Groucho Marx’s Onetime Long Island Home Hits the Market for $2.3 Million

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The onetime home of the late mustachioed comedian Groucho Marx is coming on the market in Great Neck, N.Y., for $2.3 million.

The Colonial-style property with Tudor accents, located in the Great Neck village of Thomaston, served as home to the funnyman, born Julius Henry Marx, from 1926 until 1931, when he relocated with his family to Hollywood, according to the Great Neck Historical Society. 

Marx, a star of radio, film and television, was perhaps best known as the host of the game show “You Bet Your Life,” though he also made a series of well-known feature films with his vaudevillian brothers.

The seller is a trust tied to the Bruell family, who has owned the property for more than 60 years, according to Greg Bruell, an aviation entrepreneur who grew up in the house. The family is selling the property because Greg Bruell’s mother, Rady Bruell, is getting older and is moving closer to family in Massachusetts, he said. His father, Eric Bruell, an essential oils distributor, died in 1991.

The home dates to the early 1920s, according to the historical society. Marx paid $27,000 for it in 1926, when he was married to his first wife. (About $465,000 in today’s dollars.) It was around the time he appeared in “The Cocoanuts” at the Lyric Theater on Broadway and his brothers were also living in the area. At the time, Great Neck was home to a number of important figures in entertainment.

Marx had lived in large cities before moving to Great Neck, so adapting to suburban life was difficult, according to an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from the year he bought the property. Marx was quoted as saying: “I am becoming well versed in the four topics of conversation, which are of paramount importance in a small community, i.e., domestic help, golf, bridge, and the trappings of mice. If these were listed in the order of their interest, mice would be leading the suburban league with domestic help as a snappy second.” 

Years after selling the property, Marx revisited it, dropping in on the Bruells without warning, Greg Bruell said. He was about eight years old at the time and home sick from school the day the comedian visited. His grandfather, a movie projectionist and enormous fan of Marx’s work, was delighted to give the comedian “the royal tour,” he said. The property had been changed significantly over the years, but elements of it were still familiar to Marx, who was in his late 70s at the time. The family often watched Marx Brothers movies, he said, noting that his favorite is “Duck Soup.”

“He had slowed down at that point, but he was still very witty,” Greg Bruell said of the comedian.

In her 1978 book, “Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends,” biographer Charlotte Chandler recalls the same visit. After seeing the house, Marx wanted to head into downtown Great Neck to a bakery he remembered liking. “I used to buy a roll there that was full of nuts—just like me,” he said. Jade Marx-Berti, a granddaughter, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The house, listed by Abraham Kanfer of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, spans roughly 3,800 square feet with five bedrooms, a large living room and formal dining room, an eat-in kitchen and a deck and patio. It sits on a roughly half-acre parcel of land, which is large for the village, Kanfer said.

Greg Bruell said he hopes the Marx connection will attract buyers, though he worries that the appeal will be “generational.” In June 2023, Great Neck home prices were up 18.7% compared with last year, selling for a median price of $915,000, according to brokerage Redfin. Sales were down from 32 to just 21 year-over-year in June, however. 

Write to Katherine Clarke at [email protected]