Marx Brothers Minnie helped her younger brother Abraham Elieser Adolf Schönberg (stage name Al Shean) to enter show business; he became highly successful on vaudeville and Broadway as half of the musical comedy double act Gallagher and Shean, and this gave the brothers an entree to musical comedy, vaudeville and Broadway at Minnie's instigation. Minnie also acted as the brothers' manager, using the name Minnie Palmer so that agents did not realize that she was also their mother. All the brothers confirmed that Minnie Marx had been the head of the family and the driving force in getting the troupe launched, the
Louis Marx Aber and her mother moved into the Marx home, after their brother left Fort Crockette, Galveston, TX where he was first assigned after graduating from West Point. Rene died in 1944 of breast cancer at age 37. His second wife, Idella Ruth Blackadder (b. 1924), was nearly 28 years his junior. Marx's daughter, Patricia, was born in 1938. She went on to become an activist author, and the second wife of Daniel Ellsberg, assisting him in the release of the Pentagon Papers. Louis Marx, a strident anti-Communist and supporter of Richard Nixon, regarded Ellsberg as a traitor afterwards. Eldest child,