by Ron Goulart
I sulked for about thirty seconds, then thought better of it. “Okay, sorry,” I said. “Won’t happen again.”
She sat, retrieved the magazine. “Or would you rather see Carmen Miranda?”
“Is she the one who wears bananas on her head?”
“She also sings and she’s in a show called The Streets of Paris. We could see if we can get tickets to that,” said Jane. “There’s also a new comedy team called Lou Costello and Bud Abbott in that one.”
“Used to be if you wore bananas on your head, they locked you up someplace.”
“Not if you’re from Brazil.”
“I’m still not clear as to what a Brazilian Bombshell is doing on the streets of Paris.”
“We could go to the darn show and find out, Frank.”
“Let’s go to both of them, Ebsen and Carmen Miranda,” I suggested. “Not concurrently, but on—”
The telephone rang again.
Seventeen
The murder didn’t take place until that Tuesday night.
Groucho, as he later told me, had spent most of the afternoon at a rehearsal hall down in the West 30s working on The Mikado. Earlier he’d had lunch with George S. Kaufman and Monty Woolley at the Algonquin. Kaufman, with Moss Hart, had written The Man Who Came to Dinner and Woolley was starring in it at the Music Box. “Why people will pay good money to see a fellow portray a hairy Alec Woollcott is beyond me,” Groucho had informed them.
At a little after seven that evening, dressed in a conservative dark suit, Groucho was slouching unobtrusively along Broadway in the theatrical district. Under his breath he was singing lines from The Mikado. “Behold the Lord High Executioner. A person of noble rank and title.”
A plump middle-aged woman emerged from a coffee shop, glanced at him, then gasped. “I know who you are,” she said.
Groucho halted. “Well, quick, tell me. I’m simply dying to know.”
“You’re George S. Kaufman, aren’t you?”
He leaned closer, confiding, “Right you are, madam. I am indeed the renowned playwright and podiatrist.”
“We laughed all through The Man Who Came to Dinner. Last week, my husband and I.”
“Yes, and I can tell you there were a lot of complaints about the pair of you. Here I pen a somber tragedy and you and your spouse go tittering all over the place and spoiling it for everybody.”
After eyeing him for a few seconds, she giggled. “You’re pulling my leg, Mr. Kaufman.”
Groucho rolled his eyes, shook his head. “I pass. I won’t respond to such obvious bait.”
“Tell me, what’s your next play going to be? I hear rumors that you and Mr. Hart have a new—”
“I’ve made up my mind to try a comedy this time,” he informed her. “It will be based on the life of the funniest man in America. A humble fellow named Groucho Marx.”
“Oh, he’s not all that funny,” she said, nose wrinkling. “If you want to see somebody who’s really funny, go catch Bobby Clark in The Streets of Paris.”
“By Jove,” he said, moving along, “I believe I’ll do that at once.”
A few moments later he entered Alfie’s Pub, a narrow shadowy little bar just off Broadway. He stood for a moment near the paneled door. Then he spotted Dian Bowers sitting by herself in a booth.
He made his way over to her, bowed, kissed her hand, and sat opposite. “You’re looking a mite peaked, my child. Is all well?”
“To be honest, Groucho,” said the actress, “not much is well at all. Manheim and Arneson have been at me off and on all day not to go to the opening of Jim’s play tonight.” She sighed quietly. “Matter of fact, I had to sneak out of the hotel to come over here and meet you.”
“Women who rendezvous with me often have to sneak and slink,” he said. “You really, however, have to tell Manheim that his overly paternal attitudes toward you are—”
“And I also think he’s got somebody shadowing me.”
Groucho glanced around the moderately crowded bar. “Somebody other than Arneson?”
“It’s okay, I think I ditched the guy,” she said. “A seedy fellow, some sort of private investigator, I’d guess.”
“How big is he?”
“Not more than five foot four or so.”
“In that case I’m prepared to thrash the fellow should he cause you any trouble,” volunteered Groucho. “And since I recently invented a thrashing machine, I’ll be—”
“I’m really not too happy about the way things are going, Groucho.”
“You can wear a veil and nobody will know I’m your escort, my dear.”
“I mean, I’m so damned tired of being told what I can and can’t do, who I can see, where I can go,” she said forlornly. “I’m tired of the whole business.”
“After Saint Joan opens, kiddo, you’ll be a star and you can tell everybody where to get off,” he said. “Of course, you can also do that if you’re a bus driver and that’s a lot less trying.”
Dian smiled. “I’m sorry I’m in such a gloomy mood,” she said. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“The worst thing that’s happened all day is that I was accused of being George S. Kaufman.”
“Come to think of it, Groucho, you do look a little bit like him.”
“Only below the waist,” he said.
She reached across to pat his hand. “Would you like something to drink before we head for the Coronet Theatre?”
“I would,” replied Groucho. “But I don’t see Ovaltine on the menu.”
The tickets Bill Washburn had left for his estranged wife at the box office were for seats in the third row of the orchestra section.
A very stylishly dressed matron in the seat behind Groucho said to her handsome escort, “Look, dear, isn’t that the theater critic George Jean Nathan over there on the aisle?”
“Looks a good deal like him, Iris.”
Groucho turned, resting his elbow on the back of his seat. “Actually, folks, that’s Nathan Jean George, his cousin.”
“I’ll thank you not to intrude on a private conversation, sir,” admonished the handsome escort.
“And I’ll thank you not to continue to babble once the play starts,” Groucho said. “It annoys me extremely when people talk while I’m trying to eat peanut brittle and clip my toenails.”
“You’re a first-class boor,” said the woman.
“It’s too late to try to flatter me now.”
Dian touched Groucho’s arm, saying quietly, “This isn’t my opening night, but I sure feel nervous and uneasy.”
“Perhaps you still identify with your husband,” he suggested.
“I suppose I do.”
“Could be you still like the guy.”
She said, “Yes, I think so.”
Groucho glanced back at the couple behind them. “Don’t look now, folks, but Gene Tunney, Gene Tierney, King George, and Nathan Delicatessen just came in and sat on George Jean Nathan’s lap.”
They both ignored him.
About ten minutes later the houselights dimmed and the curtain rose on the first act of Make Mine Murder. It was a comedy mystery, pretty much in The Cat and the Canary tradition. The opening scenes took place in a gloomy Long Island mansion during a thunderstorm. An assortment of lively, and mostly suspicious, characters were gathering for the midnight reading of a will.
The actress who was taking the part of the granddaughter of the deceased eccentric millionaire was Elena Styverson, who’d been playing ingenues on Broadway for nearly a decade now. Her first entrance drew enthusiastic applause from the audience. Bill Washburn, a lean dark-haired young man, had the part of Jake Scanlon, a wisecracking reporter for a New York tabloid. He’d barged into the mansion, hoping for a story about the dead man’s allegedly strange will. When he initially stepped onto the stage, there wasn’t much in the way of applause, except from Dian and Groucho.
Pringle, the crotchety old lawyer who knew the secret of the will, vanished mysteriously at the end of t
he second scene. In the third, the reporter and the granddaughter, who’d formed a somewhat bickering team, decided to hunt for the old man. The veteran actor Andrew Truett was playing the lawyer.
When they were alone in the living room, with lightning flashing and thunder booming outside in the stormy night, Elena Styverson said, “You know, Mr. Scanlon, in the movies they always—”
“Hey, kid, you can call me Jake. All my friends do.”
She smiled, moving toward a closet door. “Okay, Jake.”
“And you were saying, sweetheart?”
“Oh, that in the movies they always find missing people stowed in the closet.”
Washburn laughed, pushing his hat brim up. “That’s only in the movies.”
“Even so, Mr.—I mean, Jake. Even so, we’d better look and make sure Mr. Pringle hasn’t gotten in there somehow.”
Laughing, Washburn strode to the closet door and took hold of the knob and turned it. “Come out of there, Pringle, old boy.”
He yanked the door open.
A body fell out and slammed onto the Persian carpet with an echoing thud.
Elena Styverson screamed.
Washburn started to put an arm around her, then stepped back and said, “Holy Christ, that’s not a dummy.”
Dian, exhaling sharply, gripped Groucho’s arm. “My god, it’s Manheim.”
“That it is,” he agreed. “And this time it looks like he’s really dead.”
Eighteen
About the same time that Daniel Manheim’s body was making its Broadway debut, I was contemplating doing violence to an executive of the Empire Feature Syndicate.
This was in the East 50s at a new and currently fashionable nightclub called El Pobrecito. It was a large black-and-white place, something like the huge fictitious hot spots you see in Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. Jane and I had been taken there by the president of her newspaper syndicate and joined by the syndicate sales manager and an advertising agency executive who was going to handle producing our Hollywood Molly radio show.
The Empire Feature Syndicate sales manager was a tall, wide guy named Dobbs Walling. He was good-looking, in his middle thirties, and at the moment out on the glistening black dance floor doing, I think, a samba with my wife to the rhythms of José Fayal and his Brazilian Bunch.
Walling had brought along a pretty brunette debutante named Brenda. She was sitting on the other side of Jane’s empty chair. Leaning toward me, she said, “He dances that way with everybody. Don’t let it bother you.”
“I was just worrying that the referee would charge him with a foul,” I said.
Smiling very faintly, she said, “Dobbs is harmless, really.” She took a silver cigarette case out of her purse. “Like one?”
“Don’t smoke, thanks.”
“You’re the writer, aren’t you?”
“Writer and irate husband, yeah.”
She selected a cork-tip cigarette and I fished a book of matches out of my coat pocket to light it. “Trocadero, huh?” she said, glancing at the matchbook. “God, I haven’t been out to the Coast since April.”
I was back to watching the husky Walling dance with my wife. “Oh, so?”
Ralph Diggs, a portly man in his middle fifties who was president of EFS, was sitting directly across from me. “I believe that was a terrific preliminary meeting we had this afternoon, Frank,” he said. “I really liked the ideas you and Janey have cooked up for our radio show. So did Wally.”
I wasn’t exactly clear as to who Wally was, but I said, “Well, that’s gratifying to—”
“Have you given any more thought to the kid brother?” asked Milt Banion, who was with the McKay and Forman advertising outfit.
“Which kid brother?” I inquired.
“Our thinking at the agency is that Molly needs a cute kid brother. Somewhat like the one in that other comic strip …”
“Ella Cinders,”supplied Diggs. “But we’re not convinced that’s necessary, Milt.”
“Leon Janney would be great as her kid brother.” Banion was a lean blonde man with a thin blonde moustache. “He’s available. We could call the kid something like Blackie.”
“That’s Ella Cinders’s brother,” Diggs pointed out.
“It could be Curly or Buster or Freckles.”
“There’s a Freckles in somebody else’s strip, Milt.”
“Okay, I’ll leave it to creative minds of the likes of Fred here. He and Janey can—”
“Frank and Jane,” I corrected. “And we don’t think it’s too smart to change the cast of characters just—”
“Is there a Mr. Dumpty at the table?” Our waiter had appeared, carrying a white plug-in telephone.
“No such person,” said Banion. “Tell them Mr. Dumpty had a great fall and—”
“Could that be Mr. Denby?” I inquired.
“Might just be,” decided the waiter. “There’s a call for you from somebody claiming to be Groucho Marx.”
“Yes, it’s a sad case,” I said. “He frequently claims to be Groucho Marx. I’ll take the call.”
“Who is he really?” asked Brenda.
“Groucho Marx.” I picked up the receiver. “Are you there? Frank Dumpty here.”
“I hesitated over interrupting your company picnic, Rollo,” said Groucho. “But a little something has come up.”
“Such as?”
“Manheim has been murdered.”
“Jesus. Where?”
“As the finale of the first act of Make Mine Murder,” he answered. “If you can see your way clear to trotting over here to the Coronet Theatre, I’ve arranged with the minions of the law to let you sneak in backstage.”
“How the hell did you arrange that?”
“I happen to know one of these particular minions.”
“And how’d you track me to this bistro?”
“By using mystical powers that I picked up years ago in the Orient. Unfortunately, I also picked up an annoying rash in the vicinity of my … but plenty of time to chat about that when you arrive here at the scene of the crime.”
“You seem to be implying that we may be back in business.”
“I am, kiddo,” Groucho replied. “The main reason being that I’ve a hunch they’re going to try to pin the murder on Dian’s husband, Bill Washburn. See you soon.” He hung up.
Jane returned to her chair just as I put down the phone. Then she leaned back, frowning. “What’s wrong?” she asked, touching my hand.
“Oh, it’s just one of those nagging bouts of jealous rage I suffer from,” I confided in a very low voice. “I don’t know, every time I see a total stranger clutching your backside, I get—”
“Walling isn’t a total stranger,” she said, smiling. “But, hey, what I meant was—who just phoned you?”
“Groucho. Seems somebody’s killed Manheim over at the Coronet Theatre,” I said. “Apparently during the damn play.”
“And Groucho is on the case already and wants you to join him?”
“Yeah,” I answered, nodding. “I’d better get over there. You can stay here if you want.”
“And have to grapple with Walling again?” she said. “No. I’ll tag along with you. If you don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
Nineteen
As the curtain came rushing down, Dian stood and grabbed her wrap from the back of the theater seat. “I’ve got to get backstage,” she said.
Groucho, as he later told me, popped to his feet. “I’ll escort you, my child,” he offered.
They hurried along the aisle to one of the doors that led backstage.
The audience, starting to get over its shock, was murmuring, talking, shifting in its seats.
Taking hold of the young actress’s arm, Groucho guided her up the short, narrow staircase and through the doorway.
There was considerable noise and movement back there. It was still fairly dark, but as they started across the bare boards, overhead lights blossomed.
A husky sta
gehand noticed them and came striding over. “Stay out in the house, folks, where you belong,” he ordered in his raspy voice. “No kibitzing, okay?”
Dian said, “I’m Bill Washburn’s wife.”
The big man took a step nearer. “Oh, yeah, I read about you in the News yesterday,” he said. “I think Bill’s still out on the stage.” He frowned at Groucho. “And you are, buddy?”
“I’m their spiritual advisor,” he explained, following Dian.
The stage was bright-lit now and a tall thin man in his shirtsleeves was on one knee beside the dead producer’s body. “Dead as they come,” he announced, standing up. “Looks like he was stabbed. No sign of a knife, though.”
“Bill,” said Dian quietly.
The young actor, pale under his stage makeup, was standing in about the same spot where he’d been when the curtain dropped. He was staring down at Manheim.
Elena Styverson was sitting over on a paisley-pattern love seat, hugging herself and shivering slightly. “Bill, it’s your ex,” she called out.
He looked up, saw Dian, and, smiling briefly, came hurrying over to her. “Nancy, do you have an idea what the hell’s been going on?”
She frowned in the direction of the nearby seated actress. “I’m not his ex, by the way,” she said. “We’re still married.” She put her arms around her husband, hugged him, and then stepped back. “I don’t know a damn thing, Bill. What was Manheim doing here at all?”
“Oh, that part I know,” he told his wife. “He came to threaten me.”
“What do you mean?”
Groucho had eased closer to the couple. “Don’t mind me, young folks,” he said. “I’ll simply park here and eavesdrop.”
“Bill, this is Groucho Marx,” Dian said.
“Sorry I didn’t recognize you, Groucho. You usually have a moustache.”
“Yes, but now that my mind’s failing, I often come out without it,” he explained. “Go on about what Manheim was up to.”
“Well, as you probably know, he was extremely protective of Nancy—excuse me, of Dian Bowers,” he said. “He came barging into my dressing room about ten minutes before my entrance cue and started yelling at me.”
