Marx Brothers since he did not join the act until Gummo had departed. As with Groucho, three explanations exist for Herbert's name "Zeppo": Maxine Marx reported in "The Unknown Marx Brothers" that the brothers listed their "real" names (Julius, Leonard, Adolph, Milton, and Herbert) on playbills and in programs, and only used the nicknames behind the scenes, until Alexander Woollcott overheard them calling one another by the nicknames. He asked them why they used their real names publicly when they had such wonderful nicknames, and they replied, "That wouldn't be dignified." Woollcott answered with a belly laugh. Woollcott did not meet the
Silent comedy Charley Chase, Stan Laurel (who made a commercially successful transition into talking pictures in the team Laurel & Hardy), along with many others. In the early years of "talkie" films (beginning in 1927, see "The Jazz Singer") a few actors continued to act silently for comedic effect, most famously Charlie Chaplin, whose last great "silent" comedies "City Lights" (1931) and "Modern Times" (1936) were both made in the sound age. Another late example was Harpo Marx, who always played a mute in the Marx Brothers' films. Another important legacy of silent film comedy was the humor in animated cartoons. Even