Louis Marx
Encyclopedia
Louis Marx was an American
toy maker and businessman whose company, Louis Marx and Company
was the largest toy company in the world in the 1950s. Marx was described as an intense, hard-driving, and energetic man, who "[T]alks, walks, and gestures tirelessly, like one of his own wound-up toys."
Marx was known by numerous nicknames, including "Toycoon," "the Henry Ford
of the toy industry," "the hawk of the toy industry," and "the toy king of America."
to Jewish German
parents, Marx graduated high school at age 15 and started his career working for Ferdinand Strauss, a manufacturer of mechanical toys. By 1916, Marx was managing Strauss' East Rutherford, New Jersey
plant. But within a year, Marx was fired by Strauss' board of directors over a disagreement about sales practices.
Marx then entered the United States Army
as a private and attained the rank of sergeant before returning to civilian life in 1918. Marx's passion for the Army was reflected throughout his life; most of Marx's military toys represented Army equipment, and Marx would make a practice of befriending generals and naming his sons after them.
Following military service, Marx then went to work selling for a Vermont based manufacturer of wood
toys, redesigned the product line, and increased the company's sales tenfold.
In 1919 Marx and his brother David incorporated, founding the company that bore his name. Initially working as a middle man, Marx was soon able to purchase tooling to manufacture toys himself. When Strauss fell on hard financial times, Marx was able to buy the dies for two Strauss toys and turn them into best-sellers. By age 26, three years after founding his company, Marx was a millionaire.
By utilizing techniques of mass production
and reusing old designs as much as possible - Marx utilized some of his toy train
tooling developed in the early 1930s until 1972 - Marx was able to sell a broad line of inexpensive toys. All US made toy trains would come from the Girard plant, producing millions of lithographed tin and plastic toy trains.
By 1951, Marx's company had 12 factories worldwide and for much of the 1950s it was the largest toy manufacturer in the world adding most of the success to Sears, Roebuck catalog sales and the many themed playsets available. As World War II
drew to a close, Marx had toured Europe
and acted as a consultant on how toy manufacturing could aid reconstruction efforts. Marx used the contacts he made in this manner to forge partnerships and open factories in Europe and Japan
. Marx was featured on the cover of the December 12, 1955 issue of Time Magazine
, his likeness surrounded by examples of his toys.
Marx's first wife, Renee, died of breast cancer
at age 33. His second wife, a secretary at his company, was 28 years his junior.
Marx's daughter, Patricia, was born in 1938. She went on to become an author and activist and married Daniel Ellsberg
, of Pentagon Papers
fame. Marx, who had been a strident anti-Communist
and was an admirer of Richard Nixon
, regarded Ellsberg as a traitor.
Marx's son, Louis Marx Junior, is a venture capital
ist. He seems to be a philanthropist
who has contributed to the arts, education and medicine.
One such example is the Louis Marx Center for Children and Families of New York.
Marx retired in 1972, selling his company to Quaker Oats
for $54 million. Marx was 76 years old and his company had been declining. The decline has variously been blamed on the company's slowness to develop electronic toys and on Marx's unwillingness to employ salesmen for fear of someone else repeating his early experience with Strauss.
Louis Marx died in a hospital in White Plains, New York
at age 85. He is interred in a private mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York
.
The original house of the Marx estate still stands on Gatehouse Road in Scarsdale, NY. Though empty and neglected, its grandeur is breathtaking. The red brick, white-pillared mansion was built in 1904 and has nine fireplaces and 14 baths. It had a swimming pool, tennis court, paddle court and a four-car garage with a seven-room caretaker's cottage above it. A chain linkfence, to prevent Marx’s 13 dogs from straying, enclosed the entire compound. Before the subdivision of the property in the 1980s, the home had a Weaver Street address and could be viewed through the open lawn from the street. Now, surrounded by 29 contemporary homes on uniform lots, the home is hidden from view and appears to be a vestige of a gone by era.
The property was owned by the legendary Louis Marx, sometimes called the Toy King of America, who died in 1982 at the age of 85. He had nine children, who he named after famous friends who were named as godparents to the children: Emmett Dwight, for Gen. Emmett O'Donnell and President Eisenhower; Spencer Bedell, for Gen. Walter Bedell Smith; Bradley Marshall, for Gen. Omar N. Bradley and Gen. George C. Marshall; Curtis Gruenther, for Gen. Curtis E. LeMay and Gen. Albert M. Gruenther, and Hunter Bernhard, for Gen. Hunter Harris and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
Marx is as legendary as his estate. A 1955 article in Time Magazine describes his arrival at a soiree at the 21 Club in Manhattan; “A roly-poly, melon-bald little man with the berry-bright eyes and beneficent smile of St. Nick touching down on a familiar rooftop. Louis Marx, America's toy king and cafe-society Santa, was arriving at his favorite workshop. With his beautiful blonde wife Idella, who looks the way sleigh bells sound, 59-year-old Lou Marx toddled regally toward a table in the center of the downstairs room. The table is always reserved for Millionaire Marx by the divine right of toy kings, and the fact that he has never been known to let anyone else pay the check. “
And city friends were not the only ones to benefit from his generosity. Each Halloween from 1940 to 1980, Marx distributed hundreds of toys to neighborhood children who came to trick or treat. He built a multi-million dollar toy company and was free handed with his gifts.
Upon Marx’s death, Anthony Scarcella, a New Rochelle developer, bought the estate and received approval to subdivide it and build 29 homes. He built the development and in 1985 he sold the original home on 1.75 acres (7,082 m²) to Alexander Raydon, who kept it until October 2007. When Raydon died, Scarcella re-purchased the house, for $2,500,000, which was more than the sale price of the entire estate in 1982. Scarcella then attempted to gain approval to tear it down and build three more new homes on the property. However, this time he received far more resisitance from the Board of Architectural Review and ultimately the Scarsdale Board of Trustees. He was denied a demolition permit to tear down the home because it was found to be a structure of substantial historic importance. The BAR found that the mansion met three of the four preservation criteria and that its demolition would be detrimental to the public interest.
See: http://scarsdale10583.com/real-estate-/448-should-this-mansion-be-saved.html?date=2010-03-01 for more information.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
toy maker and businessman whose company, Louis Marx and Company
Louis Marx and Company
Louis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturer from 1919 to 1978. Its boxes were often imprinted with the slogan, "One of the many Marx toys, have you all of them?"-Logo and Offerings:...
was the largest toy company in the world in the 1950s. Marx was described as an intense, hard-driving, and energetic man, who "[T]alks, walks, and gestures tirelessly, like one of his own wound-up toys."
Marx was known by numerous nicknames, including "Toycoon," "the Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
of the toy industry," "the hawk of the toy industry," and "the toy king of America."
Biography
Born in Brooklyn, New YorkBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
to Jewish German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
parents, Marx graduated high school at age 15 and started his career working for Ferdinand Strauss, a manufacturer of mechanical toys. By 1916, Marx was managing Strauss' East Rutherford, New Jersey
East Rutherford, New Jersey
East Rutherford is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 8,913. It is an inner-ring suburb of New York City, located west of Midtown Manhattan....
plant. But within a year, Marx was fired by Strauss' board of directors over a disagreement about sales practices.
Marx then entered the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
as a private and attained the rank of sergeant before returning to civilian life in 1918. Marx's passion for the Army was reflected throughout his life; most of Marx's military toys represented Army equipment, and Marx would make a practice of befriending generals and naming his sons after them.
Following military service, Marx then went to work selling for a Vermont based manufacturer of wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
toys, redesigned the product line, and increased the company's sales tenfold.
In 1919 Marx and his brother David incorporated, founding the company that bore his name. Initially working as a middle man, Marx was soon able to purchase tooling to manufacture toys himself. When Strauss fell on hard financial times, Marx was able to buy the dies for two Strauss toys and turn them into best-sellers. By age 26, three years after founding his company, Marx was a millionaire.
By utilizing techniques of mass production
Mass production
Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...
and reusing old designs as much as possible - Marx utilized some of his toy train
Toy train
A toy train is a toy that represents a train. It is distinguished from a model train by an emphasis on low cost and durability, rather than scale modeling. A toy train can be as simple as a pull toy that does not even run on track, or it might be operated by clockwork or a battery...
tooling developed in the early 1930s until 1972 - Marx was able to sell a broad line of inexpensive toys. All US made toy trains would come from the Girard plant, producing millions of lithographed tin and plastic toy trains.
By 1951, Marx's company had 12 factories worldwide and for much of the 1950s it was the largest toy manufacturer in the world adding most of the success to Sears, Roebuck catalog sales and the many themed playsets available. As World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
drew to a close, Marx had toured Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and acted as a consultant on how toy manufacturing could aid reconstruction efforts. Marx used the contacts he made in this manner to forge partnerships and open factories in Europe and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Marx was featured on the cover of the December 12, 1955 issue of Time Magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, his likeness surrounded by examples of his toys.
Marx's first wife, Renee, died of breast cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
at age 33. His second wife, a secretary at his company, was 28 years his junior.
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...
, of Pentagon Papers
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
fame. Marx, who had been a strident anti-Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and was an admirer of Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
, regarded Ellsberg as a traitor.
Marx's son, Louis Marx Junior, is a venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
ist. He seems to be a philanthropist
Philanthropy
Philanthropy etymologically means "the love of humanity"—love in the sense of caring for, nourishing, developing, or enhancing; humanity in the sense of "what it is to be human," or "human potential." In modern practical terms, it is "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of...
who has contributed to the arts, education and medicine.
One such example is the Louis Marx Center for Children and Families of New York.
Marx retired in 1972, selling his company to Quaker Oats
Quaker Oats Company
The Quaker Oats Company is an American food conglomerate based in Chicago. It has been owned by Pepsico since 2001.-History:Quaker Oats was founded in 1901 by the merger of four oat mills:...
for $54 million. Marx was 76 years old and his company had been declining. The decline has variously been blamed on the company's slowness to develop electronic toys and on Marx's unwillingness to employ salesmen for fear of someone else repeating his early experience with Strauss.
Louis Marx died in a hospital in White Plains, New York
White Plains, New York
White Plains is a city and the county seat of Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located in south-central Westchester, about east of the Hudson River and northwest of Long Island Sound...
at age 85. He is interred in a private mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
The original house of the Marx estate still stands on Gatehouse Road in Scarsdale, NY. Though empty and neglected, its grandeur is breathtaking. The red brick, white-pillared mansion was built in 1904 and has nine fireplaces and 14 baths. It had a swimming pool, tennis court, paddle court and a four-car garage with a seven-room caretaker's cottage above it. A chain linkfence, to prevent Marx’s 13 dogs from straying, enclosed the entire compound. Before the subdivision of the property in the 1980s, the home had a Weaver Street address and could be viewed through the open lawn from the street. Now, surrounded by 29 contemporary homes on uniform lots, the home is hidden from view and appears to be a vestige of a gone by era.
The property was owned by the legendary Louis Marx, sometimes called the Toy King of America, who died in 1982 at the age of 85. He had nine children, who he named after famous friends who were named as godparents to the children: Emmett Dwight, for Gen. Emmett O'Donnell and President Eisenhower; Spencer Bedell, for Gen. Walter Bedell Smith; Bradley Marshall, for Gen. Omar N. Bradley and Gen. George C. Marshall; Curtis Gruenther, for Gen. Curtis E. LeMay and Gen. Albert M. Gruenther, and Hunter Bernhard, for Gen. Hunter Harris and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
Marx is as legendary as his estate. A 1955 article in Time Magazine describes his arrival at a soiree at the 21 Club in Manhattan; “A roly-poly, melon-bald little man with the berry-bright eyes and beneficent smile of St. Nick touching down on a familiar rooftop. Louis Marx, America's toy king and cafe-society Santa, was arriving at his favorite workshop. With his beautiful blonde wife Idella, who looks the way sleigh bells sound, 59-year-old Lou Marx toddled regally toward a table in the center of the downstairs room. The table is always reserved for Millionaire Marx by the divine right of toy kings, and the fact that he has never been known to let anyone else pay the check. “
And city friends were not the only ones to benefit from his generosity. Each Halloween from 1940 to 1980, Marx distributed hundreds of toys to neighborhood children who came to trick or treat. He built a multi-million dollar toy company and was free handed with his gifts.
Upon Marx’s death, Anthony Scarcella, a New Rochelle developer, bought the estate and received approval to subdivide it and build 29 homes. He built the development and in 1985 he sold the original home on 1.75 acres (7,082 m²) to Alexander Raydon, who kept it until October 2007. When Raydon died, Scarcella re-purchased the house, for $2,500,000, which was more than the sale price of the entire estate in 1982. Scarcella then attempted to gain approval to tear it down and build three more new homes on the property. However, this time he received far more resisitance from the Board of Architectural Review and ultimately the Scarsdale Board of Trustees. He was denied a demolition permit to tear down the home because it was found to be a structure of substantial historic importance. The BAR found that the mansion met three of the four preservation criteria and that its demolition would be detrimental to the public interest.
See: http://scarsdale10583.com/real-estate-/448-should-this-mansion-be-saved.html?date=2010-03-01 for more information.