At lunch at New York’s Sherry Netherland Hotel with Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Groucho, and myself, Erin explained why she no longer cared about being an actress, if it meant being typecast: “I never wanted to see my name in print again. I just couldn’t stand all that pain. I’m not a hooker, and there I was being fitted for black garters again. I was in Paris, and it was the same old thing. I asked Woody [Woody Allen, for the film Love and Death] if I could be the one to have a little red-haired baby at the end of the film. Instead, I got fittings in black garters. If I played that part, with the publicity, well, I just couldn’t take that kind of punishment. I don’t want to play the hooker. I’m tired of being cast in that part.”
While Groucho would have treated a light subject seriously, he would rarely have treated a serious subject any way but lightly. On receiving Erin’s telephone call to say that she was back from Paris, Groucho remarked, “It’s a gala day,” adding, “I can’t handle more than a gal a day.” When Erin arrived at Groucho’s house, he greeted her:
GROUCHO
I’m glad you’re back, if only temporarily.
ERIN
Temporarily glad?
GROUCHO
I’m not completely glad.
ERIN
(Laughs) Why not?
GROUCHO
I love you.
ERIN
So?
GROUCHO
That’s why I’m glad.
ERIN
So why not completely?
GROUCHO
Modesty.
Since Erin was a permanent member of Groucho’s audience while the other constituents of it were constantly changing, she had occasion to hear a favored story more than once. When Groucho told a story she had heard a few times before, she would get up and stalk out, saying, “I’m leaving the room,” or she would say to him, “I’ve heard that one before,” to which he would respond softly, “So have I.”
Groucho and Erin were both compatible and combatable. Some people objected to the forceful way she pushed him verbally and, at moments, even physically. They speculated on her screaming at him, which some considered “cruel” but which Groucho found exhilarating. Buoyed by the tension, he liked being the object of passionate feelings.
Whenever Groucho and Erin would have a quarrel, as she had more to say, he would have less to say. As her voice grew louder, his became softer until sometimes he was just barely moving his lips. Shortly after I met Groucho, I was in his bedroom with them when a grand-scale quarrel broke out. I could find no place to hide. The three of us were just about to go out to dinner at Chasen’s, but the raging battle didn’t promise a festive meal ahead or good digestion.
ERIN
(Screaming at Groucho) I’m not going to dinner with you!
GROUCHO
(Softly) Good. (Turning to me and taking my arm) We’re going to dinner.
ERIN
She’s having dinner with me.
GROUCHO
(To me in a tone that indicated it wasn’t a question) Are you ready.
ERIN
She’s not going with you either.
Groucho turned and walked slowly toward the front door. As he disappeared from sight, Erin pushed me out the bedroom door, saying, “Hurry, go with him!”
At Chasen’s, Groucho was quiet and petulant during dinner. He spent a lot of time studying his plate intently. At intervals he would look up at me and announce, “I don’t need her.”
We were interrupted by the approach of the maître d’:
MAÎTRE D’
Mr. Marx, there’s a call for you from Miss Fleming.
GROUCHO
(Studying his plate intently) I’m not here.
I
(To Groucho) Would you like me to tell her?
GROUCHO
Yeah.
I went to the phone and spoke with Erin, who told me that she would call back in half an hour. The next call came in the middle of the banana cream pie. Usually a highlight of Groucho’s dinner, he was eating it as if it were a cardboard model.
MAÎTRE D’
Mr. Marx, it’s Miss Fleming calling.
GROUCHO
I’m not here.
I
Should I tell her that?
GROUCHO
Yeah.
I took the call, informing Erin that Groucho still wasn’t ready to come to the phone. “I’ll be waiting at the house for you,” she told me.
When I got back to the table, Groucho was still toying with the same forkful of banana cream pie. He wouldn’t have asked me what Erin had said if we’d sat there for a million years, so I volunteered the information.
“I don’t need her,” Groucho replied.
Arriving at his house, Groucho proceeded directly back to his bedroom, where all of the lights were on and the door was slightly ajar. I stopped in the living room.
After several minutes, Erin called out for me to come to the bedroom, where Groucho was now smiling and she was plotting the next day’s schedule, exuberantly persuading him to do exactly what he wanted to do anyway.
Although others might have been horrified, the Sturm und Drang that Erin provided was the slice of strife Groucho relished. His happy life as a performer was filled with exciting stress. If there was a need for stability, there was also a need for instability, because one way to die is of boredom. With Erin around, he was never bored. If he was perpetual motion, she was perpetual emotion.
Groucho was speaking very intensely to Erin about what they had together and what they didn’t have. Erin, discomforted by so much seriousness and having no easy answer, tossed her hair, and said coyly in a playful tone to Groucho, “Oh, Grouch, you say that, but a more beautiful girl will come along, and you’ll forget all about me.” A straight line like that one immediately brought Groucho to his nonsenses: “No, I won’t. I’ll write twice a week.”
If Groucho’s and Erin’s relationship were to be summed up in one word, that word would have been “Steckrueben,” which Groucho explained means “turnips” in German. It was their private communication. Whenever Erin felt that he was not reacting to someone in an appropriate manner, she simply said “Steckrueben” and he managed an extremely pasted-on smile. “It means, ‘Be in a good mood because you’re being an old, crabby grouch,’” Erin explained. “I am not,” Groucho grumbled.
Erin took Marvin Hamlisch and Mike Nichols into their confidence, explaining the need for “a code” between her and Groucho:
“We have signals for various occasions because we’ve been through some disasters. We have things that nobody can possibly catch on to. Steckrueben!”
At the sound of Steckrueben, Groucho immediately assumed a forced-looking sugar-coated grin, much to the amusement of Mike and Marvin. “Pretty subtle,” remarked Mike Nichols. “We’d never have guessed,” seconded Marvin Hamlisch.
Erin continued the demonstration:
“Would you like to see some more? Okay, Groucho.”
Erin coughed.
“What does that mean, Erin?” asked Mike.
“It isn’t the cough that carries you off, it’s the coffin they carry you off in,” answered Groucho.
“Oh, Groucho,” scolded Erin, “you know that’s not it!”
“I don’t remember,” he said quite honestly.
“That’s right!” she said. “That means you say you don’t remember.” Then she cleared her throat quite obviously.
“That means I’m not supposed to talk too much. I’m supposed to be Harpo,” Groucho said, “and keep my mouth shut.”
“We decided we had to do this,” Erin explained, “because sometimes he’ll get to talking, and I’ll catch on that they’re nasty and they’re gonna zing us!”
Erin might have said Steckrueben in any situation from a charity dinner to a legal session with lawyers and depositions, or just on a walk along the street when they passed someone she thought Groucho ought to have remembered. Perhaps Steckrueben reminded him of “Greenbaum�
�—Minnie’s whispered warning from the wings to her boys when they started clowning around too much onstage. Greenbaum was the name of the banker who held the mortgage on their house in Chicago. Minnie was admonishing, “Don’t fool around so much that you get fired and we can’t pay off the mortgage.”
Just after his eighty-fifth birthday, Groucho, Erin, and I were at lunch at Groucho’s with writer Jon Nordheimer from the New York Times, who had come to do a feature on Groucho. Groucho was expounding on a frequent and favorite subject, the importance of Erin in his life. He was extolling her virtues when she interjected:
“Grouch, don’t you remember when you were angry at me? You said you were New York, and I was Newark.”
Groucho, with a look of utter sobriety (and nobody could look more sober than he could), answered, “I’m Los Angeles, and you’re Paris.”
“The Lord Alps those that Alps themselves”
“Beyond the Alps lies more Alps, and the Lord Alps those that Alps themselves.”
GROUCHO, as Napoleon in I’ll Say She Is
Groucho’s ethnocentricity manifested itself in certain residual attachments to food and a few of the customs, but even where his religion was concerned, his eccentricity exceeded his ethnocentricity. He had the traditional Jewish, as well as German, extreme respect for education and for writing. He was an avid, inveterate, incessant reader in the tradition of the yeshivah bucher, the pure Hebrew scholar. Reading several hours a day, especially nonfiction, he could always find satisfaction and escape in the pages of books. In the afternoons we would sit together in his bedroom and read. Books were the gifts most often given to him by his friends whose only problem was, as Goddard Lieberson pointed out, “to find something he hasn’t already read.” Groucho took greater pride in his works as a writer than he did in his talent as a performer.
If there was any regret he had in life, it was in not having had more formal education and in not having gone to college. He joked, “That’s why I don’t care about football, because I didn’t go to college.” But, as usual, he was speaking lightly of what he took most seriously. He valued tremendously the friendship of writers, and he was proud of having had as friends George S. Kaufman, Ring Lardner, T. S. Eliot, James Thurber, S. J. Perelman, Morrie Ryskind, Goodman Ace, Adolph Green, Betty Comden, Nunnally Johnson, George Seaton, Sidney Sheldon, Goddard Lieberson, and Woody Allen.
Groucho’s German and Jewish heritage also manifested itself in his desire for precision, punctuality, and perfection. Always giving the best he had, he was intolerant of those who gave less than one hundred per cent. The work ethic was an integral part of him, and he was still in motion, if indeed slower motion, still maintaining a partial work schedule into his middle eighties.
He had a strong belief in family life. The Marxes no longer here—Grandfather Opie, Frenchie, Chico, Harpo, Aunt Hannah, and especially Minnie—all lived on with Groucho, for whom blood was thicker than celery tonic. As one who greatly respected marriage, Groucho three times pursued his childhood ideal of marriage. His children, as well as his grandchildren, were important to him.
Groucho faced life with a kind of stoicism that well may have stemmed from the influence of the endurance of the immigrant. His grandparents and parents came to a new world, not of pâté de foie gras but of liverwurst; not of roast goose but of chicken soup; not of caviar but of wilted cabbage and ham hocks. The opportunity was here, but the streets were not exactly paved with gold, nor were they always even paved. It is quite probable that the daily immigrant struggle of his parents helped to teach him how to exist from day to day, living life in the present, twenty-four hours at a time.
Occasionally Groucho reminisced about his own bar mitzvah. On our way to dinner, he talked about it with Arthur Whitelaw and me:
“I remember my bar mitzvah speech. It was a great speech. My father bought it for five dollars, and all five boys used it. Each of us boys used the same speech. A dollar a man.”
Groucho still remembered how it began:
“‘My dear parents: For thirteen long years you have toiled and labored for my happiness. From the moment I saw the light of day you have watched over me…’ Or ‘washed over me’—I forget which.”
Arthur Whitelaw asked where we were going to have dinner.
“You’re treif, and you’re treif. But I’m kosher, so we’re going to a kosher restaurant,” Groucho informed us.
He took us to Chasen’s, which he advised us “is as kosher as pork chops.”
Ethel Wise, whose family lived above the Marxes in New York’s Yorkville section, remembered Groucho’s grandfather’s ties to Jewish tradition:
“I can still see Grandfather Marx sitting in the front room on Ninety-third Street reading the Torah. He sat on the stoop and told all of us children stories from the Haggadah in German. He also did magic tricks, which we liked even more.”
Minnie, however, was more occupied with building her brother’s and her boys’ careers, and Sam was more interested in gastronomy than in Deuteronomy. Groucho was proud of Frenchie’s Gallic apron-string ties to France. “He didn’t know about blintzes; he made crêpes.”
Groucho sometimes referred to “my Italian brother, Chico.” He said, “People always asked me, ‘Is Chico really Italian?’” The two of them had visited Germany as children to see Minnie’s birthplace, choosing the trip instead of proffered express wagons. Groucho’s world was never purely chicken soup but always a melting pot.
The Marx family was always ready to celebrate a holiday—anyone’s holiday: Christmas, Chanukah, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick’s Day—as long as there were good things to eat. Groucho’s cook, Robin, whom he called “the first cook of spring,” once asked Groucho about Christmas:
ROBIN
Are you looking forward to a Merry Christmas, Groucho?
GROUCHO
Is that a girl?
ROBIN
Seriously, are you sick of it at this point in life? You can remember more than eighty Christmases. After all these years isn’t it just too commercial and the same old thing?
GROUCHO
No.
ROBIN
Did your family celebrate Christmas when you were a little boy?
GROUCHO
They celebrated it, but we didn’t get anything. I got a pair of black stockings and half an orange.
I
Did you believe in Santa Claus?
GROUCHO
Yeah, my father.
ROBIN
What else did you do at Christmas when you were a child?
GROUCHO
Well, we used to build forts out of snow in New York.
ROBIN
Did you sing Christmas carols?
GROUCHO
I didn’t know any.
ROBIN
Did you have a Christmas tree as a child?
GROUCHO
No, I had a branch.
Groucho was innately but not blatantly Jewish. He felt that he was not “a professional Jew.” On a walk in New York along Park Avenue with actor Bud Cort and me, Groucho used that phrase to describe someone he knew.
“What’s a professional Jew?” Bud Cort asked.
“Someone who sees everything from a Jewish point of view,” Groucho explained.
Groucho did not follow religious orthodoxy, but then he was not an orthodox person. Religious and personal unorthodoxy characterized Groucho, who was always questioning. His old friend Julius Epstein, who co-wrote the screenplay for Casablanca, said that if it had not already been used and if he were writing a book about Groucho, he would call it Nothing Sacred.
Groucho, however, had an abiding respect for ethical tradition in all religions. This did not mean that his religion, as well as any other, might not at one moment or another be at the receiving end of one of his barbed comments:
“There used to be an old joke at an Irish wake. The body is laying there, and some woman says to the widow, ‘The body is still warm!’ And the widow says, ‘Hot or cold, it goes
out in the morning.’”
On Chanukah, Groucho would greet friends, Jewish or Gentile, with “Happy Harmonica.”
Generally, Groucho didn’t like ethnic humor. At lunch with Goodman Ace, he stopped “Goody” during a foreign accent joke. “The Marx Brothers didn’t depend on ethnic humor,” Groucho said. “Either a joke is funny or it isn’t. Making the person Polish or Italian or Jewish doesn’t make it funny if it isn’t.” Privately, however, Groucho sometimes did share a small ethnic joke with a friend. “Would you like some Jewish ice cream?” he asked me as we walked along Rodeo in Beverly Hills. “An ice cream Cohn?” He added, “It’s not much of a joke.” Inside the ice-cream parlor, I was a bit short-scooped. When he saw my meager portion, he said, “It’s not much of a cone, either.”
In his eighties Groucho started going to temple on Friday nights—Temple Emanuel on Burton Way in Beverly Hills. This is a Reform temple, modern in an affluent community. The rabbi was articulate and interested not only in theology but in community affairs. Groucho was invited to be the guest of honor. Erin talked with him about the invitation:
ERIN
The rabbi wants you on the pulpit, Groucho.
GROUCHO
On the what?
ERIN
On the stage. How about it, Groucho?
GROUCHO
When is it?
ERIN
Next Friday night.
GROUCHO
I’ll let you know.
ERIN
When?
GROUCHO
Next month.
Hello, I Must be Going Page 16
