The marx brothers biography

Remembered as kings of the vaudeville stage and early motion picture comedies, it's fitting that the Marx Brothers found their origins in a performance setting.

Their father, Simon, was a tailor from Alsace-Lorraine who despised using tape measures and derived his greatest enjoyment from games of pinochle.

He also worked as a dance instructor after moving to New York City in the early 1880s, and it was on the dance floor that the sparks flew with Minnie Schoenberg, another recently transplanted Jewish immigrant from Germany.

The couple's first-born, Mannfred, died of tuberculosis before he was a year old.

But the next two, Leonard (Chico) and Adolph (Harpo), were perfectly healthy, as was the third, Julius Henry (Groucho), other than the strabismus that left his eyes mismatched. The clan grew with the addition of Milton (Gummo) and finally Herbert (Zeppo), who arrived just before his biggest brother turned 14 yea