Groucho Marx undistinguished vaudeville singing group billed as "The Four Nightingales". The brothers Julius, Milton (Gummo Marx) and Arthur (originally Adolph, but Harpo Mark from 1911) and another boy singer, Lou Levy, traveled the U.S. vaudeville circuits to little fanfare. After exhausting their prospects in the East, the family moved to La Grange, Illinois, to play the Midwest. After a particularly dispiriting performance in Nacogdoches, Texas, Julius, Milton, and Arthur began cracking jokes onstage for their own amusement. Much to their surprise, the audience liked them better as comedians than as singers. They modified the then-popular Gus Edwards comedy skit "School Days"
Harpo Marx fiction novella, "The Foreign Hand Tie" by Randall Garrett, a tale of telepathic spies which is full of references to the Marx Brothers and their films. (The title itself is a Marx-like pun on the dual ideas of a "foreign hand" and a style of neckwear known as a "four-in-hand tie.") In 1936, he was one of a number of performers and celebrities to appear as caricatures in the Walt Disney Production of "Mickey's Polo Team". Harpo was part of a team of polo-playing movie stars which included Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. His mount was an ostrich. Walt