I hear Harpo speak!

"Harpo Speaks!" ***1/2
by Harpo Marx
I've always had a soft spot for anarchists, and "Harpo Speaks!" reveals the real-life Harpo Marx as the man I always imagined him to be--full of kindliness, decency, and canny intelligence.

Harpo's autobiography overlooks a lot--the perfidy of his brother Chico; his brother Groucho's bouts with depression; his obsessive stage mother, Minnie; and the tyranny of his dearest friend, Alexander Woolcott. But, then, you'd expect someone who viewed life as a kind of surreal joke (Harpo even had his picture drawn by the surrealist Salvador Dali, at left; click to read a Telegraph story about the pair's friendship) to be able to overlook a lot.

There are also gaps in the story. During World War I, Minnie kept the boys out of the draft by buying a chicken farm in Illinois because farmers were exempt. Harpo changed his name from Adolph to Arthur in the wake of anti-German sentiment during the wars. Although he was a secular Jew (and raised his four adopted children as Roman Catholics, his wife's faith), Harpo felt a deep affinity for the plight of Jews in Germany, whence his family had emigrated.

And the book completely ignores Harpo's and Groucho's longtime friendship with President Harry Truman. Truman had been a fan of the Marx Brothers, whom he'd seen on stage as a young man about 1910 in Kansas City. Both Harpo and Groucho seem to have lobbied Truman to allow more German and Austrian Jews into the country after World War II, urged him to run again in 1952, and Harpo sent Truman a photo of the Harry Truman Forest from Israel. (Truman was honored for being among the first to recognize the state of Israel.)

Most importantly, the book overlooks just how damn hard the Marx Brothers worked. Harpo mentions movie-making and the comedy schticks he and his brothers developed in the early vaudeville days mostly in passing. His book includes a funny story about doing gymnastics with Marion Davies at San Simeon. (He mentions casually that the Marx Brothers did all their own stunts, but forgets to mention that he and his brothers were well into their 40s at the time).

Harpo talks more about his love of music, his devotion to the harp, his beloved wife and kids, and his friends than show biz or his brothers. He seems happily bewildered by the fact that a boy who was thrown out of school (literally, froma first-storey window, by Irish hooligans) in the second grade was beloved by so many smart and influential people. He chalks it up to his being a good listener: "What could I possibly say to interest them?"

In "Harpo Speaks!" quite a lot, as it turns out.