Harpo's Letter

ACADEMIA Letters Harpo’s Letter Amanda Kluveld, Maastricht University Harpo’s Letter On April 4th, 1941, Harpo Marx, the silent and miming member of the Marx Brothers, wrote a remarkable letter headed with the logo of the famous film studio Metro-GoldwynMayer. At the time, the Marx Brothers were working on the release of the comedy The Big Store, the last film they would make for MGM. Marx’s letter was addressed to Bert Fish, United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Portugal at the embassy of Lisbon and contained an urgent plea for help.[i] I discovered the letter during my professional research into the history of the Shoah. I could find no mention of it in Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, nor in any other of the numerous publications about the Marx Brothers. However, I think this story should be more widely known, because it highlights a serious side of this world-famous comic actor.[ii] The case that Marx describes concerns his aunt, a 72-year-old Jewish widow named Helene Schickler, who had been in Naples, Italy for two years at the time he wrote the letter. Schickler was German by birth and, like many Jews, had fled Nazi Germany in the aftermath of Kristallnacht. In Naples, she found herself in or near a convent, in the Campo di San Bartolomeo that served as an internment camp for refugees from Nazi Germany. However, she could not stay there because of limited food supplies. She had a visa that would have enabled her to travel to the United States and join her son Max Schickler, who had already ordered her a ticket for a steamer to make the trans-Atlantic crossing from Lisbon, Portugal. However, to allow her entry into Portugal, the Portuguese authorities required proof of final booking, which she could not provide. Her visa to enter Portuguese territory was denied. Helene Schickler was trapped in Italy.[iii] After reading Harpo Marx’s letter, Bert Fish also received a letter from Max Schickler referring to his famous cousin Harpo. Max also included a letter from his mother describing Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amanda Kluveld, amandakluveld@gmail.com Citation: Kluveld, A. (2022). Harpo’s Letter. Academia Letters, Article 4538. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4538. 1 her predicament. From Helene Schickler’s letter, it is clear that she was in a state of panic. She wrote that the local police had sent a doctor to the convent where she was staying, in order to determine whether she was fit to make the journey to a concentration camp. Helene then had to report to the police station, where the room was full of cigar smoke, and she became unwell due to stress. The police allowed her to go outside to recover in the fresh air, but she had to leave her visa and papers behind until she could leave for the US. She wrote that she hardly had any money left and stressed that she was scared and tired of living. She had lost a lot of weight and, with it, her strength. She told her son she did not believe that life would bring her any good anymore. She signed the letter as “your lonesome mother.” Both Harpo Marx and Max Schickler seemed to believe that a letter from a famous movie star on MGM letterhead would carry weight in Lisbon. They were not the only ones. Also in 1941, Sol Lesser—later known for producing Tarzan movies—wrote a letter to Bert Fish on Principal Artists Studio letterhead, asking for help for his mother-in-law’s first cousin who was trapped in Germany. Lesser gave as a reference his friend James Roosevelt, son of the president—but to no avail. Marx and Lesser received similar responses. They were people of German nationality, not Americans. Thus, the US Embassy in Lisbon could not interfere. To Lesser, Fish wrote that the Portuguese authorities would not allow such interference; to Marx he wrote that it would be inappropriate. Max Schickler received no reply, as far as is known. How did Marx’s aunt’s story end? After Helene Schickler’s desperate letter, I can find nothing that offers certainty about her fate. The investigation is far from complete, but this is what we know and do not know. In Naples, Helene Schickler could move freely, but had to report daily to the local police. Both the regular local population people and the internees suffered from hunger, something Marx referred to in his letter. The life of the Jews detained there, and the efforts of the convent and the local population to help them, are described in the fascinating book It Happened in Italy (2011) by New York-born Elisabeth Bettina, whose grandmother was from the area.[iv] When searching the administrative sources relating to Jews persecuted in Italy, one should note that personal records were usually registered with the Italian version of their subjects’ first names. For Helene, this is Elena. In the digital archives of the Holocaust remembrance center Yad Vashem, I found an Elena Schickler, with no mention of place and date of birth.[v] This Elena Schickler was on a list of Jews arrested in Trieste, in the north eastern part of Italy. It is not inconceivable that Elena Schickler was subsequently imprisoned in Isiera di San Sabba, a compound in Trieste that served as a Nazi concentration camp for political prisoners and Jews. Most of the Jews there were deported to Auschwitz—as was Elena Schickler. If Helena and Elena are the same person, it would mean that the Nazis almost certainly murdered her at Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amanda Kluveld, amandakluveld@gmail.com Citation: Kluveld, A. (2022). Harpo’s Letter. Academia Letters, Article 4538. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4538. 2 Auschwitz. What we know for sure is that Helene Schickler was not actually Harpo Marx’s aunt— and Max Schickler was not Harpo’s cousin. They were, in fact, in-laws. Helene Schickler’s husband and the husband of Marx’s maternal aunt Hannah Schickler were brothers. In 1910, Hannah had been part of a singing group with the Marx Brothers and their mother, The Six Mascots.[vi] In his autobiography, Harpo states that the Marxes considered everyone with a German Jewish name to be family.[vii] These were not just empty words. Through this brief history, we learn that Harpo Marx tried to save people he had never met but nevertheless considered family. In his comic films, he was the silent one of Marx brothers. Offstage, he wrote in silence to save a woman whose life he considered part of his own, and bring her home. References [i] Allen Eyles, The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy, International Film Guide, 1966: 1 (London: Zwemmer, 1966); Eyles; Paul D. Zimmerman and Burt Goldblatt, The Marx Brothers at the Movies (New York: Putnam, 1968); Joe Adamson, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo: A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World, Coronet Books (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974); Wes D. Gehring, The Marx Brothers: A Bio-Bibliography, 1 online resource (xv, 262 pages) : illustrations. vols., Popular Culture Bio-Bibliographies, 0193-6891 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/?isbn=9780313031878; Wayne Koestenbaum, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, 1 online resource (ix, 299 pages) : illustrations vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780520951983; Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!., 1 online resource vols. (Pickle Partners Publishing, 2017), http:// www.myilibrary.com?id=1003939. [ii] Marx, Harpo Speaks!. [iii] 7 Archival records of microforms (new material / document acquisition) / 7.6 Document acquisition in the US / 7.6.1 Washington, National Archives USA / Documentation of various Concentration Camps, e.g. Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Natzweiler, Flossenbürg; documentation of prisons; Displaced Persons documentation; Hadamar sanatorium; reports and witness reports. / Lisbon Embassy records, 1941: 1100013150 Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amanda Kluveld, amandakluveld@gmail.com Citation: Kluveld, A. (2022). Harpo’s Letter. Academia Letters, Article 4538. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4538. 3 [iv] Elizabeth Bettina, It happened in Italy: untold stories of how the people of Italy defied the horrors of the Holocaust. (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2009). [v] “Central DB of Shoah Victims’ Names - Record Details,” accessed December 28, 2021, https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=11201940&ind=1; “I Nomi Della Shoah Italiana: Cerca Un Nome,” accessed December 28, 2021, http://www. nomidellashoah.it/1residenze_eng.asp?sigla_arr=Trieste&avant=5&vai=52. [vi] William Kennedy, “The Marx Brothers’ Family Tree Explained,” Grunge.com, December 18, 2021, https://www.grunge.com/711561/the-marx-brothers-family-tree-explained/ ; “The Marx Brothers,” accessed December 28, 2021, https://www.marx-brothers.org. [vii] Marx, Harpo Speaks!. Bibliography Adamson, Joe. Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo: A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974. Bettina, Elizabeth. It happened in Italy: untold stories of how the people of Italy defied the horrors of the Holocaust. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2009. “Central DB of Shoah Victims’ Names - Record Details.” Accessed December 28, 2021. https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=11201940&ind=1. Eyles, Allen. The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy. International Film Guide, 1966: 1. London: Zwemmer, 1966. Gehring, Wes D. The Marx Brothers: A Bio-Bibliography. 1 online resource (xv, 262 pages) : illustrations. vols. Popular Culture Bio-Bibliographies, 0193-6891. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. http://ebooks.abc-clio.com/?isbn=9780313031878. “I Nomi Della Shoah Italiana: Cerca Un Nome.” Accessed December 28, 2021. http://www. nomidellashoah.it/1residenze_eng.asp?sigla_arr=Trieste&avant=5&vai=52. Kennedy, William. “The Marx Brothers’ Family Tree Explained.” Grunge.com, December 18, 2021. https://www.grunge.com/711561/the-marx-brothers-family-tree-explained/. Koestenbaum, Wayne. The Anatomy of Harpo Marx. 1 online resource (ix, 299 pages) : Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amanda Kluveld, amandakluveld@gmail.com Citation: Kluveld, A. (2022). Harpo’s Letter. Academia Letters, Article 4538. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4538. 4 illustrations vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. https://www.degruyter. com/isbn/9780520951983. Marx, Harpo. Harpo Speaks!. 1 online resource vols. Pickle Partners Publishing, 2017. http://www.myilibrary.com?id=1003939. “The Marx Brothers.” Accessed December 28, 2021. https://www.marx-brothers.org. Zimmerman, Paul D., and Burt Goldblatt. The Marx Brothers at the Movies. New York: Putnam, 1968. Academia Letters, January 2022 ©2022 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amanda Kluveld, amandakluveld@gmail.com Citation: Kluveld, A. (2022). Harpo’s Letter. Academia Letters, Article 4538. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4538. 5