Sixty-five years ago today, a man took a hard look in the mirror and walked away from the family business, giving up a job that was providing him with unthinkable riches -- a job that had the potential to make him richer still.

"I'm sick and tired of being the stooge," Herbert wrote to his older brother, Julius, in 1934. "You know that anyone else would have done as well as I did in the act. When the chance came for me to get into business, I jumped at it. I have only stayed in the act until now because I know that you [and the other brothers] wanted me to. But I am sure that you understand why I have joined Frank Orsatti and his theatrical agency."

The letter was signed: "Love, Zeppo." The brother he was writing was better known as Groucho, and the family business was the Marx Brothers, a vaudeville act that had made the transition to films in 1929 and just finished its fifth picture, "Duck Soup."

In the kinder, gentler '30s, with no "Tonight Show" or "David Letterman Show" monologues to fill, Zeppo's break with the act prompted only a few jokes at his expense. The most-repeated story is that the brothers were asked if they would take a salary cut, and one responded by saying they were worth twice as much without Zeppo.

Today, "Zeppo" has metamorphosed into the pop-culture insult of the moment, a synonym for something that has no purpose. "Xander, you're the useless part of the group. You're the Zeppo," sneered a character on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Enough, a small band of Zeppo loyalists has roared. Jamison, take a letter, and if you don't get that reference, then keep reading. As Groucho himself might dictate: Dear Gentlemen, question mark: The Society to Prevent Abuse to Zeppo (SPAZ) is now up and running, all 16 of them, give or take a few. They're mad as hell, and they're not going to let Zeppo take it anymore.

"Zeppo Marx fans of the world unite!" proclaims the inevitable Internet site, http: //home pages.infoseek.com/tildeamerks fans/index.html. Organized earlier this year, they weren't quite organized enough to mark Zeppo's birthday on Feb. 25.

Instead, they are honoring today's date, the anniversary of the letter that one Marx Brothers historian has called "a rare document of honest self-appraisal." Zeppo's leave-taking, say his fans, prove he was a class act.

In his honor, they are giving out the first-ever ZMUSHAs -- the Zeppo Marx Unsung Screen Hero Awards.

Origins of SPAZ

SPAZ had been flying low on the Internet radar until Entertainment Weekly repeated the "Buffy" line. Self-appointed SPAZ President Aimee O'Connell, a 25-year-old school psychologist in Rochester, N.Y., decided to protest, providing her e-mail address for those who were interested in more details about SPAZ.

"Assuming this line referred to Herbert 'Zeppo' Marx, I must point out this association is grossly inaccurate," she wrote the editors. "Although his performance career began as a substitution, Zeppo showed tremendous patience as the straight man of the Marx brothers."

How serious was she? "Once I like something, I go all the way," says O'Connell, who has managed to weave her love of the Marx Brothers into her counseling job. "I am very serious about this. It's very real, yet it's also tongue-in-cheek."

Other SPAZers concur.

"Zeppo was a valuable member of the act," says Tim Phares, a Greenbelt writer who has been known to defend Zeppo's honor on the much larger Marx Brothers mailing list. "You had to have Zeppo."

Phares cites the "Jamison, take a letter" scene from "Animal Crackers," a revival of which is now at Arena Stage in Washington. While Groucho, as Captain Spaulding, has the most memorable zingers, Zeppo has to deliver his own lines at the same breakneck pace.

"Harpo couldn't have done that," Phares says. (Harpo was the silent one, for those truly unschooled in Marxism.) "And Chico would have turned it into the 'Why a Duck' routine from 'The Cocoa- nuts.' "

Dave Levy, who works in the San Francisco area, responds by e-mail when asked why he likes Zeppo: "I've always felt that he was the under-rated member of the bunch. From the short moments he was on screen, you can see there is talent but he was given little chance to show it. ... By leaving the limelight, he left people with the 'useless' perception."

But the ultimate proof that Zeppo was essential, say SPAZers, is the fact that almost all eight post-Zeppo Marx Brothers films have a "Zeppo" -- loosely defined as a romantic lead. These included actors such as Allan Jones ("A Night at the Opera," "A Day at the Races") and singer Tony Martin ("The Big Store").

In one history of the Marx Brothers, "Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo," author Joe Adamson even devises a nausea rating chart for those Zeppo wannabes.

The most nauseating, according to Adamson, was the aforementioned Martin. Steve Stoliar -- a fan/biographer who worked for Groucho, an experience he recounts in "Raised Eyebrows" -- casts his vote for Kenny Baker in "At the Circus."

Zeppo was the least nauseating, Adamson decreed.

"Not exactly high praise, but praise nonetheless," writes Stoliar, who met Zeppo and describes him as "charming, animated and very amusing." Stoliar was even amused when Zeppo, at the age of 74, hit on Stoliar's ex-girlfriend, then 19.

This was when Zeppo was on the rebound, the most-recent Mrs. Zeppo Marx having left him for another guy who also did pretty well in show business, a singer named Frank Sinatra.

Who was Zeppo, anyway?

For all the interest in Zeppo, hard facts are still hard to come by. Even the origins of his nickname are difficult to nail down. (Explanations for its antecedents range from Zippo the chimp, to Zeppelin, to the hick nickname Zebbo.)

Born in 1901, he was the youngest of the Marx brothers, of which there were six. (One died in childhood.) According to Groucho's autobiography, "Groucho and Me," Zeppo had a gift for tinkering. He would remove the ignition from a car owned jointly by Groucho and Gummo, forcing them to using public transportation for their dates. Then he'd pop the ignition back in and pursue his own active social life.

He joined the act in 1918, when Gummo was drafted. One of his dancing partners was Ruth Johnson, who would become Groucho's first wife. When Zeppo and Ruth developed "artistic differences," she asked Groucho to choose between them. "Groucho didn't think twice," wrote biographer Hector Arce. "Zeppo stayed."

Zeppo understudied all three brothers and there are various anecdotes, some possibly apocryphal, about him filling in for each of them.

But a review in the Chicago American in 1930 affirms the oft-told story that he subbed for Groucho when he was hospitalized for appendicitis.

"[And] doggone if he didn't get away with it," the critic concluded.

Groucho later told Charlotte Chandler, a pen name used by the journalist Lyn Erhard, that: "Zeppo was so good, I got better faster. ... [O]ffstage, he was the funniest of us."

Zeppo told Erhard that the cigars made him vomit after a few days and that the best thing about show business was the access to chorus girls. He also said he felt there simply was no role for a fourth Marx Brother to fill by the time he came along. He "hated" that time in his life. "I not only resented it, I felt inferior."

He appears in the first five Marx Brothers films as Jamison ("The Cocoanuts"), Horatio Jamison ("Animal Crackers"), one of the four Stowaways ("Monkey Business"), Frank Wagstaff ("Horse Feathers") and Bob Rolland ("Duck Soup"). His screen time is often minimal, as even SPAZ's own Web site admits.

But Zeppo had other talents.

After he left the act to work as an agent, he ended up pursuing his mechanical inclinations, becoming co-owner of what Groucho biographer Arce calls "the world's largest manufacturer of coupling devices [which] manufactured clamping devices that carried the Atomic Bombs over Japan."

In 1969, he patented a wristwatch, Lifeguard, to warn cardiac patients of irregularities that might signal a heart attack. He bred racehorses, grew grapefruits and worked as a commercial fisherman.

Zeppo died Nov. 30, 1979, a date that Aimee O'Connell happens to keep on her pocket planner. The last surviving Marx brother, he was drawn into the bitter feud over Groucho's estate, which estranged him from Groucho's son, Arthur.

The New York Times obituary began with the fact that he left the team in 1934 and later noted that he had been the "straight man and romantic lead." He also had the distinction of being the last Marx brother, out-living Grouch and Gummo by two years.

Whither SPAZ?

Where will SPAZ go from here? Earlier this year, O'Connell made her first foray in Zeppo activism, calling a local radio station to demand that Zeppo's name be included in the roster of celebrity births for Feb. 25. The upstate New York disc jockey reportedly apologized at length, after being called by other Zeppophiles.

But today marks the first official SPAZ activity, the ZMUSHAs. Winners include Avery Brooks for Most Under-appreciated Actor ("The Big Hit" and "American History X"), Jane Horrocks for Most Under-appreciated Actress ("Little Voice"); and Christine Cavanaugh, who gave voice to the title character of "Babe, Pig in the City."

Tim Phares, for one, would like to see the ZMUSHA bestow a lifetime achievement award as well. On whom? "One Herbert Marx, of course."

Pub Date: 3/30/99