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
Zeppo Marx was from East Frisia in Germany; and his father was a native of France, and worked as a tailor. As with all of the Marx Brothers, there are different theories as to where Zeppo got his stage name: Groucho said in his Carnegie Hall concert in 1972 that the name was derived from the Zeppelin airship. Zeppo's ex-wife Barbara Sinatra repeated this in her 2011 book, "Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank". His brother Harpo offered a different account in his 1961 autobiography, "Harpo Speaks!," claiming (p. 130) that there was a popular trained chimpanzee named Mr. Zippo, and