The Four Marx Brothers
One hundred years ago today .. Vaudeville stars the Four Marx Brothers (as their act was called) were playing at the New Brighton Theater in Coney Island, performing their variety show On the Mezzanine Floor.
The Brooklyn Times Union reviewed the show on the day in 1921:
The Four Marx Brothers, mixers de luxe of every kind of fun from the parlor variety to the slapstick shade carry of the headline honors in this week's excellent bill at the New Brighton, with their extraordinary melange of most everything, “On the Mezzanine Floor." This quartette which come close to the crown in the kingdom of comedy, is seen in its best effort, and one that brings forth every kind of laugh from every type and manner of antic, song, joke and dance.
(Brooklyn Times Union, 12 July 1921, p. 4. Newspapers.com.)
New Brighton Theater and Casino, 1912. The Brooklyn Public Library.
The Marx Brothers were having an eventful 1921. Their film debut, Humor Risk, a short movie filmed in New Jersey and 10th Avenue the previous year, had screened in April.
New-York Tribune, 10 April, 1921, III.2. Newspapers.com.
The film, its title a play on Fanny Hurst book and movie Humoresque (see our posts from last June) was a bust, and the Marx Brothers disavowed it for the rest of their careers. All copies are presumed lost; the Marx Brothers themselves would put out the word that it was such an embarrassment that they had the movie destroyed (Adamson 56). The Marx Brothers would wait until the advent of talkies to make their next film, eight years later.
– Jonathan Goldman, July 12, 2021
TAGS: vaudeville, comedy, theater, silent movies