Zeppo, p.9
Zeppo, page 9
An item in the Brooklyn Daily Star said they met at Paramount where Marion was costarring in a film with Thomas Meighan. Since Zeppo likely only worked at Paramount for a day or two filming his brief appearance in A Kiss in the Dark, there’s an incredibly small window when this could have taken place in early 1925. But it becomes even more unlikely when considering that there is no evidence of Marion ever appearing in any Famous Players-Lasky films at Paramount, let alone starring with Thomas Meighan, who was a big star at the time. If she worked at Paramount at all it would have been as an uncredited extra.1
Marion Ruth Bimberg was born on December 6, 1903, in New York City. Her Russian immigrant parents, Rebecca and Louis Bimberg, were living the American dream. Louis was prospering with the American Oilcloth Company, a business he cofounded in 1900 and owned with his brother Alexander. He and Rebecca had two more children—Jessie Sarah, born in 1906, and Alan Joseph, born in 1908. The family settled in an affluent section of Brooklyn before moving to White Plains, an upscale Westchester suburb. But Louis was involved in a scandal when Marion was ten years old that put everything the Bimbergs had in jeopardy.
On March 28, 1914, Louis and Alexander Bimberg were arrested on a train while traveling through Trenton, New Jersey. They had been implicated in an arson plot. The manager of their Salem, New Jersey, plant claimed that the Bimberg brothers agreed to pay him $10,000 to burn down the plant so they could collect on an insurance policy. The claim was made solely by the plant manager, Joseph Campbell, who told authorities he had a signed contract with the Bimbergs for the arson job. Despite this seemingly ridiculous piece of evidence—who signs a document agreeing to pay someone to torch their business?—the brothers were put in jail and could not raise the $30,000 bail. Eventually the bail was reduced, and they were released after spending several weeks in prison awaiting their trial. The plant—which was never actually burned down—had been closed when the Bimberg brothers were arrested. They sold the American Oilcloth Company in August 1914. The company was reported to be worth $300,000 but was sold for $100,000.
After a couple of postponements, the trial finally concluded in a hung jury in March 1915. Evidence against the brothers included a phony audio recording of them allegedly planning the crime with Campbell. It became clear that the Bimberg brothers had been framed by their own stockholders, who were attempting to take over the company. They were fortunate to get a jury that recognized the dubious quality of the evidence. The charges were finally dropped in January 1916, but Louis Bimberg’s reputation and finances were in tatters. He did manage to hang on to some Manhattan real estate and briefly lived in an upper west side apartment. He may have been asked to leave the family home by an unsympathetic Rebecca who was ashamed of her husband even though he was exonerated. He persevered and started his own linoleum business. Soon the family was living on West 96th Street in an apartment large enough for the five of them and two live-in servants. The 1925 New York State census lists the Bimberg family living on West 86th Street and shows all three of the children as college students. But Marion had left college to pursue a stage career by 1922.
From September 1922 to April 1923 Marion was enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the first acting school in the United States. It was founded in 1884 by Franklin Haven Sargent, a Harvard University speech and elocution professor, and therefore was commonly known as the Sargent School. During Marion’s time at the school, Spencer Tracy was also enrolled. Among the numerous illustrious graduates of the Sargent School are Edward G. Robinson, Cecil B. DeMille, William Powell, Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Pat O’Brien. An audition was required to get in and it was not inexpensive. Presumably Louis Bimberg still had some money after his earlier financial downfall.
Marion likely appeared in the Sargent School’s productions at the Lyceum Theatre but made her proper professional debut shortly after the end of her second semester. She got a job with the Harder and Hall Stock Company and appeared at the Trent Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, from May to July 1923 in a variety of productions as part of the Trent Players. She then got a small part in the comedy Home Fires, which had a brief Connecticut tryout run in Stamford and New Haven before opening a forty-nine-performance run on Broadway at the 39th Street Theater on August 20, 1923. The show moved briefly to the Ambassador Theatre shortly before closing. Marion had gone from completing two semesters in acting school to a part in a Broadway show in four months. Home Fires closed on September 29 and Marion quickly got another part. She was hired by well-known producer Jules Hurtig for his new comedy, Fraid Cat. For a brief time, stardom must have seemed within Marion’s reach. But after November tryouts in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Allentown, Patchogue, and Wilmington, Fraid Cat closed without making it to Broadway.2
Marion next joined the cast of the hit drama Tarnish, which starred Fred-ric March, at the Belmont Theatre on March 24, 1924, but only appeared for the last six weeks of the seven-month run. She did not travel with the cast of Tarnish for an extended Chicago run that summer, but her brief association with the show was significant enough to be mentioned in the New York Times announcement of her engagement. She remained in New York, where at some point, she met Zeppo, who had just returned from the post-Broadway tour of I’ll Say She Is in June 1925. They discovered a shared love of horses and went riding early in their courtship. (Marion was an experienced rider, having been given lessons as a young girl. Her equestrian interests were not dampened by an early accident in which she broke her back when thrown from a horse.) Their romance was interrupted in October when Zeppo went back on the road for the out-of-town tryouts of The Cocoanuts in Boston and Philadelphia. While Zeppo was in rehearsals for The Cocoanuts that summer, Marion got a part in a show called Mission Mary that was to open in October, but she was cut from the cast before the out-of-town tryouts. Just as well because the show never made it to Broadway. Marion rejoined the cast of Tarnish in December for brief runs in Toronto and Baltimore. By the time she got back to New York in January 1926, The Cocoanuts was a month into its 276-performance Broadway run.
Exactly how Zeppo and Marion met is a mystery with many conflicting clues. Several newspaper items have vastly different explanations—all presumably provided by Zeppo and Marion, likely through the publicist for The Cocoa-nuts. There’s much confusion surrounding Marion’s stage career because there were two women working in New York theater using the stage name Marion Benda during this period. It was this other Marion Benda who appeared in The Ziegfeld Follies and dated Rudolph Valentino.3 Zeppo’s fiancée would occasionally be erroneously placed by the press in The Ziegfeld Follies. If Marion protested, it wasn’t too vigorously. Padding her résumé could only help further her ambitions. The circumstances of Zeppo meeting Marion become even murkier with the questionable suggestion from Maxine Marx that Marion was Betty Marx’s cousin. Marion and Betty were both children of Russian immigrants, but if they were indeed related, they were probably distant cousins at best.
When Zeppo and Marion eventually married, the Universal Service press syndicate sent out an item with the headline “Marx Brother Weds Musical Comedy Star” datelined April 12, 1927. The article provides another version of the couple’s first meeting. “The young comedian first saw Miss Benda when she played opposite Thomas Meighan in a motion picture. He met her a year later and persuaded her to desert the films for the stage.” The reality is that the actress formerly known as Marion Bimberg had a very minor, if not promising, stage career before meeting Zeppo. There’s no evidence of her doing any film work. She had not appeared in any musicals nor was she a star. The Universal Service article surprisingly acknowledges the falsehood of its own headline in its final paragraph: “Marion Benda of Rio Rita—no relation to Zeppo’s bride—was showered with phone calls, notes, telegrams and flowers today congratulating her.” It is one of the very rare instances of the press pointing out that there were two women named Marion Benda active at the time, and that the one who was a musical comedy star was not the future bride of Zeppo Marx.
When Zeppo and Marion announced their engagement in August, news of Marion being cast in the Chicago company of the Broadway hit Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em was noted. The show had opened on Broadway on February 1, 1926, at the Sam Harris Theatre and it seems that Marion may have briefly had a small part—perhaps through the influence of her new boyfriend, who was appearing in a hit show produced by Harris. But there is no documentation of her being in the Broadway cast. She may not have even been in the Chicago production, which opened on August 29. If she took the job, she only had it briefly because she joined the road company of The Cocoanuts and opened with the show in Washington on September 20.
The Marx Brothers had instituted a “no wives in the act” rule because of some friction caused by Ruth and Betty, but Marion, not yet a wife at this point, was given special consideration—partly because she was an experienced actress who had been getting work on her own, and partly because his brothers were aware of Zeppo’s growing desire to get out of show business. They wanted to keep him as happy as possible, since he was still a salaried employee, and they were being paid phenomenal sums of money as Broadway stars. It was important for them to keep the name of the Four Marx Brothers intact, and it would remain this way while Minnie Marx was still around. Having Zeppo’s fiancée in the chorus was much easier than giving him a piece of the action or having him leave the act. For Marion, being on the road with Zeppo would have an added benefit. She’d be able to keep an eye on him. Since joining his brothers on the road, Zeppo had become a very prolific protégé to his brother Chico in the womanizing department. But if Zeppo was anything like Chico, a fiancée couldn’t slow him down. Chico prided himself on his ability to outfox Betty. Zeppo studied under a master.
After single weeks in Washington, Baltimore, and Cincinnati, The Cocoa-nuts settled in for a ten-week run in Chicago. The cast celebrated Christmas in Milwaukee and rang in the new year in St. Louis. The next three months took the show all over the Midwest. When The Cocoanuts finally got close to New York for a week in Newark, New Jersey, Zeppo and Marion decided not to wait for the end of the tour. The show opened at the Shubert Theatre in Newark on April 11, 1927. The following afternoon, Zeppo and Marion were married at the Chalfonte Hotel on West 70th Street in Manhattan. Two days later, under a photo of the newlyweds, a caption in the Brooklyn Citizen provided yet another completely fabricated version of the circumstances of Zeppo and Marion meeting, saying they “resumed a childhood romance when they met again in The Cocoanuts.” After the ceremony the wedding party hurried back to Newark for the evening performance. In lieu of a honeymoon, the happy couple spent the next seven weeks with The Cocoanuts in Brooklyn, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and finally New York, where the tour ended on June 4 at the Century Theatre. A month later press reports indicated that Zeppo would be producing vaudeville acts for the Keith-Albee circuit with prominent agent M. S. Bentham, who numbered among his clients W. C. Fields, Clark and McCullough, Bert Lahr, and future Marx Brothers film costars Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton. But there’s no indication that Zeppo was ever involved in a Bentham production.
After nearly four months off, The Cocoanuts was set to go back on the road for a second season of touring. This time the show would make it to the West Coast where the Four Marx Brothers planned to explore movie opportunities. Marion did well enough during her first season on the road to earn a promotion. She was relieved of chorus work and took a featured role in the show—a role that required her to do more on stage than her husband.4 Zeppo may have wanted to get out of show business, but he now had an ambitious wife angling for stardom. Marion was being promoted—certainly with help from the show’s publicist—as a rising star. A November 24, 1927, newspaper clipping promoting the show’s upcoming week at the Broadway Theatre in Denver was carefully preserved in Marion’s collection of memorabilia from her stage career. The headline of the article states, “Miss Benda Entered Musical Comedy by Romance Route.” It provides yet another variation on the story of how Zeppo and Marion met.
Miss Benda gave up the dramatic stage for musical comedy when Cupid entered the scene. And the story of the romance of Marion Benda and Zeppo Marx is as good as any fiction. The first time that Zeppo saw Miss Benda was when she was playing the second feminine lead in Tarnish, and he decided then and there that this was a girl he wanted to meet. But Tarnish closed before Zeppo had the opportunity to know her.
Some time passed and one day the Marx brother noticed a girl playing in a film with Thomas Meighan and decided that she was none other than the girl whose acquaintance he had desired to make. This time he decided that there would be no waiting. He went to the Lambs club and asked Meighan about Miss Benda. The next day the cinema star introduced her to Zeppo. At that time, she was working for Paramount in its Astoria studio. That was the beginning of a friendship that led to selection of rings.
Whatever may be true in this account of Zeppo meeting Marion can easily be separated from what is demonstrably untrue. It would have been nearly impossible for Zeppo to have seen Marion in Tarnish. She only appeared in the last 48 of the 255 performances of the show at the Belmont Theatre during its final six weeks on Broadway. For those six weeks Zeppo was on tour with I’ll Say She Is. For Marion’s first week in Tarnish, Zeppo was in Atlantic City and the next week in Washington. The following two weeks find him in Baltimore, and for the closing two weeks of Tarnish he’s in Brooklyn and Philadelphia. The only possible performance Zeppo could have attended would have been the Thursday matinee on April 24, 1924, while I’ll Say She Is was at the Shubert Crescent in Brooklyn, where matinees were on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Tarnish had the unusual schedule of Thursdays and Saturdays for matinees. And this possibility would require the assumption that someone doing eight shows a week would spend an afternoon seeing another show before heading over to Brooklyn for his own performance that evening.
As for the Thomas Meighan angle, there could be something to it because his name comes up frequently in the various tales of Zeppo meeting Marion. But it strains credibility that Meighan would have the ability to immediately contact an extra from a film he’d made as much as a year earlier, although some versions of this tale have Marion still working at the Paramount studio and Meighan introducing them there. In much the same way as the story of Zeppo’s nickname has become a Rashomon-like tale, the meeting of Zeppo Marx and Marion Bimberg will likely remain a collection of contradictory tales describing the same incident. As the press item from Denver pointed out, “the romance of Marion Benda and Zeppo Marx is as good as any fiction.” And if it wasn’t, every effort was made to make it so.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Not the Brightest Light on Broadway
FOR ALL THE EFFORT PUT INTO MARION’S CAREER—both by her and the Marx Brothers’ publicists—it pretty much ended once the second road tour of The Cocoanuts concluded on February 4, 1928, in San Francisco. Five days later, the Four Marx Brothers began a short West Coast vaudeville tour with an abbreviated show consisting mostly of a few highlights from The Cocoanuts and the “Theatrical Manager’s Office” sketch. Marion continued traveling with the company but did not perform in the show they called Spanish Knights. They also brought the show to Chicago where the season ended earlier than usual on April 21, 1928. It had been a whirlwind honeymoon. Mr. and Mrs. Zeppo Marx spent most of the first year of their marriage on the road.
The trip to the West Coast fueled rumors that the Marx Brothers would soon be making movies. First National, Universal, MGM, and United Artists were all mentioned in press reports. There was talk of a screen test and a filmed version of The Cocoanuts. But this was all premature speculation. Zeppo was still interested in finding a better paying job than being the salaried Marx Brother. Rumors about movies and Zeppo’s departure were nothing new. A report in Billboard from November 13, 1926, said, “Zeppo Marx may leave the Four Marx Brothers when the Chicago run of The Cocoanuts is finished. He plans to go into straight comedy.” In theory it would not have been a bad idea for him to work alone or with Marion instead of his brothers—at least financially. But the family pressure to keep the quartet intact won out. After a long summer break there would be a new Marx Brothers show heading for Broadway in the fall of 1928.
Rehearsals for Animal Crackers began in mid-August. Zeppo once again did not complain about the paucity of material created for him by writers George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. Ryskind addressed the situation in an interview for The Marx Bros. Scrapbook: “Kaufman and I would try to throw a line to Zeppo if we had a situation. But there weren’t many of those. We were interested in what the audience was interested in, and they wanted funny scenes. Zeppo was involved with the love story, and nobody cared a lot about love stories.” For the record, Zeppo wasn’t involved in the love story of Animal Crackers. He had not been the “romantic lead” frequently referenced in descriptions of the team since On the Mezzanine, which by the time of Animal Crackers was ancient history. His job was to be there for Groucho to bounce lines off. At least Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby came through with a song that would become a signature number for the Four Marx Brothers. “Four of the Three Musketeers” at a minimum guaranteed Zeppo a moment in the spotlight at every performance of Animal Crackers.
Just before Animal Crackers opened there were reports that a deal had been arranged between the Four Marx Brothers and Paramount on a filmed version of The Cocoanuts. Initially Paramount made a deal with Sam Harris, the producer who held the rights to the show. The studio had to make a separate deal for the services of the Four Marx Brothers, who were represented by the William Morris Agency. William Morris Jr., son of the agency’s founder, was handling negotiations with Paramount. In The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business, author Frank Rose described him: “Morris was a dapper young man, clear-eyed and handsome and stylish enough to invite comparison to Mayor Jimmy Walker and the Prince of Wales. But he wasn’t much of a salesman.” He concluded, “Morris showed less aptitude for agenting than some of his clients.”
