“I’ve got the key to my front door”
On a day late in May of 1975, the air was unusually clear in New York City, and it was slightly windy. Several times Groucho’s blue beret was nearly airborne. He had been thinking about a walk down Fifth Avenue to buy gifts at Gucci to take back to California. But it took us half an hour to go only part of a block because so many people stopped to talk with us. We never did get to Gucci but decided, instead, to walk uptown on Fifth Avenue, where there was less pedestrian traffic.
During the walk up Fifth Avenue from Fifty-ninth Street, almost everyone we passed looked at Groucho with an expression of pleasant recognition. Faces lit up, and New York is not a place where faces light up lightly. Taxi drivers shouted out, “Hi, Groucho!” “Be well, Groucho.” He autographed some Wall Street Journals and a few copies of the New York Times, some assorted business cards, and a few used envelopes, as well as one leather briefcase, which didn’t take the ink very well.
One fan, who had seen Groucho as we started our walk up Fifth Avenue, raced to Rizzoli Bookstore and then caught up with us with a paperback copy of The Groucho Letters, which he breathlessly held out for Groucho’s signature. He took the book and signed it, and the boy thanked him. “Nothing at all,” Groucho responded. “It makes the book worth less.”
Just past the Knickerbocker Club and almost back at the Sherry Netherland Hotel, which was temporarily home, something happened to Groucho. For a moment, he was almost unable to walk, almost unable to stand. Barbara, the petite nurse he had brought with him from California, fought to assist him and tried to hold her ground. But, resenting infirmity, he was in no mood to be helped, and somehow he made a supreme effort, fighting to maintain his equilibrium and his independence. With what was clearly a Herculean exertion, he managed to return to the hotel. As we literally inched our way back and finally reached the shelter of the lobby, passersby continued to greet him and to request autographs, totally oblivious to the strain he was undergoing.
In the seclusion of the elevator, Groucho held on for dear life, while two tweedy ladies, a French couple, and a stout matron chatted and chattered frivolously with him about You Bet Your Life. Even while suffering, he maintained a stoic composure and his stage presence, never one to let down even such a small audience. Surveying the intricately detailed painting and paneling inside the elegant old elevator, Groucho said, “This elevator’s an antique. It’s even older than I am.” On this note, he exited stylishly, and only when he had reached the privacy of his apartment collapsed.
“I’m calling the house doctor,” Barbara said.
Groucho, who was now lying in bed, said weakly, “Why? My house isn’t sick.”
The doctor arrived and said, “Mr. Marx, I’m going to take your temperature.”
“Where are you going to take it?” he asked.
Fortunately, a long nap and the arrival of a friend resuscitated Groucho, who bounced back with restored vigor. The friend was a spinet. He had missed having a piano in his hotel suite, so he had rented one, which in due time appeared on the scene, carried in by four monumentally muscled movers. Knowing the piano was for Groucho, they took a preposterously long time to position it. The sound of Groucho’s voice from the bedroom slowed them down immeasurably as they expectantly eyed the bedroom door from which the voice had emanated. Persistence had to be its own reward, though, because there wasn’t any other. Finally, the movers retired from the apartment, clearly crestfallen and perhaps disbelieving the excuse that Groucho wasn’t well. Living legends are only grudgingly permitted infirmities.
As soon as Groucho knew the piano was there, he experienced a resurgence of vitality. Pajama-attired, he took his place at the keyboard, ignoring nurse Barbara’s remonstrances and Erin’s pyrotechnics. He seemed almost to receive a transfusion from the keys as he began his repertory with “Father’s Day.” “That’s what Groucho would have liked to have been,” Erin commented, “a composer.” Groucho was playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” when Jack Nicholson, who also happened to be staying at the Sherry Netherland, dropped in. Jack, who sang while Groucho played the piano, admitted that his own repertory of songs was pretty limited. “But my mother used to harmonize,” he said. Groucho nodded. “Mine too.” Jack suggested that they try “Easter Parade,” and they did.
GROUCHO
I just had a letter from Irving Berlin. He said we’re a couple of “alte cockers.” He said, “Keep on holding on. There are only a few of us alte cockers left.”
JACK NICHOLSON
He was pretty smart. He published all his own music.
Later I asked Groucho what Irving Berlin meant. He hesitated. “I can’t tell you.” Then he thought for a moment and said, “An alte cocker is what I am, that’s what it is. It’s a very old man who isn’t what he used to be.”
Groucho had come to New York some days earlier to see A Chorus Line, for which Marvin Hamlisch had written the music. Marvin, since accompanying Groucho at Carnegie Hall, had acquired four Grammy Awards as well as his three Oscars. Groucho had been invited for the opening but resisted the temptation, feeling that he preferred not to be an attraction or distraction on opening night. He was well aware that the last thing he could be was anonymous. This visit was also planned to coincide with Marvin’s thirty-first birthday.
Groucho’s merry band had arrived from California on the Saturday night before the Sunday evening performance of A Chorus Line. With him were Erin, cook Robin, and nurses “Happy” Cooper and Barbara Odum. It was late when the plane got in and I met them, but Groucho was still wide awake. “I’ll take you girls out on the town,” he offered, but Erin said she was too tired.
“But what did you have in mind?” she asked.
“How about the Club Foot?” he responded slyly.
He settled for a late supper in his suite. The supper was served at 10
P.M. New York time, but with the three-hour difference, it was exactly 7
P.M. in California—just the time he always ate dinner.
As our entourage had passed, the young policeman on night duty by the elevator told me, “I go to see everything he does, over and over. I know all the lines. I laugh at the wrong places. I laugh too soon because I know what’s coming.”
Groucho had taken a luxury apartment on the tenth floor. “I remember,” he told me, looking out the window at Central Park, “when I was traveling in vaudeville, and I was afraid I would jump out the hotel window at night in my sleep. I put theatrical trunks against the windows.”
Sunday was planned as a quiet day. Goodman Ace was coming for lunch. I arrived early in the morning, but Groucho had already been up for hours. “I’m up at six every morning.” He was reading Woody Allen’s Without Feathers and Eric Lax’s book about Woody, On Being Funny. He greeted me with, “Wax lips. Did you read about Woody’s wax lips? He’s a funny man.”
Robin served the regular breakfast that Groucho had every day at home. We had orange juice, soft-boiled eggs, and toast, and Groucho had the decaffeinated coffee he always drank then. After breakfast, he read the New York Times. He read it all morning, quite carefully, making occasional comments. “Look at this name: Ratskin. You couldn’t make up a name like that.” He tried out “Groucho Ratskin” and “Julius H. Ratskin.” Later he read the entire Russell Baker column to Robin and me, commenting, “Great.”
“Do you believe in guilt by association?” I asked Groucho. “When I came in here this morning, two boys held out autograph books for me to sign.”
He smiled. “Well, you got one cheer when they gave me the Oscar.”
I admired his jaunty sport shirt, and he said, “I’m sending you some of these shirts as soon as I get back. It’s about time I gave you something.”
Groucho called Lilly Hamlisch, who was going with us to see A Chorus Line. “I’m sending a car for you tonight,” he informed her. Marvin’s mother protested that it wasn’t necessary, but Groucho had the last word. “The car will be there. I’m very rich.”
GROUCHO
What do you hear from Kansas City?
GOODMAN ACE
I used to buy my shirts from Truman in Kansas City.
GROUCHO
I had lunch with Truman in Kansas City. He was a good president and an honest man.
GOODMAN ACE
Groucho, you’re lookin’ great. I wish I felt like you look.
GROUCHO
You’re a young man compared to me. If you live long enough, you get old.
GOODMAN ACE
It’s too bad about Jack Benny.
GROUCHO
I was at the funeral.
GOODMAN ACE
You know, I told him a joke, and in the story, someone called a spade a spade. The point of the story was it was against intolerance. And Jack said, “I could never tell a joke like that because I’m not mad at anybody.” And I said, “What does it take to make you angry? When one door says ‘White’ and the other says ‘Comedians’?”
GROUCHO
He was never angry at anyone.
ERIN
Where did you meet Groucho?
GOODMAN ACE
I met him in Kansas City. I was on a paper. It must have been about ’28 or ’29. I went to work on a paper when I was eighteen or nineteen. I know I left town in ’33, and I’d already met him. He was in a show at the Shubert, either Animal Crackers or The Cocoanuts. I remember his leaving. I’d been with him for a whole week or two, and he threw a book at me, and he said, “If you’re gonna stay in the humor racket, you better read this.” It was a book written about fifty years ago by E. B. White and James Thurber called Is Sex Necessary?
GROUCHO
I like that piece you wrote about the milk situation. Everyone should have a cow. And I like that joke you told me when I called you. Tell it to her. (Indicating me)
GOODMAN ACE
Which one?
GROUCHO
“The Star-Spangled Banner.”
GOODMAN ACE
Oh, you mean the Italian who learned to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the ballpark, so he thought it ended, “Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Play ball!” And did you hear about the Pole and the Italian who were going to commit suicide by jumping off a ship, but the Pole couldn’t find his way?
GROUCHO
A good joke doesn’t depend on ethnic humor. I don’t use ethnic stories anymore. I just say “the stupid one.”
GOODMAN ACE
But you used to…
GROUCHO
I used to do a lot of things.
GOODMAN ACE
The things you got by with! Kaufman once said, “I’d only let the Marx Brothers ad-lib.”
GROUCHO
The Marx Brothers were undisciplined, but they were funny.
GOODMAN ACE
One of them was a burglar. I always loved Harpo’s routine, stealing all that silver.
GROUCHO
When are you gonna come out and stay at my house?
GOODMAN ACE
Never. Remember the last time? I had a suitcase and a garment bag, and you said, “How long you gonna stay?” And you gave me some orange juice and said, “Remember, oranges don’t grow on trees.”
After lunch, Goodman Ace departed, and Bud Cort came by with his two sisters. Bud was wearing a wide-brimmed Borsalino hat and a red T-shirt that said “Drink Coca-Cola.” Groucho was wearing his Eric Ross Marx Brothers shirt with the titles of all the Marx Brothers films, which Bud admired.
GROUCHO
I’ll get you one. I want you to have it at full retail price.
BUD CORT
I’ll bet we’re the three best-dressed men in the world.
ERIN
But you’re only two…
BUD CORT
Groucho is number one, and I’m number two. The third one we don’t know, but we assume there’s someone somewhere.
GROUCHO
That was Ronald Colman. He always looked great. And he was a nice guy. He was in a picture with us: The Story of Mankind.
BUD CORT
How’s your house, Groucho?
GROUCHO
(Producing a key) I’ve got the key to my front door.
BUD CORT
And your cats?
GROUCHO
They haven’t written much, faithless creatures. You know, someone sent me a letter last week, and said he had seen Duck Soup twenty times, and that he has a racehorse he’s naming after me. He’s calling his horse “Groucho.” Now I have a horse named after me.
BUD CORT
Wow! Have a vitamin C tablet, Groucho?
GROUCHO
No, thanks. I’m trying to quit. Are you working?
BUD CORT
There are a couple of movies going where I probably have to go out to California to meet the people. Guess what! I got my salary from my movie in Italy finally. Whew! What a relief. You don’t know! I made the movie in January, right? And I just got paid yesterday. I got the check.
GROUCHO
Did you try to cash it yet?
BUD CORT
Not yet.
GROUCHO
My brother Chico gave a man a check once, and asked him to cash it at twelve noon the next Monday. The man waits until after twelve noon Monday, and the check still bounces. The man goes back to Chico and says, “I waited until twelve-fifteen on Monday, and it bounced.” Chico says, “But I told you to cash it at exactly twelve noon!”
Groucho, Bud, his sisters, and I trooped out for a walk. As we got out of the elevator, Groucho was greeted by a lady he recognized. “That was Harriet Deutsch,” he told us afterward. “Her husband was the one Loeb and Leopold were going to kill, only he didn’t show up. You’ve gotta be lucky in life.”
We walked for almost an hour, up Fifth Avenue and back along Park Avenue, with Groucho indicating places he remembered. He pointed out where George S. Kaufman had lived, saying, “You never get over one like that being gone.”
That Sunday night, Groucho, Erin, and I went downtown to the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater to see A Chorus Line. Along the way, Groucho reminisced about where to turn off for Dinty Moore’s. We passed the Flatiron Building, and he observed, “We used to stand there and watch the girls go by. We used to look at their legs.”
As we drove, he continued. “People are pretty interesting. You never know what the next one is going to do or say. That was the basis of the quiz show. You can’t manufacture people like that.”
When we arrived at the theatre, there was a crowd standing outside waiting to enter. They saw Groucho and began to applaud, giving him a tremendous ovation which lasted until he had disappeared from their view. We were joined by Lilly Hamlisch and Elisa Pickholz, a friend of hers from Buenos Aires. They had been delivered by the limousine that was Groucho’s grand gesture. Mrs. Hamlisch’s friend spoke no English, only German and Spanish. They had been friends as girls in Vienna and hadn’t seen each other for many years. Indicating me, Groucho said, “She met Perón, and she speaks Argentinian.”
During the intermission Groucho announced, “I’m going to the can.” He never did anything that something eventful didn’t happen. Returning, he reported:
“At the urinal they asked for my autograph. I told them, ‘Could you wait till I finish?’”
Afterward we went backstage to visit the cast. They already knew Groucho was in the audience, and his visit was eagerly awaited. When he arrived backstage, he was regarded with reverence and respect. For the opening night, he had sent one of Maurice Bonté’s cakes decorated with a life-size female leg wearing a sexy black stocking with a hammer, implying the old theatrical opening night admonition “Break a leg.”
The five of us rode back together to the Sherry Netherland, where Groucho was having a small party for Marvin’s thirty-first birthday. On the way, Groucho, Lilly Hamlisch, and her friend sang old German songs. I transl
ated the friend’s comments in Spanish about the Marx Brothers’ tremendous popularity in Argentina, and he said, “Just call me Gaucho Marx.”
Back in Groucho’s hotel suite, we found Marvin’s father, who had finally managed to get past the tough security. Shortly afterward, Bud Cort and Marvin arrived. Robin carried out the cheese platter, and Erin brought in the huge chocolate cake with thirty-one candles. “Now we’re a couple of old strudels,” Groucho confided to Marvin. Groucho told stories which he asked me to translate into “Argentinian.”
I
Keith Terpe, of the Seafarer’s International Union, told me that your television program was the only one English-speaking people living in Spanish-speaking countries could count on getting in English. Desi and Lucy spoke Spanish, Ed Sullivan was believed to be Spanish because he was always dubbed, but you couldn’t be translated, so you always came on in English.
MARVIN HAMLISCH
Fan-tastic! I believe it. There’s nobody who could talk like Groucho.
GROUCHO
They even show our pictures in China, but I don’t know if we talk Chinese.
Marvin was working on the music for the television version of The Entertainer, which would star Jack Lemmon in the role made so famous by Laurence Olivier. Groucho’s gift to Marvin was his own copy of the book of The Entertainer, which had been given to Groucho by Olivier, who had written on the inside of the book:
From The Entertainer to The Entertainer.
Laurence Olivier
Marvin asked Groucho to tell his favorite story “about Annie Berger when she didn’t give you any of her sauerkraut candy.”
The next day, on a less festive note, Groucho met with his lawyers, Peter Fleming and John Sprizzo, “to press my lawsuit,” as Groucho put it. He wore pajamas for the meeting, and, as Erin told it, he never lost his poise even though he lost his pants when the drawstring came open. He was doing a performance of “Peasie Weasie” at the time.
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