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"
I'll Say She Is autobiography "Harpo Speaks" (1961), Harpo wrote that theatre critic Alexander Woollcott encouraged the Brothers to use their stage names in any subsequent production, which they did, starting with their next Broadway show, "The Cocoanuts" (1925), which was later turned into a film version in 1929. Having toiled on the Vaudeville circuit for nearly a quarter century, this would be the last stage performance that The Marx Brothers would perform for Vaudeville theaters. Once "I'll Say She Is" hit Broadway, they never left. They would have two further Broadway hits, "The Cocoanuts" and "Animal Crackers", which were then filmed in the