Harpo Speaks! Quotes

“(The most fascinating performer I knew in those days was a dame named Metcalfe who was a female female impersonator: To maintain the illusion and keep her job, she had to be a male impersonator when she wasn’t on. Onstage she wore a wig, which she would remove at the finish, revealing her mannish haircut. “Fooled you!” she would boom at the audience in her husky baritone. Then she would stride off to her dressing room and change back to men’s clothes. She fooled every audience she played to, and most of the managers she worked for, but her secret was hard to keep from the rest of the company. Every time she went to the men’s room, half the guys on the bill would pile in after her.)”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“When you lose something irreplaceable, you don´t mourn for the thing you lost. You mourn for yourself.”
― Harpo Marx, Harper speaks

“Champaign, Illinois. The critic in the Champaign-Urbana paper wrote something like: “The Marx Brother who plays `Patsy Brannigan’ is made up and costumed to a fare-thee-well and he takes off on an Irish immigrant most amusingly in pantomime. Unfortunately the effect is spoiled when he speaks.” Then he went on to discuss minor points, like the climax of Home Again being the most thrilling scene ever witnessed in Champaign, etc.
When I read the review I knew Uncle Al had been right. I simply couldn’t outtalk Groucho or Chico, and it was ridiculous of me to try. It was a cruel blow to my pride nevertheless. When I announced to Minnie that I would never speak another word onstage, she knew I had been hurt, and she looked at me with sorrow and sympathy. But she didn’t say, “Forget it-what does he know?” She said nothing.
I went silent. I never uttered another word, onstage or in front of a camera, as a Marx Brother.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“That weekend, at the Kaufmans’, we got into a hot session of croquet.
During a game one of the servants came to the court to announce that two ladies from the Society of Friends were in the house, keeping their appointment with Mrs. Kaufman. Beatrice excused herself-she’d forgotten the date, something to do with local charities-and said she’d only be gone a few minutes.
Half an hour passed. George was getting edgy. It would be his shot as soon as the game resumed, and he was in a good position to win. He couldn’t wait any longer. He went inside to rescue Beatrice from the Quakers. Twenty minutes passed. No Beatrice. No George either. Now I was getting edgy. I looked in the window. There sat both the Kaufmans, cozily sipping tea with the ladies from the Society of Friends. I went to the kitchen and dumped a bottle of ketchup down the front of my shirt and pants. I went to the doorway of the living room, where I stood, dripping ketchup.
“Excuse me, Ma’am,” I said, addressing Beatrice. “I’ve killed the one cat and he’ll be ready for dinner, but I still haven’t caught the other one. Will one be enough?”
The visitors departed in haste, and our game resumed. Beatrice couldn’t stop laughing over the Quakers’ retreat, but George was practically reduced to ashes. He couldn’t get his ball through another wicket, and never did make it to the stake.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“We decided to have lunch on the train. The diner was crowded, and an old lady asked if we minded her taking the fourth chair at our table. That was okay with us. It was only mildly embarrassing to George. He was apprehensive, I could tell, that I might somehow get involved with the old lady and make a scene. But I said nothing to her. I didn’t even look at her.
She finished eating first. The waiter brought her check on a saucer. Still not looking up from my plate, I reached for the saucer, salted and peppered the lady’s check, and ate it. Kaufman twisted in such agony that I was afraid he was going to screw himself through the bottom of the car.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“Acting in Duck Soup, our last picture for Paramount, was the hardest job I ever did. It was the only time I can remember that I worried about turning in a bad performance. The trouble was not with the working hours, the script, the director, or the falls I had to take (I never used a stunt man or a double). The trouble was Adolf Hitler. His speeches were being rebroadcast in America. Somebody had a radio on the set, and twice we suspended shooting to listen to him scream. Hindenburg had died. Hitler was now absolute dictator of Germany. He threatened to scrap the Versailles Treaty and create a German navy and air force. He threatened to grab off Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. He threatened to go beyond the boycott and revoke the citizenship of all Jews.
I never knew until then what the emotion of pure anger was like, how it felt to be sore enough to want to hit somebody in cold blood. A lot of people I knew were shocked that I was so shocked. Nothing would really come of the dictator’s threats, they said. He was all bluff and hot air. His act was nothing more than a bad imitation of that other comic, Mussolini.
I knew better. I had seen faces, those faces in Germany, that most other people had not seen. And now I remembered: I had been tipped off even earlier than that. It was Sam Harris, sweet, gentle Sam, who had opened my eyes to this evil thing festering in Germany, before I sailed for Hamburg in the fall of ‘33. Sam had been reading the news from there, every word of it in every paper he could get hold of, and he had come to a conclusion.
“Harpo,” he said, “that Hitler is not a very nice fellow.” It was the most vicious thing I had ever heard Sam say about another living person.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“I had planned to take my time getting to Moscow after we reached Hamburg, sort of mosey through Germany and see the sights. I did not mosey, however. In Hamburg I saw the most frightening, most depressing sight I had ever seen-a row of stores with Stars of David and the word “Jude” painted on them, and inside, behind half-empty counters, people in a daze, cringing like they didn’t know what hit them and didn’t know where the next blow would come from. Hitler had been in power only six months, and his boycott was already in full effect. I hadn’t been so wholly conscious of being a Jew since my bar mitzvah. It was the first time since I’d had the measles that I was too sick to eat.
I got across Germany as fast as I could go.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“So my little bungalow in the Garden of Allah was a peaceful retreat. It was the best place to practice I ever had-until a piano player moved into a bungalow across from mine and shattered the peace.
I was looking forward to a solid weekend of practice, without interruptions, when my new neighbor started to bang away. I couldn’t hear anything below a forte on the harp. There were no signs the piano banging was going to stop. It only got more overpowering. This character was warming up for a solid weekend of practice too.
I went to the office to register a complaint. One of us had to go, I said, and it wasn’t going to be me because I was there first. But the management didn’t see it my way. The new guest, whose playing was driving me nuts, was Sergei Rachmaninoff. They were not about to ask him to move.
I was flattered to have such a distinguished neighbor, but I still had to practice. So I got rid of him my own way.
I opened the door and all the windows in my place and began to play the first four bars of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor, over and over, fortissimo. Two hours later my fingers were getting numb. But I didn’t let up, not until I heard a thunderous crash of notes from across the way, like the keyboard had been attacked with a pair of sledge hammers.
Then there was silence.
This time it was Rachmaninoff who went to complain. He asked to be moved to another bungalow immediately, the farthest possible from that dreadful harpist. Peace returned to the Garden.
I didn’t really know until much later how sharp my intuition had been. I found out that the great pianist and composer detested his Prelude in C-sharp Minor. He considered it a very Minor piece of work. He was haunted by it everywhere he went, by students who butchered it and by audiences who clamored for it, and he wished he’d never written it. After playing the damn thing nonstop for two hours I knew exactly how he felt.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“Not long after this, I felt in the mood for another good deed. The beneficiary this time was Tiffany’s, the famous jewelry store on Fifth Avenue. Tiffany’s, I told myself, was too stuffy for its own good, and something had to be done about it.
I bought a bag full of fake emeralds, rubies and diamonds, at Woolworth’s, then went to Tiffany’s. I asked to look at some diamonds. The clerk pulled out a tray of stones, and while I looked at them I turned over the bag from Woolworth’s, behind my back. Jewels went spilling and bouncing all over the joint. Bells rang. Buzzers buzzed. Store detectives appeared out of the woodwork, hustled out all the other customers and locked the doors. Meanwhile the whole sales staff, including the manager, in cutaway coat and striped trousers, were down on their hands and knees retrieving my sparkling gems.
When they were all collected and put in my hat, the manager saw they were phony, every one of them. The attitude of Tiffany’s changed abruptly. The store dicks hustled me out the door, with the recommendation that I never return to the premises. On the way out, for a final touch, I tipped the doorman a giant ruby.
Tiffany’s, I found out, had a long memory. Five years later I went back there to make a legitimate purchase, some silver for a wedding present. The minute I stepped into the store, two detectives recognized me and grabbed me. I convinced them I was carrying no fake jewels. Nevertheless, they stood close by while I bought the gift, and followed me to the door with visible signs of relief.
On the way out, I tipped the doorman a giant ruby.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“When I got back to New York I found I hadn’t lost the old touch. The first day in town, Chico and I took a stroll through Times Square and, having nothing better to do, decided to sell money to a policeman.
We stopped a friendly looking cop in front of Lindy’s and asked if he’d like to buy some used cash, cheap. He gave us a tolerant smile, winked, and walked on. We stopped him again. Chico flashed a dollar bill and said our special introductory offer was one buck for ninety cents. He gave the cop the dollar. The cop thought for a minute, rubbed the bill, then gave Chico ninety cents. Next we offered him a two-dollar bill for one-seventy. He bought the two-dollar bill.
It was obvious he was humoring us along until he could decide whether we were a couple of nuts or a team of con artists. It was also obvious that he liked the bargains he was getting. But by the time we offered him a five-spot for four-fifty, he was convinced that something fishy was going on. He said he was going to haul us both in, unless we told him what our racket was.
Chico shrugged and gave him a cheerful grin. “No racket, officer,” he said. “We just like to sell money, that’s all.”
The cop muttered that he was right in the first place-a couple of nuts. He got away from us as fast as he could.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“Our favorite indoor sport was the game of Murder. A session of Murder would begin at cocktail time and sometimes last all the way through dinner. It goes like this:
We start by drawing lots to pick the District Attorney. Then we draw to see who will be-known only to himself-the Murderer. This done, the D.A. retreats and the rest of us go on with cocktails and small talk, wandering around the clubhouse, warming ourselves by the fireplace, reading, or strolling outside to admire the sunset. As soon as the Murderer manages to be alone with somebody else, he points to him and says: “You are dead.” The Victim slumps down, forbidden by the rules of the game to leave the spot of the crime or make any sound until he is discovered.
When the Victim is discovered-usually along about dinnertime -the D.A. is called in to begin the investigation. Everybody is a suspect. Every suspect, except the Murderer, has to answer truthfully, to his best recollection, where he was at any given time prior to the discovery of the crime, what he was doing, and with whom. The D.A.’s job is to deduce from the pattern of answers and alibis who is lying, and is therefore the Murderer. It’s a marvelous game.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The only disagreeable thing about England, that trip, was the climate. It was chilly and damp when we got there and it kept getting chillier and damper. I never once got really warm, outdoors or in. Chico and I shared an apartment near the theatre, where the only heat came from an open coal grate. Our last night there was the coldest yet. As the last of our scuttle of coal was burning out, we decided the only way we could keep from freezing was to bundle up in all the clothes we had with us and stay up and play pinochle, instead of going to bed. But the chill came creeping through every layer of every shirt, sweater, suit, raincoat and overcoat we had on.
“What the hell,” said Chico. “We can’t die of pneumonia our last night here. That would be ungrateful, after all they’ve done for us.” So saying, he pulled a drawer out of the dresser, stomped on it and smashed it and threw the sticks in the fire. We played two hands of pinochle, then it got cold again.
We burned up the rest of the drawers, one by one. Then the bureau itself had to go. Next we threw on the chairs and played cards standing up. Before dawn the fire began to die again. We broke up the table and piled it on the fire and had to finish the pinochle game sitting on the floor.
We took off for the boat-train first thing in the morning, too early to wake up the landlord to tell him good-bye and thank him for a pleasant stay. But we left him a note, and enough dough to replace all the extra firewood we had burned. We left the note on the mantelpiece-which we hadn’t been able to rip from the wall, although, God knows, we tried.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“Frenchie watched all our performances from the middle of the house. He didn’t have to start any laughs, but he did meet some interesting people.
One matinee he sat next to a guy who kept shaking his head during the act. Frenchie asked him what his trouble was. The guy said he was feeling sorry for the boy on the stage, the one with the red curly hair who played on the harp.
Why did he feel sorry for him?
Why, because the poor boy couldn’t talk. He was a mute. And it was a crime and a shame to make a kid with an affliction like that work in vaudeville and make a fool of himself in front of the public.
Frenchie reassured him that it was all part of the act. Off the stage, Harpo could talk. He was perfectly normal. The stranger knew better. That kid up there was a mute. You could tell from the way he behaved.
Frenchie was getting hot under the collar. He was about to reveal who he was, when the guy said, “You wouldn’t like to make a little bet on it, would you, Mac?”
Indeed Frenchie would. “A dollar-even money?” the guy wanted to know. Frenchie considered this carefully. He was a wild pinochle player, but he was a very timid bettor. A dollar was a lot to gamble at even money. Frenchie shook his head. “I’ll give you two to one,” the guy said.
Frenchie thought: What would Chico say? Chico would say the price wasn’t right. Frenchie shook his head. The guy was pretty sure of himself now. He raised the odds again, and again. Finally Frenchie agreed they had a bet, at five to one. For a price like that he could take a chance.
“How are we going to prove it so you’ll know I’m right?” the guy asked, and Frenchie said they would go backstage after the show and talk to Harpo. “They won’t let us go backstage at the Palace,” the guy said, and Frenchie said, “Sure, why nod?” The two of them came into the dressing room after the show. “Hoppo,” said Frenchie, “I wand you to meed a frent of mine.” I shook hands with the stranger and said that any friend of my father’s was a friend of mine. The stranger laughed. He handed Frenchie a five-spot and said it was a dirty trick but it was worth it if I’d give him my autograph. Frenchie couldn’t understand why the fellow called it “a dirty trick.” It was a legal bet, they had shook hands on it, and he had won it fair and square.
Chico, when he heard the full story, was never prouder of his father.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The only one of us who couldn’t tolerate the mad life day in and day out was Groucho. Groucho had to have privacy, to read. For hours at a time he would read in his Elgin roadster, parked on 33rd Street. Once he finished a book sitting in his car in a garage, while it was hoisted up on chains, being repaired.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“In Rockford, the four of us and a monologist named Art Fisher started up a game of five-card stud, between shows.
At that time there was a very popular comic strip called “Knocko the Monk,” and as a result there was a rash of stage names that ended in “o.” On every bill there would be at least one Bingo, Zingo, Socko, Jumpo or Bumpo.
There must have been a couple of them on the bill with us in Rockford and we must have been making cracks about them, because when Art Fisher started dealing a poker hand he said, “A hole card for- ‘Harpo.’ A card for-’Chicko.’ One for-” Now that he’d committed himself, he had to pass “o-names” all around the table.
The first two had been simple. I played the harp and my older brother chased the chicks. For a moment Art was stuck. Then he continued the deal. A card for “Groucho” (he carried his dough in a grouch-bag), and finally a card for “Gummo” (he had a gumshoe way of prowling around backstage and sneaking up on people).
We stuck with the gag handles for the rest of the game and that, we thought, was that. It wasn’t. We couldn’t get rid of them. We were Chicko, Harpo, Groucho and Gummo for the rest of the week, the rest of the season, and the rest of our lives.
Later, when we decided to make it official, and have our Art Fisher names put on the program, the typesetter made a mistake, and left the “k” out of Chicko. The power of the printed word being what it is, “Chico” is the way it has been spelled ever since.
Still later, Gummo left the act and was replaced by Herbie, the baby of the family. Herbie, since he was always chinning himself and practicing acrobatics, we named “Zippo.” “Mr. Zippo” was the star of a famous trained chimpanzee act. Our Zippo, understandably, felt that we were being very unflattering, and he insisted on spelling his stage name “Zeppo.”
You never could tell what you might be dealt in a poker game in those days.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The Kalamazoo trouble occurred at my entrance. I came on as Patsy (twenty years older, with the same ratty red wig, turtle-neck sweater and blacked-out teeth, but with long pants on), carrying a trash can.
MR. GREEN (who has miraculously lost his German accent somewhere during the intermission): And who might you be, my good fellow?
PATSY: Why, Patsy Brannigan, the Garbage Man.
MR. GREEN: Sorry, we don’t need any.
In Kalamazoo, like every place else, this got a laugh. But because of it, we got fired off the bill. The owner of the theatre came back and uttered those fearful words of doom: “You’re shut!”
It was hardly our fault. We didn’t know the current scandal in Kalamazoo-which was that the theatre owner’s wife had just run off to Escanaba with a city garbage collector.
We were shut, but we still got a good review in the local paper.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“I soon learned what the main pitfall was in saving money. It wasn’t temptation, or the lack of will power. It was Chico Marx. Chico could smell money. Hiding my savings at home, anywhere in the flat, was useless. Chico always found it sooner or later.
Once I thought I had him outsmarted. I sold a wagonload of junk over on the West Side, items I had selected off a moving van hitched in front of a house on Both Street. The junk dealer gave me ten cents cash, the most I ever made on a single wagonload.
I swore that this dime would not wind up in Chico’s pocket. For once I was sure it wouldn’t, because I had finally found the perfect hiding place. In our bedroom there was a small tear in the wallpaper, near the ceiling. Before Chico came home that night I stood on the dresser and pasted my dime to the wall under the flap of the torn paper. It was a slick job. I went to bed with a feeling of security.
Next morning when I got up there was a bigger rip in the paper than before. My dime was gone and so was Chico. Chico was the only person I ever knew who could smell money through wallpaper. Maybe he didn’t have much of an ear for music, but he had a hell of a nose for currency.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The cops could invent all kinds of trouble to get you into.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“There were two true aristocrats in our neighborhood, Mr. Ruppert and Mr. Ehret, the owners of the big breweries. Jake Ruppert’s mansion was on the corner of 93rd and Park Avenue. This was a fabulous place to me, for the principal reason that Ruppert’s garden contained a row of peach trees, which once a year bore lovely, luscious peaches.
Ruppert’s garden also contained two huge watchdogs who ranged along the inside of the iron spiked fence, on the alert for peach poachers. It was the theory of Ruppert’s caretaker that the dogs would be more vicious if they were kept hungry. This theory backfired. I used to hustle a bag of fat and meat scraps from a butcher, feed the starving dogs through the fence until they got friendly and sleepy, then shinny over the spikes and fill my shirt with ripe peaches.
No fruit ever tasted so sweet as stolen fruit, which was about the only kind I ever had until I became, at the age of eleven, a fulltime working man.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“Oddly enough, winter had fewer hardships for me than summer did. I could always find a warm spot somewhere when it was cold. But when the city was hot, it was hot through and through, and there was no cool spot to be found.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“There was no such character as “the kindly cop on the beat” in New York in those days. The cops were sworn enemies. By the same token we, the street kids, were the biggest source of trouble for the police. Individually and in gangs we accounted for most of the petty thievery and destruction of property on the upper East Side. And since we couldn’t afford to pay off the cops in the proper, respectable Tammany manner, they hounded us, harassed us, chased us, and every chance they got, happily beat the hell out of us.
One way, the only way, that all of us kids stuck together regardless of nationality was in our cop-warning system. Much as I loathed and feared the Mickie gang or the Bohunk gang, I’d never hesitate to give them the high-sign if I spotted a copper headed their way. They’d do the same for me and the other 93rd Streeters.
The cops had their system, too. If a patrolman came upon a gang fight or a front-stoop crap game and needed reinforcements in a hurry, he’d bang his nightstick on the curb. This made a sharp whoinnng that could be heard by cops on other beats throughout the precinct, and they’d come a-running from all directions, closing in a net around the point the warning came from.
In my time I was grabbed, nabbed, chewed out and shin-whacked by the cops, but never arrested. This may sound miraculous, considering all the kinds of trouble I was able to get into, but it wasn’t. My Uncle Sam the auctioneer, don’t forget, was a wheel in Tammany Hall. Nephews of men in the Organization did not get arrested.
For another thing, the cops went mostly for the gangs, the most conspicuous targets, and I was not a gang boy. I was a lone wolf. This made me, in turn, more conspicuous to the gangs. Gang boys couldn’t tolerate loners. They called me a “queer” and worse. Today, I guess, a kid like me would get all kinds of special attention from the authorities. They’d call me an “antisocial nonconformist”-and worse.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“I've been lucky enough, in my time, to do a number of things most people never get around to doing.
I've played piano in a whore house. I've smuggled secret papers out of Russia. I've spent an evening on the divan with Peggy Hopkins Joyce. I've taught a gangster mob how to play Pinchie Winchie. I've played croquet with Bayard Swope while he kept Governor Al Smith waiting on the phone. I've gambled with Nick the Greek, sat on the floor with Greta Garbo, sparred with Benny Leonard, horsed around with the Prince of Wales, played Ping-Pong with George Gershwin. George Bernard Shaw has asked me for advice. Oscar Levant has played private concerts for me at a buck a throw. I have golfed with Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. I've basked on the Riviera with Somerset Maugham and Else Maxwell. I've been thrown out of the casino at Monte Carlo.
Flush with triumph at the poker table, I've challenged Alexander Woollcott to anagrams and Alice Duer Miller to a spelling match. I've given lessons to some of the world's greatest musicians. I've been a member of the two most famous Round Tables since the days of King Arthur-sitting with the finest creative minds of the 1920's at the Algonquin in New York, and with Hollywood's sharpest professional wits at the Hillcrest.
The truth is, I had no business doing any of these things. I couldn't read a note of music. I never finished the second grade. But I was having too much fun to recognize myself as an ignorant upstart.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“I don’t know whether my life has been a success or a failure. But not having any anxiety about becoming one instead of the other, and just taking things as they came along, I’ve had a lot of extra time to enjoy life.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“When you lose something irreplaceable, you don’t mourn for the thing you lost. You mourn for yourself.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The time comes, like it or not, when a man has to stop kidding himself that he's as young as he feels.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks - the Riotous Autobiography Of Harpo Marx

“Money isn’t everything, but the lack of money isn’t anything.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“Sometimes, when things got dull and the family was flat broke, I served as Grandpa’s assistant. Because the language barrier was too great for him, Grandpa never worked in America as a ventriloquist or magician. For some reason unknown to me, he took to umbrella mending, door-to-door, whenever he needed quick cash.
On his rounds, Grandpa carried a tool kit and a tin can on a wire sling. In the can were coals of charcoal. To get the charcoal white-hot for the soldering iron, the can had to be swung around and around, to fan the fire. My special job with Grandpa was Tin Can Swinger.
Grandpa’s umbrella business petered out after a few years. People got wise to the fact they could buy new umbrellas for the prices he charged to mend old ones. I was sorry. Tin Can Swinging was one occupation I could have stuck at permanently. It was fun.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The passing of an ordinary man is sad. The passing of a great man is tragic, and doubly tragic when the greatness passes before the man does.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

“The tenement at 179 [East 93rd Street, NYC] was the first real home I can remember. Until we moved there we had lived like gypsies, never traveling far -- in fact never out of the neighborhood -- but always moving, haunted and pursued by eviction notices, attachments, and glinty-eyed landlord's agents. The Marxes were poor, very poor. We were always hungry. And we were numerous. But thanks to the amazing spirit of my father and my mother, poverty never made any of us depressed or angry. My memory of my earliest years is vague but pleasant, full of the sound of singing and laughter, and full of people I loved.”
― Harpo Marx, HARPO SPEAKS!

“I don't know whether my life has been a success or a failure. But not having any anxiety about becoming one instead of the other, and just taking things as they came along, I've had a lot of extra time to enjoy life.”
― Harpo Marx, HARPO SPEAKS!