The Beautiful Non-Romance Between Groucho Marx And Margaret Dumont
We remember the Marx Brothers simply as Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo. We offer Zeppo the allowance of being more or less dispensable, something he actually proved when he stopped appearing in Marx Brothers films altogether, and it didn't really matter.
But really, there’s a fifth Marx Brother, one far more consequential than Zeppo. And no, I’m not talking about Gummo. The person to whom I refer can’t be a brother because she’s a lady, and she can’t be a Marx Brother because she’s not related to them. Nevertheless, Margaret Dumont was an instrumental part of many classic Marx Brothers movies. In total, she appeared in The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, At the Circus, and The Big Store. She was actually in more films than Zeppo.
While Zeppo mostly just hung around in his Marx Brothers films, Dumont played a very specific role as Groucho’s straight man. Tall, regal, and aristocratic to an almost cartoonish degree, Margaret Dumont repeatedly offered Groucho a figure from high society for him to fleece and ridicule to no end. Groucho’s affronts to her characters are one thing; his repeated and frequently very cruel jokes regarding her age and physical attributes were quite another. ("I can see you right now in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove!" or perhaps "Well, that covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself! You'd better beat it; I hear they're going to tear you down and put up an office building where you're standing!") But Margaret took both with dignity and grace and continued setting him up for more home runs at her expense.
It’s not easy being a straight man. The role requires a particular talent and isn’t a part meant for everyone. Yet few people actually know that, and as a result, history’s great straight men seldom get any credit. People certainly tried giving Margaret hers. Groucho himself referred to her as “the fifth Marx Brother”, she won a Best Supporting Actress award from the Screen Actors Guild for A Day at the Races, critic Cecilia Ager even suggested making a monument in honor of her ability to deal with so much Marx Brother bullshit in her career (which spanned almost sixty films).
Because her Marx Brothers roles so frequently put her in direct opposition to Groucho, one gets the sense that something special existed between the two actors. That wasn’t the case in a romantic sense, but there must have been a lot of mutual respect between them. You can tell by all her return appearances. He obviously respects straight men as seen in this video where he compliments Dan Rowan for his straight man abilities:
As a side note that sort of discredits my point, it’s odd that Groucho credits Chico as being his straight man instead of Dumont. It’s always been my opinion that Chico actually turns Groucho into the straight man.
Regardless, when I think of just Groucho, I inevitably think of Margaret Dumont as well, even though she’s absent from maybe my second favorite Marx Brothers film, Horse Feathers. The two are forever linked in my mind because such a high percentage of Groucho zingers are aimed at her direction. Therefore it’s wrong to value Groucho’s comedy without paying proper due to Dumont. She was one of cinema’s first and best straight men, and without her Groucho never would have looked so great.