Harpo and his wife could not have children of their own, so they adopted enough to have a large family. Groucho joked that he came "to get his money's worth" in stopping business.) Chico had a problem with gambling, and lost more money than he won at it. (Years later, he visited the New York Stock Exchange, and drew so much attention that trading stopped for several minutes. Groucho lost a lot of money in 1929, when the stock market collapsed. The brothers had some good years and some bad years. She did not appear to know when a joke was made about her, and this made her role funnier. Margaret Dumont played the leading lady role in many of their shows. He left the group in 1933, and they worked with other actors. Groucho was a "wise guy" who had big bushy eyebrows, glasses, and a moustache who smoked a cigar Chico spoke with an Italian accent and played the piano Harpo never spoke and played the harp. In the movies, each brother played a role that was mostly the same in every movie. Gummo did not appear in any of the movies. When the brothers were out of costume, they could blend into the audience. Makeup and costumes gave their characters their look. Music stayed in their act, with the brothers performing in character, but their focus was on getting laughs. In time their antics got them more applause (and work) than their music, and they became a comedy group. They would make jokes, play funny characters, and pretend to get into fights when they performed. The Marx Brothers began as a musical group, during the days of vaudeville theater. The family lived in the then-poor Yorkville section of New York City's Upper East Side, between the Irish, German and Italian Quarters. Their mother, Minnie Schönberg, was from Dornum in East Frisia, and their father Simon Marrix (whose name was changed to Sam Marx, and who was nicknamed "Frenchy") was a native of Alsace, now part of France, and worked as a tailor. Born in New York City, the Marx Brothers were the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany.