Harpo learned how to hold the harp by emulating a harp-playing angel in a picture he saw in a five-and-dime. There is no dispute that Fisher coined the name, but some sources give an earlier date for its origin and suggest the game may have instead taken place at the Galesburg Auditorium Theatre or the same town's Gaiety Theatre. However, this version of events is disputed, at least partially because the Orpheum Theatre was not constructed until late 1916, whereas Harpo later remembered acquiring the name in 1914.

In this version of the story, Marx was referred to by Art Fisher, the dealer that night, as 'Harpo' because he played harp.

The first suggests the pseudonym originated during a card game at the Orpheum Theatre in Galesburg, Illinois. In his memoir, Groucho wrote that Harpo simply wasn't very good at memorizing dialogue, and thus was ideal to portray the archetypal Vaudeville role of the 'dunce who couldn't speak.' ĭiffering stories exist regarding the origin of the Harpo stage name. Multiple unverified stories attempt to explain Harpo's evolution as the 'silent' character in the brothers' act. In January 1910, Harpo joined two of his younger brothers, Julius (later 'Groucho') and Milton (later 'Gummo'), to form 'The Three Nightingales', which would later be renamed 'The Marx Brothers'. Newspaper ad for Animal Crackers (1930) with Lillian Roth paragraph His mother was from East Frisia, Germany, and his father, a tailor, was from Alsace, which was part of the Second French Empire at the time the elder Marx was born and for most of his childhood. His parents were Sam Marx (known by his nickname 'Frenchie'/'Frenchy') and his wife, Minnie Schoenberg Marx, sister of comedian and Vaudeville performer Al Shean. The neighborhood hosted many historic homes and other buildings, such as the William Goadby Loew House (now the Spence School), the Congregation Shaare Zedek, and the Virginia Graham Fair Vanderbilt house. The turn-of-the-century tenement that Harpo later called 'the first real home I can remember' was situated in a neighborhood populated with European immigrants, mostly artisans. He grew up in a neighborhood now known as Carnegie Hill (known at the time as Yorkville) on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, on East 93rd Street off Lexington Avenue. Harpo was born on November 23, 1888, in Manhattan, New York City.

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