Just that his character was grouchy. Harpo is pretty obvious, Chico nearly as much. Gummo (the non-performing brother) got his name because he wore gum-soled shoes. Zeppo is a complete mystery, butthis picture of the four has a harp for Harpo, a chick for Chico, a zeppelin for Zeppo and a grouchy face for Groucho.
I love Wikipedia. I had no idea that Jack Benny’s wife Mary Livingston was a cousin of the Marx Brothers. (Birth name Sadie Marks).
Probably because he preferred to be left alone so he could read. There are two theories to Groucho’s nickname: he was a grouch, or he carried his money in what was called a grouch bag. There’s no documentation for either one, and I think even Groucho wrote that he wasn’t sure where it came from. The most common story about how and when they got their nicknames has some holes in it. Harpo played the harp and Chicko (later shortened to Chico, and don’t pronounce it “Cheeko”) was always on the prowl for chicks.
He was a grouch. A lot of his quips came from anger. The wiki article mentions how he got his radio show. It’s surprising the public liked him so much. The guy really was mean spirited.
The popular story was that Julius Marx was given the nickname “Groucho” during a poker game, and MAYBE that’s true… but it seemed like a concocted story. True or not, Marx told that story so many times, he may have come to believe it himself.
Groucho’s son Arthur in his book “Life With Groucho” credits a vaudeville wit who gave nicknames to people based on their personalities. Gummo was in the act then and not Zeppo. I don’t have a copy to look up the man’s name. Groucho had a late 1960s album “An evening with Groucho at Carnegie Hall” where he remarks that he never understood his nickname.
As aceplace57 remarks it’s interesting how many people liked him, or even liked being insulted by him, although being divorced three times shows there was a limit to some people’s patience.
The nickname dispenser was Art Fisher, always called a monologuist, or essentially a stand-up comedian. The year was probably 1914.
From The Marx Bros. Scrapbook:
Simon Louvish, normally a prime researcher, made the claim in Monkey Business that neither he nor Paul Wesolowski, the world’s number one Marx Brothers fan and expert, could find any trace of a real Art Fisher.
But that’s wrong. The Marxology site has the proof. Whether he ever pronounced the immortal words and whether it was in a poker game, we’ll never know.
If you’re wondering why the -o ending, that page has the answer as well.
The real quote is, “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know.”
Everybody misquotes it, and for the obvious reason that the rhythm is wrong. You want the two-syllable “never” instead of the one syllable “don’t” at the end. “I don’t know” is a throwaway rather than a punch line.
[Technically, “I don’t know” as Groucho says it is three unstressed syllables, which isn’t any meter at all. That’s why it’s hard to remember. The unstressed-stressed pattern of “I’ll never know” is a classic iamb - as is the first part of the line, and since it’s probably the most used meter, it sticks in our heads like an earworm. I can spout comedic theory for why “I don’t know” was used: the throwaway punctures Groucho’s pretensions as an explorer and reveals him to be a teller of tales who can’t back up his bravado. But it’s wrong because 80 years of audiences get it wrong.]
Morrie Ryskind takes credit for the line, which is from the original play, but it’s the line that should be that everybody remembers and not the line as it was.
In, Harpo’s autobiography, “Harpo Speaks,” he said that the names did in fact come during a poker game. The dealer was keeping up a running patter as he dealt the cards and was giving nicknames to the players as he dealt, Gummo was the first, and the others followed, but Groucho got his because of his constant keeping his money in a grouch bag (a small pouch which he constantly kept around his neck on a small leather strap). There was regular theivery backstage when performers were on stage, so Groucho just was being safe.
By the way, Groucho always pronounced his brother Chico’s name “Chick - o” not as “Cheek - o” as is usually believed.
In a documentary I have seen many times, The Unknown Marx Brothers, it’s explained by Harpo as a reference to a Grouch bag, worn around the neck and holding cherished items. Jokingly(?), including “a little reefer.”
“I don’t know” sounds a lot better to me than “I never knew”., but that may be because I know the bit so well. And “I don’t know” is not anywhere close to being the punchline. It is a bridge to the stream of lines that continue the bit - the Tuscaloosa joke, the “irrelevant” joke and finally the native girls not being developed joke. I don’t know how they played it on Broadway, but in the movie there isn’t a big pause for laughter between each of these lines. The laugh would come when he says “how he got in my pajamas” and not have waited until the end of the line.
As for Spaulding being a fake, that was pretty well established by the polar bear line, which even gets him challenged by one of the saps in the audience.
In any case, unlike most movie comedies the line got vetted by lots of Broadway audiences. Groucho sure wouldn’t have kept it if it didn’t work.
I remember hearing the line as a kid before I ever saw the movie, probably in a Warner Brothers cartoon. Maybe they screwed it up.
And – see post #8 – comes from his reputation as a “chicken chaser.” I had always assumed he picked the name to go with his Italian-immigrant persona; and that it was somehow connected with the usage of “Chico” for a Latin-American immigrant.
If you disagree with Exapno Mapcase in a Marx Brothers thread, you’re usually wrong- but I have to disagree with you here. “I don’t know” fits the rhythm of that line better that “I’ll never know.” You have to hit the “never” pretty hard, and in any case that comes after the funny part of the line, which is “how [the elephant] got in my pajamas.” So you want everything after that to go by quickly.
