Arthur "Harpo" Marx (born Adolph Marx; November 23, 1888 – September 28, 1964) was an American comedian, actor and harpist, and the second-oldest of the Marx Brothers. In contrast to the mainly verbal comedy of his brothers Groucho and Chico, Harpo's comic style was visual, being an example of vaudeville, clown and pantomime traditions. In all of his movie appearances, he wore a curly reddish blonde wig and did not speak, instead blowing a horn or whistling to communicate. Marx frequently employed props such as a horn cane constructed from a lead pipe, tape, and a bulbhorn.
Most of the Marx Brothers' stage and film appearances included a song performed by Harpo on the harp in his unique style, for example "When My Dreams Come True" in The Cocoanuts (1929) and "Alone" in A Night at the Opera (1935).
Harpo was born on November 23, 1888, in Manhattan, New York City. He grew up in Yorkville, a neighborhood now known as Carnegie Hill, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, on East 93rd Street off Lexington Avenue. The turn-of-the-century tenement that Harpo later called "the first real home I can remember" was situated in a neighborhood populated with European immigrants, mostly artisans. The neighborhood hosted many historic homes and other buildings, such as the William Goadby Loew House (now the Spence School), the Congregation Shaare Zedek, and the Virginia Graham Fair Vanderbilt house.
His parents were Sam Marx (known by his nickname "Frenchie"/"Frenchy") and his wife, Minnie Schoenberg Marx, sister of comedian and vaudeville performer Al Shean. Marx's family was Jewish. His mother was from East Frisia, Germany, and his father, a tailor, was from Alsace, which was part of the Second French Empire at Sam's birth and for most of his childhood.
Harpo received little formal education; he dropped out of New York Public School 86 during his second attempt to pass the second grade, when he was eight, mainly because of bullying.. He began to work in numerous odd jobs alongside his older brother Chico, including selling newspapers, working in a butcher shop, and as an office errand boy, to contribute to the family income.
In January 1910, Harpo joined two of his younger brothers, Julius (later "Groucho") and Milton (later "Gummo"), to form "The Three Nightingales", which would later be renamed "The Marx Brothers". Multiple unverified stories attempt to explain Harpo's evolution as the "silent" character in the brothers' act. In his memoir, Groucho wrote that Harpo simply was not very good at memorizing dialogue, and thus was ideal to portray the archetypal vaudeville role of the "dunce who couldn't speak." It has also been said that Harpo reinvented himself as a mute clown by 1915 due to his nerves around speaking on stage; he even turned down an offer of US$50,000 to say the single word "Murder!" in A Night in Casablanca in 1946. He did however sometimes speak in live performances.
Differing stories exist regarding the origin of the Harpo stage name. The stories agree that the pseudonym originated during a card game at which Art Fisher, the dealer that night, referred to Marx as "Harpo" because he played the harp. There is disagreement regarding the time and place of the game, however. In his autobiography Harpo Speaks!, Harpo said that it took place in Rockford, Illinois. The most common version of the story places it at the Orpheum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois. However, this version of events is disputed, at least partially because the Orpheum Theatre was not constructed until late 1916, whereas Harpo later remembered acquiring the name in 1914. In addition, Fisher is believed to have left vaudeville in 1912. Some sources give an earlier date for its origin and suggest the game may have instead taken place at the Galesburg Auditorium Theatre or the same town's Gaiety Theatre.
Harpo learned how to hold the harp by emulating a harp-playing angel in a picture he saw in a five-and-dime. No one in town knew how to play the harp, so Harpo tuned it as best he could, starting with one basic note and tuning it from there. He began learning to play the instrument without lessons. Three years later, he found out he had tuned it incorrectly, but that his method placed much less tension on the strings. Despite Harpo's musical talent, he never learned to read or write music. Although he paid top musicians handsome fees to teach him "proper" harp-playing technique, he maintained his unique style his entire life (his "teachers," fascinated by his technique, spent their sessions watching and listening as Marx performed). The major exception was Mildred Dilling, the professional harpist who finally taught Harpo proper harp technique and collaborated with him regularly when he had difficulty composing. Upon his death in 1964, one of Harpo's harps was donated to the state of Israel, and eventually found a home in an Israeli orchestra.
Chico found Harpo some of his first jobs. He and Chico were co-workers, playing piano to accompany silent films. Unlike Chico, Harpo could play only two songs on the piano, "Waltz Me Around Again, Willie" and "Love Me and the World Is Mine", but he adapted this small repertoire in different tempos to suit the action on the screen. He was also seen playing a portion of Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C# minor" in A Day at the Races, and played piano in A Night at the Opera. Ultimately, he relinquished the piano to Chico in favor of his trademark harp, upon which he performed Nacio Herb Brown's 1935 song "Alone", which was sung in the film by Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones.
Harpo had changed his name from "Adolph", a name he disliked (as a child, he was routinely called "Ahdie" instead), to "Arthur" by 1911. The similarity to the name of prominent Chicago show business attorney Adolph Marks may have further encouraged the change. Urban legends incorrectly said that the name change came about during World War I due to anti-German sentiment in the US, or during World War II because of the stigma that Adolf Hitler imposed on the name.
His first screen appearance was in the film Humor Risk (1921), with his brothers, although according to Groucho it was screened only once and then lost. Four years later, Harpo appeared without his brothers as the "Village Peter Pan" in Too Many Kisses, which predated the brothers' first collaborative film, The Cocoanuts. by four years. The Cocoanuts was the first of the Marx's many talkies, and also the first film to use an overhead camera shot, at least five years before Busby Berkeley is said to have first used the technique in his 1936 film Lullaby of Broadway to film a kaleidoscopic women's dance routine. In Too Many Kisses, Harpo spoke the only line he ever spoke on-camera in a film, saying "You sure you can't move?" to the film's tied-up hero before punching him; however, it was a silent film, and the audience only saw his lips move and the line on a title card.
Harpo was often cast as Chico's eccentric partner-in-crime, whom he would often help by playing charades to tell of Groucho's problem, and/or annoy by giving Chico his leg, as an alternative to a handshake or simply to rest the leg.
Harpo became known for prop-laden sight gags, in particular the seemingly infinite number of odd things stored in his topcoat's oversized pockets. In the film Horse Feathers (1932), Groucho, referring to an impossible situation, tells Harpo that he cannot "burn the candle at both ends"; Harpo immediately produces from within his coat pocket a candle burning at both ends. In the same film, a homeless man on the street asks Harpo for money for a cup of coffee; he produces a steaming cup, complete with saucer, from inside his coat. Also in Horse Feathers, he has a fish and a sword, and when he wants to go to his speakeasy, he stabs the fish in its mouth with his sword to give the password, "Swordfish". In Duck Soup, he produces a lit blowtorch to light a cigar.
Harpo often used facial expressions and mime to get his point across instead of speaking. One of his facial expressions, which he used in every Marx Brothers film and stage play, beginning with Fun in Hi Skule, was known as "the Gookie"; Harpo mimicked the expression of Mr. Gehrke, a New York tobacconist who made a similar face while concentrating on rolling cigars.