On the small stage, the befuddled boys saw their audience disappear in mid-tune. Maybe it was one mule that kicked a cart to pieces and was dragging it down the street or maybe it was a team of mules pulling a wagon - no one knows for sure - but there was mayhem on Main Street on a Saturday afternoon, and for the moment the matinee crowd found it more interesting than the musical offerings of the young Marx brothers. Others spilled down the staircase and out the front doors as if the building were on fire. Members of the audience leaped from their seats and hurried to the second-floor gallery, where they pushed and shoved and craned their necks to see what was causing the commotion on the street below. "MULE'S LOOSE!," he shouted, or words to that effect. Whether Minnie was on hand in Nacogdoches that long-ago afternoon is lost to history, but her boys were hard at work making music when a man rushed up the stairs and burst through the theater doors. 'And another one is in the washroom shaving.' Minnie shook her head sadly. 'That kid of yours is in the dining car smoking a cigar,' the conductor told her. Here's how Groucho recalled her parsimony years later in a biography: "Because we were a kid act, we traveled at half-fare, despite the fact that we were all around 20. Still, Minnie is pinching pennies as they travel around the country. They're doing well on the circuit, much better than when young Julius had to drop out of school at 14 and find work to help support the large family. Their names are Julius (soon to be known to the world as Groucho), Milton (Gummo) and Adolph (Harpo), along with their friend Lon Levy. Their mom, Minnie Marx, is their manager.
Sons of impoverished German Jewish immigrants in a family of five kids, they've grown up in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. What you may not know as you listen is that three of the young men are brothers, and they're a long way from home. You've heard better, but in Nacogdoches you've heard worse, as well. Accompanying themselves on guitar, mandolin and violin, they offer up a few more numbers in four-part harmony, a dramatic reading or two and then - uh-oh, you find yourself stifling a yawn.
On this particular afternoon, the curtain opens onto a cramped stage, and four young men wearing sailor suits, white straw hats, clip-on bow ties and paper lapel roses break into a popular song. Some folks you know - not you, of course - have even taken in the occasional burlesque show at the opera house. Your little town by this time is on the southern vaudeville circuit, so you're accustomed to seeing plays, melodrama, magic shows and musical acts.
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So, the year is 1907, and you're part of a full house gathered on a Saturday afternoon to hear a New York musical troupe called the Four Nightingales. On the front of the building was an open gallery over the sidewalk, where theatergoers would congregate during intermissions.
A ticket office and businesses occupied the ground floor a wide staircase led to the theater on the second floor. Austin State University and the author of a fine book about early Nacogdoches, says that the two-story structure was built to induce theatrical companies to stop over between engagements in Shreveport and Houston. The locals, after all, built a downtown opera house in 1889. NACOGDOCHES - The oldest town in Texas has always been a culturally sophisticated place, as best I can tell, anyway. Then an opera house, it's now an art gallery. Show More Show Less 2 of2 The Marx Brothers might never have been the Marx Brothers had a Nacogdoches mule not upstaged them during their appearance in this building on Main Street in Nacogdoches. 1 of2 The Marx Brothers might never have been the Marx Brothers had a Nacogdoches mule not upstaged them during their appearance in this building on Main Street in Nacogdoches.
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