Susan Marx

Susan Marx had a brief screen career in the early 1930s until her marriage, in 1936, to the comedian Harpo Marx, of the Marx Brothers.

She was born Susan Fleming in New York and was originally a dancer on the Broadway stage, working in the Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals. Fleming's contemporary Paulette Goddard once claimed that the two of them were Ziegfeld's "pets" and that the producer sent them on a trip to Palm Beach. "He guessed we'd each catch ourselves a millionaire," she recalled. This would have been around 1926 but it was back in New York, some two years later, that Fleming would have a first, chance meeting with her future husband.

At the age of 20, she attended a performance of the Marx Brothers' show Animal Crackers, where Harpo Marx spotted Fleming sitting in the audience and proceeded to stare at her throughout an entire scene. Embarrassed, Fleming left the theatre once the scene had concluded. Discovering afterwards that it was a regular part of the act and indeed something of a compliment to be chosen, Fleming subsequently approached Harpo Marx in order to apologise. Her conversation seemingly extended no further than saying "How do you do, sir?" and "Oh, no, sir!", because Marx promptly asked her for a date, which she was too frightened to accept. Marx, perhaps unsurprisingly, swiftly forgot the incident, but Fleming did not.

Fleming entered films when on a vacation trip to Hollywood in 1931. She was leading lady to John Wayne in one of his many pre-Stagecoach B-westerns, Range Feud (1931), and was given small roles in A Dangerous Affair and Ladies of the Jury (1932).

Fleming also received featured roles in He Learned About Women and what was to remain her best-remembered film, Million Dollar Legs (1932), an absurdist comedy directed by Eddie Cline. Million Dollar Legs represents the efforts of a mythical country, "Klopstokia", to raise much-needed cash by participating in that year's Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Although the "legs" of the title actually belong to a man who is their champion runner (Andy Clyde), Paramount staged a publicity stunt in which Fleming's legs were insured for $1m. Fleming played the daughter of the president (W.C. Fields) and, in common with every girl from her nation, is named Angela (all the men, by the way, are called George). When asked by a visiting American (Jack Oakie) why all the girls have the same name, she replies simply, "Why not?" They fall for each other instantly and intend to marry just as promptly. "We'll be married in one minute," she is told. "I hate these long engagements," she sighs.

In real life, Fleming was to have a long engagement to Harpo Marx, whom she met again in 1932 at a dinner party organised by the producer Sam Goldwyn. According to his memoirs, Harpo Speaks! (1961), the comedian was impressed that Fleming had not acquired what he called "table-hopping eyes", the Hollywood habit of allowing her gaze to wander in the direction of other, potentially useful people while engaging someone in conversation. Marx was then in his middle forties and settled into a bachelor existence, mixing with the world's celebrities and, when it came to women, maintaining an efficient "little black book".

Over a four-year period, during which Fleming proposed to Marx three times, she won him over and they were married – in disguise, by an out-of-town registrar – in 1936. Fleming had been signed to a long-term contract with Paramount but was content to retire from the screen. "There is nothing more boring than working on a movie," she said in a 1995 interview for Hello! magazine. "It took for ever to get the lights sorted out. I hated it!"

Instead, Susan Marx became a co-conspirator in her husband's own brand of fun – as when she decided to dye Harpo's hair – and became, by her own description, his "valet", cleaning and maintaining Harpo's stage wigs and tending to the injuries that often resulted from his insistence on performing his own stunts. When Harpo and Chico Marx toured Britain in 1949, Susan also came along but spent most of the time showing their eldest son around. Susan and Harpo Marx had adopted four children as babies, starting in 1938: three sons, Bill, Alexander and Jim; and a daughter, Minnie. The family settled at El Rancho Harpo, where they were filmed for a 1956 television appearance (still extant) on Sunday Spectacular: inside Beverly Hills, in which Susan did the talking for Harpo. Groucho and Chico Marx appeared in the programme's studio sections.

A skilled artist – she did the line illustrations for Harpo Speaks! – Susan Marx encouraged Harpo to learn to paint after a heart attack in 1958 had forced him temporarily to give up playing the harp. Harpo had tried painting years before, but with Susan's encouragement became more than proficient in oils and sold a number of paintings to raise money for charity.

Harpo Marx died on 28 September 1964, the couple's 28th wedding anniversary. Coincidence somehow characterises their story: before meeting Susan, Harpo is thought to have been interested in marrying only two other women, both of whom were named Fleming; in turn, Groucho Marx spent his last years in the company of a woman named Erin Fleming; and, in the end, Susan Marx died on the same day as Chico's second wife, Mary.

Glenn Mitchell