Me "The trouble with writing about yourself is that you can't fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself, the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar. Although it is generally known, I think it's about time to announce that I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old. Now that we are on the subject of age, let's skip it. It isn't important how old I am. What is important, however, is whether enough people will visit this site to justify my spending the remnants of my rapidly waning vitality in writing it. I'm sure it's no great secret, nor is it terribly important, but for posterity and the ages my real name is Julius Henry Marx. Me, Harpo and the dog we stole. Give or take a few years, I was born around the turn of the century. I won't say which century. Everyone is allowed one guess. We had a crowded household in our Yorkville Shan-gri-la on New York's Upper East Side. In addition to the five brothers - Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo and Zeppo, in the order of our age - there were my mother and father (in fact, they got there before we did), my mother's father and mother, an adopted sister and a steady stream of poor relations that flowed through our house night and day. Whatever our visitors came for, they always came to my mother - never to my father. Minnie MarxDear Ol' Ma She advised them about their love lives, where to find jobs and how to stay out of trouble. She engineered loans when they needed money. How she did it was always a source of wonder to me, but she invariably came through. She patched up marriages that were foundering and she outtalked the landlord, the grocer, the butcher and anyone else to whom we owed money. Her maneuvers were a triumph of skill, chicanery and imagination.. Sam MarxDad My Pop was a tailor, and sometimes he made as much as eighteen dollars a week. But he was no ordinary tailor. His record as the most inept tailor that Yorkville ever produced has never been approached. He was the only tailor I ever heard of who refused to use a tape measure. Me, Chico, Gummo and Harpo It has always been a matter of wonder to me how one set of parents can spawn so many different kinds of children. Chico, for example, had a brain as fast and as accurate as a calculating machine. He could solve mathematical problems in his head faster then I could do them with pencil, paper and an abacus. Harpo was the solid man in the family. He inherited all of my mother's good qualities - kindness, understanding and friendliness. I inherited what was left. I was ready and eager for show business. School was an unspeakable bore and the only thing that interested me was the teacher, a tall, shapely, blue-eyed Irish girl, named Seneca, who recited 'Evangeline' in a deep, dramatic voice. I never heard anything like it again until I heard Barrymore recite the solilquy from 'Hamlet'. Her vibrant baritone, along with her other charms, thrilled me...until one day I discovered she liked girls, and that was the end of Longfellow and Miss Seneca. One day when I was playing hooky, luck came my way. I read an ad in the morning 'World': BOY SINGER WANTED FOR STAR VAUDEVILLE ACT. ROOM AND BOARD AND FOUR DOLLARS A WEEK. New Orleans, 1905On the prowl To a boy whose allowence was five cents every seven days, four bucks seemed like the passkey to the mint. Also the end of school. So, putting on my best suit - which was also my worst suit and the only one I had - I hailed a streetcar and in less then an hour I was walking up five flights of stairs and knocking at the door of one of the dingiest tenements I had ever smelled. I was fifteen at the time, and knew as much about the world as the average retarded eight-year-old. At any rate, I was in show business." The Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, PAIn 1923 we made our leap from Vaudeville to Broadway. The theatre is still in operation. Go see a live show. Tell'em Groucho sent you. If you want to know more about me, you'll have to buy, borrow or steal, then read the book my assistants cribbed this from, "Groucho and Me", written by me and published by De Capo Press. Thanks for being a fan or at least knowing my name...unlike that broad at that large movie store who thought I was a Russian philosopher. She had her charms, but you are a much better person then she, at least to my way of thinking. "I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn't educate America if they started at 6:30." Julius Henry Marx October 2, 1890 - August 19, 1977
