Groucho Marx (1890–1977)

Julius Henry Marx grew up in a heavily immigrant neighborhood of Manhattan, the third of five surviving sons of Sam and Minnie Marx. He had to leave school at age 12 to work and was the first of the brothers to start an entertainment career, using the stage name Groucho Marx. He and his brothers had their first success together with the musical comedy called I'll Say She Is. It was at one of the performances of this show that Groucho first put on got his painted moustache and eyebrows. I'll Say She Is is was followed by two more Broadway hits -- The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers -- both of which were made into films. Groucho made a total of 26 movies, 13 of them with his brothers Chico and Harpo (and occasionally Zeppo). Groucho honed his routine as the wise-cracking hustler with a distinctive walk and the ever-present cigar. In the latter years of the Marx Brothers movie career, Groucho also started working on the radio. His biggest success was the comedy quiz show You Bet Your Life, which started in 1947 and eventually moved to television, where it aired until 1961.
When the Marx Brothers became popular again in the late 1960s/early 1970s, Groucho made a comeback with a show in Carnegie Hall in 1972. His autobiographer was called Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1963).