Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx married chorus girl Ruth Johnson in 1920. The couple had two children, Arthur Marx and Miriam Marx. They divorced after 22 years of marriage in 1942.

He married Kay Marvis in 1945. Groucho was 54 and Kay 21 at the time of their marriage, and speculations were rife that the marriage would not last long. The couple divorced in 1951 after having a daughter, Melinda Marx.

His third wife was actress Eden Hartford who he wed in 1954. This marriage ended in 1969.

Groucho Marx was born as Julius Henry Marx on October 2, 1890 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S. to Minnie Schönberg and Sam "Frenchie" Marx as one of their five sons. He had four brothers: Leonard (Chico), Adolf (Harpo), Milton (Gummo), and Herbert (Zeppo.)

While neither of his parents was directly linked to the show business, his maternal uncle Al Shean had a successful career in the vaudeville. His mother wanted her sons to follow in the footsteps of her brother.

Though Julius aspired to be a doctor as a young boy, he was forced to drop out of school because of poverty and give up this dream.

His mother tried to promote the Marx Brothers as a singing vaudeville group. However, the boys were not much musically inclined and their performances were not successful.

After one disappointing performance, the boys started cracking jokes onstage for their own amusement. Surprisingly, the audience started laughing to their jokes as well. Thus the brothers realized that the audience liked them better as comedians than as singers.

Once the Marx Brothers decided to promote themselves as comedians, they each took up a stage name, with Julius taking the name “Groucho” for himself. His brothers adopted the names Chico, Harpo, Gummo, and Zeppo.

They found considerable success on the vaudeville as a family act and before long they had established themselves as the biggest comedic stars of the Palace Theatre in New York City. The Marx Brothers took the Broadway by storm and enjoyed massive success on the stage.

By the 1920s, the family act had become so popular that the brothers didn’t even have to utter a word to make the audience laugh. Their very presence was enough to send the audience doubling with laughter!

Films emerged as a new medium of entertainment in the 1920s. Already established entertainers, the Marx Brothers made their first feature film ‘Humor Risk’ in 1921. The film, however, was never released and has since been lost.

In 1929, ‘The Cocoanuts,’ a musical comedy film starring the Marx Brothers was released. It also starred Oscar Shaw, Mary Eaton, and Margaret Dumont along with the brothers. The movie proved to be a big hit, and earned over $1.8 million at the box office, making it one of the most successful early talking films.

Groucho Marx, along with his brothers, appeared in the 1933 comedy film ‘Duck Soup.’ The movie, which also featured Margaret Dumont, Louis Calhern, Raquel Torres and Edgar Kennedy along with the Marx Brothers, is considered by critics to be a masterpiece of comedy.

The Marx brothers’ movie ‘A Night at the Opera’ was a massive box office hit at the time of its release. In 1993, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".