Zeppo Marx that "Herbie" was tagged with the name "Zippo" because he liked to do chinups and acrobatics, as the chimp did in its act. The youngest brother objected to this nickname, and it was altered to "Zeppo". In a TV Interview, Zeppo said that Zep is Italian-American slang for baby and as Zeppo was the youngest or baby Marx Brother he was called Zeppo. Zeppo replaced brother Gummo in the Marx Brothers stage act when the latter joined the army in 1918. Zeppo remained with the team and appeared in their successes in vaudeville, on Broadway and the first five Marx
Marx Brothers The first Marx Brothers/Thalberg film was "A Night at the Opera" (1935), a satire on the world of opera, where the brothers help two young singers in love by throwing a production of "Il Trovatore" into chaos. The film—including its famous scene where an absurd number of people crowd into a tiny stateroom on a ship—was a great success, and was followed two years later by an even bigger hit, "A Day at the Races" (1937), in which the brothers cause mayhem in a sanitarium and at a horse race. The film features Groucho and Chico's famous "Tootsie Frootsie Ice