, fear, and all the rest of it will find you, no matter how cool you are. To think you are above anything, even verbal foibles, will only ensure you’re too detached to deal with it when it inevitably happens.

All you pun-haters need to quit pretending to be something other than one of us. You are not some invincible groaning monster—you’re a human, so go ahead and laugh like one. August 22, 2012 § 3 Comments John Pollack’s The Pun Also Rises (to which I owe thanks for spawning all this thinking I’ve been doing lately about puns) traces the history of the pun in human culture as a wild roller coaster. Anyone who’s ever gotten groaned down after making a perfectly joyous pun knows that they are the most unfairly derided form of humor in our current culture, but it was news to me that at various points in history they’ve been celebrated as not only as great wit, but an important rhetorical technique. For example, Pollack writes that ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians “took wordplay very seriously. In fact, it wasn’t considered ‘play’ at all, in the modern sense.” When two words sounded similar, it wasn’t so much an opportunity to crack-wise, as a sign of their connection. In contrast, he also describes the veritable crusade against punning that took place in England during the Age of Enlightenment.

In part, the backlash against punning had to do with literacy, as the printing press “helped transform what had been an oral culture into written one and forced writers, punsters included, to commit to a single spelling before the type was set.” This is indicative, though, of a larger shift in thought toward rationalism, which saw “the pun’s very ambiguity as a flaw.” As much as I love the pun, I think it’s rightful place is down with the jesters instead of up on the throne with the philosopher princes—but maybe that has something to do with how much more likely I am to pay attention to humor over rhetoric. Language is flawed; there is no point in denying that it is an arbitrary, confusing, and unstable mess. Given how caught up they were in the early stages of language and the invention of writing, it is easy to sympathize with (and thank) the ancient Sumerians for seeing power and magic in words.

But with hundreds of examples for foreign and ancient languages easily available to us today, many of which have noises that never even occurred to the speakers of the others, it is clear that we might just as easily have decided to call a whiner a winner and a winner or whiner—or called them both whiggledyblunks and let the context clarify. In any event, we certainly shouldn’t invest much other than laughter in the fact that they both sound a little like wiener (which can refer to food, anatomy, disposition, or an unfortunate family name). The pun’s proper place, then, is to remind us of the absurdity of language. No one does absurdity better than the Marx Brothers, and there are no better examples of how sometimes, despite all of language’s subtle complexities, conveying our simplest ideas to another person can feel utterly impossible. Here’s some of my favorite punning, from A Night at the Opera: Chico: Hey, wait, wait. What does this say here, this thing here? Groucho: Oh, that? Oh, that’s the usual clause that’s in every contract.

That just says, uh, it says, uh, if any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified. Chico: Well, I don’t know… Groucho: It’s all right. That’s, that’s in every contract. That’s, that’s what they call a sanity clause. Chico: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Santy Claus. Rationalism hated the pun because it pointed out just how inescapable irrationality is. While everything may seem perfectly rational in our heads, expecting that someone else will understand exactly what we’re thinking from a few grunts or pencil scratches is complete insanity. This is not to say communication is impossible or worthless; language is an incredibly useful tool that works remarkably well most of the time. It is important, though, to remind ourselves that to think it infallible or inalterable will usually have you ending up looking the fool.

It should be noted, too, that all those incredible Chico/Groucho puns have to do with the language barrier between their two characters while relying on the language understanding between them as performers and us as an audience. As such, no one who spoke Spanish, the Italian that Chico is pretending at, or ancient Sumerian could get a giggle out of the routine, even if it was translated into their native tongue. Most puns are lost through translation (and most of the snap of wit is lost through footnotes). Sadly, several of the Marx Brothers puns of more antiquated usage are already lost on me. As a result, while an important form of humor, I think puns usually lack the universality to be truly great. A well constructed scene that gets at the grand absurdity of the human experience can often be translated into different languages and still deliver it’s message after hundreds of years. The puns place seems to be pointing out the elusiveness of that sort of connection. That said, I feel the pun’s role is important and, as a result, it’s derision is not only unfair but dangerous for our culture.

So check back next week for part two of my posts on puns where I hope to launch our campaign of groaning at all those who groan ironically. June 11, 2012 § 2 Comments Continuing on from my previous posts on the subject—in which I discussed and provided an example of humor as a literary tool and a sense—I want to get into the meat of my argument today and look at the relationship between humor and subtext. As I hinted at in last week’s examination of Leaving the Atocha Station , it is hard to discuss any literary technique without discussing subtext and theme. This is because the presence of an underlying theme built by subtext is what defines literature and sets it apart from general fiction. I don’t think anyone has written so clearly on subtext as Charles Baxter does in his short treatise, The Art of Subtext , which I highly recommend and am greatly indebted to. In short, subtext is the content implied but not explicitly contained by the text; it could be a character’s motives, the narrator’s understanding of the world, or anything else the author can’t or doesn’t want to express explicitly.

As such, it is literature’s greatest strength; straight genre fiction, depending on the genre, can certainly excel over literature at plot, setting, dialogue, or anything else to quickly satisfy a reader’s desires, but nothing can draw a reader deeper, more permanently into a story than subtext. For example, if you’re reading a procedural crime novel set in a morgue, you’ll get drawn easily along the surface of a nice plot, and as you’re told what the main character is thinking and feeling, you might grow to like her and learn a few (hopefully forever useless) facts about how to dissect a corpse. Maybe you’ll get so involved in the circumstances as to hazard an informed guess at the identity of the murderer—but unless it is a particularly literary crime novel, you won’t ever have to wonder at the inner workings of the main detective, the emotions that she may be hiding from even herself, or what her struggles imply about the human condition. It is the mental and emotional work involved in all that implying that turns a lot of readers of off literary fiction, but for those that stick with it, the rewards are great.

In helping build the story through active involvement, a reader who picks up on subtext gains a sense of partial ownership of the story as well as a sense of communion with the author. This deeper form of communication is why so many people dedicate their lives to the study of literature, obsessing over single authors or books, while most people won’t dedicate more than $5.99 and a couple afternoons to a disposable paperback. Humor can work the same way in fiction by building similar bonds and forming another layer of subtext. Both humor and subtext make generous assumptions about the audience’s intelligence, compassion, and attentiveness; an author who uses subtext takes the risk that the reader won’t pick up on it, losing the thread of the story, just as the comedian takes the risk that the audience won’t understand his joke, settling into a serious silence. If you have to explain it, it isn’t funny—and it isn’t subtext. There are many jokes that play on this risk of misunderstanding, and the humor of Chico Marx is a great example.

He’s always playing against the language barrier for a laugh, but while he’s misunderstanding everyone and being misunderstood, our understanding of him as a performer deepens as our laughter effectively says, “We are so simpatico, you and I, that we both understand not just what you said, but what you were trying to say, as well as everything that was implied by the discrepancy.” So, just as with subtext, the rewards of humor are a deepening bond with each successful communication. We’ve all broken the ice with a joke in the company of strangers and felt a good laugh cementing a friendship. Similarly, humor can act as subtext in literature, deepening the unspoken bond between author and reader by letting the reader share in making the meaning of the story. Just what this meaning might be is the subject of next week’s post, as we’ll discuss the ways both subtext and humor can express the inexpressible. Thanks, again, for reading! April 30, 2012 § 3 Comments Lord Julius by Dave Sim Although I tried last week to describe how a sense of humor is essential for approaching matters of grave importance, I don’t want to imply it is our only tool for dealing with them.

In my experience—or maybe just when wielded by me—humor is an imprecise instrument, great for honing in on an area of importance but rarely of much use for fine discernment or description. For instance, I’m currently working on a semi-satirical erotic thriller and have been letting my sense of humor guide me towards my theme, trusting that the funniest parts will be the ones that best explore the reality of coming of age sexual anxieties. But while my quest for nervous laughs has brought me to scenes about the fragility and volatility of our physical bodies and the dangers of intimacy, it hasn’t given me anything to say about them. Once I’ve found the important subjects, it is something else that guides my writing: sometimes it is what I think is logical, but more often it comes from the felt experiences of my own life and the mechanisms of plot. Serious logic alone just doesn’t seem like any surer guide than humor; while it feels more precise on the small scale, its details exaggerate its exactness. Without a big, fuzzy sense of the whole, it is possible for this exactitude to lead us down narrowing tunnels further and further from the truth.

From the inside, every well-reasoned argument is truthful—but there is probably another sober argument that proves the exact opposite just as indisputably. This is nowhere more evident than when two pundits face-off on TV, both deadly certain about their thin strand of argument; they can fight over the reasoning of each others proofs, but it is always a larger, unspoken given that really divides them, so what is the point of taking it so seriously? While there are many wonderful examples of humor skewering the supposed strength of seriousness, I don’t think anyone has done it better or more systematically than the Marx brothers. Take for example Duck Soup, where the comedy explores the grave spread of fascism in the 20’s and 30’s, an era of even viler (ands more self-serious) punditry; the Marx brothers, too, ask what is the point of all this seriousness? When Groucho, as the dictator of Freedonia, is asked by his enemy for peace, he replies, “It’s too late: I’ve already paid a month’s rent on the battlefield,” and we laugh at the familiar way that political arguments detach from reality to perpetuate themselves.

But further, many cultural studiers (such as Jorn K. Bramann in this article ) have pointed out, the Marx brothers’ fracturing puns are the narrative equivalent of cubist painting, their dismantled logic making even the simplest communication impossible. Many see this as an ultimately nihilistic world-view, where even the simple foundations of causality are said to be nothing–but I don’t agree. Their films aren’t a description of reality or a philosophical tract, but an exploration, and by destroying logic in favor of puns, they show how unlivable and pointless an existence governed by humor alone would be. I’d be just as frightened to live in Freedonia as Glen Beck’s America. Neither humor nor seriousness is enough alone: creation easily contains both and more. To even begin to understand and appreciate life, we must never let the battle between them end.

The Ritz Brothers - Biography - IMDb The Ritz Brothers Jump to: Mini Bio (1) | Trivia (3) Mini Bio (1) They followed in the huge clown shoes of the Marx Brothers and stumbled a bit in doing so, but the Ritz Brothers slapstick trio (comprised of Al Ritz , Jimmy Ritz and Harry Ritz ) were troupers all the way as they did their part in helping American audiences forget about the Depression and World War II. All three brothers were born in Newark, New Jersey (Al in 1901, Jimmy in 1903 and Harry in 1906), the sons of an Austrian haberdasher whose last name was Joachim. Raised in Brooklyn, the boys developed an early interest in show business and pursued solo careers at the onset -- with rather lackluster success. Following Harry's graduation from high school, they decided to band together (1925) and put together a song-and-dance act they could take out on the road. Building up their reputation in various night clubs and vaudeville houses, they appeared in the George White and Earl Carroll revues to great success.

Their act remained fairly constant for all four decades, which included precision dancing, tongue-twisting patter songs, ethnic humor and physical schtick. They managed to break into films in the mid-30s and earned a contract with 20th Century-Fox as specialty items in Alice Faye and Sonja Henie musicals. Slowly evolving into stars of their own, some of their better known vehicles would be The Three Musketeers (1939), The Gorilla (1939) and Argentine Nights (1940), which also featured the Andrews Sisters. Their hyperbolic style and unsubtle brand of insanity, however, were not always complemented in their films. They were an acquired taste (or an acquired lack of taste) and their critically-drubbed clowning never achieved the box-office distinction of Groucho, Chico and Zeppo. Discontented at Fox for not promoting them into an "A" film attraction, they left and tried their hand at Universal in 1940. Things not only didn't improve, their films grew even more inferior in quality.

In the end, their forte would be as supper club headliners and once their film career was finished in 1943, they went back to the nitery circuit, occasionally finding work on TV. Eldest brother Al's death of a heart attack in 1965 put a serious cog in the team wheel. Harry and Jimmy continued for a time but floundered and eventually settled into semi-retirement, appearing on talk shows or in cameos for Mel Brooks (Brooks was a huge fan of their work). Jimmy died of heart failure and Harry of cancer within a year of each other in the mid-1980s. Though they remained in the comic shadow of the Marx Brothers, Al, Jimmy and Harry certainly made their broad mark in comedy and have found new legions of fans with every passing year. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net Trivia (3)

Question: Who was the eldest of the Marx Brothers?
Answer: Chico