Today is Harpo Marx's birthday
Last edited Sat Nov 24, 2018, 07:25 PM - Edit history (2)
Adolph Marx was born November 23, 1888, in Manhattan,New York.
He grew up in a neighborhood known as Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, on East 93rd Street off Lexington Avenue.
Harpo received little formal education and left grade school at age eight, mostly due to bullying.
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 boy.
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"
Harpo had changed his name from Adolph to Arthur by 1911.
Harpo gained his stage name during a card game at the Orpheum Theater in Galesburg, Illinois.
The dealer, Art Fisher, called him Harpo because he played the 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.
In 1925, Harpo appeared without his brothers in "Too Many Kisses," four years before the brothers' first released film, "The Cocoanuts" (1929)
In "Too Many Kisses" Harpo spoke the only line he would ever speak on-camera in a movie: "You sure you can't move?" (said to the film's tied-up hero before punching him).
Fittingly, it was a silent movie, and the audience only saw his lips move and the kine on a title card.
Harpo married actress Susan Fleming on September 28, 1936.
The wedding became public knowledge after President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the couple a telegram of congratulations the following month.
Harpo's marriage was lifelong.
The couple adopted four children.
Harpo Marx died on September 28, 1964, at age 75, in a West Los Angeles hospital, one day after undergoing heart surgery.
Harpo's death was said to have hit the surviving Marx brothers very hard.
Groucho's son, Arthur Marx, who attended the funeral with most of the Marx family, later said that Harpo's funeral was the only time in his life that he ever saw his father cry.
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