Four of the Three Musketeers

Always loved the Bros. and this book fills in every detail. Wonderful to see where all their ideas came from and how they arrived at each of their personas. Enormous and fascinating research.

My favorite kind of biography is one that digs into primary sources and quotes them extensively, especially in supporting theories or speculation, without telling you what to think.

Four of the Three Musketeers is exactly the kind of biography I really enjoy. Bader did a phenomenal amount of research—to the extent of digging up microfiches of tiny newspapers, long defunct, in the towns performers wound through during the days of vaudeville.

It is not only a history of the Marx brothers (the entire family, really) but also a history of vaudeville. Many old film stars have reminisced about their early days of vaudeville; sometimes you got the feeling that they were exaggerating how horrible it was. Bader digs up the facts, showing that it really was that grinding and miserable—but it was better than being put in a factory, especially for little kids. Because child labor was a fact of life in the latter nineteenth century, when the Marx brothers were wild urchins getting into trouble in what used to be called the Yorkville portion of New York City.

None of the Marx boys ever graduated from high school—only one purportedly made it that far, but in those days, nobody cared. Minnie Marx was determined to wrest her boys away from lives of easy crime and into show biz. Even so, it was hit or miss for a while—as a young teen, Leonard was playing piano in houses of prostitution, for example. Harpo also did, and was nearly swept up into a murder rap without having known what his employers were up to.

Bader follows, step by step, the slow grind toward a middling success for Julius, who later became Groucho (I had real trouble remember which brother had which birth name; it was such a relief when Bader switched over to the nicknames), who started out as a boy singer. Then he had a couple minor jobs acting. He was enough of a success for Minnie to bring the other boys in one by one, and Bader shows how it happened, when, and how Minnie tried to invent the Marxes (or Markses, as they were sometimes billed), often with highly inflated ads placed in Variety.

Vaudeville underwent a sea change in 1912, with tabloid acts; meanwhile, a stranglehold on vaudeville was established by an outfit that blacklisted anyone who didn’t knuckle under. That kept pay very low for the performers, and kept managers always struggling. The interesting thing is, each time the Marxes got hit hard by the blacklist kings, they would reinvent themselves—and do better.

Bader shows how they slowly developed the distinctive characters that they became known for—for they, unlike other actors, never played other roles. They were always those characters, with the material fit around them. Further, they were one of the very few vaudeville acts that successfully brought their vaudeville routines to film. Most old vaudevillians had to learn to adapt to film. When the Marxes turned to movies, they took the scripts on the roads to test on live audiences before filming.

Bader also tracks down as many of the very obscure other performers whose lives intersected with the boys. It can get confusing as he jumps back and forth in time to tell their stories, but it’s worth putting your finger on the page and moving about a bit to get a clear picture as the lives of these people briefly illuminate. Meanwhile, we see the Marxes as they were; despite various idiosyncrasies (Chico was not only addicted to gambling, he was also an unrepentant Lothario, even more so than the other boys, a fact that Minnie tried to curtail with her chicken farm), the family stayed pretty loyal to one another.

In short, this book is a must have for anyone who enjoys the Marx Brothers, and has read some of their books, and perhaps wondered which of the varying anecdotes about key moments in their lives are the true ones. The answer will sometimes surprise you—or maybe not, because the boys never let mere facts get in the way of a good story.

For awhile there, I thought I wanted to be a comedy screenwriter. And so I watched a lot of comedic movies. Not one contemporary comedy can hold a candle to the films of The Marx Brothers. Their zany, frenetic, witty, wacky comedy is unequaled. Their own brand of comedy genius has not and can not be replicated. 

And here's how that happened . . . 

In Four of the Three Musketeers: The Max Brothers on Stage, author Robert S. Bader takes an in-depth look at every step of the Marx Brothers' vaudeville career, starting from Harpo's early days playing the piano in whorehouses and Groucho's first time on a stage. As the years of their lives go by, the brothers grow and sing, travel and pay piano, and most of all, they learn to hone their comedic chops. Spending weeks and months on the road at a time, working every day, sometimes several shows a day, the Marx Brothers learn from experience what it takes to survive in show business, and (eventually) how to make it to the top of the game. 

Meticulously researched (literally! this is a 500-plus-page volume), this book takes you through the journey of the early careers of Julius (Groucho), Adolph (Harpo), Leonard (Chico), and Milton (Gummo). Managed by their mother and occasionally helped along with gifts of their father's cooking to booking agents, the brothers took to the stage and never stopped entertaining us. Filled with stories that no one else has been able to dig up, all the dates and places that could be found, and never-before seen photos of the family, this is the ultimate book for anyone who wants to know everything there is to know about the Marx Brothers. 



Galleys for Four of the Three Musketeers were provided by the publisher through NetGalley.com.