His older brother Groucho said in his Carnegie Hall concert in 1972[4] that the name was derived from the Zeppelin airship, and Zeppo's ex-wife Barbara Sinatra repeated this claim in her 2011 book Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank.

In a rare television interview years later, Zeppo said that "Zep" was Italian-American slang for "baby", and the name fit as he was the youngest of the brothers.

He had no desire for a show business career, but Minnie Marx insisted that he replace Gummo because she wanted to maintain the act as a foursome.

Zeppo remained with the team in vaudeville, Broadway and the first five Marx Brothers films as the straight man and romantic lead until leaving the act following Duck Soup in 1933.

While Groucho, Harpo, and Chico are hogging the show, as the phrase has it, their brother hides in an insignificant role, peeping out now and then to listen to plaudits in which he has no share.

[9] He obtained patents for a wristwatch that monitored pulse rate and sounded an alarm if the heartbeat became irregular,[9][12] and a therapeutic pad for delivering moist heat to a patient.

Barbara, a Methodist, wrote in her book Lady Blue Eyes that Zeppo never forced her to convert to Judaism, but that he told her that she became Jewish by "injection.

"[18] Barbara also wrote that Zeppo wanted to keep her son at a distance and added a guest house separated from the main residence for him.

Along with his brothers Groucho and Harpo, Zeppo was a member of the Hillcrest Country Club with friends such as Sinatra, George Burns, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar and Milton Berle.

Barbara became involved with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and had arranged to show Spartacus (1960) for charity, selling tickets and organizing a post-screening ball.

At the last minute, Barbara was told that she could not show the film, so Zeppo spoke to Sinatra, who gave them an early release of the recently completed Come Blow Your Horn.

[citation needed] Sinatra began to invite Barbara and Zeppo to his house two or three times per week, and often sent champagne and wine to their home.

In the divorce settlement, Zeppo allowed Barbara to keep a 1969 Jaguar car, and agreed to pay her US$1,500 (equivalent to $10,295 in 2023) per month for 10 years.

In 1973, 37-year old Jean Bodul, the future wife of mobster Jimmy Fratianno, accused Zeppo of assaulting her; she sued and a jury awarded her $20,690 in 1978 (equivalent to $96,652 in 2023).

"[22] Along similar lines, Gerald Mast, in his book The Comic Mind: Comedy and Movies, noted that Zeppo's comedic persona, while certainly more subtle than his brothers', was undeniably present: [He] added a fourth dimension as the cliché of the [romantic] juvenile, the bland wooden espouser of sentiments that seem to exist only in the world of the sound stage.

The review also described each brother's unique style of comedy and praised Zeppo as "the handsome but dogged straight man with the charisma of an enamel washstand.

He noted that "changes in the Marx Brothers' screen personas [were] immediate and apparent" with fewer vaudevillian elements, more in tune with standard Hollywood comedies in which "love stories [were] injected in the plots [to] make their films more palatable to female moviegoers."

He noted Zeppo's absence in the brothers' new act: Their zaniness and anarchy would be heavily diluted at M-G-M as the studio found them a wider audience.

Groucho may have had other capable straight men, but when Zeppo takes a letter to the honorable Charles H. Hoongerdoonger, Marx Brothers fans know he's the best man for the job.

[28]: 114 In the same book, Adamson noted Zeppo's position as the campy parody of the juvenile romantic in Horse Feathers: Each Marx Brother has his own form of comedy.

Typically he dresses like a normal person, in stark contrast to Groucho's greasepaint and 'formal' attire, Harpo's rags, and Chico's immigrant hand-me-downs.

That he is a plank in a maelstrom, along with the very concept of 'this guy' who is there for no real reason, who joins in and is accepted by these other three wildmen while the narrative offers no explanation, are wonderful in their pure absurdity.

If Groucho, Chico and Harpo were the funny guys, Zeppo was the Everyman, the loser who'd come running out of the grocery store only to find the meter maid sticking the parking ticket on his Hungadunga.

Not long after, Archie began to augment his already well-practiced "suave" Fairbanks look and dress with a Zeppo-like fancy bowtie (called a jazz-bow, or jazzbo, during the Roaring Twenties) and copied his brilliantine hairstyle, adding Dixie Peach, a favorite pomade of American black performers and show business leads, by the palmful to his thick dark mop, to give it a molded, comb-streaked blue-black Zeppo sheen.

[32]In his book The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes, filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder included Zeppo among the ten greatest film actors of all time.

[33] In a June 2016 review of an Off-Broadway revival of I'll Say She Is, The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik wrote: Matt [Walters], becoming Zeppo, is a reminder that the Marxes were never quite as good again after they lost their one straight man.

[36] The Mystery Science Theater 3000 character TV's Frank revealed in Episode 323 featuring Sax Rohmer's The Castle of Fu Manchu that while he was working at Arby's, he was given the nickname of Zeppo because of his supposed sense of humor.