When I was growing up in the 60’s I was a big fan of the 3 Stooges. I would watch them every Saturday morning. When I went to college in the early 70’s I learned about, and become a big fan of the Marx Brothers, who’s careers appears to have predated the Stooges by about 20 years, although they certainly overlapped for a period of time.
The Marx Brothers were originally from New York and went from Vaudeville to Broadway to film. The Stooges were also originally from New York, and they also did some stage work before they made it in the movies. Both teams were made of close relatives (brothers mostly), but clearly had very different styles of comedy. Both teams went out to Hollywood to make it in the movies. It seems the Marx Brothers have achieved more respect for their films, and the Stooge’s shorts and movies are considered more “low brow” humor. (I should probably have mentioned the Ritz Brothers too, but I am not all that familiar with their work).
I have read about both the Stooges and the Marx Brothers, and writers often acknowledge the other teams existence, but there is no mention of them socializing together, and I don’t believe they every worked together in any way. In today’s world comic actors often work with, and socialize with, other comic actors. Is that a recent phenomena? I suppose there is no reason why they would ever work together, but as they both lived in the LA area there certainly should have been opportunities for them to intermingle, but I don’t find any mention of that. Could it be because their comedic styles were just too different? Where they in different Hollywood “classes” of stars? Or did they in fact intermingle but it just was never reported widely?
Despite the similarities, there was a significant difference in the status of “movie stars” who appeared in feature films and the mere actors who appeared in short films. I’m not sure how often their paths crossed in their private lives but a public friendship or partnership between Groucho Marx and Moe Howard would have seemed a strange juxtaposition in the days of Hollywood royalty. I guess a more modern example would be the difference between movie actors and TV actors 2 or 3 decades ago.
The Marxes were true A-list movie stars. Before that they were true A-list Broadway stars. They were invited to the best parties and hobnobbed with the cream of first New York and then Hollywood. Groucho preferred the company of writers, Harpo liked stars, Zeppo became one of the leading agents in town with a glittery client list, and Chico hung out with anyone who was running the highest stakes poker game, who were often studio heads.
The Stooges were several social classes lower. And probably just as important, they were a full generation younger. Ted Healy and His Stooges didn’t start as an act until 1925, after the Marxes were out of vaudeville. From almost all accounts, the Marxes socialized with people of their generation. (Except for pretty women, of course.)
They may have bumped into one another but they weren’t contemporaries. There’s really no good reason why they should have been social buddies. Professionally, it was rare for comic acts to appear in one another’s movies at the time - My Little Chickadee with Fields and West is the giant exception - and the Stooges were too low grade to be valuable radio guests the way the Marxes were. (Yes. Harpo was a frequent guest, playing his harp and honking in all the right places.) The Stooges are remembered only because their shorts happened to be a good length for television filler. The Ritz Brothers were far bigger in the day and were old vaudeville chums of the Marxes, so they saw more of each other. There were other teams like Wheeler and Woolsey, whom S. J. Perelman, wrote for, who were bigger because they made full length movies but are also now forgotten.
The Stooges are an accident of history. We think they’re major but that would have stunned anyone in Hollywood in the 1930s.
Thanks Exapno Mapcase, that makes sense. The Stooges were popular for shorts shown on TV, the Marx Brothers for their full length movies. Very different Hollywood strata.
The actors more at the level of the Stooges are people like Leon Errol, Edgar Kennedy, Our Gang (other than the handful that became movie stars in their own right like Jackie Cooper), Charlie Chase, and Andy Clyde. They never starred in major films (other than as supporting players).
Also, Hollywood was a factory under the studio system. Actors worked six days a week and did not have a lot of time for socializing when making films. The Stooges made 190 films, so there was not a lot of time to hang out.
I just checked the index of my “Moe Howard & the 3 Stooges” book (written by Moe). There is no entry for the Marx Brothers. Although there is a brief paragraph of how they crossed paths with Abbot and Costello once.
Groucho Marx was pals with TS Eliot. Harpo sat at the Algonquin Round Table. Curly Howard hung with Louis Jordan (whom I adore, but he was nobody’s highbrow idol) and Moe was pals with, I dunno, Tor Johnson, maybe? Not a lot of social overlap.
It’s sort of like the “Hollywood Community” coming out in support of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, but not Robert Blake or Michael Richards. There’s a line, and it’s not where you’d think it is.
Movie stars can sometimes never cross paths even with their social peers for decades if they choose. When John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn made “Rooster Cogburn” in the mid 1970s, it was the first time they met despite both having 40 years as stars (Wayne’s stardom came a few years after Kate’s when he made “Stagecoach” but he had been a working actor for a decade). They both made remarks about “finally nice to meet you”.
If you’re still wondering about why they all weren’t happy friends, think about it this way. If the Marxes weren’t brothers, they’d never socialize with one another.
In their act the Stooges were variations of one idiot. You couldn’t tell the Ritz brothers apart with microcalipers. But the Marxes seemed to have wandered in from different universes. The humor lay in the befuddled interactions of these aliens bouncing off each other. That came about because they were equally different personalities off camera.
Apparently, the Marxes really were close and devoted their entire lives. But if they hadn’t been brothers nothing about their personalities, friends, interests, hobbies, or families would have intersected at all outside the movie lot. Nothing strange there. Abbott and Costello came to loath one another and that seems to be the norm. Most people in Hollywood hated (had contempt for, looked down on, snubbed, envied, feared) pretty much everyone else in Hollywood outside their immediate circle of friends. They were thrilled to leave them behind at the end of the working day. Vaudeville forged friendships and the comedy circuit of today does, but the movie world was a planet of its own.
Would the Stooges and the Marx’s be considered in a different generation? Moe was born 1897, while Groucho was born 1890, only 7 years apart (Chico/Larry and Harpo/Curly were 15 years apart). The first Marx Bros movie was the Cocoanuts in 1929, while the Stooges with Healy appeared in Soup to Nuts only a year later in 1930.
The Marx’s MGM/RKO/UA era spanned from 1935 - 1947 (A Night at the Opera 1935/A Night in Casablanca 1947 - if you don’t count Love Happy, which Groucho didn’t consider a true Marx Bros. film) while the Stooges Columbia/Curly era spanned 1934 - 1947 (The Woman Haters 1934/Half Wits Holiday 1947). If anything, I would say they were contemporaries.
Also, Moe (died 1975) spent his later years speaking at campuses and appearing on Mike Douglas, while Groucho (died 1977) spent his later years speaking at campuses and appearing on Dick Cavett. I think Moe and Groucho would have had plenty to share a glass of brandy and cigar over, as former vaudevillians, movie stars, and last surviving members of two enduring comedy teams.
Several people who worked for (or slept with) Groucho during those years have written books. They all say that Groucho socialized with a small group of people he had known for many decades. Some younger comics came to him as if on pilgrimage. But none of the books or articles or fanzines (The Freedonia Gazette, e.g.) mention a Stooge, to my recollection. They may not have been that far apart in age, but the Stooges start vaudeville at just about the time the Marxes had graduated to Broadway so there’s really no overlap.
A meeting isn’t impossible. I don’t know anything that says they disliked one another or would have anything against the other for any reason. It just didn’t happen.
Aside: Thanks, Exapno,, I needed that. My mother-in-law always raved (back in the 1970s, when Groucho was doing college tours) about how much she liked the Ritz Brothers more than that Marx Ditto. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much movie-wise available of the Ritz Bros, and what we’ve seen was totally forgettable, not funny, and (as you say) they had no screen personalities. So we’ve always been mystified by her taste.
