Hello, I Must be Going

by Charlotte Chandler

  “It’s like you’re living a moment in time that you couldn’t possibly repeat because here’s the person who did this, and he’s sitting right there and commenting about it, and yet he watches it like it’s the first time he’s seen it as well as somebody who’s lived with it for a long time. He’s the person who did it, and now he’s just a fan. It’s like a historic moment, and then he puts his hand on your knee.”

  Judging his friends on merit, Groucho tended to be quite democratic, with a small d as well as a capital D. Though he didn’t share the political opinions of Morrie Ryskind and George Jessel, they remained his friends over the decades. When he went out to fashionable restaurants, he frequently took along whichever of his nurses happened to be on duty. “Someone said to me,” he told me, “‘How can a big star like you who is getting the Academy Award go to Chasen’s with a girl who just works for you?’ I don’t understand that kind of thinking.”

  Groucho’s favor, however, could sometimes be elusive. He had a low tolerance for boredom, and was more likely to be bored in the company of non–show business people. At Chasen’s restaurant, after too many drinks, a fan came up to Groucho and started to praise him in wildly extravagant terms. Groucho squirmed for several minutes, then silenced the man’s effusiveness with a peremptory “You’re drunk!”

  The desire to display our adult success to a grammar school teacher who gave us a low grade or told our parents we were unpromising, or to show adult acclaim to childhood peers who didn’t find us likeliest to succeed, is a readily recognizable shared human trait. Young Julius Henry Marx, B.G. (Before Groucho), was generally considered by all who knew him as likely to make something of himself. The position he attained, however, far surpassed that which anyone, except possibly Minnie, could have envisioned. When just after his Broadway success, he met childhood friend Dave Geiger on the street, Groucho relished basking in the appreciation of one who had been among the most successful of Groucho’s grammar school peer group.

  GROUCHO

  I told you about David Geiger, didn’t I? He lived on Ninety-third Street where we lived.

  I

  You said that everyone thought he’d be a Supreme Court justice…

  GROUCHO

  That’s what we figured, or something that good. He became a lawyer and he was getting $150 a week. I was getting $1,500 in Animal Crackers. He came backstage to my dressing room, and he didn’t mention anything about the show—and it was a very funny show! I said, “How’d you like the show?” and he said, “Why don’t you quit this thing? You’re jumping around chairs out there, acting ridiculous. That’s nothing for you to do, a man of your age. Why don’t you settle down?” I says, “Well, I’ve been thinking of it, Dave. How much money do you make?” He said, “I make $150 a week. And next week I expect a raise to $200.” I didn’t tell him how much I was making. He left after that. Next time I saw him was on Fifth Avenue, and he had two kids, about six and seven years old. He says, “Groucho, do you remember what I told you?” I said, “What?” He said, “About your quitting this thing that you’re doing. It’s so silly. When are you going to settle down and do something with a future?” I was now getting $2,000 a week. I said, “How much are you making?” He said, “I’m making $200 a week now.” I says, “Yeah. That’s a lot of money. I’ll think about it. I might take you up on that.” I never could convince him that I was a success in show business.

  Groucho’s future proved to be a very secure one, and he survived his “failure” to impress his boyhood friend. But he told me the story with the admonition “You do better to have most of your friends in the business,” the “business” being show business.

  A subject occasionally discussed by Groucho’s friends was success:

  SIDNEY SHELDON

  What about the letdown that you have after a big success, when you wonder if you’ll ever be able to do it again?

  GROUCHO

  I never felt like that.

  SIDNEY SHELDON

  But what happens when you get there, and “there” isn’t there?

  MARTY ALLEN

  Your psychiatrist gets richer.

  GROUCHO

  Bogart used to say, “The only point in making money is so you can tell some big shot where to go.”

  One day Groucho and I talked about friendship:

  I

  What do you expect from your friends?

  GROUCHO

  I don’t. Expecting ruins friendships.

  I

  What qualities do your friends have in common?

  GROUCHO

  They like me.

  I

  What else?

  GROUCHO

  They have taste. Taste is one of the most important things. It makes the difference in whatever you do.

  I

  What do you value most in a friend?

  GROUCHO

  Honesty.

  I

  Are you always honest with your friends?

  GROUCHO

  Honestly, no.

  I

  Why not?

  GROUCHO

  Good manners are very important. I don’t like rude people.

  I

  Besides good manners, what other qualities do your friends share?

  GROUCHO

  They’re smart.

  I

  What do you think they like most about you?

  GROUCHO

  I’m seething with charm.

  I

  And what else do they have in common?

  GROUCHO

  My friends aren’t common. But mostly they come from some part of show business. People in show business are different. They have their own language. A lot of my best friends have always been writers. Erin should marry someone in show business.

  I

  You?

  GROUCHO

  No. Someone who can give her what she needs—sexually.

  I

  Do you know Maugham’s Theatre?

  GROUCHO

  Yeah. Maugham was right. Show business people are different.

  I

  Did you always know you wanted to be in show business?

  GROUCHO

  Yeah. No, for a little while I wanted to be a doctor. When I was a boy, I wanted to be a doctor, like Dr. Beltrofer. He was our doctor when we lived on Ninety-third Street. But I knew pretty early, and I never wanted anything else.

  I

  Is there anything your friends have in common besides being writers or in show business?

  GROUCHO

  They’re all crazy.

  I

  Is that an essential prerequisite?

  GROUCHO

  Yeah.

  I

  Why?

  GROUCHO

  Because I’m half crazy.

  I

  Which half?

  GROUCHO

  Not the bottom half anymore.

  Groucho admitted that he had often played cards and golf mainly as an excuse for engaging in entertaining conversation. Harry Tugend remembered that Groucho’s propensity for talking could be a bit disconcerting on the golf course:

  “We used to play golf with him. Very few people did because he kept talking on the backswing as we tried to get the balls off. But he never knew what his golf score was and never gave a damn. It was a reason for taking a little exercise, although he’d been playing for forty years. Getting a little exercise, and talking.”

  But Groucho also listened. Although his friends may not have been in perfect agreement on everything about him, they all agreed that he was a good listener. He didn’t use the time while others were talking to plan his next remark. He placed a high value on being a good listener, and he frequently told me how annoyed he was by people who didn’t listen:

  “You’re a good listener. Some people never listen. At Hillcrest a man who wasn’t in show business sat at the roundtable where we’d eat lunch and tell funny stories. Somebody told a joke, and this fellow looked pretty sad. So someo
ne says, ‘It wasn’t that bad a joke.’ And this fellow says, ‘I feel awful today. The doctor said my mother’s dying.’ And at the other end of the table a voice says, ‘You think that’s funny, wait till you hear this one.’”

  Groucho had no difficulty in spanning the time from mah-jongg to backgammon by playing neither. Despite the interest of other members of his family in playing cards, Groucho never shared their enthusiasm for games. “I used to do some crossword puzzles,” he told me. Harry Tugend noted, “Groucho was interested in conversation with cards, while his brothers and even Sam and Minnie really took their card games seriously.”

  At dinner at Groucho’s, Arthur Sheekman and his wife, Gloria, told me how Groucho almost learned to play bridge. They had hired a very prim and proper little old lady to teach them the game. While Sheekman was away from the table, Groucho happened to mention with a lascivious leer, a furtive glance at Gloria in the kitchen, and a few suggestive raisings of his eyebrows that “Sheek lives with his sister, you know.” The bridge teacher made a hurried excuse, disappeared out the front door, and never returned.

  Many of his friends not only valued his friendship, but also felt that in ways big and small Groucho’s encouragement helped them professionally. Bert Granet recalled the time Groucho gave his film a totally gratuitous plug on You Bet Your Life—something money couldn’t have bought:

  “I was sitting there drinking some coffee and right in the middle of You Bet Your Life, he stopped and said, ‘You know Bert Granet. He’s my friend. He just made a picture, a very good picture.’ I’d spilled the coffee I was drinking. It was a completely unsolicited comment, and worth a lot. Now, if I’d turned around and asked him to plug that picture, he wouldn’t have done it.”

  He did much the same thing when Dick Cavett’s publisher asked for a book jacket endorsement for Cavett’s book on television. Groucho wrote it with an enthusiasm that in his case could only be genuine. When Groucho asked Dick Cavett for a picture, Cavett sent one of himself at about four years of age. Groucho immediately put it up on his wall.

  Generosity was conscious on Groucho’s part, and he was well aware of the value of what he gave. But he counseled me, “Never expect gratitude.”

  He enjoyed being an unofficial talent scout, something like a freelance baseball scout and an unpaid agent, promoting new young performers who then frequently became his friends. A young Steve Allen was someone for whom Groucho went around giving unsolicited testimonials. His respect for talent was great, and this respect was the basis for many of his friendships, old and new, from Jack Benny to Woody Allen. As a talent scout, Groucho had talent, having very early recognized performers like Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, and Marvin Hamlisch before they became major-leaguers. One he didn’t recognize, at least on their first meeting, was Bud Cort, who described for me what happened the first time he walked up to knock on Groucho’s front door:

  “I put up my hand to knock, but before I could knock, Groucho opened the door. He was so startled to see someone standing there, especially someone who wasn’t allowed to cut a single hair, and who had a beard and a ponytail. At that time I was with the Brotherhood of the Source, and I was working in their restaurant squeezing grapefruits. Groucho took one look at me, and he just slammed the door. I was almost as startled as Groucho when the door opened before I knocked.

  “About thirty seconds later, while I was still standing there, the door opened again, and this time Goddard Lieberson was standing there. He said, ‘Groucho, it’s Bud Cort.’ And Groucho said, ‘I thought it was Manson.’ That was how I met Groucho.”

  Groucho faithfully watched the performances of his friends on television. He believed that most of show business was now in “that box.” Usually right after the program, he would call up the friend to let him know how much he enjoyed his performance, but only if he really did. With Groucho and Erin, I watched Elliott Gould’s TV special, Out for Lunch. As soon as the film credits ended (Groucho always watched the closing credits), he reached for the phone. He was extremely conscientious in showing professional consideration and, without false modesty, recognized the value his friends gave to his opinion. Elliott Gould later told me how pleased he was when he received that phone call from Groucho.

  Sometimes Groucho had to face a friend whose work he didn’t like. This is a problem shared by everyone in show business. He was faithful to his friends, but he would endorse only what he really liked. His answer was often, “Well, I’m not crazy about it,” then he would get off the subject as adroitly and as fast as he could. In a case like this, a typical Grouchoism might have been, “It’ll be a big grosser. The biggest grocer I know is the A&P.”

  If he liked a film, he would stand up for it against a dissenting majority. Billy Wilder’s The Front Page got a rather mixed reaction at its showing in the Motion Picture Academy Theatre, but Groucho loved it. Afterward, out in front of the theatre, he went around telling everyone how much he liked it, challenging negative reactions wherever he ran across them. “It’s a pleasure to see two great actors in a well-written script. They’re both great actors [Lemmon and Matthau]. The credits were wonderful.” Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Billy Wilder were all Groucho’s friends, but his staunch support of the film was professional rather than personal.

  Even friends were known to flinch and tremble at Groucho’s candor. All of them at one time or another had a preview of coming detractions. Harry Tugend told of the time, shortly after World War II, when they ate at a Japanese restaurant where Groucho made a Pearl Harbor reference that Tugend found more discomforting than amusing. Groucho sat there looking as innocent as only the guilty can.

  Occasionally someone wasn’t at all entertained by one of Groucho’s unwise cracks. King Vidor told me, “A few weeks ago I went into the Polo Lounge with a friend, and I saw Groucho. I said, ‘Hello, Groucho, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine,’ and I introduced the fellow. And Groucho said, ‘Should I be impressed?’ I didn’t like it.”

  Friends and acquaintances in the show business world sought out Groucho’s opinion and sometimes regretted it. After the preview of Samson and Delilah, Cecil B. De Mille asked him what he thought of his latest epic. “I don’t think the picture’ll be a success,” Groucho answered quite matter-of-factly. Astonished, De Mille asked him why. “The leading man [Victor Mature] has bigger tits than the leading lady [Hedy Lamarr].” De Mille never consulted Groucho again.

  After Charlton Heston had just finished a film about Michelangelo, he met Groucho at a party. Heston commented on how expensive the film had been, and Groucho said, “You could have saved a lot of money if you’d painted the Sistine Chapel floor instead of the ceiling.” Heston did not find the joke exactly uproarious.

  Groucho had no regrets about those comments that were taken in the wrong spirit. “What’s done is done, and you can’t do anything about it,” he told me. On occasion, however, he was known to admit that he was sorry and not make a joke out of it.

  Bert and Charlotte Granet once received a note of apology, accompanied by a big basket of fruit, candy, and liquor, sent from the Hillcrest Country Club:

  Dear Granets,

  Sorry I blew my top.

  Groucho

  Charlotte Granet explained to me what had happened:

  “We had six tickets for a play, opening night seats in the eleventh row. We invited Groucho and Eden and another couple. It was quite a feat getting that many tickets and such good seats for a play everyone wanted to see. The theatre was packed with celebrities. James Garner, for example, was sitting five rows behind us. Everyone knew someone and still they had difficulty getting tickets.

  “Groucho minded not having house seats, the first four rows. He kept complaining. Eden was upset because she thought other people could hear him. After the first act, he said he didn’t like the play and that he was leaving. We said, ‘You’re our guests, we brought you here, and we’ll drive you home.’ But we weren’t thrilled about it.

  “The next time w
e were at a party with Groucho, there were bridge tables set up for dinner. I was sitting with Groucho, and when he’s made a mistake and knows he is wrong, he goes over and over it. He kept talking about the play and how bad the seats were and he couldn’t see or hear anything. He kept doing it and I just couldn’t eat. I got up and said to him, ‘You have bad manners,’ and I moved my chair to another table.

  “The next day the packages and the note arrived.”

  Although Groucho was a man of strong convictions and beliefs, he was willing to listen to new and different ideas, and even to change his mind if he thought he had been wrong. Fortunately, most people didn’t take his jokes seriously, even when they should have. On the other hand, sometimes he was taken too seriously. Bert Granet told me about an evening when Groucho’s humor failed:

  “We were giving a catered dinner party, and the attractive black maid who was serving Groucho offered him the turkey platter, asking, ‘White meat or dark?’ He looks at her and says, ‘I’ll have the dark meat. I’ll take you,’ whereupon she got on her high horse and walked out right in the middle of serving dinner.

  “Actually it was a joke that didn’t come off, but it was a shame because nobody thinks less about color than Groucho.”

  Groucho expected people to make themselves at home when they visited him, as I learned when I was staying with him, and he expected to make himself equally at home when he was a guest in a friend’s house. Bert Granet described what it was like to have him over for dinner:

  “When we used to invite Groucho over around the time of You Bet Your Life, he’d always make himself really at home. He’d sit at the end of the table saying, ‘I’ll sit at the head because I’m the oldest.’”

  “Dinner at Groucho’s was like a Cracker Jack prize,” Sidney Sheldon told me. “You could never be sure who you’d find there.” Bert Granet confirmed this.

  “At Groucho’s you’re likely to meet interesting people, and he mixes people in interesting ways. One night basketball star Wilt Chamberlain and Edward G. Robinson were invited to dinner. Eddie came up to Wilt’s navel.”