Robert S. Bader spoke to us about his book detailing the Marx Brothers' rise in vaudeville.
Bader doesnt just give a history of the Marx Brothers.
He fills in lost details to the whole history of the business of funny.
By all accounts, it was beautiful.
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Den of Geek: This book is more than a history of the Marx Brothers.
It is an in-depth look at the evolution of show business in the early 20th Century.
Why do you think no one parsed through all the available information before?
I had no idea how long it would take to write the book I set out to write.
It just grew out of my own curiosity and my fascination with the Marx Brothers.
I had been researching them for many years before I started work on the book.
And even with that pretty significant head start, it took eight years to write it.
What separated vaudevillians from Broadway?
To answer that I have to separate the two main classes of vaudeville: the big-time and the small-time.
Many big-time vaudevillians also worked on Broadway and in touring legitimate shows.
But the small-timer was not a consideration in the legitimate theater business.
It was sort of like the minor leagues in baseball.
An act could improve and get from the small-time to the big-time and then maybe even get to Broadway.
This is exactly what the Marx Brothers did, by the way.
But it was a rare accomplishment.
To put it in perspective there were 40,000 working vaudevillians at the height of the business.
Only a select few were worthy of Broadway.
Can you tell us, in very few words, about the different circuits, i.e.
the Shubert, the Orpheum, and the Keith-Albee?
They were both operated under an entity called the United Booking Office.
The UBO controlled big-time vaudeville and most of small-time vaudeville.
They failed miserably in vaudeville because the UBO was too powerful a monopoly.
I cant speak for those writers, but I do find those legends whether true or not very entertaining.
I would also guess that previous writers assumed the legends were true and didnt feel the need to investigate.
I suppose Im less trusting.
I was attracted to the dialogue when I was a child.
The rapid-fire exchanges were very appealing to me probably even before I understood all of them.
And the songs and the music made me keep going back to the Marx Brothers.
But Harpo also fascinated me.
He exists in his own world even within the Marx Brothers.
I found so many different things to love about the Marx Brothers.
No other team is as multi-dimensional.
When you first read about risque or blue material, were you hoping to have certain adolescent expectations fulfilled?
I was amazed at some of the stuff the Marx Brothers got in trouble over.
It was very tame by even the standards of the time.
But vaudeville was very puritanical.
The Marx Brothers showIll Say She Ishad a dance number in which a womans clothes were torn to shreds.
They didnt play it that way in every city on tour.
They had to adjust the show for the local blue laws.
But vaudeville was always very carefully monitored and censored.
Legitimate theatre was directed at a more sophisticated audience.
At least that was the theory at the time.
When did the Marx Brothers begin to incorporate surrealism into their act?
They had a piece of scenery that approximated a boat on water.
The waves were made of cardboard and the boat rolled on wheels.
Harpo swam behind the boat and spit a stream of water into the painted cardboard ocean.
Harpo had a lot of gags like that.
What instances in the films of the Marx Brother do you suppose were ad-libbed?
Id be surprised to find anything in their movies that wasnt in the script.
But the masterful work of the writers should be recognized.
As for Margaret Dumont, dont believe for a second that she didnt understand the jokes.
How did movies impact vaudeville performers?
Movies sent the entire vaudeville business into a panic.
And it was totally justified.
When sound films arrived it was pretty much the end of vaudevilles most prosperous period.
Why would anyone shoot a Marx Brother?
The obvious reason would have something to do with their quest for female companionship.
Theres also the gambling possibility because the brothers spent a lot of time in poolrooms.
But women were more likely the cause of most of their encounters with loaded weapons.
How many Marx Brothers did jealous boyfriends, fathers, or husbands shoot?
Small town America considered vaudevillians immoral and dangerous a hundred years ago.
The Marx Brothers didnt do much to change anyones opinion about that.
Was Minnie Marx a successful theatrical producer or a spectacular con artist?
A little bit of both, actually.
They got more money as a quartet by adding a singer who couldnt sing.
But there was always a bit of the con artist in Minnie.
What were the major differences betweenFun in High School,Mr.
Greens Receptionand the other early pieces?
Mr. Greens Receptionwas the natural outgrowth ofFun in High School.
So they created the premise of a reunion with their teacher ten years later.
What did they bring toIll Say She Isthat set it apart from other stage shows of the period?
Ill Say She Iswas not initially conceived as a Marx Brothers show.
They were one of many acts hired to appear in a revue.
But they quickly became the most important part of the show and eventually it became their show.
There were a lot of similar musical comedy revues during the period.
It was one of those rare instances of vaudevillians becoming Broadway stars.
Do you think Groucho would have been a star without his brothers?
Even after his voice broke?
Minnie saw this and realized that she had several more potential vaudevillians in her apartment.
So she basically attached them to Groucho and dragged him down a little to create the family act.
We cant really know if his voice changing affected his career.
If Zeppo didnt get into the act, might he have become a noted Chicago gangster?
Zeppo was eight years old when the Marx family moved to Chicago.
He was pretty much left to his own devices most of the time.
By his own account, Zeppo was carrying a gun and stealing cars by the time he was fourteen.
Who were the Six Mascots?
Groucho, Harpo and Gummo remained from the Four Nightingales.
Minnie and her sister Hannah rounded out the Six Mascots.
It was a good business move because the act did indeed get a raise.
Artistically it might not have been as good, since two women in their mid-forties were playing schoolgirls.
You mention a lot of obscure vaudeville acts, famous and forgotten.
My favorite was the Wangdoodle Four, an African American dancing quartet pretending to be Chinese.
What were some of the acts you uncovered that inflamed your curiosity?
Mons Herbert had an act called The Musical Waiter.
Hed set a dinner table and play The Anvil Chorus by blowing knives and forks into each other.
Mons Herbert actually did this act on American stages for more than thirty years.
Id place that one just after Mons Herbert.
Did the Marx Brothers write any of their own material?
Harpo was pretty much responsible for creating his visual material.
And that continued on into their film career to a certain degree.
He had gag writers helping with the films, but in early vaudeville he was mostly on his own.
Groucho added a lot of original material to all of the Marx Brothers vaudeville acts.
He even wrote material for an act that had nothing to do with the Marx Brothers.
And Gummo also tried to write for other acts.
He registered a script with the copyright office shortly after leaving the Four Marx Brothers.
Why do the Marx Brothers stay so fresh today?
The Marx Brothers dont become dated because the most important thing they do is challenge authority.
That never goes out of style.
The plots of their films are unimportant to the point of occasionally being nonexistent.
What can you tell me about Kyle Crichtons authorized 1950 biography of the Marx Brothers?
Crichton was working with the recollections that the Marx Brothers wanted to use to fashion their legacy.
He wasnt really researching a proper biography.
So while the book is greatly flawed, it was what the Marx Brothers wanted at the time.
What myths were the saddest to dispel?
And it was actually pretty well planned.
What legend were you happiest to confirm?
But some of the craziest stories were just too strange to be made up.
Of course some of the legends are impossible to confirm or disprove.
But generally speaking, even the myths are rooted in the facts of the Marx Brothers experiences in vaudeville.
The Marx Brothers lived this life for twenty years before they became Broadway stars.
That part of their story is something I was eager to explore.
Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stageis available at Amazon.
