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
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