Which grandmother brought a harp from Russia? Minnie's mother or Frenchie's?

@@LeoOrientis Minnie’s mother, Fanny Schoenberg

@@Harfa_Traw Thank you. I must read _Harpo Speaks._ His musical gifts were amazing, and it's such an unusual and beautiful instrument. As they said on the Podcast, he runs around like a clownish Pan, chasing wood nymphs. The last thing you expect is for someone to fling a harp down into his path and transform him into an angel.

He was truly amazing

Oh I don’t know he played by ear! Even more impressive how do you even get that brilliant

It was always my favourite part of the Marx Brothers' films --- when everything faded away and there was nothing left except Harpo and his harp'

Yes.

Elisabeth4844 So well put.

Nedra Leggett, I so agree. Harpo was serious about playing the harpo and in this video, he face says it all.

Yes, totally immersed! I saw him on an I Love Lucy rerun just this morning and he played a very unique version of Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Just gorgeous! And that same enraptured face.... only moments before and the moments after he was goofy and clowning, but during his performance it was just concentration and bliss. We just don't have artists like him anymore.

Another comedy sketch?

Whith a sleevefull of silverware

Truly a genius of music, comedy, and all emotion

I was the opposite. I liked the clowning, but when Harpo played, I was mesmerized.

Well said, he was most certainly a incredible man.

Marx is love. Marx is life.

+triarii11 STFU

+triarii11 STFU

Agree :))))))

Such a great book. What a life he had!

Nobody else played the harp like he did, he was entirely self taught and tuned it completely differently to how it was supposed to be.

Hey are you still alive

@@Zerbey Harpo Marx was initially self-taught but in 1928, he met Mildred Dilling in a music store in Manhattan where she was trying out a new harp. Harpo heard her playing Poenitz' "The Music Box" and asked her to teach him to play it. That was the beginning of a decades-long relationship during which Ms. Dilling coached Harpo on his technique. I attended a master class with Ms. Dilling a few years before she passed away and she told us about the time Harpo, who was living in Hollywood at the time, called her at 3:00AM New York time - he'd forgotten about the time difference - to ask her for help with a piece he was working on. He had put his telephone near his harp and she did the same. I can't imagine anyone other than a true friend and a dedicated teacher giving an on-the-spot lesson over the phone in the small hours.

@@royjones1039 That’s an amazing story!!!!

I agree whole-heartedly. Harpo for sure. There are a few others as well. Charles Stanley,

eternal life is ONLY through believing THE GOSPEL OF SALVATION through JESUS CHRIST, for IT is the POWER of GOD unto SALVATION to every one that BELIEVES... 1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-4

You mean they are three of them

Manch... You said it right! Such pure gold lost. You'll never find musicians or comedians like them. Breaks my heart.

MRGF78 The Marx brothers were Jewish.

Christopher C. Cooper, I noticed that to. His face and the way his body caresses the harp says it all about how much he loved playing the harp.

So very well stated, and in Harpo's face you see the truth in your words.

No need to say something more They said it all . Thank you.

Lovely comment Christopher. He was a sublime musician.

It’s like watching a massage

This is from "A Night In Casablanca".

@@eblackadder3 Thank you. Duly noted.

I’m one of the younger folks (15) and night at the opera is my favorite film! Hopefully it’s nice to know the young ones of today still know the classics. I’ve shown that one to all my friends :) now we quote Groucho all the time!

@@clownfromclowntown awesome that people still watch them.

Great story!!!!!

@@clownfromclowntown this scene is from "A day in Casablanca"

Hey are you still alive

Hey are you still alive

@@dulapeep1450 probably not, he's in the afterlife now

So that's why his name was "harpo" and he "played" along. 😉😁👌🎵🎼🎶

These so-called "celebrities" today don't have talent, just a bunch of losers wanting attention. They are all forgotten in 10 years because they really don't have a heart for people, just money and mansions.

That’s the vaudeville talent. Had to stay on top of it to stay in the circuit.

Yes yes you were born in the wrong generation and all that, truly you are a culturally superior ubermensch.

@@tomaspabon2484 every generation is dumb, from the antiquity to today. Even myths display morons and moronity at their core.

I can name another person who had a talent similar to Harpo: Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. He could play a violin perfectly! He had learn how to because of an injury he suffered as a kid.

Hi are you there

​@@gerrybongohead Hi, I've never heard this, but keep in mind that Harpo played a concert harp, which has numerous pedals (I think at least 7?) which control small rotating discs with (rubber-covered?) metal pegs which stop the strings at various intervals, raising or lowering the pitch. I don't think it's shown in this footage, but when he plays, like any concert harpist, Harpo's legs and feet are moving furiously working the pedals at lightening speed to change the notes for each different chord/scale he plays. I would imagine Harpo thus tuned his harp like a normal concert harp, probably to A-440 as the pitch had been officially raised in 1928 to this from the earlier standard of A-435. It's not like a banjo or guitar where there are only a few strings and lots of fretting needed by one hand... the harpist does all their own 'fretting' hands-free, using the pedals. Also, I imagine there's a limited range in which you could tune a concert harp up or down (ESPECIALLY up), before it collapses due to the overloaded string tension. It's more like tuning a piano than a guitar in this respect... all the tension of all those strings really adds up. If Harpo played what I would term a 'natural' or older-style harp, with no pedal mechanism, such as an Irish harp, I would imagine he then would have tuned it according to his taste and maybe retuned it, but those are smaller instruments that are probably a bit more forgiving of this. I'm not a harpist so cannot comment further on that topic, and invite real harpists to weigh in. I don't know where Harpo got his style from, but some clues may be found not only from studying 'legit' classical harp literature and piano literature, and also the swing-era jazz and pop piano styles of Teddy Wilson, Fats Waller, Ted Fio Rito, Frankie Carle, Eddie Heywood, Jr. and others, but especially in studying another jazz harpist who was active at this same time, Casper Reardon (who may be heard in at least a few dozen recordings here on KZfaq and also on SoundCloud, and also in a film short showing him playing). Here is a GREAT playlist of wonderful Casper Reardon recordings: soundcloud.com/peter-mintun/sets/casper-reardon-harp Besides Casper Reardon, there was also a contemporary of Harpo's named George Lyons, a ragtime harpist in vaudeville, who wrote a couple rags and a few dozen songs with his duo-partner Bob Yosco (who was a mandolin and 'cello player; both of them also sang, reportedly very well). I don't know how many encounters Harpo had with George Lyons (I haven't yet read his autobiography), but both being around the same age and in vaudeville at the same time, their paths MUST have crossed at least a couple times. I know of no commercial 78 recordings by Mr. Lyons or the duo, but he was supposed to have made a film short playing the harp in 1929, which I would LOVE to see!!! Here's their Wikipedia article. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyons_and_Yosco Finally, there was also the Automatic Harp, invented by J. W. Whitlock of Rising Sun, Indiana, made by his company in their small factory, and licensed to and sold exclusively by Wurlitzer in circa the 1906-1918 period. The rolls were made by Ms. Whitlock using published popular piano and piano/vocal sheet music, via her own drafting-board arrangements, I think. Several mechanical music collectors have commented on these arrangements sounding more like a 'piano' than a 'harp' (or making the harp sound like a guitar when played on it), but I don't know how many of them are actually harpists. I've only heard a few tunes on a couple of these instruments so can't comment further, except to say the few dozen left are neat relics of a bygone age, can still play new arrangements as well as the old ones, and are all worth saving... I wish more were left! Full story here: www.rickcrandall.net/whitlock-automatic-harp/

I'm only 23 but I grew up with vhs tapes of their films, was always and will always be brilliant

He was the best that ever lived

You will like this ! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fbeVm712mLCXcac.html

Same here. I think it's because little kids 'get' Harpo. Groucho's double entendre and Chico's mangling of the language was not accessible to them.

Harpo, Harpo, we are the angels

where did you get that sound so fine😊

What are you doing after 11yrs?

Hi are you still alive

@@dulapeep1450 Hanging on. How are you keeping?

Groucho was the best singer imo.

Harpo always took liberties ;)

and not just with the music. But who cares? He played divinely.

The piece is nine minutes long, too long for such a film. It has always been adapted many times, in cartoons, films etc. and all types of instrumentations, and many liberties. Here the touch of swing is not unpleasing. It is already very difficult on the piano, imagine on the harp (Liszt was sort of a record in virtuosity.) The genius of Harpo is not to let the difficulty show.

Have a look at the Tom and Jerry Verizon in “Cat Concerto” I guarantee you’ll never be able to listen to this piece of music in quite the same way again ;-) :-)

A few liberties...and the silverware! :-)

Yes so right

Hey are you still alive

@@dulapeep1450 Me? Just barely.

I play The Piano, but, I, TOO, am IN *ABSOLUTE AWE*, of ANYONE who can play *THE HARP*. It is SUCH a*: (Dare I say it, *MYSTICAL*): (*CELESTIAL*): *BEAUTIFUL*: And, *DIFFICULT*(!!!): Instrument, to play:-0 It is on a *HIGHER* (*SPIRITUAL*) LEVEL: than ANY OTHER Instrument. If "*HARPO*" were HERE, RIGHT NOW: I would BOW DOWN, BEFORE him: (I WOULD PROBABLY *CRY*(!!!!)): And I WOULD KISS HIS (*BEAUTIFUL*) *HANDS*.(WHAT a *BEAUTIFUL* (*MUSICAL*) "*MENTOR*" *HE* has been to me, "*LO, These MANY Years*".;-) (HIS *LYRICISM*, I mean): (HOPEFULLY, I have been "*Channeling*" some of that: INTO *MY OWN* Music).