Comedian Groucho Marx was born Julius Marx on 2 October 1895 [?] in New York City to Samuel and Minna Marx. Between 1908 and 1924 he toured vaudeville, teaming at various times with his mother, his aunt, and his four brothers: Gummo, Zeppo, Harpo, and Chico.
Groucho made his theatre debut in 1924 in the New York production of I'll Say She Is. He later appeared with his brothers in Cocoanuts (1925) and Animal Crackers (1928). In 1931 he performed at the Palace in the London production of Varieties. Returning to the United States, he played in a 1934 summer stock production of Twentieth Century before returning to do vaudeville in Minneapolis in 1936 and Detroit in 1940.
His first films were adaptions of his Broadway hits, Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930). These were followed by Oh, For a Man! (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), Duck Soup (1933), A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), Room Service (1938), Go West (1940), The Big Store (1941), A Night in Casablanca (1946), Copa Cabana (1947), Mr. Music (1950), Love Happy (1950), Double Dynamite (1951), Behave Yourself (1951), A Girl in Every Port (1952), The Story of Mankind (1957), and Skidoo (1968).
Groucho's radio credits include performances on Kellogg's Circle in 1939 and Blue Ribbon Town in 1943. He served as quizmaster on You Bet Your Life (1947-1951) for which he won a Peabody Award as Best Comedian in 1949.
When NBC adapted You Bet Your Life to television, Groucho continued as quizmaster, winning an Emmy in 1951 and the Motion Picture Daily's Annual TV Poll from 1951 through 1954 for his role. Among his other television credits are The Mikado for Bell Telephone Hour in 1960, Merrily We Roll Along for Dupont Show of the Month in 1961, and two series: Tell It To Groucho (1962) and Open End (1963).
A writer as well as an actor, Groucho co-authored The King and the Chorus Girl (1937), a screenplay for a Warner Brothers film. In 1948 he collaborated with Norman Krasner on Time For Elizabeth, a play first produced in New York in 1948; it was also performed by summer stock companies as late as 1957. He also wrote the books Many Happy Returns (1942), Groucho and Me (1959), Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1964), and The Groucho Letters (1967).
He has been married four times and has three children.
