Arthur Marx

Arthur Julius Marx (July 21, 1921April 14, 2011) was an American writer, the son of entertainer Groucho Marx and his first wife, Ruth Johnson.

Marx spent his early years accompanying his father around vaudeville circuits in the United States and abroad. When he was 10, the family moved to Southern California, where the Marx Brothers continued their film careers.

Tennis career

Marx was a nationally ranked tennis player before he was 18. While he was attending the University of Southern California, he won the National Freshman Intercollegiate Tennis title at Montclair, New Jersey.

At the Tri-State Tennis Tournament, the event that evolved into today's Cincinnati Masters, Marx reached the singles final in 1941 before falling to Bobby Riggs. To reach the final, Marx knocked off future International Tennis Hall of Fame member John Doeg in the round of 16, Frank Froehling Jr. in the quarterfinals, and Gardner Larned in the semifinals. Riggs had blown through his competition to reach the final, and Marx gave him his toughest test of the tournament, stretching the future Hall of Famer to five sets before falling, 11–9, 6–2, 4–6, 6–8, 6–1.

War service

Marx spent four years in the United States Coast Guard during World War II serving in the South Pacific. He was assigned to the Coast Guard crewed Army Marine Ship Repair Ship ''Duluth'' which embarked an Army Marine Ship Repair Company for the repair work. Marx, a Yeoman, was aboard when the ship departed San Francisco on August 21, 1944, for Finschhafen, arriving September 24, and then arriving at Hollandia in New Guinea in early October to await departure for the invasion of the Philippines. After a very slow convoy the ship arrived October 23, three days after the landing at Leyte. Marx was hospitalized at Tacloban for malaria and when discharged was assigned to form and be master of ceremonies of an amateur show providing entertainment for those in rear areas passed by U.S.O. shows. Marx wrote about this experience in his book ''Son of Groucho''.

Literary, radio, and TV career

After the war he worked as an advertising copywriter, a radio gag man for Milton Berle, and a writer of Hollywood movies (including four for Bob Hope), Broadway plays and TV scripts for such hit shows as ''My Three Sons'', ''All in the Family'', and '' Alice''. He and his collaborator, Robert Fisher, were head writers for ''Alice'' and wrote 40 episodes of that show. They also wrote for the short-lived situation comedy '' The Good Guys'', and they wrote nine episodes of ''The Paul Lynde Show'' and four episodes of the short-lived '' Life with Lucy''. Marx was also co-creator of the TV series ''Mickey'' starring Mickey Rooney.

Marx wrote both fiction (often humorous) and non-fiction (often show-business related) pieces for magazines throughout his career. Along with Fisher, he co-authored the play ''The Impossible Years'', which ran for three seasons on Broadway and starred Alan King, and ''Minnie's Boys'', a musical about the Marx Brothers' vaudeville years that starred Shelley Winters. They also wrote ''My Daughter's Rated X'', which won the Straw Hat award for best new comedy on the summer stock circuit, and '' Groucho: A Life in Revue'', which was nominated for a New York Outer Critics Circle award for best play and London's Laurence Olivier Award for Comedy Production of the Year. Other plays included ''The Chic Life'' and ''Hello, My Name Is....'' Marx was planning a revival of ''Minnie's Boys'' to be co-authored by Michael R. Crider shortly before Marx's death in 2011.

Marx also wrote over a dozen books, including ''The Ordeal of Willie Brown'' (1951) a humorous fictionalization of his tennis years, and ''Not as a Crocodile'' (1958) a collection of family oriented humor essays. His books also included ''Goldwyn: A Biography of the Man Behind the Myth'' (1976), ''Red Skelton: An Unauthorized Biography'' (1979), ''The Nine Lives of Mickey Rooney'' (1986), ''The Secret Life of Bob Hope: An Unauthorized Biography'' (1993) and the tennis-themed murder mystery ''Set to Kill'' (both 1993). His next novel, ''Tulip'' (2004) was a thriller-mystery and it was followed in 2008 by ''Lust for Death'', a roman à clef about a Bob Hope-like character named Jack Faith. His 1974 book on Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis entitled ''Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime (Especially Himself)'' was adapted into the 2002 made-for-television movie ''Martin and Lewis''.

Marx also wrote several books featuring different takes on his relationship with his father, including ''Life with Groucho'' (1954), ''Son of Groucho'' (1973), a reworking and update of the 1954 volume renamed ''My Life With Groucho: A Son's Eye View'' (1992), and ''Arthur Marx’s Groucho: A Photographic Journey'' (2001). Marx wrote the foreword to Michael R. Crider's 2007 tome, ''The Guy's Guide to Dating, Getting Hitched and the First Year of Marriage'', a humorous look at relationships.

In his 1993 book ''The Secret Life of Bob Hope'', Marx stated, among other things, that Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were womanizers who would trade girlfriends. Marx wrote in ''Son of Groucho'' that while he himself was married to his first wife Irene, he had an affair with her sister-in-law Lois Kahn (then married to Irene's brother Donald), whom he later married after divorcing Irene.

References

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Marx, Arthur
1921 births
2011 deaths
American male tennis players
American people of German-Jewish descent
Jewish American sportspeople
Tennis people from California
Tennis people from New York (state)
Writers from California
Writers from New York City
University of Southern California alumni
USC Trojans men's tennis players
Military personnel from New York City
United States Coast Guard personnel of World War II
United States Coast Guard enlisted
21st-century American Jews