Adolph Harpo Marx (later Arthur Harpo Marx; November 23, 1888 – September 28, 1964) was an American comedian, film star, mime artist and musician, and the second-oldest of the Marx Brothers. His comic style was influenced by clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish blonde wig, and never spoke during performances (he blew a horn or whistled to communicate). He frequently used props such as a horn cane, made up of a lead pipe, tape, and a bulbhorn, and he played the harp in most of his films. Early life and career Harpo was born in New York City. He grew up in a neighborhood now known as Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side (E 93rd Street off Lexington Avenue) of Manhattan. The turn-of-the-century building that Harpo called the first real home they ever knew (in his memoir Harpo Speaks), was populated with European immigrants, mostly artisans – which even included a glass blower. Just across the street were the oldest brownstones in the area, owned by people like the well-connected Loew Brothers and William Orth. Harpos parents were Sam Marx (called Frenchie throughout his life) and his wife, Minnie Schoenberg Marx. Minnies brother was Al Shean. Marxs family was Jewish. His mother was from East Frisia in Germany, and his father was a native of France and worked as a tailor.[1][2][3] Harpo received little formal education and left grade school at age eight, during his second attempt to pass the second grade. He began to work, gaining employment in numerous odd jobs alongside his brother Chico to contribute to the family income, including selling newspapers, working in a butcher shop, and as an errand office boy.[4] In January 1910, Harpo joined two of his brothers, Julius (later Groucho) and Milton (later Gummo), to form The Three Nightingales, later changed to simply The Marx Brothers. Multiple stories — most unsubstantiated — exist to explain Harpos evolution as the silent character in the brothers act. In his memoir, Groucho wrote that Harpo simply wasnt very good at memorizing dialog, and thus was ideal for the role of the dunce who couldnt speak, a common character in vaudeville acts of the time.[5] Harpo gained his stage name during a card game at the Orpheum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois. The dealer (Art Fisher) called him Harpo because he played the harp.[6][7] (In Harpos autobiography, he says that mother Minnie Marx sent him the harp.) Harpo learned how to hold it properly from a picture of an angel playing a harp that he saw in a five-and-dime. No one in town knew how to play the harp, so Harpo tuned it as best he could, starting with one basic note and tuning it from there. Three years later he found out he had tuned it incorrectly, but he could not have tuned it properly; if he had, the strings would have broken each night. Harpos method placed much less tension on the strings.[citation needed] Although he played this way for the rest of his life, he did try to learn how to play correctly, and he spent considerable money hiring the best teachers. They spent their time listening to him, fascinated by the way he played.[7] In his movie performances he played the harp with his own tuning. In his autobiography Harpo Speaks (1961), Harpo recounts how Chico found him jobs playing piano to accompany silent movies. Unlike Chico, Harpo could play only two songs on the piano, Waltz Me Around Again, Willie and Love Me and the World Is Mine, but he adapted this small repertoire in different tempos to suit the action on the screen. He was also seen playing a portion of Rachmaninoffs Prelude in C# minor in A Day at the Races and chords on the piano in A Night at the Opera, in such a way that the piano sounded much like a harp, as a prelude to actually playing the harp in that scene. Harpo had changed his name from Adolph to Arthur by 1911. This was due primarily to his dislike for the name Adolph (as a child, he was routinely called Ahdie instead). Urban legends stating that the name change came about during World War I due to anti-German sentiment in the US, or during World War II because of the stigma that Adolf Hitler imposed on the name, are groundless.[8]
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 04:50:40 +0000
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