The Great Neck house on Long Island’s Gold Coast that Groucho Marx called home before he headed to Hollywood to make more movies with his brothers is on the market for the first time in 64 years for $2.3 million. Marx, who lived in it from 1926 to 1931, last visited the house, which has a Great Neck Historical Society Heritage plaque attesting to his residency, in the 1970s, several years before his death in 1977. (His brothers Chico and Harpo as well as their parents all lived in Great Neck.) [Source: Mansionglobal.com]
“I was eight,” said 56-year-old Greg Bruell, who along with his three siblings, was raised in the house. “It was a rainy day, and I was home sick from school. I saw a big limo pull up and Groucho Marx standing at the door with two other people. My grandfather, a movie projectionist, flipped out because he was so excited and gave him a tour. Groucho shook my hand.”
The thank-you postcard Marx sent to the family is on display in the house, which is in Thomaston Village, a part of the Great Neck Park District. During the time Groucho Marx lived in the house, the Marx Brothers shot two of their most iconic movies: “The Cocoanuts” (1929) and “Animal Crackers” (1930), which remain comedic classics to this day.
“Aside from the historic value and its part in Great Neck history, the house and lot are among the largest in Great Neck,” said Abe Kanfer of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, who listed it on Aug. 19. “It has woods, a grassy area and gardens; it’s like a private country setting.”
The five-bedroom, four-bath Colonial, built in 1923, is on a nearly half-acre lot and comes with a host of amenities. The property, landscaped with mature trees and flowering gardens, has a terraced outdoor dining area, a flagstone patio and an attached two-car garage.
The three-level house, most recently expanded in 2014, has a new portico, formal living and dining rooms, oversize casement windows, a fireplace, a cedar closet, central air, a spa-inspired bath with an oversized shower, a spa tub, radiant heated marble flooring and two skylights. During Bruell’s childhood, he carved out clubhouses in the crawl spaces in the unfinished parts of the house.
“We used to switch bedrooms every couple of years,” he said. “And we had a huge extended family, so it was party central. Every month, there was some event going on.”
Bruell’s parents, who like him and his siblings are big Marx Brothers fans, bought the property in 1959, delighted at its connection to their comedic hero. “It was a selling point when they bought the house, just as it is now,” he said. “We watched all his movies. In my mind, he and Robin Williams are the funniest men in the last 100 years.”
The family renovated and expanded the house several times. Kanfer noted that the updates bring a modern layout, including rooms that flow into each other, to a classic house.
“My mother made several rounds of improvements,” Bruell said. “She added the kitchen and office area and renovated the entire inside. I remember when walls were removed to install a steel beam to make the living room all one area. I was probably 2.” For decades after graduating from college, Bruell lived full-time in Boston but visited the house so often that he started an air transport company, Transcend Air, to make the commute faster and easier.
Is the Bruell family going to miss the house? You bet your life, Bruell said. “We have had it the longest of any owners, so it would have been nice to keep it in the family,” he said, adding that his father is deceased, and his mother, who is 93, recently relocated to the Boston area to be closer to him. “But I have a lot of roots here.”
Marx isn’t the only notable resident of the North Shore community, which was a haven for celebrities in the Roaring Twenties. Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald started writing “The Great Gatsby,” which was inspired by the rollicking parties he and his wife, Zelda, attended while living there. Its Gatsby Lane commemorates the connection. [Source: Mansionglobal.com]
