Currently, I'm going back through
the Marx Brothers' films, chronologically. They were pure, zany anarchists in their earlier, "phase one" films (the ones they made while under contract to
Paramount Pictures). I can see why the Beatles in
A Hard Days Night might have reminded people of them.
Groucho, Chico, and Harpo (not so much Zeppo) were all about creating havoc and disorder, most times for no reason at all other than just to do it. Any authority figure, no matter how important or insignificant, is in trouble if he/she is in the same scene with them. How liberating this must have been for some people (especially kids) during the 1930s! Not to mention, hilarious, too, as in this scene featuring
Harpo (
genius) and
Chico (pronounced "Chick-o") from
Duck Soup (1933):
I love that leg gag of Harpo's. It turns up frequently in their films.
On a somewhat related note, there is the Marx Brothers/Nacogdoches connection (
Wikipedia entry):
the Old Nacogdoches Opera House
One evening in 1912, a performance at the Opera House in Nacogdoches, Texas, was interrupted by shouts from outside about a runaway mule. The audience hurried outside to see what was happening.
1911
When they returned, Groucho, angered by the interruption, made snide comments about the audience, including "Nacogdoches is full of roaches" and "The jackass is the flower of Tex-ass." Instead of becoming angry, the audience laughed. The family then realized they had potential as a comic troupe.
The act slowly evolved from singing with comedy to comedy with music.
I can personally attest to the fact that although the streets of downtown are still occasionally filled with the sound of people shouting about runaway mules, Nacogdoches is not "full of roaches."
Harpo Marx taught himself to play because he could not sing, or dance, and did not talk very well, so he needed something to do. Al Shean sent him a harp (in Harpo's autobiography, he says that mother Minnie Marx sent him the harp). Harpo learned how to hold it properly by going to a five-and-dime store where he found a picture of a girl playing a harp. 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. Harpo's method placed much less tension on the strings. 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, however, spent their time listening to him, fascinated by the way he played. In the movies he played the harp with his own tuning. (source)
