I went with Groucho and Erin to the temple, where we were joined by Eve Lazarus, Erin’s “adopted Jewish mother.” As guest of honor, Groucho was seated on the dais. It was children’s night at the temple, and Groucho was called upon by Rabbi Meyer Heller to say something to the assemblage.
“Can I tell a story? A married woman with two children killed her husband with a bow and arrow. They asked her, ‘Why a bow and arrow?’ She said, ‘I didn’t want to wake the children.’”
The children (of all ages) were quite amused. As we got into the car while Groucho was signing some autographs after the service, Erin commented to me, “Children really love him, because he has the same kind of innocence they have and is as open to life as they are.”
Afterward she asked Groucho, “Weren’t the children cute?”
“All children are cute,” he answered. “It’s only after they grow up that the trouble starts.”
Groucho had apparent immunity from having to worry about what other people thought. The Marx Brothers were never bound by anyone else’s rules, Groucho even less than his brothers. The inhibition barrier that stopped others was nonexistent for Groucho Marx. He did what others wanted to do, wading in where ordinary mortals feared to tread, and he was usually rewarded where anyone else would be punished.
He brought Marxamania even to temple. At the beginning of the service the rabbi said, “Please be seated,” and Groucho got up. Later he asked the congregation to rise, and Groucho sat down. The rabbi then asked the question traditionally asked on the first night of the seder:
“Mah nishtanaw ha-lahy-lah ha-zeh mi-cawl ha-lay-los…” (“Why is this night different from all the others?”)
Groucho answered, “Because I’m here.”
Afterward the rabbi announced, “And now I’m going to deliver the blessing.”
“Whoopee!” Groucho exclaimed.
On another night as he was leaving another temple, he said to that rabbi, who was surrounded by people and who happened to be bearded, “Rabbi, your whiskers are on fire.”
Even for a rabbi in a temple in Beverly Hills, following a Marx Brother wasn’t easy. Groucho didn’t hesitate to take aim at the establishment, even when it was his own religion. But when he was involved, everyone turned out the better for wear. The next Friday night, word had spread that Groucho Marx might be on the bill, and the house was filled. Even when the performance was unscheduled, and even in temple, Groucho was a “hot ticket” personality.
One night Erin brought the car to a stop in front of the temple, and Groucho tried to open the door. The night before when he had found it difficult to open the door on his side, Erin had shot around to open it for him. “You don’t ever open the door for me, girlie!” he had said then, about as sharply as I’d ever heard him speak to her. He grumbled and muttered the rest of the evening. When he again experienced difficulty in pushing open the car door, Erin just sat back in the driver’s seat while Groucho looked out of the corner of his eye at her.
“Don’t you look at me, Grouch. We’ll just sit here all evening.” For some very long minutes it appeared that we were going to do exactly that. Meanwhile a crowd of the temple-goers had gathered by the car, eagerly awaiting the temple’s most celebrated member.
Making a great effort, Groucho heaved with all the strength he had, the door swung open, and he pitched forward. He would have fallen on his face except for Eve Lazarus, who had been waiting for him, her arms outstretched. As he fell on top of her, she cushioned his fall.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” he said from a prone position on top of the supine Mrs. Lazarus.
Neither of them was injured, and he recovered his aplomb and, with our help, his balance.
Once when Groucho went to temple on Friday night, the rabbi’s subject for discussion was “mixed marriages.” The rabbi posed two questions: 1) Should a Jew and gentile marry? 2) What are the consequences of such a mixed marriage? An audience discussion followed which was very serious and rather heated.
Groucho let everyone have his say, and then he spoke:
“I think it’s all right for a Jew to marry a gentile girl, as long as she’s rich.”
Everyone laughed, including the rabbi. Although Groucho had been married to three gentile women, he certainly wasn’t speaking from personal experience. He never had a Jewish wife or a Jewish child. When his son was rejected by an exclusive pool club, Groucho wrote back asking if young Arthur could go into the water up to his waist, “since he’s only half Jewish.”
Hoping to steep daughter Melinda in tradition, Groucho sent her to Israel, but she departed precipitously, disappointing her concerned father.
At a Christmas holiday dinner at Groucho’s, he and Goddard Lieberson talked about the phenomenon of the Yiddish theatre in its historical perspective, mentioning names like Tonieschevsky and The Dybbuk. Goddard discussed “its display of virtuosity comparable to that of Italian opera.” But the Yiddish theatre was a subject Groucho admitted he never knew much about. “It was important in its time,” he commented. “Paul Muni was great. Fred Allen used to go. George Jessel used to go. I didn’t talk Yiddish. But I looked Jewish, and oddly enough I still do.” Groucho learned German in his home, but he never knew Yiddish.
World War II was a rude shock to Groucho, who was an American first, but who also felt very strongly his German-Jewish heritage. He told Arthur Whitelaw and me how, after the war, he made a special trip to Germany. “I wanted to dance on Hitler’s grave.”
An event which upset him as much as anything during the time I knew him was the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Groucho felt sports intensely, as he did Jewish things, and as he did wrongdoing. The horror of the crime was something he felt as deeply as if a member of his own family had been a victim. “When they shot those Jewish boys over there,” he told me, “I took eight sleeping pills that night, and the next day I was in the hospital. That was one of the most shocking things in my whole life.”
Two people in the world for whom Groucho felt great admiration were Golda Meir and Henry Kissinger. They are Jewish. Nevertheless, Groucho felt that if their names were O’Meir and Von Kissinger, it wouldn’t have made any difference.
Usually Groucho answered the question “Who would you like to have been?” with “Groucho Marx.” But one night on the way to temple, Erin asked him this question, and he answered, “Disraeli.”
Groucho’s friend director George Seaton, of Swedish descent, baptized a Roman Catholic, grew up in a Detroit Jewish neighborhood, and described himself as a “Shabbas goy.” On Saturday the Orthodox Jewish boys all wanted to go to the movies, but they couldn’t buy the tickets on Saturday afternoon. George Seaton was elected to carry all of the money and stand at the box office and buy all of the tickets. One day when it was raining and he was waiting outside on the temple steps for his friends, the rabbi came out and invited him in. So he went on to learn Hebrew and was even bar mitzvahed. He still has the fountain pen he received as a gift.
When he settled in Hollywood, George Seaton decided to join a country club, but not a restricted country club that excluded Jews, so he turned to Hillcrest. At a Hillcrest luncheon, he talked with Groucho and me about the difficulties he had encountered:
GEORGE SEATON
Did I ever tell you the story about how I got into Hillcrest? I’m not Jewish, you know.
GROUCHO
Just what we need. More gentiles.
GEORGE SEATON
When I decided to play golf, I was invited to Bel Air, and I said, “Are you restricted?” And they said, “Oh yes.” And I said, “Thank you very much. I don’t believe in that kind of nonsense.” And I left. I went to Lakeside—the same thing. So, finally I said to my partner, Bill Perlberg, “Is there any chance that I can get into Hillcrest?” And he said, “Sure, come on.” So I put in my application and I was turned down because they didn’t take gentiles.
GROUCHO
We had a big meeting right after that.
So they said that they couldn’t take me, and I asked why. I appeared before the committee, and they said, “Look, we’ll give you all the privileges, which will be the same thing that Skouras had. You can sign bills and you can play, but you cannot be a member.” So I said, “I don’t want to be tolerated. I’m either in or I’m out.” I had to go before the admissions committee and they said, “You must understand our point of view. If you let one in, then you let two in, and pretty soon they’ll take over the club.” I fell through the floor, it was so funny. Well, Dore Senary heard about this, and he went before the committee and said, “I resign unless Seaton gets in.” So they said, “All right, resign.” He cashed in his membership for $4,000, which is what it was at the time. Then Groucho and my partner, Bill Perlberg, and Harpo and Chico had a big meeting, and they had about eighty signatures…
GROUCHO
Jack Benny.
GEORGE SEATON
Jack Benny, Al Jolson, and they said if I didn’t get in, they were all going to resign. Well, the club couldn’t withstand that, so I was the first gentile member of the club. Dore Schary had won his battle. I was in. Now he comes back and says, “All right, he’s in. I’ll come back.” And they said, “We’re sorry, but there’s a waiting list.” Well, when his turn came around…
GROUCHO
Good joke on him.
GEORGE SEATON
…it was $8,500 to get in. He said it was the most expensive principle that he ever adhered to. Now we have Jack Lemmon as a member, and quite a few others.
When Groucho received his Oscar, he said he wished that Harpo and Chico could have been there to share it with him. Afterward he and Sidney Sheldon were talking about the Academy Awards, and Groucho added that it was too bad that they hadn’t given the Oscar sooner when Harpo and Chico were alive.
“Maybe they know,” Sidney Sheldon said.
“I don’t believe that,” Groucho said. “When you’re dead, you’re dead.”
He told us that he and his brothers had once agreed to try to make contact from the afterlife when one of them died. “But I haven’t heard a goddamn word.”
But behind the flippant façade he was a serious person.
“Do you know what I say when I go to bed every night? ‘Unborn yesterday and dead tomorrow. Why fret about them if life be sweet?’ Right now is the only moment there is.”
“And you’re really able to live that way?” I asked.
“It’s the only way to live,” Groucho responded soberly.
In the Jewish religion, the seder is the religious service celebrated on the first night of Passover, which includes a festive meal. There is a specific order of services that accompany the meal. Arthur Whitelaw told about going to a seder at Groucho’s house:
“I hadn’t been to a seder for years. If Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were still alive, it might have been called A Night at the Seder. Over there was a dais. Besides me, Elliott Gould, George Segal, actor Warren Berlinger, Groucho’s lawyer Ed Pearlstein, and a Mr. Schubert were there. I asked, ‘J.J. or Lee?’ and Erin said that Groucho had asked the same thing. Andy Marx and Ahmet Ertegun were there too. Ahmet Ertegun was the token gentile for the evening. Mr. Schubert was officiating, and after each prayer, Groucho said, ‘Is this when we drink the wine? When do we drink the wine?’ Then there’s another prayer, and Groucho says again, ‘When do we drink the wine?’
“Then, Mr. Schubert asked, ‘Can anyone play the piano? We need someone to play the hymns.’ And Groucho said, ‘Arthur and Andy, get to the piano!’ I looked at the music, and I said to Andy, ‘I can’t read this. Let’s play Joplin.’ Well, Groucho’s having the best time, and this poor man is still trying to officiate. He reads a prayer. Meanwhile, we’re playing Scott Joplin, and Groucho’s saying, ‘When do we drink the wine?’
“Mr. Schubert says, ‘Now we drink the wine.’
“And Groucho says, ‘Do we have to drink the wine?’
“Mr. Schubert says, ‘We have one more prayer.’ And Groucho says, ‘No, we don’t. I’m gonna sing.’ And with that, he goes to the piano.
“It was the most irreverent religious service I have ever been to in my life.
“Ed Pearlstein looked at me and he said, ‘I don’t believe what’s going on here.’ I said, ‘This is supposed to be a pretty religious kind of day. It’s the parting of the Red Sea, a very meaningful holiday in the Jewish religion,’ and Groucho was carrying on like it’s A Night at the Opera, and he was going to say, ‘I wouldn’t pay this bill if I were you.’”
Groucho himself didn’t exactly define what it is to be Jewish. He said, “I haven’t ever seen a Jew.” But being Jewish did remain a part of him. “It’s not something you can lose.” He told this story:
“A Jew and a hunchback were passing a temple, and the Jew said, ‘I used to be a Jew.’ And the hunchback said, ‘I used to be a hunchback.’”
Groucho thought about making a trip to Israel. “I want to visit Harpo’s harp.” (Harpo willed his harp to Israel.)
Groucho always read the Bible; but he read it more as a great work of literature, and he didn’t look for all of the answers in it.
Perhaps his own reverent disbelief or irreverent belief in luck and a mystical unknown, in ethical tradition, as well as in himself, could be summed up in the I’ll Say She Is and Horse Feathers quote which Time featured on its Marx Brothers cover:
“The Lord Alps those that Alps themselves.”
“We’re four of the three musketeers”
Reminiscing about his relationship with his brothers, Groucho told me, “For years we played five shows a day and split weekends, but we never argued.” The madcap, steadfast relationship of the Marx Brothers was best summed up in these lines from “The Musketeers,” a song in Animal Crackers that Groucho sang for me almost half a century after he had sung it in the original Broadway production:
It’s one for all and two for five.
We’re four of the three musketeers.
This song expressed a zany, loyal camaraderie where 2+2=22, especially when the two plus two equaled Groucho and Harpo, Chico and Zeppo. Actually, there were five musketeers. Groucho, Harpo, and Chico were the most famous, probably in that order, but Gummo and Zeppo had their moments too. Zeppo explained his junior-straight-romantic lead position in the act to me:
“I came along late, and three comedians were enough.”
Gummo had played Zeppo’s roles during the vaudeville days but was never well known because he retired from the act before films gave the Marx Brothers permanence.
There was a sixth Marx Brother. Manfred Marx was born in 1885 and died in 1888 just before he was three years old.
GROUCHO
Manfred died about ninety years ago. I never knew him.
I
Did your mother talk much about him?
GROUCHO
No. He died when he was three years old.
I
What happened to him?
GROUCHO
It was a lousy accident. My mother told me about him. I wonder what would have become of Mannie…?
The year before Manfred died, Chico was born. A year later, in 1888, Harpo was born, and two years later, in 1890, Groucho. Gummo and Zeppo were born in 1897 and 1901 respectively.
Shortly after Groucho was born, the family moved to East Ninety-third Street on New York’s Upper East Side, to the German community of Yorkville. When Groucho was born, the Marx family had lived on East Seventy-eighth Street between Lexington and Third avenues. As the Marx Brothers grew up, they were conscious of “other-streeters” all around them—the Irish, Italian, and German immigrants who shared Yorkville.
When the Marx family first moved to Ninety-third Street, there were Sam, Minnie, and the three boys, Minnie’s parents, Lafe and Fannie (who were called “Opie” and “Omie”) Schoenberg, and Cousin Polly. Fannie died in 1898, shortly after celebrating her golden wedding anniversary, leaving as her only legacy the batt
ered, stringless old harp that she had played for dancing after Lafe’s ventriloquist act and magic show during their German show business days. The harp was an endless source of wonder and fascination for Adolph, sometimes known as Arthur, later to be Harpo, who eventually took from it a name and a way of life. When the Schoenbergs immigrated to the United States, they found so little demand for their specialized talents that they retired while their children got “civilian” jobs in New York City.
Grandpa Schoenberg shared a world that at the beginning included Napoleon and at the end John Kennedy. He was born in 1818, three years before the death of Napoleon, and he died in 1919, two years after the birth of John F. Kennedy. Up until his death from double pneumonia at the age of 101, he remained physically active. His favorite diversions were skating, movies, girls, and eating, not necessarily in that order.
GROUCHO
He was a big eater. He’d get up in the middle of the night, and he’d eat a couple of pumpernickel sandwiches with Limburger cheese at four in the morning and go right back to sleep. Every once in a while he had to go down to the ghetto around Grand Street and Canal—all the way downtown—and he’d buy a lot of tobacco. A bag of tobacco in those days cost about fifteen cents. He’d bring it home and go to his room—he was the only one in the house that had his own room—and then he would take this tobacco and make cigars.
I
You told me he never learned English.
GROUCHO
Not much, no. Sometimes he’d sit through the same movie two or three times. He’d make up his own stories to go with the pictures. He used to go skating in Central Park in the winter. He was in his eighties then. A very powerful, strong man.
Annie Berger’s sister, Ethel Wise, had fond recollections of “Grandfather Marx”:
“I especially remember Groucho’s grandfather. He was a beautiful man, a real magician. He was tall and stately.”
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