The Ritz Brothers

The three fellows had a hard act to follow when they tried to fill the huge movie clown shoes of the The Marx Brothers in the late 1930's and they did falter somewhat in their attempt. Nevertheless, the talented trio The Ritz Brothers (comprised of Al Ritz, Jimmy Ritz and Harry Ritz) were troupers all the way as they did their part in offering Depression and WWII-era audiences a comic escape. They later served to inspire such funnymen as Jerry Lewis and Mel Brooks.

All three brothers were born in Newark, New Jersey (Al in 1901, Jimmy in 1903 and Harry in 1906), the sons of an Austrian haberdasher whose last name was Joachim. Raised in Brooklyn, the boys developed an early interest in show business and initially pursued solo careers with rather lackluster success. Following Harry's graduation from high school, they decided to band together (1925) and put together a song-and-dance act they could take out on the road.

Building up their reputation in various night clubs and vaudeville houses, they appeared in the famous musical stage revues of George White and Earl Carroll to great success. Their act remained fairly constant for all four decades, which included precision dancing, tongue-twisting patter songs, ethnic humor and physical schtick.

The boys managed to mug their way into films and earned a contract with 20th Century-Fox as a specialty item in such Alice Faye and Sonja Henie musicals as Sing, Baby, Sing (1936), One in a Million (1936), On the Avenue (1937) and You Can't Have Everything (1937). They gradually earned their own musical comedy vehicle with Life Begins in College (1937) and ventured on in a series of zany hits and misses including Kentucky Moonshine (1938), Straight Place and Show (1938) and Pack Up Your Troubles (1939).

Evolving into a brief Fox slapstick attraction, some of their better known vehicles including The Three Musketeers (1939), a parody of the Dumas classic in which they play "The Three Lackeys" alongside Don Ameche as handsome D'Artagnan; The Gorilla (1939), as investigators in a haunted house horror comedy; and Argentine Nights (1940), which had them starring as music promoters of an all-girl band opposite The Andrews Sisters.

The trio's hyperbolic style and unsubtle brand of insanity did not always go well with critics and the boys on-screen clowning failed to achieve the box-office distinction they had hoped for. Discontented at Fox for not promoting them strongly, they left for greener pastures and landed at Universal. All they were given was the musical comedy Hi'Ya Chum (1943), in which they played "The Merry Madcaps," members of a traveling vaudeville troupe. This would be their last film vehicle.

The Ritz Brothers then returned to the nitery circuit and became popular supper club headliners. They also moved to TV in the 1950's and found occasional work as guests on such shows as "The Ed Sullivan Show," "All-Star Revue" and "The Colgate Comedy Hour."

Eldest brother Al's death of a heart attack in 1965 put a serious cog in the team wheel. Harry and Jimmy continued for a time but floundered and eventually settled into semi-retirement appearing primarily as raconteurs on talk shows ("The Merv Griffin Show" and "The Mike Douglas Show"). Jimmy and Harry were last seen in a gag cameo as cleaning women in fan Mel Brooks's slapstick movie Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976).

Jimmy died of heart failure and Harry of cancer within a year of each other in the mid-1980s. Though the team has remained in the comedy film shadow of other better known duos or trios, Al, Jimmy and Harry certainly made an amusingly broad mark in movie slapstick and continue to find new legions of fans with each passing year.