Groucho Marx and the Broadway Murders

by Ron Goulart

  The dining car, judging by the number of tables, would accommodate about three dozen. But there were only about fifteen passengers scattered around it so far. Sharing a table were the young dancer who’d interrupted Manheim and the platinum blonde who’d persuaded him to move along. He appeared to be somewhat less angry.

  The door at the other end of the car opened and a middle-aged couple came in. Some music from the cocktail lounge drifted in with them.

  “That’s Groucho singing,” realized Jane. “But I don’t recognize the song.”

  “It’s called ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady,’” I said, frowning. “Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg wrote it for At the Circus. But I didn’t know Groucho had already made a record of it.”

  Jane shook her head. “That’s no phonograph record, ninny,” she told me. “That’s got to be Groucho himself.”

  And it was.

  Six

  We found Groucho perched on the arm of one of the brownish chairs along the wall of the lounge. Wearing an ochre-colored sports coat, an olive green polo shirt, and slacks of a shade I’d never seen before, he was strumming his steel-string guitar and finishing up “Lydia the Tattooed Lady.”

  Circled close around his chair were four of the girl dancers from Step Right Up, plus three other female passengers.

  When Groucho finished the song and tagged it with a few flamenco flourishes on the guitar, the surrounding girls applauded and made appreciative noises.

  Several of the other passengers in the moving cocktail lounge clapped as well. A plump matron seated near the bar with her plump husband started to reach into her purse.

  From his chair across from Groucho, Hal Arneson, the husky troubleshooter with the tropical sunset necktie, made a mock toasting gesture with his nearly empty highball glass. “Too bad you aren’t as funny as you think you are, Groucho,” he called.

  “Nobody is,” Groucho answered.

  “I think he’s colossal,” said a pretty blonde dancer, wrinkling her nose at Arneson.

  “Actually a recent exhaustive study conducted by the Harvard Business School determined that I was supercolossal, my dear,” corrected Groucho as he dropped his guitar into its scuffed case and then raised his left eyebrow in the direction of a pretty redhead. “And what did you think of my performance, miss?”

  “Very impressive,”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “Yeah, very impressive the way you can strum your guitar and pinch my fanny at the same time.”

  “Merely a little trick I picked up from my old chum Segovia.”

  A pretty brunette asked, “You know Andrés Segovia, the world-famous guitarist?”

  “No, this is Irwin Segovia, the world-famous fanny pincher.” Groucho shut the guitar case and stood up.

  One of the male dancers joined the group, a bottle of beer in his right hand. “The word around LA is that At the Circus is a turkey,” he remarked.

  Nodding, Groucho said, “Yes, young man, but you’ll be delighted to learn that it’s a kosher turkey. Meaning that masochists of every denomination can attend without fear of—”

  “How come the Marx Brothers never make a picture in color?” asked another pretty girl.

  Groucho, looking perplexed, touched his cheek. “We don’t?” he asked. “No wonder I looked so pale in the rushes. Of course, you should have seen me in the bulrushes. Cute as a bug’s ear I was when they plucked me out of the stream and—”

  “C’mon, what’s the real reason you guys never appear in Technicolor?”

  Sighing, Groucho raised his eyes toward the sand-colored domed ceiling. “It’s a sad story, young lady,” he replied. “It all has to do with Natalie Kalmus, the statuesque beauty who controls Technicolor—and when I say statuesque, I’m alluding to that statue of General Grant in the local park. At any rate, Natalie has never forgiven me because of an unfortunate incident in a phone booth in Tijuana. She—”

  “You told us a little while ago, Groucho, that you were in that phone booth with Joan Crawford.”

  “I was, when who should walk by but Natalie Kalmus. It made quite a scene, especially in Technicolor.”

  The plump woman had made her way to the edge of the group now, autograph album in hand. She said, “I just love you in the movies, Mr. Marx.”

  “How about loving me in the baggage car—say in about an hour?”

  The plump husband popped to his feet. “Here now, you can’t talk to my wife that way.”

  “I most certainly can, sir. I have a valid permit from the Fish and Game … ah, do my old eyes deceive me or is that Frank Denby and the lovely Jane Danner I see yonder?” He hopped down from his chair and started slouching his way toward us.

  “Who the hell is Frank Denby?” asked one of the male dancers.

  “Don’t know. Nobody famous. But Jane Danner draws that great comic strip.”

  Groucho took hold of Jane’s hand and, bowing low and with considerable sound effects, kissed it several times.

  “How come you’re on the Super Chief?” I asked him as he straightened up.

  He curtsied to me and explained, “I was feeling extremely avuncular yesterday, Rollo. It therefore occurred to me that you two innocents needed someone older and wiser to chaperone you on this perilous journey across uncharted lands. I couldn’t think of anyone who filled the bill, so I decided to tag along myself. At great personal expense and admirable sacrifice, I cancelled my plane ticket and booked a compartment on this very train.” He held up a cautionary finger. “I’m a mere two rooms over from you, my children, and I intend to meditate and practice my Tibetan yoga for the entire trip. So keep the caterwauling down to a minimum, if you please.”

  “Why, Groucho, what a wonderful surprise this is,” said Jane, smiling sweetly at him. “My horoscope predicted a train disaster, but this is even better.”

  Jane and I sat with Groucho in the dining car while he had his dinner. As the Super Chief was pulling out of the Pomona station, a plump woman in a flowered dress came over, somewhat cautiously, to stand near our white-clothed table.

  Very quietly she held out a red-covered autograph album. “I’d be honored to have your autograph, Mr. Marx,” she told him.

  Groucho looked up from the menu he’d been studying. “No, you wouldn’t, madam. You’d be disgraced, drummed out of the corps, and run out of town on a rail,” he informed her. “So remember, when you’re sleeping on a park bench, that you brought it on yourself.” Grabbing up a pencil from the table, he wrote in her book and returned it to her.

  She studied the page, then, disappointed, said, “All this says is ‘clam chowder, pot roast, and coffee.’”

  “Ah, forgive me.” Groucho retrieved the book. “I wrote my dinner order here by mistake.” He rubbed the blunt end of the stubby pencil over his chin. “I forgot to ask you if you wanted the plain autograph or the deluxe autograph.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, the deluxe autograph involves my taking off a goodly portion of my clothes.”

  “I’ll take the plain, please.”

  He wrote his name on the page beneath the prior inscription. “And now you have my permission to make a graceful exit.”

  The woman took her autograph book, smiled a bit tentatively at all three of us, and returned to her table. She and a thickset young guy who might have been her son were seated one table down from where Dian Bowers was sitting, somewhat uneasily, alone.

  As Groucho took up the order slip, he frowned thoughtfully. “By Jove, Rollo, that young wench yonder looks deucedly familiar.”

  “She’s Dian Bowers,” I told him. “You know, Daniel Manheim’s newest discovery.”

  “Saint Joan,” added Jane.

  Groucho glanced again over his shoulder at the solitary actress. “I have the distinct impression I knew her before she achieved sainthood.” Concentrating on his order form, he wrote out what he wanted for dinner. “The next time I run into Fred Harvey, or any of his girls, I’m going to remind him that
pastrami and lox ought to be staples on the Super Chief menu. After all, if the Donner Party had traveled with pastrami, they … no, her name isn’t Dian Bowers.”

  Jane said, “Manheim probably rechristened her.”

  Dr. Dowling had entered the dining car from the direction of the cocktail lounge. He was less rumpled and his hair was neatly combed, but he still looked considerably wobbly on his feet.

  When the train went around a slight curve in the tracks, the doctor lurched and bumped into Dian’s table. “Well, good evening, Miss Bowers,” he said in a blurry voice. “Mind if I join you for dinner? Of course not.”

  As he lowered himself into a green-backed chair, the young actress said quietly, “I’m expecting someone to join me.”

  “Nobody here,” the doctor pointed out, gesturing vaguely at the empty chairs. “Other than us, that is. So we can have a pleasant tête-à-tête until—”

  “Really, no. I’m afraid that would only cause a good deal of—”

  “Nonsense, my dear. Now, if I can find the wine list, I’ll order us a—”

  “Miss Bowers is going to be dining with Mr. Manheim.” Arneson, who’d apparently been watching from between cars, had come into the dining area and swiftly moved up behind the tipsy physician.

  “It seems to me that the young lady ought to be the one who—”

  “Sit elsewhere.” Arneson took hold of Dr. Dowling by the coat collar and lifted him, effortlessly, clean up out of the chair.

  “Well, when you put it that way.” Back on his feet, Dowling tottered off, walking a weaving course through the car and out the far door.

  “I’m sure Daniel will be joining you shortly, Dian.” Nodding at her, Arneson withdrew from the car.

  “Bless my soul,” said Groucho. “I recognize her now. She had a bit part in A Day at the Races. Back then she was a blonde named Nancy Washburn, a struggling actress married to a struggling actor named Jim Washburn. He specialized in playing the handsome sidekick to assorted aging cowboy actors.” He rose up from his seat. “I’ll mosey over and say howdy.”

  “You’re liable,” warned Jane, “to get hoisted up by your collar.”

  “That oversized golem wouldn’t risk soiling his mitts on my coat collar, kiddo.”

  Groucho crossed to the other side of the car and bowed to the actress. “Nice seeing you again, Nancy,” he said, smiling.

  She looked up, tilted her head slightly to the right. “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake, Mr. Marx,” she said quietly. “My name is Dian Bowers and we’ve never met.”

  Arneson had reentered the dining car and was standing, arms folded and scowling, a few feet away.

  “Well, child, if you get over this bout of amnesia, I’m residing in Compartment D for the next couple days. Adios.” He turned back toward our table, giving Arneson a lazy salute. “I’ll save you the trouble of carrying me back to my table.”

  Seven

  At about midnight, just as the streamliner was pulling out of the little town of Barstow and heading into the desert, someone tapped, gently, on the door of Groucho’s compartment. He’d been, as he later told me, sitting there in his least threadbare bathrobe, smoking a cigar and rereading T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.

  “This wasteland shares several similarities with Pasadena,” he said to himself. “Except Pasadena gets more rain.”

  At the sound of the timid knocking, Groucho rose, unlatched his door, and slid it a few inches open. “Well, fancy that,” he observed. “I take it your amnesia cleared up.”

  It was Dian Bowers, wearing a white cablestitch sweater and tan slacks, standing there in the corridor. “Can I come in, Groucho?”

  “I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the Watch and Ward Society, my dear,” he said. “Or with that huge lout who plucks unwanted suitors out of your vicinity.”

  “Please, I’d really like to talk to you.”

  He opened the door wide and backed up. “My humble abode is at your service, kiddo,” he invited, beckoning her with the hand that held the book.

  “I didn’t wake you up, did I?” the slim actress asked as she crossed the threshold.

  He shut the compartment door. “Alas, I never sleep well on trains,” he confided, nodding at a chair. “I never sleep well at home either, come to think of it. What causes that, I believe, is my staying awake worrying about whether or not I have insomnia.”

  She glanced at the book in his hand. “T. S. Eliot, huh?” she said, sitting down. “You’re a lot more intellectual than you let on.”

  “I’d have to be.” He snuffed out his cigar in a Santa Fe ashtray, settled back on his couch. “Most gorgeous movie stars who invade my sleeping chambers at this hour are consumed with lust—or they’ve consumed too much near beer. You, however, I sense have dropped in for some other purpose.”

  Dian glanced at the closed door. “I wanted to apologize, Groucho, for snubbing you in the dining car tonight.”

  “I’m frequently snubbed,” he said. “In fact, when I was in the Boy Scouts I was only two snubs short of getting a merit badge in that category.”

  “I find it’s easier to pretend I’m Dian Bowers and always have been. Especially when any of Daniel Manheim’s people are around.”

  Groucho leaned forward. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  She hesitated. “Not exactly, no,” she answered after a few silent seconds. “Really, I’m in a terrific spot right now and I ought to be terribly happy and enormously grateful.”

  “Yet you ain’t.”

  She said, “I don’t know, Groucho. Back when I was Nancy Washburn … well, life was a hell of a lot simpler.”

  “It didn’t pay as well, though.”

  She gave a quiet sigh. “Well, yeah, part of this is about money,” the young actress admitted. “And it’s also about my wanting to get someplace in this damn business. I came to Hollywood in nineteen-thirty-six, from Iola, Wisconsin, for Pete’s sake. As Nancy Washburn I managed to land bit parts in exactly seven movies over the next three years.”

  “That averages out to over two a year.”

  “Sure, and I had—this is the entire total—precisely five lines of dialogue.”

  “Consider my brother Harpo. He never has any lines at all, yet he’s happy as a clam,” said Groucho. “Although a recent study in Scientific American has established that the majority of clams aren’t all that happy, especially since they found out about clam chowder.”

  Dian smiled, very briefly. “Everything changed once I was, you know, discovered by Daniel Manheim,” she said, folding her hands in her lap.

  The producer, she explained to Groucho, had spotted her over a year ago and signed her to an exclusive long-term contract. Since then she hadn’t appeared in a movie, concentrating instead on studying acting, dancing, and a wide range of other things that Manheim believed would improve her. His people had redesigned her, renamed her, and, when Manheim had decided she was ready, starred her in his very expensive production of Saint Joan.

  Leaning back, Groucho steepled his fingers under his chin. “And what does your husband think about this miraculous transformation?”

  She looked down at the folded hands. There wasn’t any ring showing. “Jim and I are separated.”

  “Your idea?”

  “I thought so at the time,” she answered slowly. “But, it seems to me now that this was really Daniel Manheim’s idea.”

  “And where’s Jim?”

  “Well, he’s opening next week in a new play on Broadway,” she said, allowing herself to smile for a few seconds. “It’s a wonderful break for him. Jim’s starring in that new mystery comedy, Make Mine Murder.”

  “I’ve heard of it. One of the few Broadway comedies that George S. Kaufman didn’t write.”

  “I’m planning to see the play opening night,” she said, defiance in her voice now.

  “Manheim objects?”

  She nodded. “Yes, he wants me to stay completely away from Jim,” she said. “I know this w
ill sound like melodramatic hokum, Groucho, but he really is a Svengali. Sometimes I think he wants to just control me completely.”

  “Has the guy made any passes at you?”

  She shook her head. “Not really, no, but …”

  “But what?”

  “He’s even more possessive than if he were my lover.”

  “What you ought to do, my dear, is—”

  “Did you know Nick Sanantonio?”

  Groucho elevated both eyebrows. “No, but my brother Chico did,” he answered. “Chico, alas, is on cordial terms with all and sundry gamblers in southern California. He’s contributed generously to their cause.” He watched her for a moment. “Don’t tell me that you were friends with a gangster like Sanantonio?”

  “Not exactly, although I met him a few times while I was doing a picture at Warner’s,” the actress answered. “He was a good friend of George Raft.”

  “Many a hoodlum is. If you’re going to specialize in saintly roles, kiddo, you ought not to hang around with the likes of the late Nick.”

  “I never actually hung around with him, Groucho,” she assured him. “But I did know him casually and he was always very nice to me. When I read about his death in the paper this afternoon, I was really upset. That’s a horrible way to die.”

  “True, but expiring in that style is one of the work-related hazards of Sanantonio’s field of endeavor.”

  “I know, but still it’s very brutal to be shot down in—”

  The new knocking on his compartment door was far from timid. It came close to being a pounding.

  “Do they have house detectives on the Super Chief?” Groucho slouched over to the door and tugged it open.

  “Ah, I thought maybe I’d find my princess here.” Manheim was looking into the room, smiling in Dian’s direction. “It’s way past your bedtime, darling.”

  “I’ll be back to my room in a few minutes, Daniel.”

  “I think now would be better, dear. You need to rest up for the ordeal that Manhattan will—”

  “Let me paraphrase the immortal Voltaire, Manheim,” said Groucho. “Scram or I’ll punch you in the snoot.”