Hello, I Must be Going

by Charlotte Chandler

  His detailed accounts of long ago never ceased to amaze friends like Elliott Gould, George Segal, Jack Lemmon, and Dinah Shore. Inability to remember is sometimes associated with aging. Those who think that way fail to take into consideration how much there is to remember when you’re past eighty-five. Young people just don’t have as much to remember. Groucho would be asked by a fan, “How did you feel before the battle scene in Duck Soup?” He answered, “Geez, that was a thousand years ago.” Or, “That was 1933. It’s almost fifty years ago. I don’t remember everything.”

  It’s true that most people aren’t expected to remember their lives in infinite detail, as was Groucho. But the advantages of being Groucho Marx outweighed any disadvantages. At least people did want to know about his life, and most people never have that kind of experience. Memory is capricious rather than pragmatic. We don’t choose what we remember, it chooses us.

  GROUCHO

  You remember the damnedest things.

  I

  You’ve lived such a long life, does that boy Julius Marx on Ninety-third Street ever seem like another person, a stranger to you now?

  GROUCHO

  You’ve seen the pictures. Don’t you think I’ve changed?

  I

  I mean on the inside.

  GROUCHO

  I don’t know. No, I guess I’m the same, only older.

  Everyone has problems, and how people deal with their problems reveals a great deal about their personalities. There may even be a basic human need for problems, since anyone so fortunate as to be temporarily without any will probably hurriedly create some. One is fortunate when the little things seem very big—Groucho was still worrying about little things.

  There are problems you can solve and problems you cannot solve. Groucho recognized the importance of cutting his losses and not throwing good time after bad. Even though old age is a condition that is difficult to accept as well as being a disability from which one cannot look forward to a recovery, he didn’t consume his energies, efforts, and time in useless pondering, complaints, and regrets.

  In old age, the questions often become more important than the answers. One learns more than one might wish to know of problems about which one would rather remain in total ignorance, and one is constantly reminded of one’s own vulnerability. Groucho told me, “When you’re eighty-five, you’ve learned how to live with things you don’t want and how to shut the door.” He had learned to sweep those problems that have no solution under a wall-to-wall carpet. Old age was for him that kind of problem.

  Goddard Lieberson, whose friendship with Groucho went back thirty years, remembered a younger Groucho who was so healthy that he would notice any insignificant ache and complain about it. “But now,” Goddard noted, “when I say, ‘How are you, Groucho?’ he says, ‘Fine,’ and never complains about anything.”

  Old age is like taking out one consolidated loan to pay off all of your debts. The debts don’t disappear, but all of the problems are wrapped up in one not so neat package. Old age is a problem so complete, so all-encompassing, so totally pervasive, so insurmountable in any desirable way, that it distracts from all others.

  Perhaps the single quality that Groucho most valued and respected in a man was strength. In his middle eighties, he was leaned on by a great many people, but he didn’t like to lean himself. Norman Krasna said of his longtime friend, “Groucho is not a complainer. He had so many years of terrible family problems, but he always went onstage funny.” The Groucho I knew always went on funny, and his stage was his daily life.

  When a person reaches a certain age, he is expected to assume the role of an old person. He is beseeched to rest, almost as if in rehearsal for that final inevitable rest. “Act your age,” a young world admonishes, when there’s no fun in that. Groucho chose to put up a fight.

  Early in life he learned that life is a battlefield, and that for every winner there are lots of losers. Thus he was careful never to go forth into the arena or the one-liner’s den with his suit of armor askew. And always emblazoned on the breastplate was “Tell ’em Groucho sent you.”

  On the theory that the best defense is a good offense, Groucho got in the first blow, and he could on occasion be somewhat offensive. Most people, however, would rather have received an insult from Groucho than a compliment from anybody else. He was considered by those who didn’t like him (and even Groucho had a few of those—one may measure one’s success by appraising one’s enemies) to be selfish. What he did have was a highly developed sense of self, which is not to be confused with selfishness.

  People are born with an undamaged self-esteem which is constantly under assault from that first jarring slap on the back. We are born liking ourselves; Groucho continued to do so. Headstrong, headlong, he loped through life, his self-confidence unshaken, through turbulence and turmoil unperturbed. He didn’t break the rules: he ignored their existence. He remained never self-conscious, but calmly conscious of self.

  Groucho avoided ruts, accepting routine but not acting from force of habit, remaining predictably unpredictable.

  Well into his eighties, Groucho still eschewed conformity:

  “It’s a good idea not to live your life just to please others. You don’t please yourself, and you end up not pleasing anyone else. But if you please yourself, maybe you’ll please someone else.”

  A waiter at Hillcrest Country Club in Beverly Hills greeted Groucho with, “How do you feel, Mr. Marx? You look younger.” Groucho responded, “I’m getting younger. Next year I’ll be eighty-three. And the next year I’ll be eighty-two.”

  One day, having lunch at Hillcrest with Groucho, we were joined by George Jessel. Their conversation stopped in midsentence as Adolph Zukor, then well past one hundred, was wheeled by.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  It’s good to be alive.

  GROUCHO

  I don’t want to live that long. I took her (Indicating me) to see Durante the other day. I sang for him and he liked it. I asked him, “How’s Mrs. Calabash?”

  GEORGE JESSEL

  I hear he’s not so good.

  GROUCHO

  He’ll never work again.

  Once I asked Groucho, “In your many years of experience, what have you learned that you would like to share? Do you have any advice to offer?” He shared with me the benefit of his wisdom: “Never sit down at a party because you may have somebody sitting next to you that you don’t like.”

  Groucho didn’t like to have anyone he cared about say goodbye to him. “Never say goodbye,” he admonished friends.

  Though in attendance at Jack Benny’s funeral, Groucho assiduously avoided funerals. He just had been to too many. Looking through his address book and seeing all of the people who, though he didn’t cross them out, could no longer be reached was a traumatic experience. He said about George S. Kaufman, “I still never get used to his being gone.” The death of friend Harry Ruby deeply saddened Groucho, as did the hospital visits to Arthur Sheekman—visits which he continued to make regularly.

  Groucho told me, “I’m still alive. That’s about it.”

  He was less than impressed by one well-meaning fan’s admonition “Don’t die—just keep on living.” Dismissing it peremptorily, Groucho said, “Some line.”

  He once discussed life and death with Woody Allen:

  GROUCHO

  I’m still alive.

  WOODY ALLEN

  How do we know that?

  GROUCHO

  I can tell when I get up in the morning. If I don’t get up, that means I’m dead.

  Groucho liked to quote Woody’s line which was one of his favorites: “I don’t mind dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

  One day grandson Andy rushed in and told us that he’d been to a hilarious film. Laughing at the very memory of it, Andy said, “I died laughing.”

  “If you’ve gotta go, that’s the way to go,” Groucho commented soberly. “You know, I have a friend who works for an organization that
tries to prevent people from committing suicide. If you want to kill yourself, you call this man up. He’ll do it for you.”

  As Groucho left Chasen’s after dinner with Minnie’s Boys’ producer, Arthur Whitelaw, a solicitous captain rushed anxiously after us, mother-hen-like cautioning Groucho, “Careful, Mr. Marx! Careful!” His tone implied that Groucho was not just less than agile, but as helpless as a very small child. The patronizing manner was not lost on Groucho. Stooping over and putting his hand on his back, he began walking in a bent-over posture that would have been appropriate to the oldest man in the world. As he creaked along, he made low groaning sounds and cackled like one of Macbeth’s witches, repeating, “I’m an old man, I’m an old man.”

  The captain, failing to take the hint, added, “Watch the step, Mr. Marx!” Groucho instantly froze, his stare fastened on the steps. The parking attendant arrived with his Mercedes and announced, “Your car, Mr. Marx.”

  Groucho responded without unriveting his gaze, “I’m watching the step.”

  Once when Groucho talked with me about being old, he said, “I don’t mind it if I can work.” As for his total retirement from show business, Groucho said when he was eighty-four, “I’m not gonna retire, I’d like to die right onstage. That would be the way to go, right onstage.” He added to that sober thought, “But I don’t plan on dying at all.”

  In Animal Crackers, Mrs. Rittenhouse pleads with Captain Spaulding to stay, and Groucho answers:

  CAPTAIN SPAULDING

  Hello, I must be going. I cannot stay, I came to say I must be going. I’m glad I came, but just the same, I must be going.

  MRS. RITTENHOUSE

  For my sake you must stay. If you should go away, you’d spoil this party I am throwing.

  CAPTAIN SPAULDING

  I’ll stay a week or two, I’ll stay the summer through, but I am telling you, I must be going.

  And without Groucho, the party never can be the same.

  “I’m too rich to eat bread”

  Dinner was served at the Marx residence, but everything was wrong for Groucho. Some of the food was burned. The fake salt was missing. There weren’t any sliced tomatoes. Vegetables and potatoes crowded the entree on the same plate. The dessert grapefruit, having been frozen, was full of ice splinters.

  During the meal Groucho didn’t complain. He ate as he always ate—slowly, with the abundant but meticulously controlled pleasure of one who really liked to eat but who didn’t like to gain weight. After the meal, he rose from the table and announced:

  “Some meal. They can’t treat me like that. I used to be Groucho Marx.”

  The celebrated irreverence for established institutions remained as strong as ever, even when the institution happened to be Groucho himself.

  He did much the same thing when, in a restaurant or at home, the bread basket was offered, and he responded disdainfully:

  “I’m too rich to eat bread.”

  Groucho was proud of his self-made success and of the financial independence it had provided for him and those he cared about. In spite of this, he maintained his irreverent perspective, even toward himself.

  “I’m not really that rich,” he explained. “In fact, the way the market’s been acting lately, I may soon be saying, I’m too poor to eat bread.”

  The stock market rarely interfered with Groucho’s appetite, though it accounted for numerous sleepless nights after 1929, when his life savings were wiped out. Of his insomnia, he said, “I’m trying to sleep it off. I subtract sheep.”

  “I remember when a day-old loaf of pumpernickel cost four cents, which probably dates my childhood somewhere between Marie Antoinette and the invention of the guillotine, the ultimate slicing machine. I have nothing at all against bread, except butter.

  “When I say I’m too rich to eat bread, I mean the opposite of what I say, or vice versa. Or better yet, weiss wurst.”

  Groucho took his bread very seriously, especially when it was pumpernickel, a constant on his table at home and often in the restaurants he frequented. This pumpernickel was always accompanied by sweet butter, a staple at Groucho’s, “Or heads will roll—I’m master in my house!” Favorite restaurants Chasen’s and the Beverly Hills Hotel kept a private stock of sweet butter for him.

  I had brought Groucho a loaf of Zabar’s raisin pumpernickel from New York. “I’d like to be raisin’ pumpernickel,” he commented at dinner. “Want some more?” he asked me. “I don’t think there’s anymore left.” I promised to bring two loaves next time. He shrugged. “It runs into money.”

  Groucho’s commitment to pumpernickel and sweet butter went all the way back to the 1890s, when he was a small boy growing up in Yorkville, New York City’s German neighborhood. In Groucho’s family, his father, Sam, wore the toque blanche, while his mother, Minnie, preferred eating to cooking. “Minnie couldn’t make anything except my father,” he recalled.

  “She could make bean soup and smoked tongue. She cooked badly. It was good enough to eat. My father was the good cook. He made pies—apple and lemon. It was through his cooking that my mother got plenty of jobs for us.”

  Born in Alsace, Sam Marx was known to everyone, even his young sons, as “Frenchie.” As Groucho told it, “My mother spoke German and my father spoke French, but they had six boys anyway.” Frenchie was renowned in Yorkville circles for his culinary triumphs. As an amateur chef of prodigious talent, he whipped up Lucullan feasts to woo recalcitrant theatrical agents, bookers, and anyone else Minnie thought could help “the boys.” If agents or theatre owners didn’t fancy the boys’ act, Minnie fed their fancies, and Frenchie fed them fancily, until they succumbed.

  Living with the Marx family in Yorkville was Aunt Hannah. One of Groucho’s earliest, most vivid and most cherished childhood memories was of Aunt Hannah’s clam chowder, which was so memorable that, into his eighties, he could still almost taste it. “Aunt Hannah used the same pot for making clam chowder that she used for doing the laundry,” he recalled. “I think it improved both—both the clam chowder and the pot.”

  The taste of a food is a sensory impression so ephemeral that with the passage of time it becomes impossible to recall perfectly. Reminiscing with me about his mother’s bean soup, Groucho said, “I wish I could remember just how it tasted.”

  Although Groucho and his brothers were far from rich, they didn’t know it. Heroic portions of beans and chowder were cooked in that huge pot that doubled for washing clothes. Both the food and their shirts were heavy on starch. Sam Marx, whom Groucho described as “the world’s worst tailor,” may not have had much to work with, but he could convert leftovers into what Groucho remembered as “something fit for the gods, assuming there are any left.”

  Eating well was a Marx value, and there was an importance placed on enjoying good food. Enthusiastic eaters, the brothers often ate their egg sandwiches on the way to school, then for lunch they had to return home for replacements. After school they were regulars at any neighbors’ apartments from which the aroma of freshly baked cookies wafted forth. Groucho remembered it as a world of iceboxes (“We used to suck on pieces of ice we stole from the ice wagon”), pfeffernüss and cheesecake with raisins, and his father’s apple pies and lemon pies—as well as a world of hiding when the landlord came around to collect the rent.

  When Groucho and I went in search of pfeffernüss at Benes, a Los Angeles Czech bakery, the experience brought back memories:

  “Where are the samples?” he asked on entering. “In New York when I was young, we used to get cheesecake with raisins or huckleberry pie for only ten cents. An ice-cream soda—a chocolate ice-cream soda—was only a nickel. And you could buy pumpernickel for a nickel, too. But we ate day-old bread that cost four cents. That was how I saved up the seventy cents to take Annie Berger to the movies. But I have no regrets. I loved her madly. I’d do it again.

  “Look! Pfeffernüss! When I was a child we used to have those for Christmas.”

  Groucho spoke to the German saleslady, givi
ng his order in surprisingly fluent German. Recognizing him, she said, “I didn’t know you understood German, Mr. Marx.”

  “I don’t. But I speak it fluently,” he informed her.

  As we were leaving the bakery, he noticed a young blond woman seated at one of the tables with a very young baby. “Wie alt?” Groucho asked, and the woman responded, “Drei Wochen.” “Oh,” Groucho said, and left eating his pfeffernüss.

  Like pfeffernüss, chocolate was always one of his minor passions. As we passed Mrs. See’s candy store, he confided, “Mrs. See is a wily old girl.” Being a man of will power (which he called “won’t power”) and discipline, he limited himself to only two pieces of chocolate a day. After we had each eaten our two chocolates, he announced, “Well, now I’ve had my two chocolates. There’s nothing to do but wait for tomorrow.”

  The temptation of chocolate went back a long time in Groucho’s life:

  “When I was five years old and I had blond curls down to here, I went to Germany with my mother. My mother had borrowed money from Sarah Wolfenstein, and then got the three boys together and said, ‘You can either get an express wagon or go to Germany.’ So Harpo took the express wagon, and Chico and I went to Germany. On the boat there was a man who took care of the horses—it was sort of a cattle boat—and they had horses belowdecks, too. He was stuck on my mother, but she wasn’t stuck on him. You can imagine how he smelled!

  “On the last night of the voyage, they had a party, but my mother wouldn’t go to the party with this man. So he decided to get revenge. He came up to us with two bars of chocolate, one for Chico and one for me, and he said, ‘Your mother wants to see you at the party. She wants you to go up there naked.’ We would have done anything for a bar of chocolate, so we two kids went up to the party naked. But the man didn’t get what he wanted, because my mother just thought it was funny.”