Marx Brothers - Jef Burnham: Portfolio

The Twenties in America
By this time, premarital “petting”—physical exploration short of sexual intercourse—became socially
acceptable among the young, even inspiring “petting
parties” in colleges, and as many as half of young
women are believed to have had intercourse with
their future marriage partners.
The New Marriage
By the 1920s, the idea of marriage demanding extraordinary self-sacrifice on the wife’s part was falling
into disrepute. As in earlier periods of American history, marriage was envisioned as a partnership, but
during the 1920s, both partners explicitly expected
to attain personal and sexual happiness from their
marriage. Increasingly widespread understanding
of birth control methods and Freudian psychology
made these goals seem attainable.
The average age at marriage dropped during the
decade, and a greater percentage of the population
married than in the late nineteenth century. Middleclass men tended to marry younger, with one-third
marrying before age twenty-four, and fewer than 20
percent of young women had to choose between a
college education and marriage. Even so, after marriage, few middle-class women worked outside the
home; the general prosperity of the decade made
stay-at-home mothering possible for the majority of
American families.
Married partners tended to replay the dating pattern by socializing together as a couple more than
their parents had done. Although married men and
women might continue to participate in same-sex social groups, it was generally assumed that their emotional center was firmly in the family.
Divorce became more common as the expectations of marriage changed and its realities did
not always keep pace. In contrast to the economic
considerations or abuses that were the historical
grounds for divorce, those petitioning for divorce
during the 1920s often cited emotional or sexual
dissatis­­faction.
Impact
The 1920s saw more frank discussion of sexual and
interpersonal issues than ever before. Paradoxically,
this seems to have led both to happier marriages and
to more conscious dissatisfaction with the realities of
marriage. Numerous doomsayers predicted that
marriage would disappear, interpreting the rapid
changes in social mores as a fatal assault on the
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institution. Rather, marriage continued to be central
in most people’s lives, but with a stronger emphasis
on the couple bond.
Emily Alward
Further Reading
Bailey, Beth. “From Front Porch to Back Seat: A History of the Date.” OAH Magazine of History 18, no. 4
(July, 2004): 23–26. Presents the theory of dating
as a popularity ritual.
Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History: From Obedience
to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. New
York: Viking Penguin, 2005. An extensive survey
of marriage through the ages. The chapter on the
1920s describes how the era’s customs elevated
the pair bond.
Fass, Paula S. The Damned and the Beautiful: American
Youth in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1977. A study of collegiate life and mores
during the decade.
Finlay, Barbara. Before the Second Wave: Gender in
the Sociological Tradition. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Includes essays on
gender roles in the 1920s and on rating-and-dating.
Heitmann, John Alfred. The Automobile and American
Life. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2009. Explores
the relationship between the automobile and
courtship customs, among other topics.
See also: Birth control; Flappers; “Roaring Twenties”; Sex and sex education; Women in college;
Women in the workforce; Women’s rights
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were one of the biggest comedy acts in
vaudeville, starring in three hit shows on Broadway during
the 1920s. As a result of the decade’s innovations in film
sound, the Marx Brothers also starred in their first feature
film with sound in 1929.
Born to Jewish immigrants Samuel and Minnie Marx
in New York City, the Marx Brothers were Leonard
(stage name Chico), Adolph (Harpo), Julius Henry
(Groucho), and Herbert Manfred (Zeppo). However, Zeppo did not join the act until 1918, when he
was called on to replace the second youngest brother,
Milton (Gummo) Marx, who left show business to
join the Army during World War I. In the years
The Twenties in America
558  ​Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
leading up to the 1920s, the four Marx Brothers became one of the most widely recognized acts in
vaudeville, under the management of their mother.
The Marx Brothers toured extensively between 1914
and 1918 in the musical comedy Home Again, written
by Minnie’s brother, Al Shean. The show was renamed N’ Everything, and it opened as The Marx
Brothers Revue on February 7, 1919, in Chicago and
ran through December 1920.
Financial Setbacks and Broadway Success
Inspired by former vaudevillian Charlie Chaplin’s
success in film, the Marx Brothers attempted to
launch their own film careers in 1920 with a selffinanced short film. Chico, Groucho, and Zeppo
each contributed one thousand dollars to the six-
thousand-dollar budget. The two-reel film
Humor Risk was shot in Fort Lee, New
Jersey, with players from the N’ Everything
cast. However, the comic characters Chico
and Groucho had developed on stage did
not translate well to silent film, because
they relied heavily on humorous dialogue
and wordplay. The resulting film was a disaster for which no distributor could be
found.
Afterward, the Marx Brothers returned
to vaudeville, where their show The Twentieth Century Revue went bankrupt in 1923.
The Brothers found themselves unemployed and without prospects; before
their plans to dissolve the act could be
realized, however, Chico brokered a deal
with theater producer Joseph M. Gaites.
With Gaites’s help, the Marx Brothers compiled two recently failed musicals by playwrights Will and Tom Johnstone into a revised show entitled I’ll Say She Is!
I’ll Say She Is! opened in Philadelphia on
May 29, 1923. The show made the Brothers
extremely wealthy, also garnering them
the approval of New York’s intellectual
elite. Within a year of touring with I’ll Say
She Is!, the Brothers had bounced back
from financial ruin and were headed for
Broadway. When the show opened at the
Casino Theatre on Broadway on May 19,
1924, drama critic Alexander Woollcott
was in attendance. He became instantly enamored with the shenanigans of Harpo,
praising his performance in a review for the Sun
newspaper. Woollcott met Harpo after the show the
next night and subsequently invited the performer
to join the literary and intellectual group known as
the Algonquin Round Table.
From Stage to Screen
The Marx Brothers’ next show, The Cocoanuts, was a
satire of the Florida land boom of the 1920s, written
by Algonquin Round Table member George S.
Kaufman with coauthor Morrie Ryskind, also featuring songs by Irving Berlin. The Cocoanuts opened
on Broadway on December 8, 1925, and ran for 377
performances. The Brothers took the show on tour
in 1927, and it ran through much of 1928. This production was significant in its addition of entertainer
The Twenties in America
Margaret Dumont to the Marx Brothers’ ensemble
of performers. Dumont, who portrayed a dignified
lady of society, was the ideal contrast for the Brothers.
She would play their foil in two stage productions
and seven films, and she was sometimes referred to
affectionately as the fifth Marx Brother.
Animal Crackers, the second Marx Brothers collaboration with writers Kaufman and Ryskind, opened
at the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre on Broadway on
October 23, 1928, and ran for 171 performances.
Again the Brothers were joined by Margaret Dumont.
For a period during the show’s run, the Brothers
spent their free time on Long Island, filming the
screen adaptation of The Cocoanuts. With the Warner
Bros. sound picture The Jazz Singer (1927), film had
finally developed enough to communicate the Marx
Brothers’ verbal comedy. The motion picture studio
Paramount Pictures, scrambling to match the output
of talking pictures by film studio Warner Bros., optioned the commercially proven The Cocoanuts performance on film for $100,000. The film premiered
in New York on May 3, 1929.
The Cocoanuts was an enormous financial success
for Paramount, yet the decade ended with great losses
for the Marx Brothers. Minnie Marx suffered a stroke
and died in the early hours of September 14, 1929,
and Groucho and Harpo went into debt after losing
more than $250,000 each in the stock market crash of
October 1929. Fortunately for the Marx Brothers, The
Cocoanuts had established them as Hollywood stars,
and they continued making successful films.
Impact
With the popularization of talking motion pictures,
the Marx Brothers escaped the waning medium of
vaudeville to pursue a career in film. The Brothers
received top billing in twelve feature-length films
between 1930 and 1950, and they were awarded an
Honorary Academy Award in 1974. The comedic
style of the Marx Brothers influenced many later
screen comedians, paving the way for such comedies
as the film M*A*S*H (1970) and the early works of
actor and film director Woody Allen.
Jeff Burnham
Further Reading
Ellis, Allen W. “Yes, Sir: The Legacy of Zeppo Marx.”
Journal of Popular Culture 37, no. 1 (2003): 15–27.
Explores Zeppo’s contribution to the Marx Brothers’s act.
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Louvish, Simon. Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers. New York: Thomas Dunne
Books, 2000. Debunks many myths and rumors
surrounding the Marx Brothers’ personal lives and
careers, showcasing lengthy passages from their
film scripts.
Kanfer, Stefan. Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius
Henry Marx. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Links
Groucho Marx’s difficult personal life to his trademark comedic style.
Marx, Groucho. Groucho and Me. 1959. New York:
Da Capo Press, 1995. The story of the Marx
Brothers as related by Groucho through a series
of anecdotes.
Marx, Harpo, and Rowland Barber. Harpo Speaks!
1962. New York: Limelight Editions, 2010. Details Harpo’s childhood, his time with the Algonquin Round Table, and his experiences as a
bachelor.
See also: Algonquin Round Table; Chaplin, Charlie;
Cocoanuts, The; Talking motion pictures; Theater in
the United States; Vaudeville
McFadden Act of 1927
The Law: Federal law prohibiting national banks
from branching across state lines
Date: Enacted on February 25, 1927
The McFadden Act of 1927 prohibited national banks
from opening branch offices across state lines, instead confining their operations to the states where they were headquartered. The act was named after Pennsylvania representative Louis Thomas McFadden, a Republican who
also served as the chair of the House Committee on Banking
and Currency.
The McFadden Act permitted national banks (that is,
banks chartered by the federal government) to make
real estate loans with terms of up to five years, and
it also codified the authority of national banks to
buy and sell investment securities as defined by the
Comptroller of the Currency. Its major provision,
however, involved prohibiting national banks from
branching across state lines, a ban that lasted until
1994. Prior to the passage of the McFadden Act, some
type of interstate branching by commercial banks
was allowed in eighteen states. Smaller banks were