Hello, I Must be Going

by Charlotte Chandler

  Everybody started to look around at Groucho. So he got up, unsteady, of course, and once he got up, he was up. He went over to Browning and Eubie, and he started to sing, of course in this terrible, almost dog-like sound. You know—wolfing—and what he was doing, he was trying to harmonize with Browning. But the range Browning was singing in was so far above Groucho’s, all Groucho could do was try and harmonize in that key, and what came out was this dog-like wail. We all started to laugh, and Groucho started to smile, and Mr. Browning broke up laughing.

  Eubie, he was just playing, because he was concentrating on the song. I don’t know if Eubie even heard what was going on. Well, they got near the end of the song, and Groucho decided that he wants to high-kick. And he starts to cross one leg in front of the other, kicking. He starts to dance, and Erin stands up, and her face is flushed, and she’s excited about the whole thing. But he’s really dancing!

  They continued on. I don’t know whether there were three or four more songs, but I do know that the evening was important enough fun for Groucho that he missed You Bet Your Life that night. That was the biggest compliment Groucho could give to a party. He never missed reruns of You Bet Your Life. Erin said, “Groucho, do you want to go and see your show?” and he said, “No, I want to sing.”

  “But you look tired.”

  “No! I want to sing.”

  For him, it was absolutely the biggest thing. My mother still talks about it. And laughs! She laughs so hard whenever we talk about it, because it was a great tribute. He was there, high-kicking, and just doing this dog’s wail, trying to harmonize. Then, he’d do “Lydia,” and Eubie didn’t know it, but he faked it. They all sang that together, faking it, and they tried to find his key. But he had a ball. He left that evening before Eubie, and afterwards, Eubie, who was the oldest of that group, said, “You know, he’s in pretty good shape.”

  I said, “Yeah, and tonight he’s in better shape than he’s ever been in.” You know, there’s no medicine for that. A pharmacist can’t just put that in a bottle.

  Erin called back the next day and said, “When he woke up, his spirits were just great, just lovely.” Because of that evening.

  I was fortunate enough to be able to meet three of the four comedians I most admire. Besides Groucho, there were Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. I never met W. C. Fields, of course. But Groucho was the only one I ever really knew. I talked with Buster, but at that time it wasn’t good at all, because Buster was ready to go. I met Chaplin once. The funniest thing about it was his granddaughter told him who I was. She was really excited about it.

  It was my pleasure to meet Groucho and to get to know him. I think, other than that, it probably would have been even better to have known him when he was at his prime. If we could have worked together, both at our prime, that would have been extraordinary. To me, Groucho will always, always be appreciated and respected as a human being who thought funny.

  Now, more than his movies, I appreciated You Bet Your Life. I broke my neck to get in there and watch that, and that’s where I really knew Groucho from. Woody Allen speaks highly of the films, but to me, Groucho Marx is You Bet Your Life and coming up with the lines off of which the people said what they said. That I appreciated more than anything. As a matter of fact, I appreciated him so much in it, that I wanted to do a show like that, the kind of thing that really made for good viewing. The people on You Bet Your Life became human beings instead of the blithering idiots you usually see on these television quiz shows. As you’ll notice in Hello, I Must Be Going, Groucho considered the audience the straight man. That’s important. And you weren’t really giving anything away. No big bucks.

  I always wanted to do You Bet Your Life. We even went into meetings with the old producers of the show. I felt very confident I could deal with the people on the show the way Groucho did. Not slick, natural. I’ve been waiting a long time to do it.

  The audience I’d most like to have for the show is Groucho. I hope he’s watching. I’d like for him to smile that funny little smile of his that meant more than other people’s out-loud laughs. I’m tickled that I’m getting the chance to do You Bet Your Life while I’m still crisp.

  Titles page

  (Other titles suggested for this book)

  Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories—suggested by Groucho Marx

  Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories, and Tall Tales—suggested addition by Marvin Hamlisch

  Grouch—suggested by Bill Cosby

  The Other Side of Groucho—suggested by Sidney Sheldon, author of The Other Side of Midnight

  Tell ’Em Groucho Sent You—suggested by Erin Fleming

  Sitting Duck—also suggested by Erin Fleming

  Groucho the Great—suggested by Jack Benny

  One of a Kind—suggested by Bert Granet

  Andy’s Grandfather—suggested by Andy Marx

  Nothing Sacred—suggested by Julius Epstein, writer of Casablanca, knowing that this title has already been used but feeling that no other title so perfectly described Groucho, or:

  No Relation to Karl

  Here Comes Captain Groucho—suggested by King Vidor

  Art Ducko—suggested by Erté

  Beware the Ids of Marx—suggested by Goddard Lieberson

  “I’m as young as the day is long, and this has been a very short day.”

  GROUCHO MARX

  “Hello, I must be going”

  Groucho did not grow old gracefully, because there is no such thing. It was an indignity with which he lived, with the greatest dignity possible. “Growing old is what you do if you are lucky,” he said, and though any decline was a constant offense to his pride, Groucho mustered all his strength for what in the end had to be a losing battle.

  The Groucho legend, however, didn’t age; it was frozen in time. The Duck Soup Groucho was expected by some; others expected to find the You Bet Your Life Groucho. After one of his jokes you could hear echoes of “He’s the same, he’s the same as ever!” People didn’t want to see their idol fall. If Groucho was aging, so were they—someone else’s old age is a threat to one’s own immortality. Time may pass for them as it does for other mortals, but they are shocked to find that it also passes for an immortal of the silver screen and the video tube. Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, Impresario Otis B. Driftwood, and Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush are ageless, but Groucho was in his eighties.

  In his daily life, the most difficult competition Groucho had to face was competition from his younger self. His professional appearances, though happening until shortly before his death, were constantly diminishing in number—to avoid growing old in technicolor close-ups, and because growing old isn’t funny.

  Groucho had a perspective different from those of most of his friends, since virtually none of them had ever been that close to a century old. Health and survival became what was important. He gave the highest priority to remaining able-minded. “I want to go on as long as I can, as long as I’m in good shape, especially mentally.” But he did not find the rigors of growing old or the supposed secrets of longevity to be a diverting topic of discussion.

  “Age isn’t very interesting to talk about. Anyone can get old. Everybody gets older, if you live long enough.”

  In answer to Jack Nicholson’s “How old are you, Grouch?” he raised his eyebrows and said, “It’s not how old I am, it’s how I’m old.”

  During Groucho’s last visit to New York City, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Penelope Gilliatt joined Groucho and me for lunch in his suite at the Sherry Netherland Hotel. We gathered in a football huddle in the living room, glasses in hand. Groucho raised his glass of tomato juice in a toast and said, “To health. That’s all there is.” Mystified, Betty pondered the toast. “Is that all there is?” she asked. Groucho shrugged and said, “Vay iz mir.” Adolph translated: “That means ‘Woe is me.’ What kind of a toast is that?” Groucho didn’t even try to explain that for him the greatest luxury in life was being able to take good
health for granted.

  While we were having dinner before going to see Juno and the Paycock, Billy Marx, Harpo’s adopted son, asked Groucho what was the most exciting thing that ever happened to him.

  “The most exciting thing that ever happened to me was when my doctor said I was good and healthy.”

  “I mean in show business, Groucho,” Billy persisted.

  “I was in show business when the doctor said that.”

  He also tried to explain his feelings to virile young friend Jack Nicholson, who couldn’t really put himself in Groucho’s house slippers:

  JACK NICHOLSON

  We ought to be goin’ around the town together, Grouch. We’d have some time!

  GROUCHO

  You reach a certain age, and you don’t care about sex anymore. You just care about health.

  JACK NICHOLSON

  There has to be more than that. You can still always do something. You can just lay around and…

  This conversation was interrupted by the entrance of nurse “Happy,” whom Groucho always described as “the only woman who can put me to sleep.” He was referring to her tickling of his feet, a minor passion of his, “one of the few I can still satisfy.” He added wistfully, “That wasn’t the way it always was. But when a guy is eighty-three, he should forget the whole thing. I know if I do it, it’s going to be lousy, so why cheapen myself? It doesn’t depress me. I know I can’t do it properly anymore; if I could, I’d still be doing it. I’ve talked to a lot of guys who are seventy-eight, seventy-nine, and they all say it’s hopeless. When you can’t get it up anymore, you should quit. When a guy is eighty years old or thereabouts, he should read a book.”

  I

  Is there anything in your life you would do differently?

  GROUCHO

  I wish I were young enough to make the same mistakes all over again.

  I

  But isn’t there something you would do if you had your life to live all over again?

  GROUCHO

  I’d try more positions.

  Animal Crackers had not been shown in theatres for more than twenty years when Groucho obtained a print and screened it at home for us. Mike Nichols and Jack Nicholson were invited for the event, and they clearly thought the film was great. Jack was particularly impressed by Groucho’s dance. “I’d sure like to be able to do that,” he told Groucho. “It must be really difficult to get it just the way you did it.” Groucho said, “I’ll give you lessons.”

  The next day, Jack appeared for his lesson. Groucho got up and did the dance, but it was a pale reflection of his 1930 performance. Jack looked momentarily stunned, and Groucho was angry at himself for not being the man he had been. Then the moment passed and the conversation turned to other topics.

  Jack Nicholson, who was born almost a decade after Groucho danced that dance—perhaps even after Groucho had already forgotten it—had not fully appreciated the interval of time that had elapsed between the 1930 performance and the 1973 performance—and neither had Groucho. On the screen the performers remain unchanged over the decades. The motion picture can be rather frightening for the performer who is able to watch his own wide-screen wrinkles appear. When Jack had left, Groucho told me, “I hope I look that good when I’m his age.”

  In 1974 Groucho returned to New York for the opening of Animal Crackers, and Doubleday Editor Ken McCormick asked him, “What do you find most changed, Groucho?” He replied, “Me, I’m eighty-three.” At his Carnegie Hall appearance in New York, Groucho summed it up: “I come from a world that doesn’t exist anymore, and hardly do I.”

  Groucho was fortunate that his character was never extreme youth. Who’s ever heard of a youthful lecher? He never had to face the trauma that confronts the motion picture ingenue. The Groucho character was middle-aged in his earliest films and remained so for a very long time. He was, in fact, still readily recognizable in his middle eighties, as one learned on even the shortest saunter down any street with him. Harpo’s innocence was like that of a child who was never supposed to grow up, let alone grow old, while Groucho, who wooed dowager Margaret Dumont or soubrette Thelma Todd, didn’t have to contend with losing his youth. He could still joke about it. “My youth is slipping,” he said. “Someone should tell him to be more careful.”

  There were those who felt that any public appearances by Groucho in his eighties should be curtailed or better yet, curtained. They felt that his forays into the world of show business were destroying the myth of a Groucho Marx who should not grow old in the glare of the klieg lights. It is part of the limitation of the human condition that the mystique of glamour and the mistake of excessive accessibility have enough difficulty coexisting without the complication of aging.

  For Groucho, the important day of his life was today, and he loved playing himself. As the years ahead grew shorter, the tributes grew longer, but he was not ready to be enshrined. “I don’t want to be put in a case in a museum like Harpo’s harp.” As for his fans, some of them young enough to be his great-grandchildren, the thrill of Groucho in his eighties was still a thrill, even if—especially if—the name he mischievously signed in the autograph book was “Mary Pickford,” which he did on occasion.

  As one grows older, one is constantly losing illusions, learning that the “real” Santa Claus is working for the Salvation Army and Macy’s at the same time, and that romantic, true, and perfect love rarely ages as well as cognac. But Groucho managed to remain at least somewhat illusioned in the face of disillusioning realities. Life itself, after a certain point, operates under a law of diminishing returns, and eighty-five-year-old optimism is rarer than twenty-one-year-old optimism or even seventy-five-year-old optimism.

  I

  Was it a hard life in the early days when the Marx Brothers didn’t get much money, had to travel all the time living in rooming houses, eating chili every day?

  GROUCHO

  Well, I was young. And there’s no hard life when you’re young. Everything is easy.

  I

  Yes, but unfortunately, when you’re young, you may not realize that.

  GROUCHO

  Yeah. You don’t know it, so it seems hard. But when you’re young, you’re not afraid. You don’t know any better.

  Then Groucho put his finger on what was different for him about being old: “Everything comes harder. You have to concentrate to do what you didn’t have to think about before. You can’t take things for granted. You can’t even take salt for granted.”

  Having dinner with Jack Nicholson, Groucho suggested to him, “Maybe you should stop using salt while you’re still young, so you won’t miss it when you have to give it up. I don’t use salt, I don’t drink now, and I don’t smoke.

  “I used to be crazy about Somerset Maugham. He lived to be about ninety years old. He still smoked cigarettes. The doctor said, ‘You ought to quit. You’ll die if you don’t quit smoking.’ And Maugham said, ‘What can you give me to replace it?’ The doctor went home in a huff. He was driving a blue Huff at the time.”

  Happiness consists largely in the ability to live each day without too great an awareness of the passing of time. The ability to be oblivious to the passing of time is one of the greatest luxuries of youth, but Groucho in his eighties still had that casualness about time which allowed him to waste it in nonconstructive pursuits without feelings of pressure or guilt. “I take one day at a time. And I won’t put it back.”

  Another aspect of happiness is the ability to reconcile one’s hopes-and-dreams world with the real world. Groucho had made his peace with what he was and what he had. “Getting old is what hurts. After you get there, you’re glad to wake up in the morning.” He was a realist, if a romantic realist. He accepted the natural law of diminishing returns not as a situation tragedy but as his due “for having too many birthdays.” He had the satisfaction of being able to answer “Groucho Marx” to the question “Who would you like to have been?”

  Groucho was the first to recognize that he was not the m
an he used to be:

  “I called my tailor, and a girl answered. I said, ‘This is Groucho Marx,’ and she said, ‘You’re foolin’ me. He’s dead.’ And she was right.”

  When I asked Groucho, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” he responded soberly, “I’m growing down.”

  Nothing made Groucho unhappier than when a young woman held a door open for him, unless it was when an old woman held a door open for him.

  Groucho was well aware that old age is not the ideal state, only the best of all possible choices. He read to me the words Vincente Minnelli had written in the front of a book he had given Groucho:

  “‘To the greatest comedian alive,’” then Groucho paused and added, “Only he was wrong. I’m not alive.”

  Groucho sometimes told a story about a baseball game between two vaudeville teams. He and Will Rogers were on opposing sides. When Groucho tried to steal second base, the catcher threw to second-baseman Will Rogers, who yelled, “You’re out!”

  “But you’re ten feet off second base,” Groucho protested.

  “Groucho, at my age wherever you stand is second base,” Will Rogers explained.

  Old age can be like the tortures of Tantalus. The fruit is still there, but not only is it out of one’s grasp, one may no longer care about grasping it. Groucho still cared.

  Although it is common for older people to begin liquidating their estates in advance, Groucho eagerly continued to acquire possessions and enjoy them. His inanimate world as well as his animated world was not in a state of diminution. Going through several books every week, he remained an avid reader, able to be alone without being lonely. He practiced his guitar, still taking frivolity seriously. He continued trying to improve himself, even while all the forces of nature were at work against him. True old age commences with the feeling there is nothing to look forward to; Groucho was still looking forward.