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Margaret Dumont (born October 20, 1889; died March
6, 1965) was an United States|American comedic
actress.

Born Daisy Juliette Baker in Brooklyn, New York
she adopted the stage name Margaret and/or
Marguerite Dumont. She is remembered mostly for
being the straight man|comic foil to Groucho Marx
in seven of the Marx Brothers movies. Groucho
called her practically the fifth Marx brother.
(There were in fact five Marx brothers, but only a
maximum of four ever performed together.)

Dumont played wealthy high-society widows whom
Groucho alternately insulted and romanced for
their money. They include Mrs Rittenhouse in
Animal Crackers, Mrs Claypool in A Night at the
Opera (movie)|A Night at the Opera, Mrs Gloria
Teasdale in Duck Soup, Martha Phelps in The Big
Store, Mrs Susan Dewkesbury in At the Circus, and
Emily Upjohn in A Day at the Races (movie)|A Day
at the Races. Groucho once said a lot of people
believed they were married in real life, but they
were not.

Over the course of her lifetime she played in 40
film|movies, not including some minor silent work.
Her first feature film was the Marx Brothers movie
The Cocoanuts in 1929 in which she played Mrs
Potter, the same role she played in the stage
version from which the film was adapted. Her last
movie was What a Way to Go! in 1964, in which she
played Shirley MacLaine's mother.

She also played the same type with W.C. Fields (in
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break), Abbott and
Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Jack Benny and Danny
Kaye. She also played some dramatic parts.

In her interviews and press profiles she preserved
the myth of her on-screen character - the rich,
regal woman who never quite understood the joke -
and claimed she had returned reluctantly to acting
as a result of widowhood. But as a young actress
she had specialised in straight female-leads in
musical comedies, where the cardinal rule was to
make space for the featured comedian. Perhaps the
joke was not entirely on her.

On her passing in 1965, Margaret Dumont was
cremated, her ashes stored in the vault at the
Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.

==External link==
*imdb name|id=0241669|name=Margaret Dumont