This was posted on a Marx Brothers message board. It has the look of a newspaper article, but there was no attribution, and a Google search onlly turned up a highly truncated version.
Susan was a classy lady. Everyone who read “Harpo Speaks!” fell in love with her. (And if you haven’t, you are in for a real treat!) She and Harpo were a devoted couple, adored each other, and raised four terrific kids. She had a long and active life after Harpo’s death, as this obituary shows. Recently she was reported to be working on her autobiography. We can only hope she got enough done to make it publishable.
Condolences to her family and many friends.
Unconfirmed rumor has it that Chico’s widow, Mary Dee, died the same day.
Susan Marx, a “Ziegfeld Follies” girl, movie star and wife of the
legendary Harpo Marx, was remembered by friends Monday as a woman who
changed the Coachella Valley from a movie star destination to a real
home for families.
She died shortly before midnight Sunday [Dec. 22] at Eisenhower
Medical Center after suffering a massive heart attack. She was 94.
Her son, pianist Bill Marx, was at her bedside just hours after
concluding a talk about his father in a benefit for the Jewish
Community School with a rendition of “Sunrise Sunset.”
Susan Marx’s friend and neighbor, New York-based music publisher Howie
Richmond, called her “a true Rancho Mirage pioneer.”
“The people you talk about in the desert, what (Frank) Sinatra did,
what Mr. (Walter) Annenberg did, I wouldn’t make a comparison because
Susan was in a place by herself,” Richmond said. “To me, Susan Marx
made the magic. We all looked at this place as a beautiful
destination. We had this haven, and then we went back to another
world. She had the courage and stamina and vitality and dedication to
make this place a real place, dealing with the real, everyday
responsibilities of the family-oriented home.”
He added, “She opened new boundaries for this playground. I loved her
as a friend.”
Marx served off and on for 35 years on boards for the Palm Springs
Unified School District and College of the Desert. When College of the
Desert considered building a theater that had been on its original
blueprint, Marx asked the tough questions that caused it to eventually
be operated as the independent entity the McCallum Theatre is today.
“Susan said there was no one with any expertise on that board to guide
the theater, and she thought some of the ideas, such as having guest
artists stay at people’s houses, was silly,” then COD President Fern
Stout said years later. “I wouldn’t disagree with that. I hadn’t
thought of it in those terms simply because that board did not claim
expertise, they were just raising money.”
After Marx’s opposition, the board’s two top fund-raising leaders
resigned.
Stout said the theater was “dead in the water” until a new group got
permission in the 1980s to lease the land from COD for $1 a year. That
group built a 1,200-seat theater and operated it as a separate
nonprofit organization.
Marx was active in many community endeavors. She ran unsuccessfully
for a state Assembly seat but served on the Rancho Mirage Planning
Commission, the Cathedral City Parks Committee, the Cove Communities
General Planning Committee, the League of Women Voters, the Palm
Springs Desert Museum Women’ s Committee, Tri Arts and the Women’s
Auxiliary of Desert Hospital.
Bill Marx said there were three phases of his mother’s life: her early
show biz life as Susan Fleming, her personal life as Mrs. Harpo Marx,
and her life of public service as Susan Marx.
Born in Brooklyn, she started her career as a stage actress, working
her way up to the top musical revue on Broadway, “The Ziegfeld
Follies,” in the 1920s.
She followed the opportunities to Hollywood in 1931 when she appeared
as John Wayne’s love interest in “Range Feud.” As a Paramount actress,
she actually made more movies than the Marx Brothers, with her peak
coming in the 1932 comedy “Million Dollar Legs” with W.C. Fields.
Her best friend, Gloria Stuart, co-star in the blockbuster film
“Titanic,” remembered she got a big Hollywood buildup for that film.
“The publicity was, she was Susan Fleming with the million-dollar
legs,” Stuart recalled. “She starred, and her legs were insured for a
million dollars.”
But Bill Marx said his mother hated the movie business. When she met
Harpo Marx at Paramount, she courted him – even proposing to the
silent Marx Brothers comedian three times.
She and Harpo adopted four children.
She began studies to enrich her life with Stuart, whose husband wrote
for the Marx Brothers. They studied cooking, stamp collecting and
Bonsai tree-shaping.
“She was very forthright, certainly beautifully centered,” Stuart
said. “When she took up one of her various interests, it was always
100 percent.”
Susan and Harpo Marx became original members of Tamarisk Country Club
in Rancho Mirage in 1952.
Tamarisk attracted such stars as Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, George
Burns, Milton Berle, Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Bing
Crosby and Red Skelton.
Susan Marx stepped out of her celebrity circles to advance local
education.
“She was kind of a guide to us because we had the children and we
didn’t know what to do,” said Richmond, who joined Tamarisk in the
early 1960s.
Susan Marx is survived by her four children, Bill of Rancho Mirage,
Alexander of Vallejo, Jim of Paso Robles and Minnie Eagle of
Orange. She had five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
No funeral services are planned, and Bill Marx said a memorial service
is pending.