Herbert "Zeppo" Marx
Born	February 25, 1901 New York, New York
Died	November 29, 1979 Palm Springs, California

Herbert Marx (February 25, 1901 – November 29, 1979) is best known as Zeppo Marx, the name he used when he performed with his brothers, The Marx Brothers. Image File history File links Picture of Zeppo Marx taken from the NNDB site at [1] This work is copyrighted. ... February 25 is the 56th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Official language(s) English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  Ranked 27th  - Total 54,520 sq mi (141,205 km²)  - Width 285 miles (455 km)  - Length 330 miles (530 km)  - % water 13. ... Official language(s) English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  Ranked 27th  - Total 54,520 sq mi (141,205 km²)  - Width 285 miles (455 km)  - Length 330 miles (530 km)  - % water 13. ... November 29 is the 333rd (in leap years the 334th) day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... Palm Springs is a famed Riverside County, California, desert resort city, approximately 110 miles east of Los Angeles. ... February 25 is the 56th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... November 29 is the 333rd (in leap years the 334th) day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... See Marx brothers (fencing) for the 16th century German brotherhood. ...

There are different theories to where Zeppo got his stage name: Groucho once said that the name was derived from the Zeppelin, a new invention at the time of his birth. However, it is more commonly suggested that the name derived from that of another vaudeville performer named Mr. Zippo, whom Herbert resembled. It is possible that both are true and that some punning was involved. (Another story tells of the time the Marxes were pretending to be gentleman farmers in the Chicago suburbs in order to avoid conscription into World War I. The brothers would refer to each other by "hayseed" names like Zeke and Zep; Zep became Zeppo.) Julius Henry Marx, known as Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), was an American comedian, working both with his siblings, the Marx Brothers, and on his own. ... LZ127 Graf Zeppelin, one of the two zeppelins that carried passengers from Germany to the United States. ... Vaudeville is a style of multi-act theatre which flourished in North America from the 1880s through the 1920s. ... It has been suggested that dajare be merged into this article or section. ... Combatants Allied Powers: British Empire French Empire Italy Russian Empire Kingdom of Serbia United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary Bulgaria German Empire Ottoman Empire Commanders Douglas Haig Sir John Jellicoe Ferdinand Foch Nikolay II Nikolay Yudenich Radomir Putnik Woodrow Wilson John Pershing Wilhelm II Reinhard Scheer Franz Josef I Oskar...

Zeppo appeared in the first five Marx Brothers movies, as a straight man and romantic lead, before leaving the team. According to a 1925 newspaper article, he also made a solo appearance in the Adolphe Menjou comedy A Kiss in the Dark, but no known copy of the film exists, and it is not clear if he actually appeared in the finished film. [1] He had sufficient comic abilities to have stood in for Groucho when the brothers performed on stage, and he was reputed to be very funny offstage; but he never invented a comic persona of his own that could stand up against those of Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx, even though the role he formerly filled would continue to exist in the brothers' remaining films. He also had perhaps the best singing voice among the four brothers. The best example is probably in Horse Feathers. Early in the film he sings a "straight" version of "Everyone Says I Love You", while the three other brothers later perform versions of the song in the style of their normal "schticks". The popular (and erroneous) assumption that his character was superfluous was fueled in part by Groucho, according to Groucho's own classic story: When the group became the Three Marx Brothers, the studio wanted to trim their collective salary, and Groucho argued, "We're twice as funny without Zeppo!" Adolphe Menjou Adolphe Jean Menjou (February 18, 1890 – October 29, 1963) was an American actor of French and Irish descent. ... Julius Henry Marx, known as Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), was an American comedian, working both with his siblings, the Marx Brothers, and on his own. ... Adolph Arthur Marx, popularly known as Harpo Marx, (November 23, 1888 – September 28, 1964) was one of the Marx Brothers, a group of Vaudeville entertainers who later achieved fame as comedians in the Motion Picture industry. ... Chico Marx Leonard Marx, known as Chico, (March 22, 1887 – October 11, 1961) was one of the Marx Brothers. ... Horse Feathers (1932) was the fourth Marx Brothers film. ... Everyone Says I Love You (1996) is a musical film written and directed by Woody Allen. ... A schtick (or shtick) is an expression which refers to a comic theme or gimmick. ...

Offstage, Zeppo had great mechanical skills and was largely responsible for keeping the Marx family car running. Zeppo later owned a company which machined parts for the war effort during World War II including the Marman clamps used to hold the Hiroshima bomb inside the Enola Gay. He also founded a large theatrical agency with his brother Gummo Marx, and invented a wristwatch that would monitor the pulse rate of cardiac patients and give off an alarm if they went into cardiac arrest. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, the use of images on this page may require cleanup, involving adjustment of image placement, formatting, size, or other adjustments. ... A commercially-produced Marman clamp A Marman clamp is a type of heavy-duty band clamp: this allows two flat cylindrical interfaces to be simply clamped together with a ring clamp. ... Hiroshima City Hall Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba Address 〒730-8586 Hiroshima-shi, Naka-ku, Kokutaiji 1-6-34 Phone number 082-245-2111 Official website: Hiroshima City , // The city of Hiroshima ) is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chugoku region of western Honshu, the largest of... Colonel Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gays cockpit after the bombing of Hiroshima. ... Milton Marx (October 23, 1892 - April 21, 1977), known as Gummo, was one of the Marx Brothers. ...

On April 12, 1927, Zeppo married Marion Benda. The couple would adopt one child, Timothy, in 1944 and would later divorce on May 12, 1954. On September 18, 1959, Zeppo married Barbara Blakeley, whose son, Bobby Oliver, he adopted and gave his surname. Zeppo and Blakely would divorce in 1972 or 1973. Blakely would later marry singer Frank Sinatra. April 12 is the 102nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (103rd in leap years). ... 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ... May 12 is the 132nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (133rd in leap years). ... 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... September 18 is the 261st day of the year (262nd in leap years). ... 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Barbara Marx, born Barbara Joanna Blakeley on October 16, 1927, was the wife of former comedian-turned agent Zeppo Marx from September 18, 1959 until she divorced him in 1972 or 1973. ... Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was a popular and highly acclaimed male vocalist. ...

The last surviving Marx Brother, Zeppo died of lung cancer in 1979 at the age of 78. Lung cancer is a cancer of the lungs characterized by the presence of malignant tumours. ...

Zeppo defended

In recent years, a surge of adamant Zeppo supporters have risen to challenge the notion that he did not develop a comic persona in his films. James Agee considered Zeppo "a peerlessly cheesy improvement on the traditional straight man." Along similar lines, Gerald Mast, in his book The Comic Mind: Comedy and Movies (University of Chicago Press: 1979), notes that Zeppo's comedic persona, while certainly more subtle than his brothers', is undeniably present: James Rufus Agee (November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, screenwriter, journalist, poet, and film critic. ...

"[He] added a fourth dimension as the cliché of the [romantic] juvenile, the bland wooden espouser of sentiments that seem to exist only in the world of the sound stage. [... He is] too schleppy, too nasal, and too wooden to be taken seriously" (282, 285).

Danél Griffin, film critic for the University of Alaska Southeast, elaborates on Mast's theory: The University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) is a regional university in the University of Alaska System. ...

"Zeppo’s parts were always intended to be a parody of the juvenile role often found in sappy musicals of the 1920s-30s era. Sometimes, he would just have a few lines, and he would otherwise be reduced to standing in the background with a big smile on his face. In these roles, he was a lampoon of the infamous extra, always grinning widely as a needless decoration, and always stiff and wooden. In other films, Zeppo would have a more significant role as the romantic lead, but he would still always be stiff, wooden, and, yes, with a big smile on his face. Either way, he could never be considered a real straight man. He was a sappy distortion of the real thing, and sort of the gateway through which we connected with the other Brothers. We perceived him as the “normal, good-looking” one of the bunch, but was he really? Wasn’t there something about that line from The Cocoanuts, 'You can depend upon me, Mr. Hammer,' that was a little too ... happy? Roger Ebert called Zeppo 'superfluous,' and that is the point of his character in the six Paramount films. He was the straight man only in pure Marxian sense — while his Brothers spat on movie clichés, he imitated them, proving in his own way to be quite a brilliant comedian." (Link)

In her book Hello, I Must be Going: Groucho & His Friends, Charlotte Chandler defends Zeppo as being "the Marx Brothers' interpreter in the worlds they invade. He is neither totally a straight man nor totally a comedian, but combines 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). Charlotte Chandler (née Lyn Erhard) is a biographist, famous for biographies of Groucho Marx and Frederico Fellini. ... Margaret Dumont (born October 20, 1889; died March 6, 1965) was an American comedic actress. ...

In his book Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo, Joe Adamson analyzes a scene in Animal Crackers that reveals Zeppo's uncanny ability to one-up Groucho with simple, plain-English rebuttals - something no one else has ever done before or since in a Marx Brother movie. In the said scene, Zeppo is told to take a letter to Groucho's lawyer. Adamson notes, See also Animal crackers (disambiguation). ...

"There is a common assumption that Zeppo = Zero, which this scene does its best to contradict. Groucho dictating a letter to anybody else would hardly be cause for rejoicing. We have to believe that someone will be there to accept all his absurdities and even respond somewhat in kind before things can progress free from conflict into this genial mishmash. Groucho clears his throat in the midst of his dictation, and Zeppo asks him if he wants that in the letter. Groucho says, 'No, put it in the envelope.' Zeppo nods. And only Zeppo could even try such a thing as taking down the heading and the salutation and leaving out the letter because it didn't sound important to him. It takes a Marx Brother to pull something like that on a Marx Brother and get away with it." (114)

Allen W. Ellis writes in his article Yes, Sir: The Legacy of Zeppo Marx (The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2003):

"Indeed, Zeppo is a link between the audience and Groucho, Harpo and Chico. In a sense, he is us on the screen. He knows who those guys are and what they are capable of. As he ambles out of a scene, perhaps it is to watch them do their business, to come back in as necessary to move the film along, and again to join in the celebration of the finish. Further, Zeppo is crucial to the absurdity of the Paramount films. The humor is in his incongruity. Typically he dresses like a normal person, in stark contrast to Groucho's greasepaint and 'formal' attire, Harpo's rags, and Chico's immigrant hand-me-downs. By most accounts, he is the handsomest of the brothers, yet that handsomeness is distorted by his familial resemblance to the others — sure, he's handsome, but it is a decidedly peculiar, Marxian handsomeness. By making the group four, Zeppo adds symmetry, and in the surrealistic worlds of the Paramount films, this symmetry upsets rather than confirms balance: it is chaos born of symmetry. That he is a plank in a maelstrom, along with the very concept of 'this guy' who is there for no real reason, who joins in and is accepted by these other three wildmen while the narrative offers no explanation, are wonderful in their pure absurdity. 'To string things together in a seemingly purposeless way,' said Mark Twain, 'and to be seemingly unaware that they are absurd, is the mark of American humor.' The 'sense' injected into the nonsense only compounds the nonsense" (21-22).

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, novelist, writer, and lecturer. ...

See also

• The Zeppo (Buffy episode)

The Zeppo is episode 13 of season 3 on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ...

External links

• Zeppo Marx at the Internet Movie Database
• The Marx Brothers