The Marx family lived in the then-poor Yorkville section of New York’s Upper East Side, between the Irish, German, and Italian blocks. The Marx Brothers were born in New York City, but their mother, Minnie Schonberg, was from Dornum in East Frisia, Germany, and their father, Simon Marx, a tailor, was a native of Alsace, France. Harpo was a comic genius before the Third Reich came along, but the Third Reich gave Harpo’s anarchy extra pointedness.” In his appraisal of Harpo’s antics in “A Night in Casablanca,” Koestenbaum writes, “I will lean on the Nazi theme Harpo leans on it, too. He guides readers through the 13 Marx Brothers films, from “The Cocoanuts” in 1929 to “Love Happy” in 1950, focusing on Harpo’s body language-its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, pathos, and Jewishness. Koestenbaum’s book is a detailed account of Harpo’s physical movements as captured on screen. Get The Jewish Standard Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories “To the extent, then, that Jews have always been scapegoated – and certainly in the ’30s most tragically and demonstrably scapegoated -it seems to me no coincidence that the Marx Brothers made their films exactly during the time of the rise of Nazism.” “Within a family already marked as Jewish within cinema culture of the 1920s and ’30s, Harpo, as the one who experiences shame most vividly in the films, became the scapegoat,” Koestenbaum said.
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