The family had five brothers, although only four (and later three) performed together at a given time. Their subsequent show, The Cocoanuts, was also a success, and was adapted to film, launching one of the greatest series of screen comedies ever made. Their performance caught the positive attention of the theatrical critics as well as the audience, and their relatively haphazard, underfunded show ran for months. Success on the road with I'll Say She Is, a stage revue based in part on their vaudeville routines, continued when the show was brought to Broadway. The troupe was about to disband when a backer willing to fund a legitimate theatre production was found. A disagreement with the executive running the biggest vaudeville circuit at the time exiled them from big-time vaudeville, and sent them into regional touring, which was difficult and draining. Their act quickly incorporated a significant component of what would be referred to today as improv comedy, frequently mocking theatrical clichés and tropes, and they began to move up the ranks of vaudeville performers, eventually reaching the pinnacle of vaudeville fame, performing at New York's Palace theatre. This outraged the team, and they began breaking from their script to abuse the audience, which went over better than they expected with the audience finding it hilarious. They were wild and outrageous, and gut-bustingly hilarious, with the act's three central figures each a master of a different type of humor: verbal (Groucho), ethnic and musical (Chico), and surreal, slapstick pantomime (Harpo).Ī family act, the Marx Brothers went through several incarnations under varying names (including "The Four Nightingales", "The Six Mascots", and others) before an appearance in Texas, where the audience left the theatre during a performance to go watch a mule. They later starred in their own Broadway shows, and subsequently in movies. The Marx Brothers were vaudeville comedians from the early 20th century.
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