Hello, I Must be Going

by Charlotte Chandler

  GROUCHO

  Yeah.

  I

  Do you think women are very different now than they were when you were a young man?

  GROUCHO

  They’re allowed to talk dirty now, same as men do. And smoke cigarettes. When I was young, no women wore pants. They all wore dresses. Now, in America, they all wear pants. I was young so long ago that when my wife, Ruth, went to the beach, she had to leave her silk stockings on. It was more shocking then to take off your stockings than it is now to take off everything. Now they’ve got Women’s Lib, and I’m all for it. I think if there’s a war, for example, and a man has enlisted, I think his wife should take a job, not necessarily in the front lines shooting at the enemy, but there are so many things that a woman can do in an army. Since the man is risking his life, why shouldn’t the woman do something? I don’t know if that’s a good explanation. I think they should have all the salary advantages and everything. I think there’ll be a woman president. I expect to see it someday in America. No reason why it shouldn’t be.

  I

  You like the idea.

  GROUCHO

  I think it’s a great idea.

  I

  Do you think women should have to pay alimony?

  GROUCHO

  Depends on the amount of money. If the woman’s rich, and she marries a man and it breaks up, I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t give her husband some so he could get married again if he wants to. There are a lot of men that would like to get married and can’t because they don’t have any money after paying alimony to a woman.

  I

  Besides enlisting in the Army and paying alimony, what else do you think women ought to be free to do?

  GROUCHO

  Everything. They do it anyhow.

  I

  What do you like most in a woman?

  GROUCHO

  A woman who likes me.

  I

  But what are the characteristics or qualities or features that have always most attracted you in a woman?

  GROUCHO

  You can’t put everything into words.

  I

  Isn’t there something you can single out?

  GROUCHO

  Femininity.

  He added, “You can’t answer questions like what makes one woman attractive and another not. It’s like trying to say what’s a winning personality and what isn’t.”

  Groucho, having skipped merrily over several generation gaps, was confident enough of his own modernity to unabashedly espouse an occasional old-fashioned value. He told me, “When I heard you were coming to see me for Playboy, I thought they’d send a jerk, but you’re shy and diffident and everything a woman should be.”

  When it came to women, the living legend was very much a living man. Groucho’s lifelong philosophy toward women was perhaps best summed up in the last two words of one of his favorite stories:

  “I once knew a girl who wore an anklet that said ‘Heaven’s above.’”

  “If I didn’t have Erin, I’d have old furniture”

  For Groucho-watchers, Erin Fleming needs no introduction. A young Canadian with New York acting credits, she came into Groucho’s life to answer his fan mail and, as Groucho said, “to answer my prayers.” Although she continued her acting career with appearances in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, a Los Angeles stage play, and some television dramatic shows, her most recent acting was in real life, playing Margaret Dumont, Thelma Todd, or even Erin Fleming in everyday scenes with Groucho.

  Energetic and high-spirited, she made powerful men quake in their Gucci shoes. Groucho paid tribute to her importance in his life in his acceptance speech at the Oscar ceremonies, along with his mother and Margaret Dumont, as one of the most important women in his life. Erin commemorated the occasion by wearing around her neck a tiny gold Oscar made for her by a Beverly Hills jeweler.

  Following the 1974 Academy Awards, Erin received an avalanche of mail from secretaries who identified with her and were gratified by Groucho’s heartfelt tribute. “Letters came from all over the country,” she reported, “saying they’ve never felt that their bosses have appreciated them, and that at last a boss appreciated a secretary.”

  When she was very young, Erin was married to a successful New York lawyer. This marriage ended amicably in divorce, which was at least partially brought about by Erin’s avid pursuit of a career on the stage. Her friend and agent Harvey Orkin suggested that she visit California to further her career. There he introduced her to producer Jerry Davis.

  While she was sitting in his office, the whole course of her life was changed by a telephone call from Groucho that came through coincidentally at that moment. Jerry Davis, who didn’t have a part for her, was glad to place the insistent Miss Fleming in something, even if only lunch. Erin relived that moment with Groucho and me while we were having lunch at Hillcrest Country Club:

  ERIN

  I was in Jerry Davis’s office at Paramount looking at the pilot script for The Odd Couple when Groucho called him. Jerry said, “I’m sitting here with a pretty girl named Erin Fleming.” “Erin Fleming!” Groucho said. “Is her name really Fleming?” Jerry asked me, “Is your name really Fleming?” I said yes, and Groucho said, “Send her over. Harpo had three girls named Fleming. I’d like to meet her.” He had had a secretary for years, the one who saved up the Groucho letters. But she had caught a husband and moved to Portugal, so Groucho needed a secretary. He was complaining about this to Jerry on the phone. After Groucho hung up, Jerry said to me, “That would be a good job for you, Erin. You’d only have to work a couple of hours a day answering the mail and writing Groucho’s letters. You’d have the rest of the time to look for acting work.” But I said, “I don’t want to be a secretary!” Anyway, at this time I had just moved to the Chateau Marmont to a writer’s apartment who was out of town for a month, and I didn’t know whether I was going to stay or what I was doing. When I got home, there was a message that Groucho called. So with trembling fingers I dialed Groucho, and he answered, “This is Groucho Marx, I would like you to come to dinner.” He said his cook was off, and we could go out and have a bite to eat. We went to Dupar’s and had buttermilk hotcakes. That’s true, and Groucho flipped me…

  GROUCHO

  A five-dollar bill.

  ERIN

  No, you flipped me to see who paid, and I had to pay. It was about $3.25.

  GROUCHO

  We matched for the check?

  ERIN

  We matched for the check. I know when it was. It was around the first of August. Groucho asked me how old I was. I said he’d never get that kind of information out of me, but that my birthday was August the thirteenth, which was a couple of weeks away. So he called me several times. But at that time I was running around meeting all these producers and everything. Groucho called me and said, “Your birthday is next week. Would you like to come to my house to dinner?” So I went to Groucho’s place for dinner on my birthday, and he had the Granets there and Arthur Jacobs, the producer of Planet of the Apes. Groucho had gone to Saks and bought me a bottle of perfume, which I still have. When he was at Saks, he ran into Anne Jackson and invited her to dinner the next night. He told me that she was coming to dinner the next night and could I come to dinner the night after my birthday. By then he had me around his little finger. He had a birthday cake, my favorite kind—a special carrot cake Martha made. And Arthur gave me a part in one of the Apes pictures.

  GROUCHO

  She was the leading ape.

  ERIN

  I wanted to be an ape, but I couldn’t wear the contact lenses. My eyes hurt too much. So they just gave me a little part as one of the humans in it. I worked a couple of days, and made a lot of money. Then I became Groucho’s secretary. You should have seen the mail he had. Boxes full! And he said, “I have a little mail to be answered.”

  GROUCHO

  The little male was me.

  ERIN

 
; Yeah, that’s true. You were the little male that needed answering.

  Asked what was his first impression of Erin, Groucho answered, “I thought she was just a fleeting girl from New York.” This attitude changed very quickly, to: “If she ever quit me, I’d quit show business.”

  Erin brought future into his life, both professionally and privately. With her, Groucho looked forward. Before she appeared, offers had been coming in all the time because he was still in big demand, but no one had paid any attention. Erin provided someone to do things with and someone to do things for. His late show-business years were linked to Erin, who was his personal manager without the official title for his triumphant trip to Ames, Iowa, and for his return to New York and the SRO Carnegie Hall performance. She also played an important role in planning the television appearances, the opening of Animal Crackers in New York, at which Groucho’s attendance precipitated a riot (a good-natured riot), and the concerts in Los Angeles and San Francisco. With Erin, he felt he had turned over a new leaf.

  Groucho had great respect for Erin’s ability as a business manager, and talking about her business acumen, he frequently said, “She’s much smarter than I am.” He didn’t like to concern himself much with the business of show business. He also took pride in Erin’s talent as an actress who had done Shaw and Shakespeare. He felt, however, that she didn’t have to take her clothes off, as she did in a Los Angeles stage production.

  “You don’t need to do that,” he told her. “I’ve never taken off my clothes in a movie, and I don’t see why you should, either. I don’t belong in this world of nudity. What’s sexy is what you don’t see. Women are sexy if they have clothes on and you take them off. Then, you’ve triumphed. Once Boasberg wanted me to take off my pants. I wouldn’t do it. I said I didn’t need to take my pants off—on the stage, that is.”

  Erin regarded his attitude as outdated. Still, he did manage to see everything she did. He never tried to stop her from acting, even if he didn’t deem the vehicle worthy of her talents. It was imperative to their relationship and rapport that Erin was not a “civilian,” but a working member of the theatrical profession.

  Groucho trusted Erin’s judgment in most matters artistic, in all business matters, and he relished her accolades. Her influence was especially evident in his increased sartorial splendor. Her taste, and that of Bernie Schwartz and Peter Jarem, oracles of chic at the Eric Ross men’s clothing store, was reflected in Groucho’s English woolens, blazers, Marx Brothers print shirts, and colorful turtlenecks. “They have a vested interest in me,” Groucho said.

  But Groucho did have veto power, as he did in everything. While he joked about the ordeal and wiggled through fittings as if he were trying to extricate himself from the most excruciating discomfiture, there was deep down a bit of the male peacock whose prideful strut on catching a glimpse of himself in a full-length mirror indicated that the veto would not be exercised.

  Groucho told Erin and me that too great an interest in shopping is feminine. “If you watch people walking down the street, the ones whose heads turn to look in all the store windows are women. Of course,” he added, raising his eyebrows, “there are other ways to tell, too.” He frowned on nouveau riche excesses, and ostentatious baubles were his verbal targets, although he was pleased by banker Al Hart’s gift of a vicuña coat. Sometimes if something was too gaudy, he would tell Erin, “This is for people outside of show business who want to look like they’re in show business.”

  Erin encouraged him to wear his beret, feeling that it kept him more readily identifiable as the Groucho character. As he put it, “She always berates me when I don’t wear my beret.” Sometimes he would add, “She redresses me.”

  Groucho liked order and didn’t care for change where his house was concerned. When he said to Erin, “I’m the master of my house, girlie,” his tone was light, but his meaning was serious.

  His feeling for Erin was demonstrated when, at her instigation, he permitted interior decorator Peter Shore to, as Groucho put it, “tar and feather my nest.” Erin said, “Grouch, your nest needs refurbishing.” He countered, “Then I’ll get new furbs.” He added, muttering, “I think it’s all a chip in the dale.” Secretly, he liked the finished result, “especially that it’s finished,” and Peter Shore became a regular visitor at meals and to hang pictures. Groucho called me to announce the completion of the decorating: “Everything’s new but me.”

  He summed it up in something less than gushing sentiment:

  “If I didn’t have Erin, I’d have old furniture.”

  Erin said, “If anyone writes a book about me, there is one thing they should say: the thing I can be remembered by is that whenever I arrive in a hotel room, the first thing I do is move the furniture around. I rearrange the furniture. I always do. You can quote me.”

  She meticulously arranged the furniture at Groucho’s house or in his hotel rooms to be certain that his choice place was protected in any grouping for conversational chairs. But more important than arranging furniture, Erin was always going around looking for that unnoticed lamp or TV cord that might cause Groucho to trip.

  Erin had her own separate residence, first an apartment, and later her own house. The house, which used to belong to Dorothy Parker, is located unfashionably just out of Beverly Hills.

  Gossip usually had Erin living with Groucho. This was true only after her return from a hospital stay, during which time she recuperated at his house for a few weeks. Gossip also had Groucho buying her house for her, a story which displeased her because she felt it intruded on her privacy and distorted the facts. She felt it was part of a house, and the house was less than the mansion gossip built. Rumor reconstructed the modest residence into something more nearly resembling the palatial Harold Lloyd manor. Originally, Groucho wanted to pay cash for the whole house and give it to her, because owning one’s own home free and clear was a kind of security he respected. He often repeated proudly, “I have the key to my front door.” Erin refused this offer and spent a great deal of time deliberating about how many rooms of the house she should permit Groucho to give her before he prevailed.

  On Valentine’s Day, Groucho surprised her by sending her a gift of an oriental rug. Happily surprised, she asked him, “How did my rug get laid on Valentine’s Day? I came home, and there it was. Did you lay my rug, Groucho?”

  Groucho answered, “I’m not in the habit of laying rugs.”

  Erin’s domesticity did not extend to the kitchen. Like Minnie, she would rather eat than cook. She did so with a ravenous abandon that astounded all who witnessed her devouring an entire sauceboat of Chasen’s hot chocolate, butterscotch sundaes galore, or a good part of one of Dorris Johnson’s chocolate cakes, while retaining a slim figure. All that brought her into the kitchen was some menu-planning or the fixing of tea that she drank with true British enthusiasm. Before the death of her beloved white Persian cat, however, Erin did cook Gabrielle’s meal.

  Having had her choice of a litter of pedigreed kittens, Erin chose Gaby, who was born crippled, because she felt that if she didn’t take her no one else would.

  Not liking to leave Gaby alone, Erin would sometimes drop her off with Groucho so he could “sit her.” There was always someone cooking or working in Groucho’s house. Gaby, however, objected to the strange surroundings and the presence of Groucho’s own big black tomcat, Blackie.

  One afternoon Groucho and I returned to find Gaby apparently having a fit. “That cat’s gone mad,” David Hixon told us as he let us in. “She’s hysterical!” The cat was trying to climb the wall, flinging herself against furniture and making grotesque faces.

  I phoned Erin, who said she was on her way. In the meantime, she said, “Tell David he should catch her so she doesn’t hurt herself.”

  During the next ten minutes, there was intermittent bloodshed as a scratched and bleeding David tried to take hold of what had turned into a ferocious beast. “She’s imitating Erin,” someone suggested. Groucho said we should call t
he police. Just then, Erin arrived.

  “Where’s my poor baby?” she said. “What have you done to her?”

  Rushing straight to Gaby, she scooped her up. Erin cradled the cat, who was purring loudly and had gone completely limp in her arms.

  Erin likes things, but she doesn’t take out much time for them. Occasionally, she enjoys shopping, remembering her mother’s frustration at having to order from catalogues in the small town in Canada where they lived. She is an aficionado of garage sales and auctions. She likes clothes, but doesn’t buy very many, wearing mostly pants and sweaters, with a small repertory of long dresses and a boa for the many formal affairs she and Groucho attended. Always busy and in motion, with the grace and agility of a professional dancer, extroverted, and energetic, Erin doesn’t allot much time for vanity. Her hair, dark with a reddish cast, is worn loose, shoulder length or shorter. She is fair with high cheekbones, and a turned-up nose.

  She could usually be found not far from Groucho’s telephone, which was where the action was, or where she made it happen. She was as totally enchanted by Alexander Graham Bell’s invention as Groucho was totally disenchanted by it, but Groucho didn’t try to change her (knowing it was impossible) and she didn’t try to change him (knowing it was impossible).

  I asked Groucho how he saw Erin, and he answered, “Every day.”

  When her name was mentioned, he would sometimes say, “She’s a cute girl, and I’m crazy about her” or “She’s cute—for a girl.”

  Groucho said that she was an example of a “liberated” woman. Asked to explain what he meant by a liberated woman, he said, “She does as she damn well pleases.”

  He added, “I don’t care what she does, as long as she doesn’t tell me about it.”

  While Groucho sometimes encouraged her to go out with other men, there were few indeed who could measure up to his standard for her. Groucho referred to one potential suitor, “He’s a wolf in cheap clothing.” On another occasion, Erin mentioned someone with whom she had a dinner date: