Marx Brothers Quotes

“The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl.”
― Irving Berlin

“You're a great brother. You give us a heart attack worrying about your heart attack, which you didn't even have the decency to have!”
― Groucho Marx

“I've been lucky enough, in my time, to do a number of things most people never get around to doing.
I've played piano in a whore house. I've smuggled secret papers out of Russia. I've spent an evening on the divan with Peggy Hopkins Joyce. I've taught a gangster mob how to play Pinchie Winchie. I've played croquet with Bayard Swope while he kept Governor Al Smith waiting on the phone. I've gambled with Nick the Greek, sat on the floor with Greta Garbo, sparred with Benny Leonard, horsed around with the Prince of Wales, played Ping-Pong with George Gershwin. George Bernard Shaw has asked me for advice. Oscar Levant has played private concerts for me at a buck a throw. I have golfed with Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. I've basked on the Riviera with Somerset Maugham and Else Maxwell. I've been thrown out of the casino at Monte Carlo.
Flush with triumph at the poker table, I've challenged Alexander Woollcott to anagrams and Alice Duer Miller to a spelling match. I've given lessons to some of the world's greatest musicians. I've been a member of the two most famous Round Tables since the days of King Arthur-sitting with the finest creative minds of the 1920's at the Algonquin in New York, and with Hollywood's sharpest professional wits at the Hillcrest.
The truth is, I had no business doing any of these things. I couldn't read a note of music. I never finished the second grade. But I was having too much fun to recognize myself as an ignorant upstart.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“I know this may not seem terribly important, but it was all-important to us. It was actually our point of departure, our coming of age, our first timid step over that mysterious line that divides the small time from the big time. For the first time in our career we realized that we could succeed as an act without any outside help. We didn't need any more extraneous singers, dancers, and feeble comedians. We were now a unit. We were The Marx Brothers.”
― Groucho Marx, Groucho and Me

“I soon learned what the main pitfall was in saving money. It wasn’t temptation, or the lack of will power. It was Chico Marx. Chico could smell money. Hiding my savings at home, anywhere in the flat, was useless. Chico always found it sooner or later.
Once I thought I had him outsmarted. I sold a wagonload of junk over on the West Side, items I had selected off a moving van hitched in front of a house on Both Street. The junk dealer gave me ten cents cash, the most I ever made on a single wagonload.
I swore that this dime would not wind up in Chico’s pocket. For once I was sure it wouldn’t, because I had finally found the perfect hiding place. In our bedroom there was a small tear in the wallpaper, near the ceiling. Before Chico came home that night I stood on the dresser and pasted my dime to the wall under the flap of the torn paper. It was a slick job. I went to bed with a feeling of security.
Next morning when I got up there was a bigger rip in the paper than before. My dime was gone and so was Chico. Chico was the only person I ever knew who could smell money through wallpaper. Maybe he didn’t have much of an ear for music, but he had a hell of a nose for currency.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The Kalamazoo trouble occurred at my entrance. I came on as Patsy (twenty years older, with the same ratty red wig, turtle-neck sweater and blacked-out teeth, but with long pants on), carrying a trash can.
MR. GREEN (who has miraculously lost his German accent somewhere during the intermission): And who might you be, my good fellow?
PATSY: Why, Patsy Brannigan, the Garbage Man.
MR. GREEN: Sorry, we don’t need any.
In Kalamazoo, like every place else, this got a laugh. But because of it, we got fired off the bill. The owner of the theatre came back and uttered those fearful words of doom: “You’re shut!”
It was hardly our fault. We didn’t know the current scandal in Kalamazoo-which was that the theatre owner’s wife had just run off to Escanaba with a city garbage collector.
We were shut, but we still got a good review in the local paper.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“In Rockford, the four of us and a monologist named Art Fisher started up a game of five-card stud, between shows.
At that time there was a very popular comic strip called “Knocko the Monk,” and as a result there was a rash of stage names that ended in “o.” On every bill there would be at least one Bingo, Zingo, Socko, Jumpo or Bumpo.
There must have been a couple of them on the bill with us in Rockford and we must have been making cracks about them, because when Art Fisher started dealing a poker hand he said, “A hole card for- ‘Harpo.’ A card for-’Chicko.’ One for-” Now that he’d committed himself, he had to pass “o-names” all around the table.
The first two had been simple. I played the harp and my older brother chased the chicks. For a moment Art was stuck. Then he continued the deal. A card for “Groucho” (he carried his dough in a grouch-bag), and finally a card for “Gummo” (he had a gumshoe way of prowling around backstage and sneaking up on people).
We stuck with the gag handles for the rest of the game and that, we thought, was that. It wasn’t. We couldn’t get rid of them. We were Chicko, Harpo, Groucho and Gummo for the rest of the week, the rest of the season, and the rest of our lives.
Later, when we decided to make it official, and have our Art Fisher names put on the program, the typesetter made a mistake, and left the “k” out of Chicko. The power of the printed word being what it is, “Chico” is the way it has been spelled ever since.
Still later, Gummo left the act and was replaced by Herbie, the baby of the family. Herbie, since he was always chinning himself and practicing acrobatics, we named “Zippo.” “Mr. Zippo” was the star of a famous trained chimpanzee act. Our Zippo, understandably, felt that we were being very unflattering, and he insisted on spelling his stage name “Zeppo.”
You never could tell what you might be dealt in a poker game in those days.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The only one of us who couldn’t tolerate the mad life day in and day out was Groucho. Groucho had to have privacy, to read. For hours at a time he would read in his Elgin roadster, parked on 33rd Street. Once he finished a book sitting in his car in a garage, while it was hoisted up on chains, being repaired.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The only disagreeable thing about England, that trip, was the climate. It was chilly and damp when we got there and it kept getting chillier and damper. I never once got really warm, outdoors or in. Chico and I shared an apartment near the theatre, where the only heat came from an open coal grate. Our last night there was the coldest yet. As the last of our scuttle of coal was burning out, we decided the only way we could keep from freezing was to bundle up in all the clothes we had with us and stay up and play pinochle, instead of going to bed. But the chill came creeping through every layer of every shirt, sweater, suit, raincoat and overcoat we had on.
“What the hell,” said Chico. “We can’t die of pneumonia our last night here. That would be ungrateful, after all they’ve done for us.” So saying, he pulled a drawer out of the dresser, stomped on it and smashed it and threw the sticks in the fire. We played two hands of pinochle, then it got cold again.
We burned up the rest of the drawers, one by one. Then the bureau itself had to go. Next we threw on the chairs and played cards standing up. Before dawn the fire began to die again. We broke up the table and piled it on the fire and had to finish the pinochle game sitting on the floor.
We took off for the boat-train first thing in the morning, too early to wake up the landlord to tell him good-bye and thank him for a pleasant stay. But we left him a note, and enough dough to replace all the extra firewood we had burned. We left the note on the mantelpiece-which we hadn’t been able to rip from the wall, although, God knows, we tried.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“When I got back to New York I found I hadn’t lost the old touch. The first day in town, Chico and I took a stroll through Times Square and, having nothing better to do, decided to sell money to a policeman.
We stopped a friendly looking cop in front of Lindy’s and asked if he’d like to buy some used cash, cheap. He gave us a tolerant smile, winked, and walked on. We stopped him again. Chico flashed a dollar bill and said our special introductory offer was one buck for ninety cents. He gave the cop the dollar. The cop thought for a minute, rubbed the bill, then gave Chico ninety cents. Next we offered him a two-dollar bill for one-seventy. He bought the two-dollar bill.
It was obvious he was humoring us along until he could decide whether we were a couple of nuts or a team of con artists. It was also obvious that he liked the bargains he was getting. But by the time we offered him a five-spot for four-fifty, he was convinced that something fishy was going on. He said he was going to haul us both in, unless we told him what our racket was.
Chico shrugged and gave him a cheerful grin. “No racket, officer,” he said. “We just like to sell money, that’s all.”
The cop muttered that he was right in the first place-a couple of nuts. He got away from us as fast as he could.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“Acting in Duck Soup, our last picture for Paramount, was the hardest job I ever did. It was the only time I can remember that I worried about turning in a bad performance. The trouble was not with the working hours, the script, the director, or the falls I had to take (I never used a stunt man or a double). The trouble was Adolf Hitler. His speeches were being rebroadcast in America. Somebody had a radio on the set, and twice we suspended shooting to listen to him scream. Hindenburg had died. Hitler was now absolute dictator of Germany. He threatened to scrap the Versailles Treaty and create a German navy and air force. He threatened to grab off Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. He threatened to go beyond the boycott and revoke the citizenship of all Jews.
I never knew until then what the emotion of pure anger was like, how it felt to be sore enough to want to hit somebody in cold blood. A lot of people I knew were shocked that I was so shocked. Nothing would really come of the dictator’s threats, they said. He was all bluff and hot air. His act was nothing more than a bad imitation of that other comic, Mussolini.
I knew better. I had seen faces, those faces in Germany, that most other people had not seen. And now I remembered: I had been tipped off even earlier than that. It was Sam Harris, sweet, gentle Sam, who had opened my eyes to this evil thing festering in Germany, before I sailed for Hamburg in the fall of ‘33. Sam had been reading the news from there, every word of it in every paper he could get hold of, and he had come to a conclusion.
“Harpo,” he said, “that Hitler is not a very nice fellow.” It was the most vicious thing I had ever heard Sam say about another living person.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“Champaign, Illinois. The critic in the Champaign-Urbana paper wrote something like: “The Marx Brother who plays `Patsy Brannigan’ is made up and costumed to a fare-thee-well and he takes off on an Irish immigrant most amusingly in pantomime. Unfortunately the effect is spoiled when he speaks.” Then he went on to discuss minor points, like the climax of Home Again being the most thrilling scene ever witnessed in Champaign, etc.
When I read the review I knew Uncle Al had been right. I simply couldn’t outtalk Groucho or Chico, and it was ridiculous of me to try. It was a cruel blow to my pride nevertheless. When I announced to Minnie that I would never speak another word onstage, she knew I had been hurt, and she looked at me with sorrow and sympathy. But she didn’t say, “Forget it-what does he know?” She said nothing.
I went silent. I never uttered another word, onstage or in front of a camera, as a Marx Brother.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“I always preferred Harpo to Groucho Marx.”
― Lee Evans, The Life of Lee

“Dat's a some joke, Hey Boss.”
― Chico Marx

“With the Marx Brothers on hiatus as Paramount made plans for their final film due under the 1930 contract, Zeppo was enjoying his leisure time—and winning a lot of money—while exploring future opportunities. With no sponsors willing to meet the radio price for the Four Marx Brothers, Groucho and Chico took to the airwaves as a duo on NBC’s Five Star Theatre. They debuted on November 28. The following day New York Daily News columnist Sidney Skolsky reported, “Zeppo Marx hit the gambling tables last week for more than Groucho and Chico received for their broadcast last night.” Zeppo’s reputation as a gambler didn’t portray him as the genial, happy-go-lucky reckless loser that Chico seemed to be. Maxine Marx wrote in Growing Up with Chico of overhearing Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. remark, at around this time, that Chico was bad enough, “but the one I can’t stand is Zeppo. He plays for blood, and I think he’s crooked besides.”
― Robert S. Bader, Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother