Cabaret
Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, dance, recitation, or drama. It is distinguished by the performance venue, which might be a pub, a restaurant or a nightclub with a stage for performances; the audience dining or drinking, does not dance but sits at tables. Performances are introduced by a master of ceremonies or MC; the entertainment, as done by an ensemble of actors and according to its European origins, is oriented towards adult audiences and of a underground nature. In the United States striptease, drag shows, or a solo vocalist with a pianist, as well as the venues which offer this entertainment, are advertised as cabarets; the term came from Picard language or Walloon language words camberete or cambret for a small room. The first printed use of the word kaberet is found in a document from 1275 in Tournai; the term was used since the 13th century in Middle Dutch to mean an inexpensive restaurant. The word cambret, itself derived from an earlier form of chambrette, little room, or from the Norman French chamber meaning tavern, itself derived from the Late Latin word camera meaning an arched roof.
Cabarets had appeared in Paris by at least the late fifteenth century. They were distinguished from taverns because they served food as well as wine, the table was covered with a cloth, the price was charged by the plate, not the mug, they were not associated with entertainment if musicians sometimes performed in both. Early on, cabarets were considered better than taverns. In the seventeenth century, a clearer distinction emerged when taverns were limited to selling wine, to serving roast meats. Cabarets were used as meeting places for writers, actors and artists. Writers such as La Fontaine and Jean Racine were known to frequent a cabaret called the Mouton Blanc on rue du Vieux-Colombier, the Croix de Lorraine on the modern rue Bourg-Tibourg. In 1773 French poets, painters and writers began to meet in a cabaret called Le Caveau on rue de Buci, where they composed and sang songs; the Caveau continued until 1816, when it was forced to close because its clients wrote songs mocking the royal government.
In the 18th century the café-concert or café-chantant appeared, which offered food along with music, singers, or magicians. The most famous was the Cafe des Aveugles in the cellars of the Palais-Royal, which had a small orchestra of blind musicians. In the early 19th century many cafés-chantants appeared around the city. By 1900, there were more than 150 cafés-chantants in Paris; the first cabaret in the modern sense was Le Chat Noir in the Bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre, created in 1881 by Rodolphe Salis, a theatrical agent and entrepreneur. It combined music and other entertainment with political satire; the Chat Noir brought together the wealthy and famous of Paris with the Bohemians and artists of Montmartre and the Pigalle. Its clientele a mixture of writers and painters, of journalists and students, of employees and high-livers, as well as models and true grand dames searching for exotic experiences." The host was Salis calling himself a gentleman-cabaretier. The cabaret was too small for the crowds trying to get in.
The composer Eric Satie, after finishing his studies at the Conservatory, earned his living playing the piano at the Chat Noir. By 1896 there were fifty-six cafes with music in Paris, along with a dozen music halls; the cabarets did not have a high reputation. The traditional cabarets, with monologues and songs and little decor, were replaced by more specialized venues; some were purely theatrical. Some focused on the erotic; the Caberet de la fin du Monde had servers dressed as Greek and Roman gods and presented living tableaus that were between erotic and pornographic. By the end of the century there were only a few cabarets of the old style remaining where artists and bohemians gathered, they included the Cabaret des noctambules on Rue Champollion on the Left Bank. The music hall, first invented in London, appeared in Paris in 1862, it offered more lavish musical and theatrical productions, with elaborate costumes and dancing. The theaters of Paris, fearing competition from the music halls, had a law passed by the National Assembly forbidding music hall performers to wear costumes, wear wigs, or recite dialogue.
The law was challenged by the owner of the music hall Eldorado in 1867, who put a former famous actress from the Comédie-Française on stage to recite verse from Corneille and Racine. The public took the side of the music halls, the law was repealed; the Moulin Rouge was opened in 1889 by the Catalan Jo
Crooner
Crooner is an American epithet given to male singers of jazz standards from the Great American Songbook, backed by either a full orchestra, a big band or a piano. It was an ironic term denoting a sentimental singing style made possible by the use of microphones; some performers, such as Russ Columbo, did not accept the term: Frank Sinatra once said that he did not consider himself or Bing Crosby "crooners". This dominant popular vocal style coincided with the advent of radio broadcasting and electrical recording. Before the advent of the microphone, popular singers like Al Jolson had to project to the rear seats of a theater, as did opera singers, which made for a loud vocal style; the microphone made possible the more personal style. Al Bowlly, Gene Austin, Art Gillham and, by some historical accounts, Vaughn De Leath are credited as inventors of the crooning style, but Rudy Vallée became far more popular, beginning in 1928, he could be heard by anyone with a radio. "In his popular radio program, which began with his floating greeting,'Heigh ho, everybody,' beamed in from a New York City night club, he stood like a statue, surrounded by clean-cut collegiate band musicians and cradling a saxophone in his arms."His first film, The Vagabond Lover, was promoted with the line, "Men Hate Him!
Women Love Him!" while his success brought press warnings of the "Vallee Peril": this "punk from Maine" with the "dripping voice" required mounted police to beat back screaming, swooning females at his vaudeville shows. By the early 1930s the term "crooner" had taken on a pejorative connotation. Cardinal William O'Connell of Boston and the New York Singing Teachers Association both publicly denounced the vocal form, O'Connell calling it "base", "degenerate", "defiling" and un-American and NYSTA adding "corrupt"; the New York Times predicted that crooning would be just a passing fad. The newspaper printed, "They sing like that, their style is begging to go out of fashion…. Crooners will soon go the way of tandem bicycles, mah jongg and midget golf." Voice range shifted from tenor to baritone. Still, a 1931 record by Dick Robinson, "Crosby, Columbo & Vallee", called upon men to fight "these public enemies" brought into homes via radio. Although the term is used to describe a female singer, Vaughn De Leath, Annette Hanshaw, Mildred Bailey and Helen Rowland have been cited in the category of crooners.
Due to the country songs popularized by Bing Crosby, the crooning style of singing became an enduring part of country music. Bing Crosby achieved a million seller with his 1940 rendition of the song " San Antonio Rose" recorded by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys. In 1942 Perry Como had a smash hit with "Deep in the Heart of Texas". Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves and Ray Price are well known for their country crooner standards. Dean Martin is rather famous for the country music he recorded in the period when he was working for Reprise Records. Fellow Italian-American crooner Perry Como recorded several albums with country producer Chet Atkins in Nashville. Regular, non-country crooners scored hits with pop versions of country-songs: Tony Bennett had a Billboard #1 hit in 1951 with his rendition of Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart", performed by Louis Armstrong. In 1970, Ray Price had a #1 U. S. country hit and a #11 Billboard Hot 100 hit with the song "For the Good Times" written by Kris Kristofferson.
List of crooners Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: The Early Years, 1903–1940. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 2001. Allison McCracken, Real Men Don't Sing: Crooning in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals for the Marx Brothers and others. One play and one musical that he wrote won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama: You Can't Take It with You, Of Thee I Sing, he won the Tony Award as a Director, for the musical Guys and Dolls. George S. Kaufman was born to Joseph S. Kaufman, a hatband manufacturer, Nettie Meyers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he had Ruth. His other sister was Helen, nicknamed "Helse." He studied law for three months. He grew disenchanted and took on a series of odd jobs, selling silk and working in wholesale ribbon sales. Kaufman began contributing humorous material to the column that Franklin P. Adams wrote for the New York Mail, he became close friends with F. P. A. who helped him get his first newspaper job—humor columnist for The Washington Times—in 1912. By 1915 he was a drama reporter on The New York Tribune, working under Heywood Broun.
In 1917 Kaufman joined The New York Times, becoming drama editor and staying with the newspaper until 1930. Kaufman took his editorial responsibilities seriously. According to legend, on one occasion a press agent asked: "How do I get our leading lady's name in the Times?" Kaufman: "Shoot her." Kaufman's Broadway debut was September 4, 1918 at the Knickerbocker Theatre, with the premiere of the melodrama Someone in the House. He coauthored the play with Walter C. Percival, based on a magazine story written by Larry Evans; the play opened on Broadway during that year's serious flu epidemic, when people were being advised to avoid crowds. With "dour glee", Kaufman suggested that the best way to avoid crowds in New York City was to attend his play. In every Broadway season from 1921 through 1958, there was a play directed by Kaufman. Since Kaufman's death in 1961, there have been revivals of his work on Broadway in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 2000s and the 2010s. Kaufman wrote only one play alone, The Butter and Egg Man in 1925.
With Marc Connelly, he wrote Merton of the Movies and Beggar on Horseback. According to his biography on PBS, "he wrote some of the American theater's most enduring comedies" with Moss Hart, their work includes Once in a Lifetime, Merrily We Roll Along, The Man Who Came to Dinner and You Can't Take It with You, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. For a period, Kaufman lived at 158 West 58th Street in New York City; the building would be the setting for Stage Door. It is now the Park Savoy Hotel. Despite his claim that he knew nothing about music and hated it in the theatre, Kaufman collaborated on many musical theatre projects, his most successful of such efforts include two Broadway shows crafted for the Marx Brothers, The Cocoanuts, written with Irving Berlin, Animal Crackers, written with Morrie Ryskind, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby. According to Charlotte Chandler, "By the time Animal Crackers opened... the Marx Brothers were becoming famous enough to interest Hollywood. Paramount signed them to a contract".
Kaufman was one of the writers who excelled in writing intelligent nonsense for Groucho Marx, a process, collaborative, given Groucho's skills at expanding upon the scripted material. Though the Marx Brothers were notoriously critical of their writers and Harpo Marx expressed admiration and gratitude towards Kaufman. Dick Cavett, introducing Groucho onstage at Carnegie Hall in 1972, told the audience that Groucho considered Kaufman to be "his god". While The Cocoanuts was being developed in Atlantic City, Irving Berlin was hugely enthusiastic about a song he had written for the show. Kaufman was less enthusiastic, refused to rework the libretto to include this number; the discarded song was "Always" a huge hit for Berlin, recorded by many popular performers. According to Laurence Bergreen, "Kaufman's lack of enthusiasm caused Irving to lose confidence in the song, and'Always' was deleted from the score of The Cocoanuts – though not from its creator's memory.... Kaufman, a confirmed misogynist, had had no use for the song in The Cocoanuts but his disapproval did not deter Berlin from saving it for a more important occasion."
The Cocoanuts would remain Irving Berlin's only Broadway musical – until his last one, Mr. President – that did not include at least one eventual hit song. Humor derived from political situations was of particular interest to Kaufman, he collaborated on the hit musical Of Thee I Sing, which won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, the first musical so honored, its sequel Let'Em Eat Cake, as well as one troubled but successful satire that had several incarnations, Strike Up the Band. Working with Kaufman on these ventures were Ryskind, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin. Kaufman, with Moss Hart, wrote the book to I'd Rather Be Right, a musical starring George M. Cohan as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, he co-wrote the 1935 comedy-drama First Lady. In 1945, Kaufman adapted H. M. S. Pinafore into Hollywood Pinafore. Kaufman contributed to major New York revues, including The Band Wagon with Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, his often
Eddie Cantor
Eddie Cantor was an American "illustrated song" performer, dancer, singer and songwriter. Familiar to Broadway, radio and early television audiences, this "Apostle of Pep" was regarded as a family member by millions because his top-rated radio shows revealed intimate stories and amusing anecdotes about his wife Ida and five daughters; some of his hits include "Makin' Whoopee", "Ida", "If You Knew Susie", "Ma! He's Makin' Eyes at Me", "Baby", "Margie", "How Ya Gonna Keep'em Down on the Farm?" He wrote a few songs, including "Merrily We Roll Along", the Merrie Melodies Warner Bros. cartoon theme. His eye-rolling song-and-dance routines led to his nickname, "Banjo Eyes". In 1933, artist Frederick J. Garner caricatured Cantor with large round eyes resembling the drum-like pot of a banjo. Cantor's eyes became his trademark exaggerated in illustrations, leading to his appearance on Broadway in the musical Banjo Eyes, his charity and humanitarian work was extensive, he is credited with coining the phrase, helping to develop the March of Dimes.
He was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1956 for distinguished service to the film industry. Cantor was born in 1892 in New York City, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants and Mechel Itzkowitz; the precise date of his birth is unknown. His mother died in childbirth, his father died of pneumonia when Eddie was two, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz; as a child, he attended Surprise Lake Camp. and he generously financially supported that camp for others. A misunderstanding when his grandmother signed him into school gave him her last name of Kantrowitz. Esther died on January 29, 1917, two days before Cantor signed a long-term contract with Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. to appear in his Follies. Cantor had adopted the first name "Eddie" when he met his future wife Ida Tobias in 1913, because she felt that "Izzy" was not the right name for an actor. Cantor and Ida were married in 1914, they had five daughters, Natalie, Edna and Janet, who provided comic fodder for Cantor's longtime running gag on radio, about his five unmarriageable daughters.
Several radio historians, including Gerald Nachman, have said that this gag did not always sit well with the girls. Natalie's second husband was the actor Robert Janet married the actor Roberto Gari. Cantor was the second president of the Screen Actors Guild, serving from 1933 to 1935, he invented the title "The March of Dimes" for the donation campaigns of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, organized to combat polio. It was a play on The March of Time newsreels popular at the time, he began the first campaign on his radio show in January 1938, asking listeners to mail a dime to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At that time, Roosevelt was the most notable American victim of polio. Other entertainers joined in the appeal via their own shows, the White House mail room was deluged with 2,680,000 dimes—a large sum at the time. Following the death of their daughter Marjorie at the age of 44, both Eddie and Ida's health declined rapidly. Ida died on August 9, 1962 at age 70 of "cardiac insufficiency", Eddie died on October 10, 1964, in Beverly Hills, after suffering his second heart attack at age 72.
He is interred in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in California. By his early teens, Cantor began winning talent contests at local theaters and started appearing on stage. One of his earliest paying jobs was doubling as a waiter and performer, singing for tips at Carey Walsh's Coney Island saloon, where a young Jimmy Durante accompanied him on piano, he made his first public appearance in Vaudeville in 1907 at New York's Clinton Music Hall. In 1912, he was the only performer over the age of 20 to appear in Gus Edwards's Kid Kabaret, where he created his first blackface character, "Jefferson", he toured with Al Lee as the team "Cantor and Lee". Critical praise from that show got the attention of Broadway's top producer, Florenz Ziegfeld, who gave Cantor a spot in the Ziegfeld rooftop post-show, Midnight Frolic. A year Cantor made his Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, he continued in the Follies until 1927, a period considered the best years of the long-running revue. For several years, Cantor co-starred in an act with pioneer comedian Bert Williams, both appearing in blackface.
Other co-stars with Cantor during his time in the Follies included Will Rogers, Marilyn Miller, Fanny Brice, W. C. Fields, he moved on to stardom in book musicals, starting with Kid Boots and Whoopee!. On tour with Banjo Eyes, he romanced the unknown Jacqueline Susann, who had a small part in the show, went on to become the best-selling author of Valley of the Dolls. Ziegfeld Follies of 1917 – revue – performer Ziegfeld Follies of 1918 – revue – performer, co-composer and co-lyricist for "Broadway's Not a Bad Place After All" with Harry Ruby Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 – revue – performer, lyricist for " Last Rose of Summer" Ziegfeld Follies of 1920 – revue – composer for "Green River", composer and lyricist for "Every Blossom I See Reminds Me of You" and "I Found a Baby on My Door Step" The Midnight Rounders of 1920 – revue – performer Broadway Brevities of 1920 – revue – performer Make It Snappy – revue – performer, co-bookwriter Ziegfeld Follies of 1923 – revue – sketch writer Kid Boots – musical comedy – actor in the role of "Kid Boots" Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 – revue – performer, co-bookwriter Whoopee!
– musical comedy – actor in the role o
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949. Five of the Marx Brothers' thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy films, with two of them in the top twelve, they are considered by critics and fans to be among the greatest and most influential comedians of the 20th century. The brothers were included in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list of the 25 greatest male stars of Classical Hollywood cinema, the only performers to be inducted collectively. The group is universally known today by their stage names: Chico, Groucho and Zeppo. There was the first born, named Manfred, who died aged seven months; the core of the act was the three elder brothers: Chico and Groucho, each of whom developed a distinctive stage persona. After the group disbanded in 1950, Groucho went on to begin a successful second career in television, while Harpo and Chico appeared less prominently.
The two younger brothers and Zeppo, never developed their stage characters to the same extent as the elder three. They each left the act to pursue business careers at which they were successful, for a time ran a large theatrical agency through which they represented their brothers and others. Gummo was not in any of the movies; the early performing lives of the brothers owed much to their mother Minnie Marx, who acted as their manager until her death in 1929. The Marx Brothers were born in the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany and France, their mother Miene "Minnie" Schoenberg was from Dornum in East Frisia, their father Samuel Marx was a native of Alsace and worked as a tailor. The family lived in the poor Yorkville section of New York City's Upper East Side, centered in the Irish and Italian quarters; the brothers are best known by their stage names: Another brother, the first-born son of Sam and Minnie, was born in 1886 and died in infancy: Family lore told of the firstborn son, born in 1886 but surviving for only three months, carried off by tuberculosis.
Some members of the Marx family wondered if he was pure myth. But Manfred can be verified. A death certificate of the Borough of Manhattan reveals that he died, aged seven months, on 17 July 1886, of enterocolitis, with "asthenia" contributing, i.e. a victim of influenza. He is buried at New York's Washington Cemetery, beside his grandmother, Fanny Sophie Schönberg, who died on 10 April 1901; the Marx Brothers had an older sister a cousin, born in January 1885, adopted by Minnie and Frenchie. Her name was Pauline, or "Polly". Groucho talked about her in his 1972 Carnegie Hall concert. Minnie Marx came from a family of performers, her mother was her father a ventriloquist. Around 1880, the family emigrated to New York City, where Minnie married Sam in 1884. During the early 20th century, Minnie helped her younger brother Abraham Elieser Adolf Schönberg to enter show business. Minnie acted as the brothers' manager, using the name Minnie Palmer so that agents did not realize that she was their mother.
All the brothers confirmed that Minnie Marx had been the head of the family and the driving force in getting the troupe launched, the only person who could keep them in order. Gummo and Zeppo both became successful businessmen: Gummo gained success through his agency activities and a raincoat business, Zeppo became a multi-millionaire through his engineering business; the brothers were from a family of artists, their musical talent was encouraged from an early age. Harpo was talented, learning to play an estimated six different instruments throughout his career, he became a dedicated harpist. Chico was an excellent pianist, Groucho a guitarist and singer, Zeppo a vocalist, they got their start in vaudeville, where their uncle Albert Schönberg performed as Al Shean of Gallagher and Shean. Groucho's debut was in 1905 as a singer. By 1907, he and Gummo were singing together as "The Three Nightingales" with Mabel O'Donnell; the next year, Harpo became the fourth Nightingale and by 1910, the group expanded to include their mother Minnie and their Aunt Hannah.
The troupe was renamed "The Six Mascots". One evening in 1912, a performance at the Opera House in Nacogdoches, was interrupted by shouts from outside about a runaway mule; the audience hurried out to see what was happening. Groucho was angered by the interruption and, when the audience returned, he made snide comments at their expense, including "Nacogdoches is full of roaches" and "the jackass is the flower of Tex-ass". Instead of becoming angry, the audience laughed; the family realized that it had potential as a comic troupe. (However, in his autobiography Harpo Speaks, Harpo Marx stated that the runaway mule incident occurred in Ada, Oklahoma. A 1930 article in the San Antonio Express newspaper stated that the incide
