Do people rank their favorite Marx Bros the way they rank their favorite Beatles? There are some clear parallels between the two groups. Zeppo, of course, is the Ringo of the Marx family, putting in steady background work that catches all of the mockery and none of the credit. Groucho & Chico are the Marx Bros’ Lennon-McCartney songwriting duo: legendary lyrical talents who could craft a joke so brilliantly, beautifully simple that it appears effortless. That leaves Harpo as the Marx equivalent to George: the abstraction, the artist, the connoisseur’s favorite. Groucho & Chico might have the most widely remembered Marx bits thanks to the eternal quotability of their rapidfire wordplay, but Harpo is the unpredictable, undefinable element that makes the vaudeville group’s cinematic output for Paramount convincingly, enduringly rank among the greatest comedies every made. If Groucho’s 4th-wall-breaking smartassery was the inspiration for Bugs Bunny’s wascally, wisecracking persona, Harpo’s schtick was the blueprint for the zanier, more surreal touches of Looney Tunes slapstick – crafting all-timer sight gags out of nonstop chaos & violence. He’s just as deserving of celebration as a screen comedy icon, selling curly blonde wigs on costume store shelves right next to Groucho’s famous “beaglepuss” glasses.

The one time Harpo might’ve been properly appreciated as the best of the Marx Bros was in the group’s film debut, 1929’s Cocoanauts. Adapted from a stage musical at a time when Hollywood productions were still learning how to incorporate sound recording equipment, Cocoanauts finds Groucho & Chico struggling to get their puns & dirty jokes across with their usual clarity & machine-gun rhythms. Meanwhile, Harpo is just as funny as he ever was, acting as the rickety bridge from Chaplin-style silent comedy to the early sound era that the Marx Bros would soon collectively master. He is a mute little tramp, and a scoundrel. While Groucho plays the wisecracking manager of a failing Florida resort, Harpo tears into the scene like a human tornado, causing nonstop chaos for a business that’s already got enough problems without him. Within seconds of arriving, he’s eating jacket buttons off Groucho’s bellboys, tearing up guests’ mail into confetti, and stealing money directly from the concierge’s cash register. Much of Cocoanauts is a cutesy, well-behaved stage musical romance that happens to add in dashes of Marx Bros humor for flavor, and Harpo’s the one spice note that comes through the strongest. It’s no one’s favorite Marx Bros movie, but he makes sure it’s no one’s least favorite either.

It’s at the start of the brothers’ follow-up film, 1930’s Animal Crackers, where Harpo goes toe-to-toe with Groucho in direct competition for group MVP. The movie starts with Groucho being introduced to a society party as Captain Spaulding, an African explorer returning from safari with heroic tales to recount to anyone who’ll listen. Of course, Groucho immediately undercuts this ostentatious introduction by firing off a long string of hypersexual, self-deprecating one-liners that reveal his true nature as a pervert and a coward, much to his host’s embarrassment. Then, Harpo is given a similar grand introduction as The Professor, an erudite academic who is meant to impress the same captive audience with his expertise in fine art. Harpo looks unusually well put-together during this entrance, wearing a high-quality top hat & coat combo that doesn’t match his go-to scrappy pickpocket persona. When a servant removes his coat, however, the rest of his clothes come off with it, shocking the mansion’s welcome party with his underwear-clad body. Then, he immediately grabs a gun from Groucho’s safari arsenal and starts firing randomly at guests, clearing the room with a purposeless escalation of violence. Those two introductions are about as direct of a one-to-one comparison between Groucho & Harpo’s comedic styles as you’ll find and, while both are funny, it’s the latter one that earns the bigger laughs.

The Marx Bros didn’t only charm the masses with slapstick violence & punny wordplay; they also carried over vaudeville variety show tradition to the screen by playing beautiful music. Groucho would sing bright & bubbly show tunes with absurd in-character lyrics; Chico played a mean piano, often showing off by tapping keys with finger guns; and Harpo, of course, played the harp. Originally inspired by an advertisement’s illustration of a cherub, Harpo was a self-taught harpist who leaned heavily into the angelic softness of his chosen instrument, while also repurposing the childlike curly wig of a cherub to instead recall a circus clown. While he would spend the majority of his screentime performing manic prop comedy, chasing young women around the set like Benny Hill, and indulging in some sleight of hand pickpocketry, Harpo would always put his sadistic clown antics aside for a minute to treat his audience with the heavenly sounds of the harp. Imagine if Tom Green paused in the middle of Freddy Got Fingered to sincerely play the cello; it’s quite the switcheroo. The in-universe logic of whatever character Harpo’s playing never gets in the way of that indulgence, either. In 1932’s Horse Feathers, he plays a barfly dogcatcher who shows surprising talent as a harpist but no aptitude whatsoever for playing football with the boys; go figure.

There’s obviously no need to rank the Marx Bros against each other, since the fraternal goofballs work best as a full set. Groucho’s filthy wordplay, Chico’s circular logic, and Harpo’s madcap sadism would all get exhausting in isolation without their brothers balancing out the rhythms of their act; that’s mainly why Zeppo hangs around, acting as the group’s only calming presence. It’s just notable that Harpo is an impossible act to follow and is thus consistently slotted last in rotation, if not only because he’ll clear a room with a pistol or an industrial size bottle of chloroform when given the chance. There’s a famous bit in 1931’s Monkey Business where all four brothers, essentially playing themselves, take turns impersonating heartthrob crooner Maurice Chevalier as a way of getting one over on shipboard immigration cops. Zeppo’s got a handsome-enough look that he thinks he can get away with the deception but immediately fails; Groucho & Chico, of course, think they can talk their way out of the crisis but they don’t get very far either. Then, Harpo stomps onto the scene, tearing up the immigration authorities’ paperwork and causing his usual maddening chaos before then launching into an eerily perfect Maurice Chevalier impersonation . . . which is revealed to be a drag routine lip-sync act involving a phonograph player hidden behind his back. It’s such a perfectly, deliriously absurd escalation of the bit that no one can follow it. Harpo’s is always the ultimate punchline, which makes for a credible argument that he is the funniest person who ever lived, especially since his only true competition is his own brother Groucho.

-Brandon Ledet