Harpo speaks, sings and sneezes - Your one-stop guide to the silent one's vocal lapses on film

One of the subjects that comes up most often in our Facebook group is the various occasions on which Harpo does, or might, speak on film.
Whether it is an accidentally recorded slip, or a sly in-joke, the number of suggested examples is greater than you might think.

There are also a couple of notable cases outside of the Marx movie canon itself.
In this edition of The Spike Jones Show, the strange hacking laugh at 7:06 certainly appears to be coming from Harpo. He can also be heard indistinctly mumbling to Jones at 24:13:



This in turn, lends greater credence to the suggestion that it may be his laugh we can hear in this moment from You Bet Your Life (at 0:37): the laugh doesn't sound like anything we might expect to float past the Harpo tonsils... but it does sound like the laugh in The Spike Jones Show... 



Best and least ambiguously, in this newsreel footage from the premiere of The Great Ziegfeld he says "honk, honk!" into the microphone, and can be heard saying "You gotta do the talking" under his breath:

 

Harpo certainly knew that his trademark silence was not something to be abandoned lightly, on camera at least. Once revealed it could never be unheard, which is why he tended to limit planned speaking engagements to the stage. We do now know that the original plans for Room Service were to do it as a proper adaptation of the original play, with a real moustache for Groucho, no Italian accent for Chico and a fully vocal Harpo. But the team had second thoughts and abandoned these plans relatively late into pre-production, probably when it became obvious that their surprise re-signing by MGM meant that the opportunities for experimentation that had first lured them to RKO would now be off the long-term table.
Then there's the claim that Harpo was offered a large sum of money, additional to his salary, to shout "Murder!" in A Night in Casablanca. But not only does he not do so, it is massively unlikely the offer was ever really made - most likely it is, like the notion that Warner Brothers threatened legal action over the title and Groucho destroyed their pretensions in an ongoing correspondence, just another publicity scam dreamed up by producer David Loew.

The following examples, however, all appear in the established canon of 13 official Marx Brothers movies.
We shall weigh up the evidence for each in turn, and then let Harpo himself deliver the verdict...


1. Singing 'My Old Kentucky Home' in Animal Crackers

When the four brothers enter in absurd bathing costumes towards the end of the film, four voices can be heard performing this number. Harpo's lips are clearly moving, but for most of the time he seems to be deliberately hiding behind Groucho. This suggests that he is indeed contributing to the sound, as he would surely have done on stage, but not as an in-joke, hence his furtiveness.

Verdict: Harpo speaks!

2. Singing 'Sweet Adeline' in Monkey Business

Now, of course there is the suggestion of four voices being heard, for the services of the joke. (How do you know there are four stowaways? They were singing Sweet Adeline!) For a long time, however, debate has raged as to whether there really are four voices to be heard or only three. For the longest time I insisted I heard only three: Glenn Mitchell and I fought bloodily and at length over the matter. More recently, however, I have been convinced by Andrea Orlando, whose graphic below, when followed with the soundtrack running, conclusively reveals the presence of the elusive fourth voice:

Of course there is no sure certain way of proving that the other voice is Harpo's, but on the other hand there are no sensible grounds for supposing it isn't. (What's more, there seems to be a degree of in-jokey concealment here, suggesting the exercise is a deliberate tease.) So I think it is reasonable to reach a firm conclusion on this one. Over to Harpo...

Verdict: Harpo speaks!

3. Geeing-up the horse in Horse Feathers

When Pinky first gets in the dust cart and rides away to the big football game, he can clearly be heard signalling to the horse to move off. The only question mark is over whether it is Harpo at all: the face is indistinct, and the action - though not exactly hazardous - is nonetheless something one would expect a stunt double to perform. On the other hand, in the following shot of the horse charging down the street, it does appear to be the real Harpo. Therefore...

Verdict: Harpo's not certain

4. Saying "In the opera" to Chico in A Night at the Opera

Andrea Orlando again, and this one's a real find. When Harpo and Chico first meet at the beginning of the film, Chico asks Harpo, "Where's Riccardo?" Turn it up good and loud: he unquestionably whispers something in reply, and it's almost certainly "in the opera". Now this is interesting: he's not giving Chico any kind of a prompt, so there's no reason why he should say anything. Yet it's not done like an in-joke. I think I like Andrea's suggestion, that it reveals that Harpo has a kind of spoken script in his head at all times, and is "emoting under the constraints of not being able to speak yet knowing exactly what he wants to say." And this time, the words slipped out.
Whatever the explanation, of the fact of the matter there can be no doubt:

Verdict: Harpo speaks!

5. Playing comb and paper in A Night at the Opera

This is one that passes a lot of people by. Obviously there is no question that he is playing the comb and paper in the scene where he and Chico are locked in the brig. But does that require a voice? Try getting a tune out of one using only breath and you'll soon find out!

Verdict: Harpo speaks!

6. Singing 'Down by the Old Mill Stream' in A Day at the Races

Another one that should have leaped out of the screen at me, but which I didn't even notice until it was pointed out to me by my pal Jay Brennan. The Brothers' rendition of this number - behind face masks - during Dumont's medical examination, is clearly being delivered by three voices. As with Sweet Adeline we can't prove it's Harpo, but it seems a stretch and a half to propose it's someone else...

Verdict: Harpo speaks!

7. Shouting "Stop that bird!" in Room Service

This is a slightly sneaky one, in that it's never been claimed this appears in any release print. Nonetheless, according to a contemporary report in the Evening Independent "rushes prove conclusively" that in one take of the turkey scene "Harpo forgot himself" and yelled 'Stop that bird!'
Obviously impossible to prove one way or another, but these kinds of desperate publicity stories are legion, and there are no grounds for taking it seriously at all. Be firm on this one, Harpo...

Verdict: Harpo doesn't speak

8. Doubling for Chico in At the Circus

The Milwaukee Journal of July 22, 1939 claimed that in the rain scene where Chico allows thingy and whatsit onto the train, it is actually Harpo mischievously standing in for him, dialogue and all. This was a prank of which even director Ed Buzzell was unaware until afterwards, it goes on to add, but he concluded: “If the director couldn’t tell the difference, how can anyone else?” Well, who knows - maybe that is him, shot from a distance? But the dialogue is surely overdubbed, and I don’t care how well they could impersonate each other: that’s Chico’s voice. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (July 11, 1939) goes further, claiming that “for a gag in one scene” Harpo and Chico both exchange roles, and says that the Marx Brothers “defy the audience to pick the place where it happens.” Yeah, whatever.

Verdict: Harpo doesn't speak

9. Sneezing in At the Circus

Harpo's character in this film - I forget his name; probably Woofles or something - delivers several raucous "Atchoo!"s in the scene where Groucho and Chico are interrogating the midget. But the sound is overdubbed, and the likelihood of it being Harpo's actual voice is very slim. Still it can't be ruled out entirely, and so, though it's massively unlikely...

Verdict: Harpo's not certain

And that's your lot. Unless any of you know better, that would seem to be as close as you'll ever get to actually seeing Harpo talk on screen - outside of those home movies, of course...

A Tale of Two Susans

Harpo's blissful marriage to former actress Susan Fleming is the stuff of Marx legend.
But so happy was their union, and so completely did Susan immerse herself in her new life and family, that only the most cursory account of her career before settling down with Harpo is generally known.
Harpo's autobiography paints a somewhat misleading account of her life before they met, portraying her as a girl from a small town who tried her hand at movies and didn't much care for it:

Her father was a fine draftsman and amateur artist. Susan had inherited his talent, and the most fun she had as a kid came from drawing, and watching her father work with pen and brush. Those were lonely years for a girl as full of pizazz as Susan. When she got older, art didn't seem satisfying enough and she turned to acting. "Now," she said one afternoon, "I'm not sure an acting career, or any career, is the answer..."

In reality there was much more to it than that. That she was a Ziegfeld Follies girl is of course no secret, but there is more still to be discovered, a history obscured in part accidentally, on account of her alternating two slightly different professional names.

Let's start with Broadway. Those expecting to find her at the IBDB will be disappointed at first to find she is not present at all. But a little perseverance and experimentation will pay off: as 'Suzanne Fleming', she is listed as a performer in Ziegfeld's No Foolin' (1926) and George White's Manhattan Mary (1927). She also appeared, along with Paulette Goddard, in the 1927 season of Rio Rita, and the 'Plays and Players' column of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1929 tells us:

Susan Fleming, the noted beauty who appeared in the 1927 edition of Scandals and was last seen in Manhattan Mary has been engaged by George White as a principal for the forthcoming edition of Scandals.

But a chorus girl's popularity is measured as much in portrait shots and column inches as recognised stage credits, and the record would seem to suggest that Susan was among those earmarked for special promotional treatment.

What makes the perfect Follies girl? Ziegfeld himself pondered the matter in this 1926 article from the Eagle, and it's Susan ("who measures up to Ziegfeld's requirements") that is chosen to illustrate his conclusions.
Her beauty was much celebrated. The following year, the same paper told us that her fellow players in Manhattan Mary had voted her "the prettiest girl in the show." And this intriguing yarn was recalled as publicity for The Great Ziegfeld in 1936:

Throughout the 1920s reports she is sometimes referred to as Susan and sometimes as Suzanne. But by the time of such retrospectives as above, this Ziegfeld incarnation has generally come to be known as Suzanne. The tendency to presume that she is therefore not the Susan Fleming of Million Dollar Legs et al started early. In another 1936 retrospective asking 'what has become of the Ziegfeld girls?' we are told this:

Champagne sipped from her slipper, eh? Not quite the Susan Fleming we thought we knew!
But what's that about filming with Menjou? Just an error? Nope - another surprise...

One thing all sources agree upon is that her movie career began in 1931, with her role as Susan the secretary in the Columbia talkie Lover Come Back. From here she joined John Wayne in Arizona and The Range Feud before hightailing it to RKO, Fox and, eventually, Paramount, where she made her most famous film, Million Dollar Legs. This standard account is the one you'll find in the reference books, Wikipedia and on her IMDB page.

But in fact, she had already starred in a Paramount movie in 1926. The source of the confusion can be easily guessed - if not, here's a curious IMDB record for an actress with a strangely familiar name...
This is, of course, our girl, making her movie debut five years earlier than history would have us believe, and in a silent movie entitled The Ace of Cads.

Aside from confusion over the two names, it seems odd that her participation in the film should be forgotten. Indeed, as we shall see, it seems deliberate, albeit for somewhat uncertain reasons.

Here's the plot, for those who are interested, courtesy of the Adelaide Register:

It seems to have been pretty hot stuff - the film was, in fact, banned in Britain. As to Susan's potential as a new screen star, the publicity drum is beaten with obvious investment:

The reports show all the usual signs of special promotional effort. We learn that the newcomer is deemed good enough for a role intended for an established heavy-hitter, and also that the lead selected her personally:

Piece after piece plays on this claim that Menjou was smitten with Susan after fortuitously seeing her posing for a Ben Ali tableau:

And we are left in no doubt as to the certainty of a long future in movies:

From Variety in 1926:

And yet, she drops right out of movies for four years. This may have been as a result of Paramount's decision to close its East Coast studio early in 1927 (reopening it in 1928 to make use of Broadway actors in talkies). Tempted though she may have been by the movies, it would have meant commitment of a very different order to follow opportunity all the way to Hollywood, especially when there was no shortage of glamour, excitement and people willing to drink from her slipper on Broadway.
Or, it could have been for no more pointed a reason than that the film did not meet expectations.

Susan herself escapes the reviews with her dignity intact, but what praise there is is generally faint:

By 1928, Picture Play was answering a reader's enquiry thus:

Whether the film was deemed a jinx or not, when she does return in 1931 (the point where the IMDB and everyone else first begins to track her) she is relaunched as a completely new star: no mention whatever is made of her earlier starring debut.

Variety, 1930:

Silver Screen, 1931 (and look who we have discovering her this time!):

And Film Daily, 1931:

For whatever reason, there seems to have been a definite effort to disassociate this new attraction from the Susan Fleming that was launched so auspiciously just a few years before. And history has proved happy to oblige.
From here, Suzanne disappeared for good, and the all-new Susan Fleming the Second re-entered the gates of Hollywood to make her dates with Klopstokia, Harpo and destiny.
Let's toast them both.

(Thanks to Rodney Tryster, Bob Gassel and Ed Watz for invaluable research)

What colour was Sir Harpo Newton's wig?

Harpo's rather sweet appearance in The Story of Mankind lends further weight to the suggestion that his 'blonde wig' may have been light red, as opposed to the preferred red wig he wore on stage (seen looking almost black in The Cocoanuts and photos of the Day at the Races stage try-outs).
Or is he just taking advantage of colour film to get the old red one out of the box again and it's photographed a bit lighter in colour than it looks in black and white? If you turn down the colour on this clip, it could pass for the 'blonde' wig, familiar from the majority of the movies.
Or it could be a third wig, did you think of that?
On the other hand, the almost glowingly blonde one he seems to be wearing in fifties TV appearances (and A Night In Casablanca, but we can save that argument for another day) really is blonde, isn't it?
So that's four wigs. Do I hear five?

Holy shit...

"The Anatomy of Harpo Marx is a luxuriant, detailed play-by-play account of Harpo Marx's physical movements as captured on screen. Wayne Koestenbaum guides us through the thirteen Marx Brothers films, from The Cocoanuts in 1929 to Love Happy in 1950, to focus on Harpo's chief and yet heretofore unexplored attribute--his profound and contradictory corporeality. Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo's body--its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, "cute" pathos, and more. In a virtuosic performance, Koestenbaum's text moves gracefully from insightful analysis to cultural critique to autobiographical musing, and provides Harpo with a host of odd bedfellows, including Walter Benjamin and Barbra Streisand."
(- blurb)


"Wayne Koestenbaum is our Roland Barthes, updated, remastered, cleared for the pressure zone of American mythologies. Delicate and brave, discerning and outrageous, the meditations organized around the other Marx track unconscious byways and the remarkable turns of a highly personal investment. Startlingly original, Koestenbaum provides critical understanding with poetic acuity and breathtaking disclosure."
( - Avital Ronell, author of The Test Drive)

The Chico Suicides

Strangest darned pictures of the elderly Chico and Harpo I've ever seen...
But I can't stop looking at 'em. I love the way that drill bit seems to warp and bend, because they haven't lined themselves up properly.

Save the Gookie!

(Thanks to Anthony Blampied for the tip-off.).
Strange things are afoot at the Internet Movie Database. .Under the postings for Harpo, all references to his "gookie" face have become "*bleep*ie". I'm not joking.
The reason is that 'Gook', if you're American (what do you mean, you're not?), is a well-known racial slur, applying to foreigners generally, Korean or Vietnamese ones especially. Just as 'Gookie' is a facial expression named after a New York cigar roller.
.Okay, the censorship is automatic - but the user comments are not.
One says: "I guess some would call this excessive Political Correctness, but I wouldn't trade it for what people had to put up with in the Good Old Days."
The woman whose original post was censored has obligingly changed it from 'the infamous Gookie face' to 'the infamous Harpo face' - and apologised for offending anyone.
Britishers note, then, that the IMDB's own description of Harpo as possessed of "big, poofy, curly red hair" has managed to escape from the offenceometer unscathed.