Editing Zeppo Marx (section)

==Legacy==
Several critics have challenged the notion that Zeppo did not develop a comic persona in his films. [[James Agee]] considered Zeppo "a peerlessly cheesy improvement on the traditional straight man."<ref>Joe Adamson. ''Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo: A Celebration of the Marx Brothers''. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.</ref> Along similar lines, [[Gerald Mast]], in his book ''The Comic Mind: Comedy and Movies'', noted that Zeppo's comedic persona, while certainly more subtle than his brothers', was undeniably present:

<blockquote>[He] added a fourth dimension as the cliché of the [romantic] juvenile, the bland wooden espouser of sentiments that seem to exist only in the world of the sound stage. ... [He is] too schleppy, too nasal, and too wooden to be taken seriously.<ref>Mast, Gerald. ''The Comic Mind: Comedy and Movies'', pp. 282, 285. University of Chicago Press, 1979.</ref></blockquote>

Reviewing the 1924 play ''I'll Say She Is'', ''[[The New York Daily News]]'' called Zeppo "the obliging audience of the family – the feeder who helps his brothers be funny by playing straight himself."<ref>[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/116043272/again-the-old-casino-rocks-with-laughter/ "Again the Old Casino Rocks with Laughter -- Marx Brothers and "I'll Say She Is" Grand Burlesque".] ''New York Daily News''. May 20, 1924.</ref> When ''[[The New York Times]]'' reviewed the brothers' debut film ''[[The Cocoanuts]]'' in 1929, it ranked all four Marx Brothers equally: "When the four Marx brothers are on the screen, it's a riot." The review also described each brother's unique style of comedy and praised Zeppo as "the handsome but dogged straight man with the charisma of an enamel washstand."<ref>''Cinema Year by Year, 1894–2001''. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2001, p. 205.</ref>

In his essay "The Marx Brothers: From Vaudeville to Hollywood,"<ref name=bader>{{Cite web|url=https://marxbrothers.net/essays/the-marx-brothers-from-vaudeville-to-hollywood/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220924164357/https://marxbrothers.net/essays/the-marx-brothers-from-vaudeville-to-hollywood/|archive-date=September 24, 2022|first=Robert S.|last=Bader|title=The Marx Brothers: From Vaudeville to Hollywood|publisher=The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment|year=2016|via=marxbrothers.net}}</ref> Robert S. Bader observed that the Marx Brothers as a trio without Zeppo should be considered a different comedy team. He noted that "changes in the Marx Brothers' screen personas [were] immediate and apparent" with fewer [[Vaudeville|vaudevillian]] elements, more in tune with standard Hollywood comedies in which "love stories [were] injected in the plots [to] make their films more palatable to female moviegoers." He noted Zeppo's absence in the brothers' new act:

<blockquote>Their zaniness and anarchy would be heavily diluted at M-G-M as the studio found them a wider audience. … These are not vaudeville's Marx Brothers. But in the Paramount films they certainly are the Marx Brothers of the stage – the FOUR Marx Brothers, as Minnie intended them to be. While Zeppo may not be as busy as his brothers, they function best as a quartet. Groucho may have had other capable straight men, but when Zeppo takes a letter to the honorable Charles H. Hoongerdoonger, Marx Brothers fans know he's the best man for the job. … Those five films are one of the last links to the era when vaudeville was the primary form of entertainment in America – and the Four Marx Brothers were packing vaudeville theaters across the country. Of course they were still great as a trio in their later films, but if you want to know what it was like to see them on stage, you need to start with four of them – and their first five films.<ref name=bader/></blockquote>

In her book ''Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho & His Friends'', [[Charlotte Chandler]] defended Zeppo as "the Marx Brothers' interpreter in the worlds they invaded. He was neither totally a straight man nor totally a comedian, but combined elements of both, as did [[Margaret Dumont]]. Zeppo's importance to the Marx Brothers' initial success was as a Marx Brother who could 'pass' as a normal person. None of Zeppo's replacements ([[Allan Jones (actor)|Allan Jones]], [[Tony Martin (American singer)|Tony Martin]] and others) could assume this character as convincingly as Zeppo, because they were actors, and Zeppo was the real thing, cast to type." Chandler's appraisal of Zeppo's role in the films—as an "interpreter" for his older brothers to the audience—was essentially confirmed by Groucho, who once noted that Zeppo's role was "handsome, obtuse, slightly wooden" and that he "brought logic to a basically illogical story," acting as "an intrusion" to their otherwise complete anarchy.<ref>Wilson, Victoria. ''A &nbsp;Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940'', p 427. Simon & Schluster, 2013.</ref>

Zeppo's comic persona was further highlighted in the dictation scene of ''[[Animal Crackers (1930 film)|Animal Crackers]]''. In his book ''Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo'', [[Joe Adamson]] analyzed the scene, detailing how it revealed Zeppo's ability to best Groucho with simple rebuttals. In the scene, Groucho dictates a letter to his lawyer, which Zeppo writes. Adamson noted:

<blockquote>There is a common assumption that Zeppo = Zero, which this scene does its best to contradict. Groucho dictating a letter to anybody else would hardly be cause for rejoicing. We have to believe that someone will be there to accept all his absurdities and even respond somewhat in kind before things can progress free from conflict into this genial mishmash. Groucho clears his throat in the midst of his dictation, and Zeppo asks him if he wants that in the letter. Groucho says, 'No, put it in the envelope.' Zeppo nods. And only Zeppo could even try such a thing as taking down the heading and the salutation and leaving out the letter because it didn't sound important to him. It takes a Marx Brother to pull something like that on a Marx Brother and get away with it.<ref name="Adamson">Joe Adamson, ''Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo: A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World'', Simon & Schuster, Paperback (1983).</ref>{{rp|114}}</blockquote>

In the same book, Adamson noted Zeppo's position as the campy parody of the juvenile romantic in ''[[Horse Feathers]]:''

<blockquote>Each Marx Brother has his own form of comedy. Zeppo is at his funniest when he opens his mouth and sings. It has taken forty years, of course, for the full humor to come across. For a normal comedian this may be bad timing, but for a Marx Brother it's immortality. Almost every crooner of 1932 looks stilted and awkward now, but with Zeppo, who was never very convincing in the first place, the effect crosses the threshold into lovable comedy. "I think you're wonderful!" he oozes charmingly to [[Thelma Todd]], and we ''know'' he never met her before shooting started.<ref name="Adamson"/>{{rp|191}}</blockquote>

Critic Danél Griffin, who praised Zeppo as "that great comic parody of the schleppy juvenile role of the 1920s/30s musicals," believed that the onscreen dynamic between Groucho and Zeppo was one of the "key relationships between the individual Marx Brothers [that] shape their comedic strategy, not counting when the four of them are onstage together." Griffin wrote that Zeppo would often offer ideas that Groucho would cultivate into comedic routines:

<blockquote>Zeppo's onscreen relationship with Groucho has always been tricky to ascertain; Zeppo is generally Groucho's aloof secretary in their films, but he is seemingly capable of reducing Groucho to stunned silence with simple, plain-English rebuttals (see ''[[Animal Crackers (1930 film)|Animal Crackers]]'') when Chico's snappy comebacks only fuel Groucho’s insults all the more. … Zeppo's parts are usually small, but he performs exactly what is required of him as an outwardly wooden fellow who is incapable of being rattled by a man whose business is to rattle.<ref>{{cite web  | last = Griffin  | first = Danél  | title = ''Duck Soup'' review  | work = Film as Art  | publisher = [[University of Alaska Southeast]]  | url = http://uashome.alaska.edu/~dfgriffin/website/ducksoup.htm  | archive-url = https://archive.today/20121203234711/http://uashome.alaska.edu/~dfgriffin/website/ducksoup.htm  | url-status = dead  | archive-date = 2012-12-03  | access-date = 2019-06-08  }}</ref></blockquote>

Allen W. Ellis wrote in his article "Yes, Sir: The Legacy of Zeppo Marx":

<blockquote>Indeed, Zeppo is a link between the audience and Groucho, Harpo and Chico. In a sense, he ''is'' us on the screen. He knows who those guys are and what they are capable of. As he ambles out of a scene, perhaps it is to watch them do their business, to come back in as necessary to move the film along, and again to join in the celebration of the finish. Further, Zeppo is crucial to the absurdity of the Paramount films. The humor is in his incongruity. Typically he dresses like a normal person, in stark contrast to Groucho's greasepaint and 'formal' attire, Harpo's rags, and Chico's immigrant hand-me-downs. By most accounts, he is the handsomest of the brothers, yet that handsomeness is distorted by his familial resemblance to the others – sure, he's handsome, but it is a decidedly peculiar, Marxian handsomeness. By making the group four, Zeppo adds symmetry, and in the surrealistic worlds of the Paramount films, this symmetry upsets rather than confirms balance: it is chaos born of symmetry. That he is a plank in a maelstrom, along with the very concept of 'this guy' who is there for no real reason, who joins in and is accepted by these other three wildmen while the narrative offers no explanation, are wonderful in their pure absurdity. 'To string things together in a seemingly purposeless way,' said [[Mark Twain]], 'and to be seemingly unaware that they are absurd, is the mark of American humor.' The 'sense' injected into the nonsense only compounds the nonsense.<ref>Ellis, Allen W. "Yes, Sir: The Legacy of Zeppo Marx" in ''The Journal of Popular Culture'', Vol. 37, No. 1, 2003, pp. 21-22.</ref></blockquote>

In a eulogy for Zeppo written in 1979 for ''[[The Washington Post]]'', columnist Tom Zito wrote:

<blockquote>Thank goodness for Zeppo, who never really cracked a joke on screen. At least not directly. He just took it from Groucho, in more ways than one. ... If Groucho, Chico and Harpo were the funny guys, Zeppo was the [[Everyman]], the loser who'd come running out of the grocery store only to find the meter maid sticking the parking ticket on his Hungadunga.<ref>Tom Zito, "The Last of the Marxes", ''The Washington Post'': December 1, 1979.</ref></blockquote>

In Marc Eliot's 2005 biography of [[Cary Grant]], Eliot wrote that as a teenager, Grant favored Zeppo:

<blockquote>While the rest of the country preferred Groucho, Zeppo, the good-looking straight man and romantic lead, was Archie's favorite, the one whose foil timing he believed was the real key to the act's success. Not long after, Archie began to augment his already well-practiced "suave" Fairbanks look and dress with a Zeppo-like fancy bowtie (called a jazz-bow, or jazzbo, during the Roaring Twenties) and copied his brilliantine hairstyle, adding Dixie Peach, a favorite pomade of American black performers and show business leads, by the palmful to his thick dark mop, to give it a molded, comb-streaked blue-black Zeppo sheen.<ref>Eliot, Marc. ''Cary Grant: The Biography''. New York: Aurum Press (2005).</ref></blockquote>

In his book ''The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes'', filmmaker [[Rainer Werner Fassbinder]] included Zeppo among the ten greatest film actors of all time.<ref>Fassbinder, R. W. ''The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes''. The Johns Hopkins University Press (September 1, 1992).</ref>

In a June 2016 review of an [[Off-Broadway]] revival of ''[[I'll Say She Is]]'', ''[[The New Yorker]]''{{'}}s [[Adam Gopnik]] wrote:

<blockquote>Matt [Walters], becoming Zeppo, is a reminder that the Marxes were never quite as good again after they lost their one straight man. The object of the Marxes' comedy is anarchy, but its subject is fraternity: they are in it together to the end. Zeppo's inclusion in the family made the others less like clowns and more like brothers.<ref>[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-a-lost-marx-brothers-musical-found-its-way-back-onstage Gopnik, Adam. ''How A Lost Marx Brothers Musical Found Its Way Back Onstage'']. ''[[The New Yorker]]'', June 1, 2016</ref></blockquote>