Walter Kerr on Chico Marx

[Ed Watz]

CHICO MARX, THE LINK FOR ACT AND AUDIENCE
by Walter Kerr
The New York Times, February 23, 1981

I'VE always wanted to sponsor a Chico Marx film festival. The only thing is, I've never been able to figure out how to do it. Those other two busybodies keep getting in the way.

The problem, you see, is that audiences won't look directly at Chico if they have either Harpo or Groucho to look at, and since they always have either Groucho or Harpo to look at (or both at once) there's never time or space left over to take stock of what Signor Ravelli (or whatever pasta-based title Chico's acquired for the moment) may be up to.

But this is not only unfair, it's unintelligent. We really do suppose that the glory of the Marx Brothers - a glory that is obviously going to go marching on, courtesy not only of the films but of the theater's determination to bring them back alive in such entertainments as ''Minnie's Boys'' and ''A Night in the Ukraine'' - depends mainly, if not entirely, on the gleeful muteness of Harpo as he munches on a telephone mouthpiece for his dinner or upon the compulsive garrulousness of Groucho as he continues to upend the language in an effort to make it say what he means (''One false move and I'm yours''). And who would venture to subtract an ounce of praise from either? Not I.

But Chico - ah, there's a strange one. We think of him, if we bother at all, as something like a straightman, a handy fellow for setting up Groucho's puns and Harpo's efforts to rest his knee in someone else's available paw. He's a presence that comes and goes usefully but without altering our focus very much, a kind of steady occupant of our peripheral vision. We like him, but we don't feel the act would disappear if he did. In fact, he can walk right out of a beginning scene - as he does in ''The Cocoanuts,'' which I happen to have seen again recently - and leave the surreptitious theft of Groucho's tie, teeth and underwear to Harpo alone. Unneeded, he vanishes without so much as an exit line. And yet, if he didn't return - and in pretty short order - the act would disappear. Chico is the unobtrusive indispensable man.

His daughter, Maxine Marx, has made that pointedly and pleasantly clear in an attractive, often surprisingly informative short memoir, ''Growing Up With Chico,'' that slipped into the bookstores - almost as unobtrusively as its hero might have - during the fall (PrenticeHall, 177 pages, $9.95). The book contains a number of interesting oddball snippets that have little to do with Chico. Do you know, for instance, why Zeppo became the act's juvenile? No doubt you have always supposed it was because he was the handsomest of the group or because he could do nothing better, or funnier.

But, Miss Marx confides in us, Zeppo was as funny as his brothers. Unfortunately for him, his comic temperament and style precisely duplicated Groucho's, and, since Groucho had got there first, Zeppo had to settle for pursuing the girl. (I ought to have guessed as much. Once, at the Palace in Chicago, I saw Zeppo play Groucho for an entire performance - I later learned that Groucho was ill - and I doubt that more than 10 people in a crowded house tumbled to the substitution.) 'An Essential Ingredient’

And on the subject of her father's indispensability, Miss Marx is most persuasive. Practically everyone who's followed the career of the Marxes knows that it was Chico, over the bridge table, who talked Irving Thalberg into taking them on at Metro after they'd run out of inspiration at Paramount. But the legend that mother Minnie was the guiding genius of the vaudeville act, training her charges until they were in trim for the big-time, is convincingly - if gently - erased. Minnie, obviously, was much beloved and irredeemably an amateur. The boys at their early best were defying rather than obeying her; Chico had even left the act. Though the remaining members of the vaudeville troupe were doing moderately well, it was only Chico's unexpected return - announced by a gunshot trill on the piano keys and a barrage of apples hurled from the pit - that provided ''the necessary catalyst to get the Marxes rolling in a big way.''

Catalyst? Yes, if you think about it. And not only in a managerial sense. Chico did take over the management of the act, arranging its business deals thereafter. But his essential function was performed onstage, maintaining communication between the other brothers. As Miss Marx sensibly insists, ''Daddy was much more of an essential ingredient than most people ever realize.'' Harpo couldn't talk, and Groucho needed to work off (that is to say, insult) somebody. But Groucho couldn't work off Harpo because he couldn't get a response out of him no matter how much he might needle, and what, pray tell, could Harpo do with Groucho? Strum him?

The upshot was that Chico would work with Harpo and then Chico would work with Groucho, a practice that kept him occupied virtually all of the time, busy the night long. Almost surreptitiously, Chico had become the act's dynamo, or at least its permanent fulcrum.

But not as a straightman. Not the creature whom Groucho refers to, within a single two-minute span, as Hiawatha, Peter Rabbit and Winnie the Pooh (personally, I've always thought of him as Pinocchio; it's that cap). True, he plays in dead earnest, listening with his eyes, head lowered in concentration. When he speaks, he means to be informative and/or helpful. He Means to Make Friends

If, as he goes to the piano, Margaret Dumont asks him what his first number is to be and he replies with a majestic ''No. 1!,'' he could not be more accommodating. If, during a moment of great discontent with his impoverished state, he announces that he has killed for money, adding, to Harpo, ''I kill you for money, ah, no, you my friend, I kill you for nothing,'' he is being genuinely considerate.

Whereas Groucho always knows that a joke is a joke and is even willing to discuss the matter, Chico never means to make a joke at all. He is a social being, and he means to make friends. When he glances over his shoulder at us while playing the piano, his smile suddenly brightens into the most innocent leer I have ever been surprised by. He is confiding, even conspiratorial, but always congenial. His emotions are often inappropriate: he is apt to scowl at good news and beam at bad. And he is stubborn, God knows, stubborn enough to make a mule blush with embarrassment. But he is a sweet, sullen soul, and must never be confused with a straightman. He is not straight, he is stupid - like us.

I wonder if you see what that does for everybody concerned? Chico is not only the necessary link between Harpo and Groucho. He is the necessary link between Harpo, Groucho and those of us who sit out front. We do need an arbiter, a spiritual middleman no more untrustworthy than we are, an occasionally victorious numbskull with whom we can wistfully identify. We may love Harpo, but we can't identify with him: too otherplanetary. We may admire Groucho, but we can't possibly cope with him: his headlong assault - very often into the camera, at us - is so overwhelming that our collapse into helpless laughter is really a form of self-defense. Kept Us All in Touch

With Chico, we can breathe. He is our only intimate among the three, resident of a universe that is almost recognizable, everlastingly prepared to take steps that are practical, logical and utterly useless. I first saw the Marx Brothers in the stage version of ''Animal Crackers,'' and, oddly, it's Chico's voice that comes back to me from that unthinkably distant time. Chico had decided that a stolen painting was hidden in the house next door. He was informed that there was no house next door. ''All right,'' he said, getting right down to business, ''we build one.''

He was not only a good builder, he was an expert maintenance man, keeping us all in touch. Daughter Maxine has done nicely by him, I think, being candid about his failings (he had some, another point of contact!) and acute about the special nature of his work (well, perhaps she didn't have to be acute, all she had to do was ask him). ''Growing Up With Chico'' is casual and chatty and altogether unpretentious, and I should think its bits of special information - along with a couple of important insights - would make it essential reading for your true Marx Brothers buff. I mean, it's got something of Chico in it.

[Richard M Roberts]

Absolutely dead on. I hadn't read that piece of Walter Kerr's writing before (another nice new pleasure of the day), but it is absolutely what I have said about Chico Marx for years, he is indeed the link between Groucho and Harpo, you seldom just see Groucho and Harpo working together, those two universes really don't transect all that smoothly. Chico gives them both the playing ground to work off of and a bit of an anchor to allow them to go off on their little flights of fancy. And Chico is the only one who can always get the better of Groucho, no matter how stupid he pretends to be, "Get-a your tootsie-fruitsie ice cream!".

He is also indeed the one who brings the warmth to the team, I always said Chico was the one who was hurt the least when the Brothers got shoehorned into the MGM formula for making comedy, because he is the character who can actually care about whatever is happening in the plotline. This is why the thing that least works in LOVE HAPPY for me is when Harpo wants to be Chaplin, he can try to cheer up Vera Ellen, but basically Harpo's whole modus operandi the the same as Groucho's, to come in and disrupt whatever is going on in the scene at the time. Harpo really can't commit himself to caring about what's happening to the other characters in the film any more than Groucho can, he's better off helping Chico do that when they're both in the same scene because he can do his schticks to fight off and confuse the villains, but really, he'd do the same thing to the heroes if the villains weren't around, which is also why Harpo sometimes manages to do the mistake that allows the bad guys to get the one-up on him and Chico, he'll let his schtick go overboard and put them in the thick of it.

One reason that I find GO WEST a more interesting film than many Marx fans do is that it is the one Marx Brother film in which we see all three of them working together in the same scenes the most, and it shows you the difference in the team dynamics that contrast the Marx's from, say, The Three Stooges. In their films, the Stooges are more likely than not to be altogether in the majority of their scenes, sometimes there will only be two, or Curly will get a little solo piece of his own, but their comedy dynamic really requires them to all be there at once to make it work. With the Marx Brothers it is the opposite, there are more Groucho/Chico scenes and Harpo/Chico scenes or Groucho/Margaret Dumont scenes than scenes of them together. Even in the big comedy climaxes, most of the gags are each individual Marx brother doing something to cause the chaos all around the opera, or the race track or the circus, they attack on several fronts, not one straight on operatoin.

Chico's warmth is also indeed inclusive to the other characters in the film as well, I always watch Chico's piano numbers in their films, not just because I love to hear him play, but also to watch the other extras or performers in those scenes who are there to do nothing but watch him perform. Notice that many of them, especially the women, really don't seem to be acting, they are really enjoying watching and listening to him play, perhaps even charmed by it (watch Thelma Todd sitting close to him on the piano bench in HORSEFEATHERS while he goes through "Collegiate", what the hell is she doing to Chico's back with her left hand while he's playing?). And Chico's confident smile during his ivory tinkling says he knows what he's doing, this is probably part of the itinerary that allowed him to the apparently sizeable scores he racked up through out his life, if any of them had Thelma Todd, he did. When Harpo plays the harp, he goes inward, the schticking stops, it's him and the harp, no matter how many kids or black people MGM places around him to add focus, Paramount knew better and just shot him solo, Chico plays the room.

You really want to get a look at Chico's personal charm, look no further than his late appearance on the BBC Variety show SHOWTIME from 1959, where we get to see an elderly and probably not well Chico still put on the wig and the old hat and chat comfortably with presenter David Nixon, it's both relaxed and funny, and you see that Chico's still an old pro keeping it funny and charming the audience all by himself, you just want to spend more time with him. If only a Dick Cavett or somebody had gotten to sit and talk with him for 90 minutes on videotape like Groucho got to do many times, I'll bet we'd have a much more rounded and positive picture of the man. His daughter obviously loved him, despite his faults, maybe more of us would too.


RICHARD M ROBERTS