The Reader's Digest - February 1962

Harpo Tells a Story

The silent member of the four Marx Brothers reveals that he knows how to use words to quicken responses from the human heart

Condensed from "Harpo Speaks!"

Harpo Marx with Rowland Barber

In the house in Beverly Hills where our four children grew up, living conditions were a few thousand times improved over the old tenement on New York's East 93rd Street we Marx Brothers called home.  But my mother and father would have approved of the way my wife, Susan, and I ran the place in California.  Like the East Side tenement, our house was seldom without the sound of music or laughter or questions being asked or stories being told.  One of our kids' favorite stories was about how they came to be adopted.  They used to sit around Susan and me on the bedroom floor in their bunny-type pajamas while we told "The Story," as we came to call it.  We played it for suspense, like an old-fashioned cliff-hanger, and how they loved it!    I was the same kind of father as I was a harpist -- I played by ear.  And I've been lucky on both scores. The harp has given me a decent living, and my children have given me more pleasure than I ever thought possible.  Billy, Alex, Jimmy and Minnie have turned out to be healthy, inquisitive children with muinds of their own.  I'm proud of them.    Susan, an only child who never had any roots, and I, a lone wolf who got married 20 years to late, were adopted by the kids as much as they were by us.  We decided we would tell them they were adopted as soon as they could understand any speech.  We'd seen some pretty sad cases where parents kept putting off telling their adopted children the truth; and the kids, told too late, were full of resentment and a feeling of being unwanted.  In our case, since we were all an adopted family, we had equal amounts of gratitude and respect mixed in with our love for one another.    Billy was 14 months old when he joined the family, and by the time he learned to talk, he knew all about that "someplace else" he had come from.  He accepted it as a fact of life, like learning that the sun went down at night, and that Mommy loved Daddy and they both loved Billy.    In the fall of 1943 we brought home our second son, whom we named Alexander.  In 1944 James Arthur and Minnie Susan were added to the Marx household.  Each came to us as a baby.  We started telling the kids where they had come from in the form of a true-adventure bedtime story when Alex was two, and  Jimmy and Minnie were scarcely a year old.  By the time they were four and three they couldn't go to bed without hearing The Story.    "Poor, poor Billy," Susan would begin.  "Growing up sad and lonely, with no little brother to play with." Alex's eyes would be glittering, because he knew he was coming.  "We had to find a little brother for Billy -- not just any little brother, but the right one, whose name would be Alex and who would have yellow hair and pink cheeks.  Well, we looked at this baby boy and that one, but no -- not one of them was alex.  Then one day Dr. Hirshfeld phoned and said, 'I think I know where you can find him!'  So Daddy and I packed our suitcase and got on a train and rode all day and all night to the place that Dr. Hirshfeld told us about.  There they showed us a little boy.  We looked at him --"    Susan would pause for effect.  Alex would be shivering from the terrible suspense.  "--and what do you know!  It was Alex!  We bundled him up and took him home of the train with us, and Billy had his little brother so he wasn't sad and lonely any more."  Alex would smile with relief.  He'd been found!  Now it was Jimmy's turn to hold his breath.      "But Billy was six years older than Baby Alex, and he would run out to play with the older boys, and now Alex was going to be sad and lonely if he didn't have a little brother.  So we began looking and looking for a little brother for Alex -- the right one, who would have bright, shiny brown eyes.  Well, we hunted all over.  We began to think we would never find Jimmy.  Then one day Dr. Hirshfeld phoned and said, 'I've heard about a baby boy, and I think he's the one you're looking for.'  So Daddy and I got on the train, and this time we rode three days and three nights, and we got off the train and rushed over and they showed us this baby, and oh, my goodness--"     Susan would shake her head.  Jimmy would be biting his lip, his hands clenching and unclenching.     "--it wasn't our Jimmy.  We started to leave, and then they said, 'Maybe we showed you the wrong one.  Maybe this is the one.'  And what do you know!  It was Jimmy!"     Jimmy would smile and clap tp hear he had been found at last, but Minne would be beside herself waiting to hear the end of the story.     This is where I usually took over.  "Alex had his kid brother,"  I would begin, "but what Alex and Jimmy wanted now more than anything else in the world was--"     "A baby sister!"  Minnie would whisper breathlessly.  "--a baby sister.  Not just any old baby sister, but a little doll named Minnie, who was happy and gay and who wanted three brothers the same as they wanted her.  Well, it's not easy, you know, to find a baby girl like that.  We hunted and hunted, but we couldn't find Minnie.  then one day Dr. Hirshfeld phoned and said, 'Hurry over, fast!  I think I've found her!'  So Mom and I hurried over, and Dr. Hirshfeld showed us this little girl.  And what do you know!  It wasn't Minnie at all."     Minnie would stuff her hand in her mouth so she wouldn't blurt out the ending.     "So we came home, feeling sad, and told Alex amd Jimmy we hadn't found their sister, and maybe we never could.  Then one day Aunt Gracie Burns called us up all the way from New York City, and said, 'I think I've found your girl!  She's a little doll, happy and gay,' and we said 'Yes!  That sounds like our Minnie.'     "Well, we were in such a hurry we told them to bring Minnie to us on an airplane.  And the very next day a nurse got off the airplane with the little girl.  But the minute we looked at her, she began to cry and yell, and her face got red and she wasn't happy or gay at all.  'You'll have to take her back on the airplane,' we said.  'This isn't Minnie.'  But then do you know what happened?"     Minnie's eyes would be shut tight.      What happened was, the little girl fell fast asleep, she was so tired from the long airplane ride.  And I looked at her, and in her sleep she was smiling a happy and gay smile.  I yelled, 'Hey, Mom!  It is her, after all!  It's Minnie!'"     Now that all of them had been found, they had something wonderful to take to bed with them and dream about, and there was seldom any squawk when the lights went out.  In fact, long after they outgrew bedtime stories, Alex, Jimmy and Minnie would ask us to tell them The Story at least once a week.  By then, of course, Bill -- no longer "Billy" -- had gone off to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.     Alex was about 12 when one day he came to me while I was playing the harp.  he looked troubled.  I asked him what was eating him.     "Oh, nothing, Dad," he said, staring at the harp pedals.     I reminded him of a rule in our house:  If he had something to say, out with it.     Well, Dad,"  He said, "we've been talking about The Story, Jimmy and Minnie and me.  And, well, there's something none of us ever said to you that we ought to have.  And we voted I should come and say it."     My heart was in my throat.  Maybe the truth was coming out after all these years.  Maybe we'd made a big mistake, told the kids too much too soon.     I said, "What is it you want to say, Alex?"     He finally got up the courage to look straight at me.  he took a deep breath and said, "Thanks.  Thanks for adopting us."     My heart went back where it belonged, and it's stayed there ever since.

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