poor zeppo


I always liked zeppo alot and in this movie he really had nothing to do...no wonder he left the act.
I really don't understand why he was so under utilized ( outside of being the younger brother) I mean he was fairly good looking, had a nice voice, a nice way of playing comedy and was prety good at the action stuff( referance the end of monkey business )
ah well


When I want your opinion I'll beat it out of you

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His is the curse of the Juvenile.

In vaudeville acts such as the Marx Bros had, they based their comedies on "types." Groucho's character evolved from the German or Jew Comedian, Chico's from the Italian Comedian, Harpo's from the Irish Patsy Brannigan character. They put their own stamps on them and morphed them into the movie characters we know, but it took a decade or longer of touring vaudeville circuits.

One of the other types in many vaudeville comedy acts was the Juvenile. Maybe he was a love interest, or a naive type, but he wasn't as broadly drawn as the overtly comic ethnic characters. Often he was a straight man for one or more of the others. In vaudeville, Gummo was the juvenile until he signed up for military service during The Great War. Zeppo, being youngest, took his place. By this time, the three older brothers had already established themselves in the act, and Zeppo was just filling in, and doing so in an act where the three major comedians were even zanier and more prominent than usual.

The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers show how much of a stage prop he was, since they're movies of stage plays, and were essentially just the Broadway musicals captured on film. With all the comedic potential to be mined from Groucho, Chico and Harpo, it probably wasn't all that essential to work Zeppo's character up too much. He actually is the love interest in Monkey Business, but other than that, his acting career was spent playing two-scenes with Groucho and setting up jokes for him.

" " ~ Harpo Marx

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Actually, the Marx Brothers themselves considered Zeppo to be the funniest. In fact, he was Groucho's understudy and actually had to fill in for him in a stage performance when Groucho fell ill. Zeppo supposedly got far more laughs from the audience than Groucho did, which apparently "prompted" Groucho to get better more quickly.

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Zeppo's part in this film is small, but by my calculation, he's the only person to ever one-up Groucho in a way that left him staggering for a comeback. That's in this film -- "You said some things that weren't important, so I omitted them." Groucho's speechless, and Zeppo plays the aloof foil perfectly in that scene.

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Od course, I doubt if there are few people left alive who actually saw the Marxes in vaudeville or in their revue, "I'll Say She Is," so it may be that the straight man had more to do onstage. From what I've read about their early careers, Gummo seemed to be fairly prominent in the act.
The trailer for MONKEY BUSINESS is a variation of the opening of "I'll Say" and gives Zeppo a more substantial role than he had in any of the five feature films. One can also assume that in vaudeville he handled the bulk of straight singing and dancing with whatever ingenues may have been employed. No less a personage than Jack Benny always considered Zeppo the funniest of the four, at least in real life.

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I do wish he would have had a larger role in this....

Urania to Terpsichore: "You're so quiet. Musing????"

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The fact is, he was supposed to be the love interest in both Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers, but studio politics shoved existing film stars into Zeppo's role when the plays were made into films. Look at how the architect in Cocoanuts is a hotel clerk, just like Zeppo ('one who clerks, Polly, is a clerk').

Only in Monkey Business does he fulfill his role with the team, as another poster pointed out. He plays that role in Horse Feathers, too, but his contribution is diluted by the fact that the plot requires all the Marxes to make love to the college widow.

I think he left because the studio kept replacing him, or threatening to, and he got tired of sparring with them all the time.

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I'm pretty sure Zeppo fills in for Groucho in the scene with Margaret Dumont in the dark living room. Notice the hairline and voice timbre.
"We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did."

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Got to say not a fan of Zeppo, Groucho, Chico & Harpo seem to have such strong personalities where Zeppo was just in the background with a non personality imo

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