Biography

Margaret Dumont

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Margaret Dumont would not consider it a tragedy that she is best-known for her performances as the ultimate straight woman in seven of the Marx Brothers' films (including most of their best). It is a popular myth that she never understood their jokes (offscreen and on); restored footage of Groucho's "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" shows her laughing at his ad libs. Apart from a small role in a 1917 Dickens adaptation, she spent her early career on the stage, ending up with the Marxes in the late 1920s in the stage versions of The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930), and was given a Paramount contract at the same time they were. She played similar roles alongside other great comedians, including W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy and Jack Benny and also played straight dramatic parts (her chief love), but few of them made much impact - it is as Groucho Marx's foil that she ranks among the immortals, and she died shortly after being reunited with him on The Hollywood Palace (1964).
- IMDb mini biography by: Michael Brooke

She was bald and wore wigs for several years on and off camera.
Last appearance of any kind was on the TV show The Hollywood Palace (1964) in 1965, reprising her role as Groucho Marx's straight woman. She died just days later.
Her screen persona was that of a stolid, wealthy society matron, which is exactly what she was: her husband, John Moller, was a millionaire industrialist, and she often commuted to filming locations from her mansions in Palm Springs, California, and Paris, France.
Offstage, she usually called Groucho Marx "Julie", which is short for Julius, Groucho's given name.
Groucho Marx called her "practically the fifth Marx Brother".

[on first joining the Marx Brothers act] After three weeks as a leading lady, Groucho had pushed me out of windows, pulled chairs out from under me, broiled steaks in the fireplace of my apartment, put frogs in my bathtub and made my life miserable, on the stage and off.
I'm not a stooge, I'm the best straight woman in Hollywood. There's an art to playing it straight. You must build up your man, but never top him, never steal the laughs from him.
Script writers build up for a laugh, but they don't allow any pause for it. That's where I come in. I ad lib - it doesn't matter what I say - just to kill a few seconds so you can enjoy the gag. I have to sense when the big laughs will come and fill in, or the audience will drown out the next gag with its own laughter.

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