![]() Groucho – still Julius at the time – made his show business debut in the summer of 1905. By that point the Marx Brothers – individually and collectively – had been working on vaudeville and Broadway stages for twenty years. Sound films had been in development almost since the invention of motion pictures, and it was apparent by 1925 that it was just a matter of time before one of the many systems finally worked well enough to put the idea over. The Four Marx Brothers could-and three of them would. But the studios that did embrace sound movies quickly began to look for actors who could speak. It was a slow death, as the other studios were not all quick to adapt. The silent film as an art form essentially died that evening. ![]() ![]() ![]() talking motion picture adaptation of the hit Broadway play, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, redefined the movie business overnight. That evening at Warners’ Theatre in Times Square, the premiere of the Warner Bros. While the Marx Brothers were onstage performing The Cocoanuts at the Lyceum Theatre in Rochester, New York, on October 6, 1927, history was being made 330 miles away in New York City. This essay was first published in the 2016 Universal Pictures Home Entertainment release, The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection (Restored Blu-ray Edition.) It also appears in the 2017 UK edition of the release, The 4 Marx Brothers at Paramount.
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