Zeppo, p.4
Zeppo, page 4
Herbert was far from unique in his early life of crime. The Chicago streets were filled with youth gangs and underage crime when the Marx family arrived in town in 1909. Four years later a Chicago Tribune story titled “Chicago’s Boy Gangsters, Its Greatest Menace” dated November 2, 1913, set the scene: “There are hundreds of gangs in Chicago. The membership of these gangs runs into the thousands. Most of the gangsters are youngsters from the age of 10 to 18.” Herbert met the Bass brothers shortly after the family arrived in Chicago. The neighborhood had two dominant gangs—the 39th Street gang and the 43rd Street gang. The Marx home on Grand Boulevard was between 45th and 46th Streets, putting Herbert squarely in 43rd Street gang territory, along with the Bass brothers, who lived nearby at Wabash Avenue and 42nd Street. The Tribune story quoted John H. Witter, superintendent of the Chicago Boy’s Club: “The gangster is usually a young fellow who to all appearances is harmless. He is a boy of 16 or 18, and when met on the street shows nothing of the criminal. But he is a criminal. He is a thief, a petty thief to begin with. As he reaches the age of 17 or 18, he becomes a more dangerous criminal.” To put it mildly, Herbert was at risk.
When the Four Marx Brothers hit the road for the new vaudeville season in August 1913, Herbert was a full-blown juvenile delinquent. Groucho’s son Arthur wrote in Son of Groucho, “Zeppo had a good left hook and was nimble afoot from the training of trying to outrun the local truant officer.” Minnie only knew one way to get her son under control, but he was still a bit too young for vaudeville. On occasion, when Al Shean was on tour, Johanna and Larry would make extended visits to Chicago and stay with the Marx family. Larry Shean was a cousin that Herbert looked up to and he usually stayed out of trouble when Larry was around. When the Four Marx Brothers were on the road there just weren’t many people at the house able to keep Herbert off the streets.
On January 5, 1914, the Four Marx Brothers opened a weeklong engagement at the Willard Theatre in Chicago—only a few blocks from the Grand Boulevard house. The New York Clipper on January 10 noted the proximity of the theater to the Marx home and reported, “On Monday they sang special songs for their friends, which brought down the house.” The Sunday evening performance at the Willard on January 11 was Herbert’s vaudeville debut. He did a solo spot singing “Where Did You Get That Girl,” a current popular song written by Harry Puck and Bert Kalmar. (Kalmar would later collaborate with Harry Ruby on numerous songs for Marx Brothers shows and films.) For Minnie, Herbert’s debut amounted to an intervention. She had gotten him off the street for at least one night. The New York Clipper wrote, on January 24, “Herbert Marx, youngest of the Marx Brothers, will change the title of the act from the Four Marx Bros. to the Five Marx Bros. as soon as he completes school. He appeared at the Willard one night recently and scored . . . big.”
Herbert was still six weeks away from his thirteenth birthday when he appeared at the Willard. Completing school did not seem likely. If he was still too young to join the Marx Brothers, he was perfectly happy running around Chicago with the Bass brothers. If he was on tour in vaudeville at least Minnie would know where he was. On February 24 Herbert made another appearance with his brothers in Gary, Indiana. The day before the four-day engagement at the Orpheum Theatre began, an advertisement in the Gary Evening Post announced a “Special Attraction.” Herbert Marx, the fifth Marx Brother, “Chicago’s Boy Soprano” would appear for one night only. The trip to Gary was likely a birthday celebration for Herbert, who turned thirteen the day after his performance.
The Four Marx Brothers played in the Chicago area frequently in the spring of 1914, and Herbert saw his brothers regularly. But when they were away from Chicago Herbert continued getting into trouble. On May 1 and 2, Minnie got Herbert out of Chicago for a couple of days. She took him to Joliet, forty-five miles away, to appear with the act at the Orpheum Theatre. She again promoted the addition of her youngest son to the act. Her press release appeared in The Joliet News: “[T]he youngest brother of this talented family, who is in his sixteenth year, and who has just finished his studies in Chicago, joins the company at matinee tomorrow and as a lyric tenor will add still another specialty.”
There could be a few reasons why Minnie would lie about Herbert’s age. There had been a lot of controversy about putting children on the stage and the Gerry Society, an organization dedicated to preventing and exposing the exploitation of children, was making a lot of noise about vaudeville. At the same time, Chicago’s truancy and juvenile delinquency problems had become worse. The juvenile court was overcrowded with gang and petty theft cases, and on March 18, 1914, a new boys’ court was opened for cases involving boys aged seventeen to twenty-one. This took a lot of pressure off the juvenile court, which promptly started rounding up younger truants. If they could catch up to Herbert, he would be a prime candidate for incarceration in what was known as the Parental School. It was opened in 1902 in the remote northwest corner of Chicago, adjacent to the municipal tuberculosis sanatorium. Hundreds of hooky-playing Chicago boys spent between eight months and two years in this facility, which was essentially a combination of a school and a prison. Any boy there would be discharged upon reaching the age of fourteen, but there was a political movement working toward increasing the age to sixteen. With debate going on about the age at which a child could legally be out of school, and truant officers fanning out across their neighborhood, Minnie took no chances. She got Herbert to Joliet and advertised him as “the Fifth Marx Brother—Chicago’s 16-Year-Old Tenor.” To Minnie’s way of thinking, any truant officers reading the vaudeville press would know to leave Herbert alone.
Herbert was now part of Minnie’s show business plan, but he wasn’t ready for the road yet. When he returned to Chicago, he would be thirteen again and would be required by his mother to attend school regularly to get into the act, which, contrary to his later recollections, he very much wanted to do. Al Shean’s son Larry, a few years older than Herbert, was again staying in the Marx home. He was a good student and positive influence on Herbert, who wrote a letter to his brother Julius on the road on November 23, 1914. Julius likely received it at the Lyric Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama later that week:
Julie. Dear brother, how are you feeling? I hope you are well. How is everything? I hope you hurry and come home. I am having a fine time with Larry. When are you coming home? Mama told me that you were going to play the Majestic. . . . I have not much to write but enough to assure you I am getting a lot of chicken nowadays. Dear brother Julius, give my regards to all. I am getting along fine in school and at home. I am a good boy now and glad of it. Goodbye. Your loving brother Herbert.
Herbert had not made a complete transformation from juvenile delinquent to honor student. While he did spend less time with the local criminal element, he remained pals with Joey and Louis Bass. The big change was going to school every day, which was all it took to keep the truant officers away. He’d still have time to steal the occasional car with his buddies. Buster Marx was still a tough kid on the streets and if anyone made any cracks about him going to school, they could count on getting punched in the face. Herbert got into a lot of fights—as did a lot of boys his age at the time. The prevailing attitude was “boys will be boys.” But even so, Herbert was a more frequent fighter than most.
When he did go to school, Herbert was a good student. He developed an early appreciation of books and would later proudly own a fine collection of first editions. Like most boys his age, Herbert was inspired by the work of Mark Twain, whose death in 1910 resulted in numerous new editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Herbert found he had much in common with Huck Finn, whose favorite pastimes included not going to school, “borrowing” boats, and fishing. Herbert would later become an avid fisherman—possibly the result of his admiration of Twain’s celebrated juvenile delinquent character. There were several instances of runaway boys Herbert’s age attracting the attention of Chicago’s newspapers. It was frequently reported that these boys were emulating Huckleberry Finn. Herbert didn’t need to run away from home to live this fantasy life. The lack of supervision at home allowed him to indulge in his Huck Finn lifestyle while enjoying a roof over his head and three square meals a day.
The end of the school year coincided with the end of the vaudeville season. On May 29, 1915, The Grand Rapids Press reported that Herbert was heading straight from school to Michigan to join the Four Marx Brothers: “During their Grand Rapids engagement, their youngest brother who is just out of school, will make his professional debut. He has had several tryouts and is said to be one of the cleverest in the lot.” The act opened at the Empress Theatre in Grand Rapids on May 31 as a quartet, but Herbert was on stage the following day and the rest of the week. The Grand Rapids Press covered his arrival on June 2, albeit with his age incorrectly listed:
The youngest of the Marx Brothers, ten-year-old Herbert, arrived Tuesday from school in Chicago and appeared in the musical revue, Home Again at the Empress. He is a clever little lad and his appearance in everyday school attire and his frank, unaffected boyishness ingratiated him at once in the favor of the audiences. This is the second time that he has appeared publicly on stage. He expects to return to school in the fall.
Herbert had turned fourteen a few months before his appearance in Grand Rapids. Perhaps the locale was no accident or coincidence. Julius made his professional debut in Grand Rapids ten years earlier at the age of fourteen—and the occasion marked the end of his formal education. But at least publicly, the stated intention was for Herbert to continue in school. At the end of June, Leonard, Arthur, Julius, and Milton came home to Chicago for their summer vacation. But it would be a shorter break than usual. Minnie had an idea about giving Herbert a real chance to experience vaudeville without missing school. There was some hope that Herbert would be the first member of the family to graduate from high school, so any vaudeville work would need to be in the summer. But if higher education wasn’t in Herbert’s future, Minnie would be perfectly happy to expand the act into the Five Marx Brothers.
After a seven-week vacation, the Four Marx Brothers along with their youngest brother would hit the road for a one-month tour of Michigan. A few weeks before the tour started Herbert and Milton visited their cousin Lou Shean, who was vacationing at Park Beidler, a resort at Lake Goguac in Battle Creek. On July 25, 1915, Herbert sang a few songs at a local cabaret. This seemingly insignificant event managed to get reported in the Battle Creek Moon-Journal: “One of the regular entertainers at the cabaret was singing and had started upon the chorus of a well-known popular song, when a new voice was heard, coming from a different section, and continued until the end of the piece, ending in high tremolo tenor. A thunder of applause greeted this and all present looked to see where the voice came from. One of the other members of the cabaret troupe saw Marx through one of the side windows and succeeded in inducing him to come in and sing several selections for the audience.”
This little episode seems like a carefully orchestrated piece of publicity. The newspaper item noted that Herbert’s appearance had taken the cabaret by storm. Presumably a fourteen-year-old kid interrupting a performance would not be pleasing to the audience or the performers on stage. But Herbert was one of Minnie Marx’s sons and this was no spontaneous outburst by Herbert. Milton and Herbert returned to Chicago before debuting with the Five Marx Brothers. Playing split weeks, they appeared in eight cities—Lansing, Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Jackson, Bay City, Flint, Battle Creek, and Ann Arbor. It would be the only instance of the act being billed as the Five Marx Brothers. Herbert’s integration into the act was simple. The Four Marx Brothers had been successfully touring in Home Again, a show written for them by their uncle, Al Shean. The second act featured a party with several musical performances. Herbert sang a few songs in this context and appeared in a couple of other small bits added to the show.
The first local review, from the Bijou Theatre in Lansing, Michigan, on August 15, 1915, got Herbert’s age wrong, and noted, “Master Herbert, who is about twelve, sings four or five ballads well and shows promise of development.” At their next stop in Saginaw, the local paper commented on the new quintet: “The Four Marx Brothers are presenting an entire change of bill this season. There are now five of them, Leonard, Arthur, Julius, Milton, and a kiddie brother who perhaps is not yet christened as his name does not appear on the artistic menu cards handed out to Franklin Theatre patrons Thursday night when they went to see the brotherhood in Home Again.” Apart from not knowing Herbert’s name the writer gave him a positive review: “Number Five makes his debut in a vocal specialty and his performance is such as to place him in line for full membership in the brotherhood.”
A reporter in Kalamazoo appears to have taken the time to speak with Herbert and wrote, “The new Marx—the youngest brother—who appeared on the theatrical horizon for the first time at the Sunday performance, sang nicely and gave evidence that he will soon be ready to take his regular turn along with the other four. He is only fourteen years old and will return to his home in Chicago when school season starts. In the meantime, he is having the time of his young life, just traveling and watching his brothers entertain the crowds.”
For his baptism of fire Herbert experienced a grueling schedule. The tour ran from August 15 through September 11. There were no days off and most of the days featured three performances—a matinee and two evening shows. Herbert may have been having a good time on the road, but he also had to have noticed how hard his brothers worked. After the final show of the tour in Ann Arbor, the entire family returned to Chicago. For the Four Marx Brothers it was just a short rest. They opened in San Francisco on September 19. Herbert most likely wanted to go with them, preferring the hard work of vaudeville over the more mundane option of going to school. But it was certainly not Herbert’s decision to make, and he returned to school—at least for a while.
CHAPTER THREE
The Juvenile Six
AN IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT DURING HERBERT’S CHILDHOOD WAS the opening of the Ford Motor Company’s Chicago Assembly Plant in 1914. The sprawling facility was located at 39th Street and Wabash Avenue—a short walk from the Marx home on Grand Boulevard. Herbert’s fascination with cars kept him around the Ford plant, and he learned everything he could about engines in the hope that he could work at the plant someday. When Herbert cut school during the fall semester in 1915, he was more likely to be found near the Ford plant than roaming the streets with Joey and Louis Bass. Fixing cars had suddenly become more interesting than stealing them. Still too young to work at Ford, Herbert learned that lying about his age was more difficult on a Ford job application than it was in vaudeville. But Herbert now had a dream of his own that had nothing to do with vaudeville. He had already experienced the road conditions and the grind of vaudeville. He preferred the idea of joining the Ford team of 350 workers at the plant, which had added a salesroom and a service department since the opening. Ford employees had a profit-sharing plan and could earn as much as five dollars a day. The plant even had its own movie theater. (It was mostly used to show visitors how cars were assembled at the plant, but employees were occasionally treated to a film screening.)
Herbert was still being groomed by his mother for a career on the vaudeville stage, but the possibilities he saw at the Ford plant were enough to make him less interested in show business. When Groucho and Gummo jointly purchased a used Chalmers automobile, they had a pint-sized mechanic at home to keep it running. In Groucho and Me, Groucho wrote, “I suppose there are any number of mechanically minded geniuses around the country who are born with an instinctive flair for machinery. Zeppo was one of these freaks. He could take an engine apart, grind the valves, adjust the timing and clean out the carbon with no more fuss or effort than I would use in sharpening a pencil.” Groucho also mentioned that the Chalmers would often mysteriously become inoperable, forcing him and Gummo to find alternate means of transportation. Each time Herbert would proceed to drive the repaired Chalmers around Chicago the moment they left the house.
Occasional periods of good behavior could never keep Buster Marx out of trouble for very long. In the Marx Brothers’ authorized 1950 biography, Kyle Crichton wrote, “Minnie had only lately rescued him from a State Street poolroom, where he was assistant manager and associate of a circle of friends who were later to cost Cook County a fortune in cell space. Zeppo was the handsomest of the brothers and the possessor of a scintillating wit and a splendid right cross. . . . At a mass meeting called by the school principal at the request of fearsome parents, only one question had been asked: ‘Has any boy in this room been struck by Herbert Marx?’ Every hand went up.”
When he turned fifteen in February 1916, Herbert was much less of a concern for the truant officers, and he quit school in the middle of the ninth grade.1 But there was still the Chicago Police Department to worry about. In July, while his brothers were home on their summer break, Herbert managed to get into a fight that resulted in all five Marx Brothers being arrested. To Minnie’s dismay this incident was covered by the Chicago Examiner and picked up by Variety in their July 21 issue, where the show business paper noted fifteen-year-old Herbert’s age as sixteen, probably the result of Minnie’s previous billing of him as Chicago’s Sixteen-Year-Old Tenor. Details of the fracas appeared in the Examiner on July 18:
The Four Marx Brothers were at liberty in jail yesterday. Only members of the theatrical profession can be at liberty and in jail at the same time—because “in jail” means “in jail” and “at liberty” means “temporarily disengaged from professional activities.” The Marx Brothers are a vaudeville team.
They went swimming yesterday at the Fifty-First Street beach, and they all declare that J. J. Kelly, a lifeguard, beat the youngest brother, Herbert, for playing ball in the water.
