“Doing it was a real pleasure. There was a lot of fun and nonsense every day, but it didn’t slow down getting the job done. I remember stepping on a boat, and my skirt blew up—that sort of thing. I’ve always been glad I did it. When I’ve seen it recently, I’ve been pleased.”
After Thalberg died, the Marx Brothers did three more pictures for M-G-M, At the Circus (1939), Go West (1940), and The Big Store (1941), as well as Room Service (1938) for RKO, a special deal engineered by Zeppo. The Thalberg formula without Thalberg continued to serve them, but there was less magic. Louis B. Mayer was reputed to have personally disliked the Marx Brothers, and Groucho confirmed that any animosity was reciprocated. One day Mayer came up to Groucho on the set and asked him how everything was going. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Groucho snapped. By 1942 it wasn’t any of the Marx Brothers’ business, either, for they were finished with M-G-M. At that time they announced their first “retirement,” and Groucho added, “in anticipation of popular demand.”
Groucho’s domestic life changed during these years, too. His marriage to Ruth had been failing and “her solution was alcohol.” His was to get a divorce, which he did in 1942. Three years later he married his daughter Miriam’s best friend, 24-year-old Catherine Marvis Gorcey, who had been the wife of former Deadend Kid Leo Gorcey. In 1946 Melinda was born.
After a long-confirmed bachelorhood, Harpo had married actress Susan Fleming in 1936. They adopted four children. Of the five brothers, only Harpo and Gummo avoided divorces. Gummo married his wife, Helen, shortly after leaving the act, and they had a son. “I remember when Bobby was a little boy,” Groucho told me. “I’d give him a nickel for shining my shoes. Now he’s forty or fifty years old.”
Faced with the responsibilities of a new family, Groucho quickly unretired. But, then, he never really had retired, only the brothers as an act. During World War II he remained active on radio and toured military bases as well as joining nationwide Hollywood war bond rallies. By 1946, however, Groucho’s new status as a papa-to-be at fifty-five and Chico’s old status as a pauper-to-be at fifty-eight brought the team back together again for A Night in Casablanca. Groucho supplemented this with solo appearances in Copacabana (1947), Mr. Music (1950), Double Dynamite(1951), and A Girl in Every Port (1952).
In Double Dynamite, Groucho worked with Frank Sinatra. Groucho was fastidiously punctual, usually arriving on the set early. Frank Sinatra was more casual about time, so Groucho, who said, “I don’t even wait for myself,” found himself waiting around for Sinatra’s arrival. It reminded him of the days “before we made it big, when we used to have to wait for everybody.” His answer was to come later than Sinatra, causing Sinatra to come even later and Groucho to come still later, and so on. Finally a détente was reached.
“Sinatra talked with me about it, and I said, ‘You come on time, and I’ll be there.’ He did and I did.” Later, Frank Sinatra became almost a member of the Marx family when he married Barbara Marx, Zeppo’s former wife.
Although they would appear together again a decade later, the last true Marx Brothers’ film was Love Happy (1949). Love Happy was an unhappy affair that Harpo had been persuaded to do alone, then he was joined by his brothers. The film was Marilyn Monroe’s first and the Marx Brothers’ last.
During the middle 1930s, Groucho had met a young writer with few credits whom he immediately liked. He and Norman Krasna started collaborating, and the first result was Warner Brothers’ The King and the Chorus Girl in 1937. After Norman Krasna had firmly established himself as one of Broadway’s best playwrights, Groucho and he again joined farces to write Time for Elizabeth. The play opened and closed after seven performances on Broadway in 1948, but ten years later enjoyed a modest success in summer stock when Groucho played the lead himself.
At mid-century, when Groucho reached sixty, nationwide television became a reality, and Groucho a part of it. You Bet Your Life was a success on radio (it had won a Peabody Award in 1949), so it was natural that the show would move over to the new medium, which it did in 1950. You Bet Your Life was more of a Marx family show than most people realized. Both Gummo and Chico participated behind the scenes. Gummo was Groucho’s agent, and Chico was the family’s “lost soul,” as Groucho described him. Chico made no material contributions to the show, but he was put on salary, and the salary was doled out whenever he needed to pay gambling debts, which was most of the time. Gummo told me that if Chico called him and started the conversation with “Gummy,” he knew what was coming and as a reflex pulled out his checkbook. This was, however, not Chico’s sole income. He was also appearing in nightclubs, usually in Las Vegas, where his income was always more of an outgo.
Sometimes Harpo would join him in a nightclub act. Harpo was also doing harp concerts. By now, Zeppo had sold his rights in the agency that he and Gummo had built up from a few clients to one of the largest in Hollywood, and was a successful manufacturer.
At least three-fifths of the Marx Brothers’ domestic lives continued to be turbulent. Zeppo had divorced his first wife, Marian, and would soon marry Barbara. Chico and Betty were now divorced, and their daughter, Maxine, grown. Groucho’s marital fortunes seemed to wane as his professional fortunes waxed. This had been true with Ruth, and now it was true with Kay. They were divorced in 1951 just as You Bet Your Life was establishing itself as one of the top-rated programs on television. Recidivous by nature, at least as far as marriage was concerned, Groucho married for a third time in 1954, this time, Eden Hartford. They had met during the filming of A Girl in Every Port, where she had come to visit her sister, Dee, who was appearing in the film with Groucho. Eden fainted and Groucho came to her rescue.
You Bet Your Life ran on NBG until 1961, and was followed by a short-lived sequel, Tell It to Groucho, on CBS. “It [You Bet Your Life] was some of the best stuff I ever did,” Groucho told me once just after we had watched a rerun. “I really had to think. I never worked so hard.” I asked him if there was any significance to the duck which appears at the magic word. “No. It’s just easier to crack a joke about a duck than an elephant.”
Talking with me about You Bet Your Life, Groucho said, “The audience is the straight man. It’s what they say that makes what you say funny. You can’t make up people like that.” When people would come up to us to tell Groucho that they watched the seventies reruns of his show, he always responded, “I do too.”
The great success of You Bet Your Life left Groucho with little time for other professional activities. He did, however, find time to make two brief movie appearances after A Girl in Every Port. One of them, Irwin Allen’s The Story of Mankind (1957), featured his brothers, too, but not together. They appeared together for the last time in The Incredible Jewel Robbery on the General Electric Theatre television show in 1959. From 1957 through 1960, he toured Time for Elizabeth in summer stock, his first non-Groucho acting part since he had done Twentieth Century in Maine twenty-three years earlier. For Groucho, who so greatly appreciated Gilbert and Sullivan, one of the highlights of his career was appearing as the Lord High Executioner in a telecast of The Mikado, produced by Goddard Lieberson in 1960.
After You Bet Your Life, Groucho didn’t bother to announce his “retirement” as the team had done twenty years before. Instead he became a kind of comedian emeritus, appearing as guest on many television programs. He played his last film role in Otto Preminger’s film Skidoo in 1968. Preminger summed up for me his impression of Groucho the actor:
“He was a complete professional. He came on time, he knew his lines, and he was totally prepared. He was a star, but he didn’t overact.”
Groucho had told me of working with Otto Preminger:
GROUCHO
He’s a good director. And he’s a gambler.
I
A gambler?
GROUCHO
Not like Chico. I mean he’s not afraid to take chances.
One of Groucho’s most memorable guest appearances was on The Hollywood Palace in 19
65, when he and Margaret Dumont re-created Captain Spaulding’s arrival from Animal Crackers. Two weeks later, she died.
The decade of the sixties was also the final act for Chico and Harpo. Chico died in 1961, and Harpo in 1964. No matter how old they had grown, as long as the Marx Brothers were alive, there was always the hope that they might be reunited in front of an audience again. Groucho was left to carry on the act alone.
A lot of erudite, not very funny books have been written about why we laugh, but nobody has ever really been able to explain it satisfactorily. Perhaps Groucho came closest when he said that all great comedy grows out of believable characters. Lee Strasberg agreed, commenting to me about the comedy of the Marx Brothers:
“Groucho and Harpo were the great ones. Chico and even Zeppo were important because they all worked well together, but it was Groucho and Harpo who really established characters.”
Toward the end of the sixties, Groucho’s third marriage started to founder. He and Eden were finally divorced in 1969. Their parting was amicable, and they continued to see each other from time to time.
Minnie’s Boys, a musical comedy based on the family life of the young Marx Brothers, opened in New York at the Imperial Theatre in 1970. The show was not as great a success as it might have been, but as producer Arthur Whitelaw mentioned to Groucho and me, Minnie’s Boys has continued to play in one amateur production after another ever since. Arthur, Groucho, and I went together to one such performance in Los Angeles. Some of the music was written by Marvin Hamlisch, who had not yet met Groucho.
From the mid-sixties on, Groucho was making fewer public appearances, while the fame of the Marx Brothers was soaring with a new generation. In 1971, Erin Fleming catapulted into Groucho’s life to become his secretary. Because Groucho didn’t want to disappoint Erin, and because what she wanted him to do was what he wanted to do anyway, he returned to show business. “I hit the road and it didn’t hit back,” Groucho told me. The show at Ames, Iowa, the Carnegie Hall concert, the re-premiere of Animal Crackers, all followed.
Groucho told me, “I wish you could’ve met Harpo and Chico. We played every town in America and I think we were the only group that never fought. No act in vaudeville got along better than we did. There never was anyone like my brothers and me.”
I first met Zeppo and Gummo in the bar of the Tamarisk Country Club in Palm Springs, shortly after I had interviewed Groucho for Playboy. Though in his seventies, Zeppo looked much younger, and he still had the voice of the fourth Marx Brother in the Paramount films. He sat politely through our meeting, but he was visibly impatient. There was still that empty chair waiting in a card game somewhere.
Gummo was the least known of the Marx Brothers, but in Palm Springs, where he lived, he was a celebrity. When we arrived, the adjoining club-restaurant had not yet started filling up for lunch. By the time Zeppo left, people had started coming in, and most of them greeted Gummo. He was asked for his autograph, and some people asked him if he could get Groucho’s autograph for their son. He said he would.
When I arrived, Zeppo was waiting for me in front of the club. We went inside where Gummo was sitting at a table.
ZEPPO
I thought your interview was just excellent, and probably one of the best I’ve seen on the Marxes, because you handled it so well—and you handled him so well. But I was surprised when I saw you. I thought you were probably an eighteen-year-old girl with very big busts and the usual beautiful face, and everything—that’s why you got this great interview from Groucho, because usually he isn’t this tolerant. But you’re still a very attractive lady—I don’t mean to bring you down in any way. It was done very well, and I must compliment you on that. It’s one of the reasons why I am subjecting myself to this interview.
I
What are you doing now?
ZEPPO
I’m a commercial fisherman. Strange, isn’t it? But I’ve been in a few businesses in my lifetime. I was in the horse-racing business, raising horses with Barbara Stanwyck. We had a breeding farm, and we boarded horses. We boarded horses for Alfred Vanderbilt, Liz Whitney, and L. B. Mayer on our ranch in the Valley, which we owned jointly. Before that, I had been with the Marx Brothers, which I hated. I was very unhappy doing what I had to with the Marx Brothers, and I was so confined with them, because I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. I had to be a straight man, which I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be a comedian. But there were three comedians already, and there was no room for another comedian, especially a younger brother that came in later. So I had to content myself with being a straight man and being subjected to, well, a small part in the group, which I resented. I not only resented it, but I felt inferior. So, eventually, it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore, because I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do and what I thought I was capable of doing. You know, at one time I took Groucho’s place. He was ill, in Chicago. And coming on the train into Chicago…did you know this?
I
Yes, but you tell me, then I’ll tell you what Groucho said.
ZEPPO
Oh, I know what he said, because he said it to me the other night on the phone. Well, anyway, I felt this was something I could do, but I had no opportunity with the Marx Brothers. I had to be the straight man.
I
Tell me about the night you took his place.
ZEPPO
Well, the day we arrived in Chicago, he was rushed right to the hospital, and I didn’t understudy him or anything, because who expected it? He had an operation for appendicitis, and I had to jump in and do five shows a day. I had to do Groucho five times a day at the Chicago Theatre, which I did. Actually, some of his friends didn’t even realize it was me. They thought it was Groucho. They came backstage, and they wanted to see Groucho. But, anyway, it got pretty bad after a few days, because I never smoked cigars, and I’d smoke those goddamn cigars every day. I used to vomit every day after the last show—four or five shows a day, you know, and it was very difficult. But, anyway, I knew I could do it. And this frustrated me more, because I knew I could get laughs, but I wasn’t allowed to with the Marx Brothers. So when we got out here, I didn’t have any money, and I didn’t know what the hell to do. I had no education. I went to about the fifth grade in public school. Or sixth. Then I got a job as a mechanic in Chicago at the Ford Motor Company.
When Gummo joined the Army, they were playing in Rockford, Illinois, and my mother called me down at this garage where I was working, and said, “Come home immediately.” I came home immediately, and she said, “Get packed and go to Rockford and join your brothers.” So, I had to take his place. I had to dance, and I had to be the juvenile and the straight man, which I did. ’Course, I don’t think either one of us were too great (Laughs) as actors. But I stayed with them through the vaudeville days, and through the shows, and then the pictures. Finally, I did about four or five pictures, I can’t remember how many. Then I just said, “Boys, I’m leaving.”
I didn’t have any money. I didn’t know what I was gonna do, had no education, but I had to go because I would have collapsed mentally. I didn’t want to do that. So I said to myself, “What is the best thing for me to do that I don’t need a fine education, but that has something to do with show business?” So I figured out the agency business.
I opened an agency, I got a little office, had no clients, (Laughing) not even the Marx Brothers. I had started to go around looking for clients, and finally joined some people I was friendly with in the agency business. They had an agency called Orsatti and Brent. Now, Orsatti was a very close friend of L. B. Mayer, so he had all that stuff. And Brent was a pretty sharp guy. So I talked to them, and they thought I’d be a pretty good agent. I bought a third interest in their company. I borrowed the money, and after I was in that company about a month, I could see Brent and Orsatti were not exactly speaking to each other.
Brent would say, “Well, Zep, what did you do today?” And I said, “I went to Paramount, and I went to Warner Brothers, and I
picked up a couple of clients.” He said that was good, and I said, “What about Frank?” He said, “Well, go in and see him.” Now, I’d go in to Orsatti, and he said, “What’s Brent doing?” Finally, I found out these guys were not speaking with each other. I knew I was in a trap. So I said, “I want out,” and I got my money back, and I opened a little office on the Sunset Strip, and had no clients.
I’d been with Orsatti and Brent about two months, and I had developed some very good friendships and rapport with some of these clients. Now I started to concentrate on the people I had known in that agency, and finally I started to get a few. And I started to get a few more clients. I started to build, and I worked. I worked my ass off, eighteen hours a day, going to every studio, every actor or actress or director or producer. I would just go up to them and say, “Who’s representing you?” In those days the contracts weren’t too strong, and I picked up a lot of guys who couldn’t get jobs with the agents they were with. And I got them jobs. They would say, “Jeez, go to Zeppo Marx. He’ll get you a job.” Finally, I built up a very, very good business.
Now Gummo was in New York, and he was in the dress business or something and he wanted to go into the agency business. So my brothers came in and said, “Jeez, what about Gummo?” So I said, “All right. We’ll open a New York office and let Gummo take over the New York office. So he opened an office and he did very well. He got New York actors signed up to our agency, sending them out here, and I’d sell them if I could. Eventually, he closed the New York office, took the clients, and he moved out here.
As I’ve told you before, I was a mechanic. I love mechanical things, and every place that I’ve had, I’ve always had a shop in back of my house, because I love it. I have one right here now. So, the agency business kept flourishing. Gummo kept bringing in clients, and my partner kept bringing in clients, and I brought in clients, and I’m selling them. Now we’ve got about 250 clients in this agency business doing fabulously. We were the third largest agency in the business. But in the meantime, I didn’t like it because they drove me crazy, these actors and directors and everything. They came in and they said, “Why didn’t I get that job? Gable got it!” Well, this little punk who was getting a hundred dollars a week with Goldwyn or something, he wanted Gable’s part that was out at Metro. So you had to contend with those things in the agency business. You had to be their manager, you had to be their analyst. You had to do everything for some of those people. And it got to me. So I just sold out.
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