Al Shean

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Abraham Elieser Adolph Schönberg 12 May 1868 12 August 1949 known as Al Shean was a comedian and vaudeville performer Other sources give his birth name variously as Adolf Schönberg Albert Schönberg or Alfred Schönberg6 He is most remembered for being half of the vaudeville team Gallagher and Shean and as the uncle of the Marx Brothers Shean was born in Dornum Germany on 12 May 1868 the son of Fanny and Levi or Louis Schoenberg His father was a magician His sister Minnie married Sam Frenchie Marx their children would become the Marx Brothers After making a name for himself in vaudeville Shean teamed up with Edward Gallagher to create the act Gallagher and Shean in the 1920s While the act was successful the men apparently did not like each other much After their acts final Ziegfeld Follies pairing Shean went on to perform solo in eight Broadway shows even playing the title character in Father Malachys Miracle Shean had some solo film roles as the piano player known as The Professor in San Francisco 1936 as a priest in Hitlers Madman 1943 as grandfather in The Blue Bird 1940 and in some three dozen other films He and Gallagher also made an early sound film at the Theodore Case studio in Auburn New York in 1925 He died on 12 August 1949