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 greasepaint moustache once more for "You Bet Your Life," but refused, opting instead to grow a real one, which he wore for the rest of his life. He did paint the old character moustache over his real one on a few rare performing occasions, notable a TV sketch with Jackie Gleason on the latter's variety show in the 1960s (in which they performed a variation on the song "Absolutely Mr. Gallagher, Positively Mr. Shean," written by Marx's uncle) and in the 1968 Otto Preminger film Skidoo. In his 70s at the time, Marx remarked on his appearance: "I looked like I was embalmed." He played a mob boss called "God" and, according to Marx "both my performance and the film were God-awful!"