What was the reason for Groucho Marx having a painted on moustache in his films?
Although I’ve been told that Wikipedia is not reliable, this is the only information that I could find: The famous moustache As much as Harpo and Chico were difficult to recognize without their wigs and costumes, it was almost impossible to recognize Marx without his trademark moustache, glasses, or fake eyebrows. The use of greasepaint originated spontaneously before a vaudeville performance when he did not have time to apply the pasted-on moustache he had been using (or, according to his autobiography, simply did not enjoy the removal of the moustache every night – imagine tearing an adhesive bandage off the same skin every night). The absurdity of the greasepaint moustache was never discussed on-screen, but in a famous scene in Duck Soup, where both Chico and Harpo are disguising themselves as Groucho, they are briefly seen applying the greasepaint, implicitly answering any question a viewer might have had about where he got his moustache and eyebrows. Marx was asked to don the grea
