Arthur Marx was a champion tennis player, a journalist who wrote many books and articles about Hollywood, an accomplished playwright and a successful comedy writer. Oh, and he was also the son of Groucho Marx.
Whenever I got to talk with Arthur — which didn't happen as often as I would have liked — I always felt I had to make clear to him that I knew and respected his work, and that I wasn't just chatting with him because of his family tree. One time when the subject came up, he remarked that he was fortunate that he'd won all those awards for tennis when he was younger. It helped his self-esteem to have had a success that was all his own, that in no way could be credited to whose son he was.
At times, he looked like his father, sounded like his father and gave you the sense that sarcasm was hereditary. In some of his many books, he shared the benefits and problems of being the offspring not only of such a famous and revered man but also one who could be cold and acerbic, even towards his own kid. His first Marx-themed book, Life With Groucho, was an altogether flattering, loving look at his old man…but his old man objected to a couple of minor points and threatened to sue his son over them. No suit was ever filed but that's what happens when you have a father named Groucho.
Another downside is that people tend to assume you have the exact same skill set as your parent. Arthur did most of his screen and stage writing with a partner named Bob Fisher and reviewing one of their plays, a critic once assumed that all the weak jokes must have been written by Fisher because they could not possibly have been written by the son of Groucho. (In reponse, Arthur noted that the critic was almost surely comparing his and Fisher's work to Marx Brothers movie scripts written not by Groucho but by famous humorists like George S. Kaufman and S.J. Perelman.)
He had an odd relationship with Marx Brothers fans. He tried to accommodate the many questions and all the interest but he also wanted to protect the family name and a certain level of privacy. And while he knew an awful lot about the Brothers' careers and almost everything about their lives, he occasionally got a question he could not answer and had to turn to folks like me for answers. One time when he called me, I don't recall the question he asked but the answer was "Al Boasberg."
I took the above photo at an event in October of '09 at which U.S. postage stamps were unveiled of great TV icons. There was, of course, one of Groucho so Arthur was grumbling, mainly for comic effect, that he had to pay full price for a stamp with his father on it and they wouldn't give him a discount. I reminded him that unless and until they put out a series on Great Tax Collectors, I can't buy a stamp with my father on it at all. He chuckled, pointed at a large blowup image of the stamp which also included a photo of the duck from You Bet Your Life and said, "I shouldn't complain. They probably made the duck's kid pay double."