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Nothing goes through a theater faster than news that there's a sneak thief around.
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Mabel put the bowl down; six or eight hands filled with biscuits dipped into it and came out with gobs of gravy.
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The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode in On)
by Howard Waldrop
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A few years before Manny Marks (that's how he insisted his name be spelled) died at the age of 107, he gave a series of long interviews to Barry Winstead, who was researching a book on the death of vaudeville. Marks was 103 at the time, in the spring of 1990. This unedited tape was probably never transcribed.
• • • • •
Marks: … I know it was, because I was playing Conshohocken. Is that thing on? What exactly does it do?
Winstead: Are you kidding me?
Marks: Those things have been going downhill since the Dictaphone. How well could that thing record? It's the size of a pack of Luckies …
Winstead: Trust me, Mr. Marks.
Marks: Mr. Marx was my father, Samuel " Frenchy " Marx. Call me Manny.
W: Let's start with that, then. Why the name change?
M: I didn't want my brothers riding my coattails. They started calling themselves the Four Marx Brothers, after they quit being the Four Nightingales. Milton—Gummo to you—got it out of his system early, after Julius—Groucho to you. Of course, Leo and Arthur had been playing piano in saloons and whorehouses from the time they were ten and eleven. You'll have to tell me whether you think that's show business or not …
W: It's making a living with your talent.
M: Barely.
W: You entered show business when?
M: I was fourteen. Turn of the century. I walked out the front door and right onto the stage.
W: Really?
M: There was a three- or four-year period where I made a living with my talent. Like Gene Kelly says, "Dignity, always dignity." Actually, Comden and Green wrote that—it just came out of Kelly's mouth. I was in a couple of acts like the O'Connor/Kelly one at Dead Man's Fang, Arizona, in that movie.
W: With whom?
M: Whom? You sound like Julius.
W: Would I know any of your partners?
M: In what sense?
W: Would I recognize their names?
M: I wouldn't even recognize their names now. That was almost ninety years ago. Give me a break.
W: What was the act?
M: A little of everything. We danced a little, One partner sang a little while I struck poses and pointed. One guy played the bandoneon—that's one of those Brazilian accordions with the buttons instead of the keys. I may or may not have acted like a monkey; I'm not saying, and I'm pretty sure there aren't any pictures …
W: Gradually you achieved success.
M: Gradually I achieved success.
W: Had your brothers entered show business by then?
M: Maybe. I was too busy playing four-a-days at every tank town in Kansas to notice. A letter caught up with me a couple years on from Mom, talking about Julius stranded in Denver and Milton doing god knows what.
W: Did your mom—Minnie Marx—encourage your career as she later did those of your brothers?
M: I didn't hang around long enough to find out. All I know is I wanted out of my home life.
W: Did Al Shean (of Gallagher and Shean) encourage you?
M: Uncle Al encouraged everybody. "Kid, go out and be bad. Come back and see me when you get good, and I'll help you all I can." Practical man.
W: Your compatriot George Burns said, "Now that vaudeville is dead, there's no place for kids to go and be bad anymore."
M: What about the Fox network?
W: You got him there.
· · · · ·
Winstead: So by now you were hoofing as a single.
Marks: No—I moved a little from the waist up, so it wasn't, technically, hoofing. To keep people from watching my feet too much, I told a few jokes. Like Fields in his juggling act or Rogers with his rope tricks. Fields used to do a silent juggling bit. He asked for a raise at the Palace and they said: "You're the highest-paid juggler in the world." He said, "I gotta get a new act."
W: I've heard that story before.
M: Everybody has. I'm just giving you the practicalities of vaudeville. You're the best in the world and you still aren't getting paid enough, you have to do something else, too, to get more money. So I was a dancer and—well, sort of a comic. Not a comic dancer—the jokes are in your feet, then. My act: the top part told jokes—the bottom part moved.
· · · · ·
Winstead: What was—who do you think was the best? Who summed up vaudeville?
Marks: That's two questions.
W: Okay.
M: Who summed up vaudeville? The answer's the standard one—Jolson, Cantor, Fields, Foy, Brice, Marilyn Miller. They could hold an audience for ten hours if they'd have wanted to. And you can't point to any one thing they had in common. Not one. There are all kinds of being good at what you do …
W: And the best?
M: Two acts. You might have run across them, since you write about this stuff for a living. Dybbuk & Wing: a guy from Canarsie and a guy from Shanghai. Novelty dance act. And the Ham Nag. A horse-suit act.
W: I've seen the name on playbills.
M: Ever notice anything about that?
W: What?
M: Stick with me and I will astound you later.
W: What, exactly, made them so good?
M: Dybbuk & Wing did, among other things, a spooky act. The theater lights would go down, and they'd be standing there in skeleton costumes—you know, black body suits with bones painted on them. Glowed in the dark. Had a scene drop that glowed in the dark, too. Burying ground—trees, tombstones, and so forth. Like in that later Disney cartoon, what was it?
W: The Skeleton Dance?
M: Exactly. Only this was at least twenty years before.
W: So they were like early Melies—the magician filmmaker?
M: No. They were Dybbuk & Wing.
W: I mean, they used the phantasmagorical in the act. What was it like?
M: It wasn't like anything. It was terrific, is all I can say. You would swear the bones came apart while they were d
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