Name: Bill Marx (Harpo's son) on Letterman, November 4, 1985
Uploaded: 2016-04-30T16:15:23.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Marx (Harpo's son) on Letterman, November 4, 1985' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-04-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Marx (Harpo's son) on Letterman, November 4, 1985' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-04-30. Transcript available.

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Along with his brothers Groucho, Chico, and Zeppo, Harpo Marx made some of the
funniest motion pictures ever.
He actually never said a word on screen and was always seen wearing his blonde
wig and was usually also chasing a blonde.
My next guest is Harpo's oldest son and is responsible for the re-release of
this book right here.
It's called Harpo Speaks. Please welcome Bill Marx.
Welcome to the program.
Now we mentioned in the little bit of film there that we saw that he never
spoke in film.
Apparently he spoke in the stage act before the films, right?
First he was a character by the name of Patsy Branigan, which was a character
created in a school days act that was an old vaudeville act.
And he read a review one time that said something like the Marx brother who did
pantomime made a memorable illusion.
However, it was dashed to the rocks the minute he opened his mouth to speak.
So he became a strict panomimist. This was long before he even was Harpo.
Yeah. What was his voice like when he actually did talk?
It was Upper East Side.
He would take a word like Turkey and it would come out, "Takey, hamburger,
liver waste."
And a very soft patty voice with a bomb, that kind of nice quality.
"Yeah, this is Harpo."
What kind of a father was it?
What was it like for you to have -- you must have been aware of how your father
made a living.
Well, all kids, myself included, were so self-involved.
He was just a father.
Yeah.
I mean, that's basically --
Did he help you with your homework and stuff?
Oh, God, yes.
He was a wonderful, all-pervasive influence on all of us kids.
I have two Marx brothers and a Marx sister.
And he would help us with our homework and he would do one wonderful thing.
He thought that to laugh is the greatest thing you can do and to hear laughter.
And I know you love to hear laughter. We all do.
And what he would do is he would take a problem or what appeared to be a crisis
and reduce it to absurdity.
I had a terrible hassle.
I was lying awake at night.
I was in the fourth grade and I had to write a poem for my -- and it was due
the following day.
And I'd been brooding about it for three or four days.
So, finally, he said, "I'll help you at the dinner table."
And by the end of the salad, he had come up with my poem.
And I remember it to this day.
"There they go.
I'm betting on flow.
If she loses, I'll blow my dough.
Into the stretch, she's out in front.
At the wire, when I done."
I got a B plus.
A B plus?
Yeah.
He got an A.
But your father didn't really have any education at all, did he?
He was thrown out of a window one too many times.
Actually, it was a second story window in the first grade.
So, he never went back.
Now, why would he be tossed out windows?
The bully did it.
He was a little guy and they beat up on him all the time.
But strangely enough, in spite of his lack of formal education, he was one of
the most sought-after and revered members of two of the most famous literary
round tables in the world.
The Hillcrest Country Club and, of course, the Algonquin Round Table.
Yeah, yeah.
And he was a very, very sophisticated man and he was a great audience.
People loved to be around him because he cared about what people had to say and
that's how he got a very, very good education.
All right, we have, well, you tell us what you have.
These are from your own personal collection from when you were a kid?
These are home movies.
Yeah.
He loved to be involved in home movies and my mother took practically all of
these.
Okay.
And they're fun.
So, I guess you can just go ahead and talk over them as we take a look at them
and tell us where these are from.
Is this like backyard stuff?
This is all over the place.
That's backyard.
That's little Willie on the right.
And that's, he was always trying on new wigs, you know.
There's Groucho and one of his happier moments.
Well, Groucho looks terrific there, doesn't he?
Yeah.
They were all very athletic.
And who is that in the background?
Oh, there he is.
Yeah.
They were all very athletic people, as you well know.
That was, I guess, Groucho's fourth wife.
This could be dirty.
No, he really caught that.
That was up in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Now, this is where you lived as a kid?
No, that was, I don't know where that was.
But no, this is up in Vermont.
All of them were athletic.
This is me on the left.
He loved kids.
You can see the man-child.
Did you have a lot of dogs when you were a kid?
Oh, yeah.
Those were just three of them.
What did he do to amuse himself?
What did he do that was fun for him, other than playing with the family and the
dogs and the neighbors and stuff?
Well, he was an ardent golfer, and he would play golf.
He would play to a 12 to 14 handicap no matter what, but he would always
experiment.
He was the first person I ever knew that ever putted a la shooting pool.
He would also, he was the first person I ever knew that played 18 holes of golf
nude.
Now, where did this take place?
In Palm Springs, when most people left during the summer, he was a sun worshiper.
And so I went out with him one day on a golf court, and he'd hit a golf ball,
and then he'd run over and jump in a neighbor's pool that was adjacent to the
fairway, take a dip, jump back in the golf cart, we'd go to the ball the next
day.
He played 18 holes of golf that way.
Absolutely nude.
Absolutely.
And, of course, the obvious question, where did he keep the tees?
That, you know.
This is stupid.
It's stupider.
No, no, no.
Okay, the, I'm sorry.
Shall I tell you?
No.
The book, of course, is Harpo Speaks.
Geez, it's a pleasure to meet you, and it was great fun looking at those films.
It's my pleasure.
Thank you very much for being here, sir.
We love you.
My pleasure.
Thank you very much.
We'll take applause here.
We'll be back with Jimmy Cliff.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.