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| children = 1 }} Leonard "Chico" Marx (March 22, 1887 – October 11, 1961) was an American comedian, musician, bandleader, actor and film star as part of the Marx Brothers. His persona in the act was that of a charming, dim-witted albeit crafty con artist, seemingly of rural Italian origin, who wore shabby clothes, and sported a curly-haired wig and Tyrolean hat. In virtually every film that includes the main trio of the Marx Brothers, Chico is seen working with Harpo Marx, usually as partners in crime. Leonard was the oldest of the Marx Brothers to live past early childhood (first-born Manfred Marx had died in infancy). In addition to his work as a performer, he played an important role in the management and development of the act, at least in its early years. ==Acting career== Billing himself as Chico, he used an Italian persona for his onstage character; stereotyped ethnic characters were common with vaudevillians. His non-Italian-ness was specifically referenced three times on film. In their second feature, ''Animal Crackers'', he recognizes someone he knows to be a shady character impersonating a respected art collector: Ravelli (Chico): "How is it you got to be Roscoe W. Chandler?" In ''Duck Soup'', when Chico impersonates Groucho but retains his accent, Margaret Dumont asks what happened to his voice. Chico replies, "Well, maybe sometime I go to Italy and I'm practicing the language." To which Dumont replies, "Your dialect is perfect." In ''A Night at the Opera'', which begins in Italy, his character, Fiorello, claims not to be Italian, eliciting a surprised look from Groucho: Driftwood (Groucho): "Well, things certainly seem to be getting better around the country." A scene in the film ''Go West'', in which Chico attempts to placate an Indian chief of whom Groucho has run afoul, has a line that plays a bit on Chico's lack of Italian nationality, but is more or less proper Marxian wordplay: S. Quentin Quayle (Groucho): "Can you talk Indian?" However, there are moments where Chico's characters appear to be genuinely Italian; examples include the film ''The Big Store'', in which his character Ravelli runs into an old friend he worked with in Naples (after a brief misunderstanding due to his accent), the film ''Monkey Business'', in which Chico claims his grandfather sailed with Christopher Columbus, and their very first outing ''The Cocoanuts'', where Mr. Hammer (Groucho) asks him if he knew what an auction was, in which he responds "I come from Italy on the Atlantic Auction!" Chico was a talented pianist. He originally started playing with only his right hand and fake playing with his left, as his teacher did so herself. Chico eventually acquired a better teacher and learned to play the piano correctly. As a young boy, he gained jobs playing piano to earn money for the Marx family. Sometimes Chico even worked playing in two places at the same time. He would acquire the first job with his piano-playing skills, work for a few nights, and then substitute Harpo on one of the jobs. (During their boyhood, Chico and Harpo looked so much alike that they were often mistaken for each other.) In the brothers' last film, ''Love Happy'', Chico plays a piano and violin duet with 'Mr. Lyons' (Leon Belasco). Lyons plays some ornate riffs on the violin; Chico comments, "Look-a, Mister Lyons, I know you wanna make a good impression, but please don't-a play better than me!" In a record album about the Marx Brothers, narrator Gary Owens stated that "although Chico's technique was limited, his repertoire was not." The opposite was true of Harpo, who reportedly could play only two tunes on the piano, which typically thwarted Chico's scam and resulted in both brothers' being fired. Groucho Marx once said that Chico never practiced the pieces he played. Instead, before performances he soaked his fingers in hot water. He was known for 'shooting' the keys of the piano. He played passages with his thumb up and index finger straight, like a gun, as part of the act. Other examples of his keyboard flamboyance are found in ''A Night at the Opera'' (1935), where he played the piano for a group of delighted children, and ''A Night in Casablanca'' (1946), where he played a rendition of "The Beer Barrel Polka". Chico became manager of the Marx Brothers after their mother, Minnie, died.〔 As manager, he cut a deal to get the brothers a percentage of a film's gross receipts—the first of its kind in Hollywood. Furthermore, it was Chico's connection with Irving Thalberg of MGM that led to Thalberg's signing the Brothers when they were in a career slump after ''Duck Soup'' (1933), the last of their films for Paramount Pictures. For a while in the 1930s and 1940s, Chico led a big band. Singer Mel Tormé began his professional career singing with the Chico Marx Orchestra. Through the 1950s, Marx occasionally appeared on a variety of television anthology shows and some television commercials, most memorably with Harpo in "The Incredible Jewelry Robbery", a pantomime episode of ''General Electric Theater'' in 1959. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chico Marx」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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