Leonard Joseph "Chico" Marx (/ˈtʃɪkoʊ/ CHIK-oh; March 22, 1887 – October 11, 1961) was an American comedian, actor and pianist.

His persona in the act was that of a charming, uneducated but crafty con artist, seemingly of rural Italian origin, who wore shabby clothes and sported a curly-haired wig and Tyrolean hat.

In addition to his work as a performer, he played an important role in the management and development of the act in its early years.

His questionable Italian ethnicity was specifically referred to twice on film: In their second feature, Animal Crackers, he recognizes someone he knows to be a fish peddler from Czechoslovakia impersonating a respected art collector: In A Night at the Opera, which begins in Italy, his character, Fiorello, claims not to be Italian, eliciting a surprised look from Groucho: A scene in the film Go West, in which Chico attempts to placate an Indian chief of whom Groucho has run afoul, has a line that plays a bit on Chico's lack of Italian nationality, but is more or less proper Marxian wordplay: There are moments, however, where his characters appear to be genuinely Italian; examples include the film The Big Store, in which his character Ravelli runs into an old friend he worked with in Naples (after a brief misunderstanding due to his accent), the film Monkey Business, in which Chico claims his grandfather sailed with Christopher Columbus, and their very first outing The Cocoanuts, where Mr. Hammer (Groucho) asks him if he knew what an auction was, in which he responds "I come from Italy on the Atlantic Auction [Atlantic Ocean]!"

In a record album about the Marx Brothers, narrator Gary Owens stated that "although Chico's technique was limited, his repertoire was not."

The opposite was true of Harpo, who reportedly could play only two tunes on the piano, which typically thwarted Chico's scam and resulted in both brothers being fired.

Other examples of his keyboard flamboyance are found in Go West (1940), where he plays the piano by rolling an apple over the keys and A Night in Casablanca (1946), where he performs a rendition of "The Beer Barrel Polka".

[1] As manager, he negotiated with the studios to get the brothers a percentage of a film's gross receipts—the first deal of its kind in Hollywood which has become common practice today.

Crooner Mel Tormé began his professional career singing with the Chico Marx Orchestra.

Numerous radio recordings from the 1940s exist in which announcers and fellow actors mispronounce the nickname, but Chico does not correct them.

During Groucho's live performance at Carnegie Hall in 1972, he states that his brother got the name Chico because he was a "chicken-chaser" (early 20th century slang for womanizer).

"[8] Chico's lifelong gambling addiction compelled him to continue working in show business long after his brothers had retired in comfort from their Hollywood income, and in the early 1940s, he found himself playing in the same small, cheap theater halls in which he had begun his career 30 years earlier.

The Marx Brothers' penultimate film, A Night in Casablanca (1946), was made largely for Chico's financial benefit since he had filed for bankruptcy a few years prior.

[citation needed] Chico had a reputation as a world-class pinochle player, a game he and Harpo learned from their father.

[citation needed] Chico's last public appearance was in 1960, playing cards on the television show Championship Bridge.

"I wish that Harpo and Chico could be here to share with me this great honor," he said, naming the two deceased brothers (Zeppo was still alive at the time and in the audience).