Groucho Marx, King of the Jungle

by Ron Goulart

  I was walking along the palm-lined street leading to the Writers Building when someone behind me called, “Wait up, Frank.”

  Turning on the late-morning street, I saw a pretty young woman whom I didn’t recognize hurrying to catch up with me. She was wearing an open rayon bathrobe and a bright-flowered sarong. “Yes?” I said, trying to figure out who she might be.

  The girl smiled. “I know, you don’t recognize me.” She held out her hand.

  I shook it, admitting, “Afraid I don’t, miss.”

  “I’m Polly Pilgrim,” she told me. “I was the costar on the Groucho Marx, Private Eye radio show that you wrote.”

  “Polly Pilgrim? But …”

  “Right, Frank. I used to be pudgy,” she said. “And, back when you knew me, I had a different nose and different cheekbones, and my hair wasn’t this reddish blonde. But that was over two years ago.”

  “Polly Pilgrim,” I repeated, still surprised at the transformation she’d accomplished since she used to sing on our show. Groucho and I had cleared her actress mother of a murder charge, but since then I’d lost touch with both of them.

  “I got myself a new agent about a year ago,” Polly explained. “He sort of had me streamlined. His idea was basically that while I had a great voice, I wasn’t exactly a knockout. I had to agree with him.”

  “So now you’re a knockout,” I said. “How’s your mom taking all—”

  “When I told her that Gene Thompson—that’s my agent now, Gene Thompson—when I told her what he wanted to do, she said, ‘This is Hollywood, honey. Do what you have to do, but try not to go to bed with anybody you don’t like.’ Sound advice.”

  I nodded. “That it is, Polly,” I agreed. “You’re working at Warlock now?”

  “Gene got me a three-picture deal. Everybody thinks I’m going to be Warlock’s answer to Deanna Durbin or maybe even Judy Garland.”

  “Or Gloria Jean.”

  “No, I’m going to do a heck of a lot better than she has,” she said. “Being pretty has really built up my confidence. What are you doing these days, Frank?”

  “Working on the script for the latest Ty-Gor movie.”

  “Seems like the movie’s going to go on just fine without Randy Spellman,” she observed. “How’s your wife?”

  “Expecting.”

  “When?”

  “Any day now.”

  “Gee, that’s swell.” She shook my hand again. “Please say hello to Groucho. Oddly enough, I miss him.” Leaning, she kissed me on the cheek and went hurrying away ahead of me.

  “Polly Pilgrim,” I said yet again, reflecting on the miracles that Hollywood can work.

  Wallace Deems looked as though he’d been concentrating on doubling his weight over the past few years. He was in his early sixties, fat and pale, with a head of feathery silver hair. He overflowed his chair, and his size made his portable typewriter look somewhat like a toy. There was nothing else atop the desk except an ashtray holding a flock of cigarette stubs. “Enjoy it while you can, son,” he said as I crossed the small, stuffy office.

  “What, specifically?”

  “Youth.” He wheezed while shaking a fresh smoke out of his package of Camels. “How’s your prostate?”

  “Fine, far as I know.”

  Deems lit his newest cigarette, coughed, inhaled smoke. “Mine’s the size of a watermelon,” he said. “Or at least it feels that way. You get old, your prostate starts growing. It’ll happen to you. Then either you can’t take a pee, or all the livelong day you run to the can.”

  I sat in a rickety chair facing him. “Joel Farber tells me you’re going to … do a polish on the script I’m writing for this latest Ty-Gor movie.”

  “Don’t fret, son,” the older writer advised me. “I fully intend to sit on my butt, collect my paychecks, and do as little work as possible. Art Benson, known to you as Arthur Wright Benson, is a pal of mine, and he finagled me this job.”

  “You still writing for the pulps?”

  “Not so much these days, market’s drying up. Back in the 1920s and early 1930s, I was banging out a million words a year,” he informed me. “But my prostate gave out about the same time as most of my markets.” He coughed again. “My specialty was exotic locales, which is why Art sold me to Warlock to work on Ty-Gor. If you own an encyclopedia and a good atlas, you can fake any damn exotic locale in the—”

  “Then you don’t intend to rewrite my stuff?”

  “As little as possible.”

  Nodding, I asked, “How long have you known Benson?”

  “A coon’s age.” Deems snuffed out his cigarette. “Met him back in New York about fifteen years ago. He was already cashing in with Ty-Gor, and I was grinding out my million words and living well out on Long Island. Art and I were drinking buddies.”

  “Now you’re living in LA.”

  “Moved out a year or so ago, started scripting B movies,” he said. “After you’ve plotted thousands of pulp yarns, putting together a cheapie action film is easy. I worked on a couple of serials for Republic, too.”

  “You and Benson are still close, huh?”

  “I see him pretty often,” said Deems, shaking his head. “Art’s not all that happy these days. It’s a big mistake, although I can see where it’d be tempting, to marry a pretty girl much younger than you are. They have a tendency to get restless.”

  “I’ve heard that, yeah.”

  He lit a fresh cigarette, then rested both his pale, flabby hands on the desktop. “This lad who got himself knocked off, this Spellman. He and Art’s new wife were pretty chummy.”

  “Did Benson tell you that?”

  “Not in so many words, but I could tell he knew what was going on,” the erstwhile pulp writer said. “On top of everything, both of those kids of Art’s are true pains in the butt. Especially Alicia.”

  “Oh, so?”

  “Having a rich father can screw you up. I did a novelette about that for Argosy once, called ‘Siren of the Snowdrifts,’ where—”

  “What about Alicia?”

  “She’s been man-crazy since she was out of rompers practically.” He coughed out a swirl of smoke. “Ran away with one of the gardeners when she was still in high school. Some punk who was supposed to help tend that god damned jungle. Art had to hire some Pinkertons to drag her back from Tijuana, where she was shacked up with the guy. Worst of all, I think he was a Mex.”

  I stood up. “Anything you want to discuss about my script?”

  “I read it, Frank, and it sounds great to me,” he replied after coughing. “The new scenes will be fine, too. I’m just going to do a wee bit of tinkering, to justify my salary. Don’t worry, son.”

  “I will strive not to.”

  “You also write that Hollywood Molly radio show, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, with some help from my wife.”

  “It’s a pretty good show,” Deems said. “But if I were you, Frank, I’d do something about the locales. Hollywood is okay, but think about using Hong Kong, Macao, Paris. Paris is especially easy to fake.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

  Sixteen

  I was still working for the Los Angeles Times when its new headquarters were built on West First Street. It’s a massive building, granite below and cream-colored limestone on the higher floors. There’s a bronze eagle on the roof.

  As I walked by the place that morning, I didn’t feel any nostalgia for the bygone days when I was a crime reporter on the paper. What I felt was happy that I’d moved on, that writing radio scripts and jungle man movies was closer to what I wanted to do.

  My pace automatically kicked up, and I had the fleeting feeling that some circulation sluggers might come charging out of the Times building to press me back into service as a reporter.

  My destination was a small café just around the corner.

  Larry Shell, thin as ever, was waiting for me at a back booth in the Five Star Coffee Shop. “Is this going to result in a scoop for me?” as
ked the photographer.

  I sat opposite him. “Someday, certainly. Right now, though, it gives you a chance to do a noble service for the cause of justice and—”

  “Okay, since you’re a longtime friend, I’ll help you out of the kindness of my heart,” Larry said. “Has this to do with the Spellman murder that you and Groucho Marx are messing around with, huh?”

  “That’s right, yeah.”

  “Who do you think killed him?”

  “It definitely wasn’t Dorothy Woodrow.”

  “Nope, she’s too sensible for that,” he said, “and she never sticks with one guy long. Matter of fact, I took her out a few times couple years ago. Long before she got tangled up with Ty-Gor.”

  I took an envelope out of the breast pocket of my jacket. “What I’d like you to do, Larry, is take a look at a couple of photos and tell me if you can identify any of the people.”

  “What’ll you have, kiddo?” A waitress of about sixty, with flamboyant red hair, had materialized in the aisle.

  “Just coffee.”

  “You sure you don’t want what your pal’s having?”

  I glanced down at Larry’s plate. “I don’t think so, no, but I’m not exactly sure what it is.”

  “That’s the Five Star Special,” she explained. “Consists of a glazed donut, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with walnuts, and saturated with maple syrup.”

  “Reluctantly, I’ll pass. Coffee.”

  “You’ll regret it.” She patted me on the shoulder and retreated.

  Sliding the envelope across the tabletop, I said, “These are … well, photographs used for blackmail.”

  “Ah, dirty pictures.” He picked up the envelope. “Doubt that they’ll shock me.”

  “These came from Spellman’s collection. They show people he considered, we think, important targets and dangerous ones. It could be that someone in the pictures had something to do with killing Randy.”

  Larry extracted the two small photos from the envelope, placing them side by side on the table. He rested his right hand next to them to act as a shield. “Well, that’s interesting.”

  “Which one?”

  “The pudgy guy in this shot is a very well-to-do real estate developer named Galen Klein. The lady I don’t know, but she isn’t his wife.”

  “I’ve heard of Klein. What about the other shot?”

  “The woman lacking clothes is Mrs. Alden Poirier, and I’m pretty sure that fellow so intimately entangled with her was her chauffeur until about a month ago, when he got arrested for burglary.” Larry returned the pictures to their envelope. “I’ve taken her picture several times in the past few years, mostly at fashionable charity dances. Her hubby is the Alden Poirier.”

  “Owns a baseball team.”

  “That’s the guy. And his daddy has a nice collection of oil wells in Oklahoma.”

  “Makes Mrs. Poirier a nice subject for blackmail.”

  “So blackmail was Randy Spellman’s sideline. I’ve heard rumors to that effect.”

  “Could be acting was his sideline, with blackmail his main source of revenue,” I said, putting the envelope away.

  The Golden State Hotel was not that far from the Times building in the tacky heart of Los Angeles. To the left of its once-resplendent façade was a boarded-up saloon named Big Bob’s Nitespot, which sported a faded sign proclaiming, UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT! On the other side was a small dusty shop offering ALMOST NEW! clothing.

  A very thin man who looked much older than he could possibly have been was leaning in the shop doorway. “I got the perfect necktie for you, mister,” he called out as I headed for the hotel’s tarnished revolving door.

  “Sorry, my wife just bought me the perfect necktie.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt to try it on.”

  “Nevertheless.” I went into the Golden State.

  The lobby was vast and lofty, chock-full of heavy nineteenth-century couches and armchairs. For some reason the whole place smelled not of dust and decay but of fresh flowers. Well, more like funeral parlor flowers.

  A man who looked even older than the neighboring haberdasher was sitting in one of the armchairs. He had a dented tea tray across his lap and was dealing out Tarot cards while muttering surprised noises. “Watch out for a woman you think you can trust,” he told me as I crossed to the desk.

  “I do that automatically, thanks.”

  The clerk was a boy of about twenty, reading a copy of a movie magazine. “I’d like to meet this May Sankowitz,” he confided, sitting up. “She really knows Hollywood, and I bet she could show you a good time.”

  “At the very least. What room is Tim O’Hearn in?”

  “You ever meet her?”

  “No, but I once caught a glimpse of her on Hollywood Boulevard. It fair took my breath away. O’Hearn’s room?”

  “Three-thirteen,” answered the young clerk. “Some people think that’s an unlucky number, but O’Hearn says he’s already had his lifetime quota of bad luck, and it doesn’t matter.” He returned to reading May’s gossip column.

  The ancient elevator, which smelled of both flowers and ancient urine, carried me, with several rattling lurches, up to the third floor.

  The door of 313 was open about three inches. I stood near the slice of dim light. “O’Hearn. It’s Frank.”

  “C’mon in,” he invited. “Don’t shut the door. I keep it open for ventilation.”

  His latest hotel room was much like all the other hotel rooms my old LA Times tipster had resided in over the years that he’d been supplying me with information. Small, musty, all the shades pulled down.

  “You’ve changed your menu again,” I noted.

  “I was reading an article in Time at the all-girl barbershop across the street, Frank,” explained O’Hearn, who was sitting on the edge of his unmade bed. “A respected doctor advised that a vegetarian diet was beneficial.”

  I lifted a paper plate that held the moldering remains of a nutburger off a faded armchair and sat. “Where do you find vegetarian fare?”

  “There’s a dinky Armenian joint up near Pershing Square.” His foot nearly squashed the moss-covered unfinished nutburger that sat on the thin carpet as he started to leave the bed. “Want a beer?”

  “Nope. What have you found out about Val Gallardo?”

  “Think I’ll have one.” Both he and the bed creaked as he left it.

  O’Hearn usually kept his beers in the tank of the toilet. He went into the bathroom now to fetch one.

  “Okay, so?”

  Picking a rusty bottle opener off his pillow, he opened the brown bottle of Regal Pale Beer. “Salermo’s boy Val Gallardo didn’t bump off Spellman.”

  “Then we can cross him off our list of potential killers. For now.”

  O’Hearn took a swig of his beer. “The word is—and I checked this in my usual thorough way, Frank—that Gallardo had nothing to do with bumping off that second-rate actor,” he informed me. “Oh, by the way, you owe me ten bucks.”

  “Instead of the five we agreed on over the telephone?”

  After coughing into his fist, O’Hearn drank some more of his Regal Pale. “I found out some other stuff,” he said. “If you’re interested.”

  Taking out my wallet, the one Jane’s aunt in Fresno had sent me on my birthday, I gave my informant a ten.

  He folded it twice, tucked it into his shirt pocket. “I found out that this guy Spellman wasn’t working his blackmail dodge alone.”

  “And?”

  “There was a mystery woman in the picture.”

  “Since she was a mystery woman, I suppose you couldn’t find out her name?”

  “No, but the word is Spellman had a dame who did some of his threatening for him.” He paused to finish his beer. “Maybe two dames, because one of them had a Deep South accent.”

  “Or one dame with a gift for mimicry.”

  He went into the bathroom for another beer. “Sure you won’t have one, Frank?”

  “Abs
olutely convinced. Did you learn anything else?”

  “Hell, pal, you already got fifteen bucks worth of inside dope for ten bucks.” He returned with a bottle of Lucky Lager Beer. “Want me to keep nosing around?”

  “Not on Gallardo. That looks like a dead end.” I left the chair, nearly tromping on yet another mossy nutburger. “But if you hear anything else about this mystery woman, let me know.”

  “How much?”

  “Another five.”

  “Jesus, Frank, haven’t you heard the damned Depression’s over? Wages are going up.”

  “Okay, ten if it’s something we can use.”

  He uncapped the bottle. “I think this vegetarian diet is really working,” he said. “I’m feeling a lot better. How do I look?”

  “You’re pretty close to looking alive.”

  “See, that’s an improvement,” O’Hearn said.

  Seventeen

  As we drove farther into San Fernando Valley, we left much of civilization behind—or what passes for civilization in and around Los Angeles—and found ourselves traveling past fields and ranches and occasional small towns.

  First off, I explained to Groucho that Warlock was dropping his walk-on part in the Ty-Gor movie. “They think humor isn’t appropriate to a movie they’re now planning to dedicate to the memory of Randy Spellman.”

  “Alas, what’s left for me now but a declining career as a dress extra?” he remarked, with a pathetic sigh. “Well, I’ll certainly have more time to work on that crazy quilt I’ve been putting together. The only trouble is, two noted Rodeo Drive psychiatrists have warned me that my quilt is dangerously crazy and should be sent somewhere for observation. I was thinking of letting it be observed in one of the windows of the May Company department store. Or I may ship it to Topeka.”

  “Sure, the Menningers will straighten it out,” I said. Next I filled Groucho in on what Larry Shell, Wallace Deems, and Tim O’Hearn had told me and went over the now-expanded list of Randy Spellman’s blackmail targets.