Who Grew Up Poor, Not Funny
Left to right: Harpo, Groucho, Zeppo and Chico. Where is Gummo ?
By Megan McKinney
The web tells that The Marx Brothers were from a poor Jewish family living in the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the late 19th/early 20th century.
Chico, the eldest son was born Leonard in 1887.
Next came Harpo, originally Arthur, in 1888.
After that was Julius, known to us as Groucho, who arrived in 1889.
Then came the little known Milton in 1893; he would be the forgotten brother, Gummo.
Finally, baby brother Herbert was born 1901 and would be known as Zeppo.
Minnie Marx was their mother and their manager.
This was a house in which the brothers lived in Chicago.
And a marker for another on Martin Luther King Drive; however the house has vanished, leaving only the marker
It was in 1910 and 1911 that the family first lived in an apartment at 4649 Calumet Avenue, but in late 1912 they moved to a three-storey brownstone house at 4512 Grand Boulevard. In The Marx Bros. Scrapbook, by Groucho and Richard Anobile, Groucho says: “We lived in Chicago for twelve years. I saw Ty Cobb play baseball many a day at White Sox Park. We lived right near there. We bought a house for $ 25,000.00. We paid a thousand down and owed the rest.”
On 6 April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany and in order to avoid her sons being drafted, Minnie Marx bought a farm in La Grange, south-west of Chicago. She had heard that farmers “who fed the nation” could be exempted from the draft. The farmhouse, north of Joliet Road and east of La Grange, and has long been replaced by development. Chico married Betty Karp in March 1917 and three years later Groucho married Ruth Johnson. In the autumn of 1920, all the Marxes moved back to New York City.
Author photo: Robert F. Carl
