Answering GREENBRIAR PICTURE SHOWS

Yesterday my buddy John McElwee posted a gorgeous vintage newspaper ad from the pre-Chico era of The Marx Brothers in vaudeville on his terrific blog, asking "if there are any earlier newspaper ads with Marx imagery."  I've not seen originals, of course, but have plumbed the depths of newspaper databases, mainly for my own entertainment but also with one eye toward a possible Marx tome.  Here's a sampling of what emerged:

This is from the Atlanta Constitution of Valentine's Day 1909; a mere 105 years ago, when the three Marxes were the Four Nightingales.  That's Gummo, Lou Levy, Groucho and Harpo in the lower right photo.  

Just ten months earlier they were two Marxes (sans Harpo) and Three Nightingales, here advertised in the Fitchburg (NY) Sentinel of  April 16, 1908.  Apparently, and despite the legend, comedy was a fixture of their act early on, hence the sub-billing as "The Merry Funsters"... or is it "Punsters"?  (Probably not; no Chico yet.)

The titles listed at top were not acts, but the ditties to be featured in the "illustrated songs" portion.  (If not for that last one, I would've been at a complete loss.)


In Harpo Speaks, the "silent" brother's massive autobiography, an otherwise forgotten vaudevillian named Mons Herbert makes a cameo appearance.  Mr. Herbert was evidently prone to wager his meager salary at the card table, which delighted Harpo as the poor fellow had a habit of tipping the quality of his hand by the number of gold teeth he'd flash.  Onstage, according to Harpo, Herbert "blew up a turkey until music came out of its ass."  This, as you can see, is barely hinted at in an ad for Waterloo Iowa's Orpheum bill of March 14, 1911.  (Note too that in this early stage Fun in Hi Skool was also tltled "Skool Goils and Boiz.")

As is well known among Marxologists, Groucho - Julius, actually - was the first of the brothers to appear on stage.  One of his earliest gigs was in support of Lily Seville in something called The Lady and the Tiger.  This ad is from the San Antonio Gazette of January 6, 1906. Although their act is touted as "direct from Paris," Miss Seville and 15-year-old Master Marx are listed among the extra attractions at bottom, just before the illustrated songs and "Kinetograph Views," a pretentious term for "flickers."

My own favorite discovery comes from much later, when the Four Marx Brothers that we're used to seeing traveled to England in May 1922 - a journey that got them blackballed from big time vaudeville because they didn't clear it through the Keith-Orpheum booking office, which itself led indirectly to I'll Say She Is and Broadway stardom.  Ancestry.com has yielded the brothers' passport photos.  Chico and Groucho are each accompanied by the missus (evidently wives didn't get their own passports in 1922), while bachelors Zeppo and Harpo - the latter looking like he'd been out all night partying before sitting for his picture - are solo.

So Long, Shirley

Shirley Temple, who passed away at age 85 this past Monday, was twice a showbiz phenomenon.  The first reign has been pretty well covered by the obits: in the space of two years (1933-34) she shot like a rocket from "leading lady" of Educational Pictures' execrable "Baby Burlesk" one-reelers to number one box office attraction in the country, then held that position for four years straight.

Picture Play, 1934

Her second rise is less well-covered.  In 1957, National Telefilm Associates (NTA), looking to build its own syndication network, leased a block of pre-'48 features from 20th Century-Fox, including four of Shirley's: Captain January, Wee Willie Winkie, Heidi and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.  These were extracted from the main package and offered as "The Shirley Temple Film Festival" to national advertisers.  Ideal Toys immediately signed on for one-third of the package.  Reaction was so solid, NTA immediately added Poor Little Rich Girl and Little Miss Broadway to the lineup.  By mid-1961, all of Shirley's Fox product was on the air, and local stations would keep the "Temple Film Festival" active into the 1970s.

My own experience was on Metromedia's WNEW-5 in New York City.  In my preadolescence, Shirley graced Saturday afternoons as reliably as did Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall on Sundays for channel 5's "East Side Comedy" hour.

Ken Films' releases were worth buying for the covers alone!

          Like any red-blooded youth, I developed a crush on the dimpled darling, albeit aware that it not only transcended distance but time as well.  The closest I could get to everyday company with Shirley was via Ken Films' 8mm releases of four Baby Burlesk titles.  The genuine Shirley Temple was by then engaged in her second vocation with the United Nations and was about to become - most unexpectedly - an empathetic torch carrier for sufferers of breast cancer.

When her films first tallied up huge ratings and grosses in the late fifties, she signed on for a fairy tale program, Shirley Temple's Storybook, broadcast in color on NBC.  Several of the tapes survive and were released to DVD in recent years, but as forshadowed by this 1958 TV GUIDE cover, it's the original, Depression-era Shirley that still gets the glory... and likely always will.