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
Gummo Marx Minnie Schoenberg Marx. Marx's family was Jewish. His mother was from Dornum in East Frisia, and his father was a native of Alsace and worked as a tailor. Although the fourth Marx Brother in age, he was the first to make his debut, pretending to be a dummy in an act with his uncle Henry Shean (né Heinemann Schoenberg) the brother of Al Shean in 1899. Milton was put into a costume with a papier-mâché head and pretended to be a dummy while Henry pretended to work him. The act may have only performed once and was not helped by