In the meantime I had started a mechanical business. I had a little shop in back of my house. And I had that horse ranch with Barbara Stanwyck which didn’t work out too good. The expenses were too high for what we could make. Eventually, we sold the ranch. Anyway, while we were in this horse ranch, I let Gummo and my partner, Miller, run the agency business mostly. I didn’t spend too much time there. I was out at Santa Anita one day, and we had a box right next to the vice president of Douglas Aircraft, who had some of his horses on our ranch. He said to me, “You know, we’re very shy of machine shops and machinists.” The war had come along. Well, I had met a fella at RKO when I was going around to the different studios selling clients and getting jobs for my clients. I always used to hang around the machine shop at RKO. Every studio had a machine shop. And I got very friendly and close with a fantastic machinist there. So I said, Charlie, I’ve got a little machine shop in back of my house in the Valley. I’d love to play around with it with you. I have different ideas and inventions. And he said, “That’s wonderful. I’d love to play around with it and work with you.” Incidentally, I invented the stoplight on cars, which I never followed through with. It was an idea of mine as well as several other things that are now being used.
So this vice president of Douglas Aircraft said, “I hear that you have a machine shop. Well, we need some machine work very badly. We’re very short of machine shops.” I said, “All right. Send some stuff and the prints over, and we’ll machine it for you.” Now, a box comes over, about half the size of this table, with parts to be machined. And I’ve got a little shop in the back of my house in the Valley! So after I worked in the agency business going around to all the studios, I’d go now and we’d work until one or two o’clock in the morning machining these parts and getting them ready, because the war was important.
We got them all set, sent the box back, and about four days later a box comes twice the size. They liked the work so much they wanted these parts done, machining castings. So I said, “Jeez, Charlie…it looks like I’ve got myself into something here. If they’re gonna do this, I’ll have to rent a little place.” So we machined those parts, and I rented a little place in the Valley, because now they sent back three boxes. I hired some mechanics, and we had this little place in the San Fernando Valley about the size of this place here. And I bought some machinery, and I kept getting bigger places and hiring more people. Finally, I built two factories and had five hundred people working for me.
I couldn’t devote too much time to the agency business now. I had this tremendous thing going. So Gummo handled it. Then I made a deal with MCA, and Gummo went with MCA, and I got out of that agency business, which was driving me crazy anyway. So now I’m in the machinist business. I’ve got five hundred people working, and we’re working twenty-four hours a day, three shifts. We’re working like mad turning out these parts for all the aircraft companies.
Finally, one day I started to take stock of myself. I said, “Look, I’ve got a machine shop here, and I’m machining things. If the war gets over very quickly, I’ve got a million dollars’ worth of machinery here, and who’s gonna use it? And what am I gonna do with it? We’ve got to get a proprietary item—something we can split the government work with something of our own.”
Well, one day a fella came into the shop and to the office, and the girl came in and said, “There’s a Mr. King out here who would like to talk to you.” I said, “I don’t know a Mr. King.” She said, “Well, he’s got an invention, and he wants to show it to you.” I said, “Bring him in.” ’Course, I would see anybody. I brought him in, and he sat down. He had holes in the bottoms of his shoes. Terrible-looking man. He had a little clamp, a coupling device, and it appealed to me. He had his patents, and he said he’d been all over, but he couldn’t get in to see anybody because on account of the war, they were so busy, and they didn’t want to take on anything like that.
I said, “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll take it on, and I’ll give you the regular inventor’s royalties.” So, we made a contract, and I took this thing on. It was really a very good coupling or clamping device. As a matter of fact, right now, most everything that moves and some stuff that doesn’t move has this item on it. We had it all over airplanes, we had it on boats, we had it in oil fields, we had it every place. This man finally became a millionaire. He rode around in a Cadillac with a chauffeur, and had a yacht and everything due to his royalties from this thing, because it turned out to be so big.
I stayed with that for a while, then eventually I sold out. I was getting divorced, and I wanted to make a clean break of everything, so I gave my wife what she was entitled to, and I sold out. Now I had nothing going for me, but I had some money. I was a bachelor now, and played the field. Incidentally, I did all right that way. Eventually, I met this girl—oh, Christ, do I have to go through all this? Anyway, I don’t know if I should bring this into it or not. She was a very attractive gal, and we went together for a year, then we broke up. We broke up for a year, and we went back together. The reason we broke up, we couldn’t get along too well. But when we went back together, we got along very well. So I married her, and it lasted through about thirteen or fourteen years, and of course now I’m single again.
In the meantime I had invented a watch, a wristwatch this size that would warn a person of a heart attack. I have all the patents for it, and now it’s being pursued. If a person is getting a heart attack or they have their blood pressure going down so low or up so high where they’re in big trouble, this thing will give a warning, a sound, a beep-beep-beep. And it’s also a watch, no bigger than this. We have it working, and I think it’s a very revolutionary item. I have the controlling interests, I own most of the stock, and other people are working on it.
Right now I am a commercial fisherman. I have a commercial license, and I have a boat. I was gonna have a fleet of commercial boats to fish when all of this came on with fuel and the economy, and I didn’t think it was too good an idea for me to go out and spend a lot of money on more boats. So I’m now just running the one boat as a charter boat and also as a commercial fisherman. This is the only business I have right at the moment.
I
What do you call your company?
ZEPPO
The Marx Brothers. That’s the name of the boat, and that’s the name of the company. The other company, the watch, is called Lifeguard. Which it is. I think it could be very big, it could be very helpful. The idea for it started with my family. My father died, his heart went, my mother had a stroke, and then Harpo had a bad heart, and Gummo’s heart isn’t too good, and neither is mine. I had two operations recently, open heart surgery. But I didn’t know about that then. So I thought this would be a great thing to help people out that have problems. This will tell them. I’ve had many doctors, heart specialists tell me that they think it’s a very wonderful idea. I patented it in Japan and Germany and France and England and the United States and in the Iron Curtain countries, so that’s it, and that’s where we stand right now, and I’m very happy to have met you…
I
Before you go away, do you want to talk anymore about your early days, about how you feel about the Marx Brothers, about the Marx Brothers’ movies…?
ZEPPO
I told you all about that. I told you that I was very unhappy.
I
Didn’t you get any fun out of it?
ZEPPO
No. Well, the only fun I got out of it was the chorus girls. And laying all of them, or as many as I could. That was the fun I got out of it. I am not a ham, and I don’t care about publicity or anything like that. (To Gummo) Now you take over.
I
(To Zeppo) Groucho told me a story last night about you. He told me about how when you wanted Norman Krasna…
ZEPPO
Oh, I knocked out a couple of guys who were bothering him. That’s when I was in the agency business. Well, there were a lot of those things, but I can’t go through all that. It would take two
or three days. Okay? Nice meeting you, honey, and I hope everything turns out all right for you. I hope you make a lot of money on it.
GUMMO
Well, thanks for the drinks.
ZEPPO
You’re welcome. (Laughs) Okay. ’Bye! (He leaves)
I
(To Gummo) Groucho said he thought you were a natural agent, and he told me you discovered quite a few actors.
GUMMO
Dennis Morgan, Glenn Ford, Rhonda Fleming, Evelyn Keyes. It was only last week when Glenn Ford said, “If it hadn’t been for Gummo, I would not be where I am today.” Because he was passed up by every studio in town. But I found a method for building him, and I made a star out of him. I had a special feeling when I saw someone like him.
I
What were the early days with the Marx Brothers like?
GUMMO
I’ll tell you just one thing: I knew I was not a good actor, and I didn’t want to stay in show business. Zeppo took my place, and I had to teach his dancing partner how to dance. She, incidentally, married Groucho.
I
Groucho said you were a good dancer.
GUMMO
I was not a very good dancer. I was known, perhaps, as America’s slowest whirlwind dancer. I attribute the success of the Marx Brothers largely to me. I quit the act.
I
Zeppo complained about being the youngest brother. He said it was kind of hard being the youngest brother because he could only follow…
GUMMO
I was the youngest brother outside of Zeppo. Now, when I left the act, they put Zeppo in my place. Zeppo was not a great dancer and neither was I, for that matter. But I wasn’t too bad. I read that interview you did with Groucho, and I thought it was good. The reason Zeppo liked it so well is because Groucho said that Zeppo was the funniest of the Marx Brothers. Well, my friends think I’m the funniest.
I
Last night Groucho said that you were very funny too, though he still says that he thought Zeppo was the funniest of the Marx Brothers in real life.
GUMMO
Could be. Chico was a very funny man. But Chico was irresponsible. There’s been stuff written about Groucho, but there’s been none written about Chico. His life was so fantastic that it’s a shame that there hasn’t been a book written about him. There is a book being written about Chico, by his daughter, Maxine. The things that happened in Chico’s life are so fantastic that it should be written. I’m not qualified to write it, and I don’t think there are enough people alive who know all the things that happened to him while he was alive. His daughter has no knowledge of the things that I’m talking about.
I
Such as…
GUMMO
I can remember one time when his wife Betty used to watch him to catch him cheating. Why, that’s like trying to catch a gnat in a net! It’s just impossible. Well, anyway, they were playing in New York in one of their plays, and she sneaked up into the flies to catch him. And there he was, kissing one of the girls on the mouth. A real mouth kiss. So she said, “I caught you that time!” He said, “Caught me what?” She says, “Kissing that girl in the mouth!” He says, “I wasn’t kissing that girl in the mouth. I was whispering in her mouth.”
He would find ways of fighting with her. That was when he was still in the money. But he was never in the money because he never kept it. They lived in a two-story house on Rexford or something. And her room was here and his room was there. So they had a hell of a fight, which he wanted, because if he could get a fight, he could go out and play bridge. This went on for about six weeks. Do you know after six weeks, she just couldn’t stand this separation. She loved him very much. So, she thought of an idea. She took a deck of cards, and she spread them all the way up the stairs. In front of her door, she put the queen of hearts. And on her nightgown, she pinned the ace of hearts. Now, to get to his room, he had to pass her room. He must have seen these cards all the way up, but he went right into his room and went to bed. She heard him, and she got up and said, “You no-good son of a bitch! After I thought of such a wonderful idea to make up, you walk right into your room!” “Honey, when I saw the queen of hearts in front of your door, I knew you had the ace of hearts on your nightgown, and I just couldn’t help but finesse.” He finessed right past her room into his own room.
I know a thousand stories about Chico. But that belongs in a separate book, because he was a character that doesn’t live very often. He was the best-hearted man, unless he was cornered like a rat. Then he got tough. I know that I made a deal for him, with the help of Groucho, that he got $50,000 a year from NBC to do three shows a year. Well, we knew it wouldn’t be enough for Chico. So some of the money came from Groucho and me. I had ten percent of Groucho’s income. I paid ten, Grouch paid the other forty. Well, it didn’t mean much to Groucho, because he was earning a lot of money. And it didn’t mean much to me either, ’cause I was doing pretty well. So, I had put $10,000 in cash into my vault for one purpose: I knew that no matter what Chico got from NBC, it was not gonna be enough.
So, every week I got a call from Chico. He said, “Gummy…” and I knew what was coming. I says, “How much do you need?” He said, “I need $300. I had a bad time last night.” So I’d give him $300 from the money I’d put away. Every week—and mind you, he’s getting $50,000 a year from NBC—I’d get a call. “Gummy, it was very bad last night. Can you let me have $500.” Well, he went through the whole $10,000.
I
And what happened when the $10,000 was gone?
GUMMO
I don’t recall what happened. He was reaching the end of his string by that time. He was close to dying.
I
Do you think that Chico was a happy person?
GUMMO
Yes, and one of the most selfish persons I’ve ever met in my life. It’s a strange thing that a person can be selfish and still be generous. And he was. You know, there’s a man who’s still alive who was Chico’s closest friend. They both made out their wills leaving whatever they had left to each other. Neither one had five cents.
I
How would you describe Harpo?
GUMMO
Harpo played the right instrument. He was an angel. There was nobody like him, there never will be anybody like him. He was just simply wonderful. He never had a bad word for anybody…not like me. I at least occasionally say something. But Harpo…they don’t make that kind anymore.
I
How about Groucho? How would you describe Groucho?
GUMMO
Groucho is very stern, or was, but very just, and in his way, very good-hearted. If it wasn’t for Groucho, I would never be in the position I’m in today, which is fairly affluent, though I’m not rich. My wife’s been very sick. And there isn’t really any more that I can tell you.
I
Do you like the Marx Brothers pictures?
GUMMO
I love them.
I
Do you have a favorite?
GUMMO
Yes. A Night at the Opera. Then Day at the Races.
I
Last night Groucho talked about one special deal you made as his agent, and he said that you did a good job.
GUMMO
Well, I had always felt that I alone couldn’t give Groucho enough service. I shouldn’t say that—I could, but if I could get assistance, it was to Groucho’s benefit, even if it took half the commission away. So, I called in the Morris office, and we represented Groucho together. I made a deal for him for radio, and then for television. It was You Bet Your Life. The Morris office went to New York with me and my lawyer, and NBC and CBS were bidding for the show. Groucho was on CBS, and I called up CBS and said, “We want to buy our contract from Allen Gelman.” He had the show on radio. He’s died since then. He had the Elgin-American Company that made cigarette cases, compacts, and so forth. And we wanted to get the contract from him so that we could make a deal. We had a deal ready. Gelman wanted $50,000 for the contrac
t. We wanted to go on television, but Gelman couldn’t go on television under any conditions, because he couldn’t afford it.
So I called CBS and said, “Listen, we have a deal, but Allen Gelman wants $50,000 for his contract. Now he can’t pick it up, but if we wait until his contract runs out, we will lose the deal that we have. I’ll tell you what we’ll do: you pay the $50,000, and I will agree to stay with CBS for fifty weeks, which is practically two years.” They tell me, “That’s a one-way deal.” So I says, “Forget about it.” I went to the Morris office, and I says, “Let’s you and I buy the contract. Then we can go ahead with the deal,” which we did. So CBS came out and said they wanted the show. I said, “Well, you had your chance for $50,000, which would guarantee you having the show for two years.” I said, “You made a costly mistake, because NBC is bidding, and so is ABC.” In the meantime, the Morris office is ready to sell the show for a quarter of a million dollars. I said, “Not a chance.” Well, to go through the thing that we had at my house, NBC, CBS, and ABC’s men started bidding until it got to be a million and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And I said, “Gentlemen, we’ll have to put a stop to this bidding. You’re each gonna have one more bid, and whoever has the best bid, we’re going.”
Well, NBC offered two million dollars. Now, this was just for the rights of the show. Groucho still had to be paid for the show. The deal was set. We wanted to stay with CBS, but we took the NBC deal. And that’s how it happened. That’s the deal that he was talking about.
Hello, I Must be Going Page 24
