Arthur Julius Marx was an American author, a nationally ranked amateur tennis player, and son of entertainer Groucho Marx and his first wife, Ruth Johnson. He was named after Groucho's brother Arthur "Harpo" Marx. 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.
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 ShipDuluth 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's experience aboard was recalled 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, 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 comedyThe Good Guys and four episodes of the ill-fated Life with Lucy. Marx was also co-creator of the TV series Mickey starring Mickey Rooney. Marx wrote both fiction and non-fiction 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 , which won great critical acclaim and 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 a humorous fictionalization of his tennis years, and Not as a Crocodile a collection of family oriented humor essays. His books also included Goldwyn: A Biography of the Man Behind the Myth, Red Skelton, The Nine Lives of Mickey Rooney, The Secret Life ofBob Hope and the tennis-themed murder mystery Set to Kill. His next novel, Tulip 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 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, Son of Groucho, a reworking and update of the 1954 volume renamed My Life With Groucho, and Arthur Marx’s Groucho: A Photographic Journey. 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.
