MORRIE RYSKIND
Well, Harpo did something else. He was playing the piano and stuck his head out the window. He also stuck out the lower part of his anatomy—right out the window.
GROUCHO
He was a wild man.
MORRIE RYSKIND
Harpo could get away with anything.
GROUCHO
I had his son here last week.
MORRIE RYSKIND
All of Harpo’s kids were adopted, weren’t they?
GROUCHO
Yes.
MORRIE RYSKIND
Harpo played with those kids—he was wonderful.
GROUCHO
You know, Harpo swore he’d never get married. Yeah, he was the one guy who would never get married. He went with three girls in his life, and they were all named Fleming. Well, there’s no business like show business. Do you believe that?
MORRIE RYSKIND
Yes, I do. Grouch was at his best when he felt that the audience responded. When he felt they were dull, he wanted to get the whole thing over with. It’s like anything else. Who was it who said that to have great artists you must have great audiences? If they don’t respond, they don’t get anything.
GROUCHO
When the market crashed, we were doing Animal Crackers, and that night I didn’t think or say anything that wasn’t about the stock market.
MORRIE RYSKIND
I don’t know what you said, but I was having dinner at your house the night the market crashed, with you and Max Gordon.
GROUCHO
At Great Neck?
MORRIE RYSKIND
At Great Neck, yes. (To me) For years Groucho had been trying to get me into the stock market. I didn’t know anything about it, but he was so sold on it, he finally got me to buy a hundred shares of something. We were out in Great Neck, and were playing golf one afternoon. About the third hole, Chico came up. And he could hardly breathe. He said, “Grouch, you gotta buy Canadian Marconi.”
GROUCHO
That’s what you bought, Canadian Macaroni.
MORRIE RYSKIND
Yeah. You did, too.
GROUCHO
I bought Goldman, Sachs. I lost my money in the best.
MORRIE RYSKIND
Wait a minute. I know what you did on this day: you bought Canadian Marconi. Back to the story, Grouch says, “Well, all right. I may pick up some tomorrow.” “Tomorrow!” Chico says. “By tomorrow that thing will have gone up twelve points and you won’t be able to buy.” Well, Chico walks around—and three holes with Chico and oh, boy! That guy! Groucho says, “Come on, Morrie. We’ve gotta get that stuff now.”
So we got into this cab—I think we’ve still got our golf shoes on—and Groucho says, “Hurry up, because the market closes at three o’clock.” We go to beat the band, and a cop stops us. We’re doing about eighty-two. He says, “Where do you think you’re going?” And this guy here (Indicating Groucho) says, “Look, Officer, I’m Groucho Marx and my wife is having a baby, and if I don’t get her to a hospital, she’s likely to have it right in the middle of the street.” And the cop says, “Do you want me to lead you—to escort you?” Now Groucho’s scared because the cop is gonna eventually know he’s going to the broker, and he’s not going home to his wife. So he says, “No, no,” and made up some excuse. We finally get to the broker, and it’s five minutes of three. Groucho can’t even talk by now, but he says, “Get me a thousand shares of…”
GROUCHO
Goldman, Sachs.
MORRIE RYSKIND
No, no. You said, “Get me a thousand shares of Canadian Marconi.” It was only about ten then. Then he turns to me and says, “Morrie, why don’t you get some, too?” I said, “But I don’t know anything about the market.” I used to wonder what those pages in the back of the paper meant. Groucho says to me, “Come on, Morrie—you’re beginning to make a little money.” So I said, “All right. Buy me a hundred shares.” That’s investing a thousand dollars. At that time, a thousand dollars…my God! So the next morning I am now an investor in the stock market, and I have now seen the insides of brokerage houses.
GROUCHO
Do you remember Gordon’s famous line when he called me up?
MORRIE RYSKIND
Oh, I don’t know. But I was with him in your house.
GROUCHO
“This is Salpeter,” he said. “The jig is up.”
MORRIE RYSKIND
He said it that day at your house, Groucho. That was the day of the crash. He was looking through the paper, and he had this punch line: “Well, I don’t have anything, but I don’t owe anything.” He was very happy, and Groucho thought they’d lost the house in Great Neck. Do you remember that night?
GROUCHO
I lost everything I had in the crash: $250,000.
MORRIE RYSKIND
I lost every penny I had: $2,800. I lost a little more than that. I had bought by that time some Peruvian bonds at the bank…
GROUCHO
I always used to like those.
MORRIE RYSKIND
The bank advised me. You know, I didn’t know anything. And then, when the crash came, I went down and said to them, “Can I sell these?” And they said, “Sell what?” It got to be in those days that the disaster was so overwhelming that everybody had it. It wasn’t like you were alone. We’d sit there, and we’d gag about stuff.
MARY RYSKIND
You should tell the story about the line you wrote for Groucho and what he did to you.
MORRIE RYSKIND
We had several moments in the show when Groucho would just have to sit on the stage and listen to Harpo and Chico. He’d go crazy. For Groucho to sit alone on the stage for two minutes and listen to somebody else and not say anything—you know what that is.
GROUCHO
Who’s talking?
MORRIE RYSKIND
Anyway, one night we had dinner, and he said, “Morrie, give me a line here, will you?” So I gave him a line the next night, and he fell off the chair laughing and roaring about it. He said, “That’s it! That’s one of the greatest lines I’ve ever heard.” I had a lot of respect for his judgment when he said things like that. So that night he tried it, and he advanced upon it the way Maggie Dumont would advance upon things: Groucho would explain to her that something was funny, and she would walk out to the audience and ask them what was going on. So here was Groucho. He walks downstage to front center and says this line. Not a snicker! Not a sound. Nobody laughed. Then he says, “Well, that’ll teach you one thing: don’t have dinner with Morrie Ryskind!” The audience roared. They loved it.
I
Do you remember the line?
MORRIE RYSKIND
No. I don’t. But a lesson I learned early was that if you wrote something and the audience didn’t get it, you tried something else that they would get.
GROUCHO
I remember a lot of lines. I saw them in the zoo a couple weeks ago.
MORRIE RYSKIND
And you’re the guy who sits around and sneers at puns! There is nothing like a good pun. They’re the greatest thing in the world.
GROUCHO
I wrote a few good ones. Want to hear one?
MORRIE RYSKIND
If you can do it while we’re eating, and it won’t interfere with our appetite, go ahead.
MARY RYSKIND
It’ll go with carrot cake.
GROUCHO
In Animal Crackers I said I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I don’t know. Then I had trouble getting the tusks out…
MORRIE RYSKIND
Tuscaloosa.
GROUCHO
Yes. That was my joke.
MORRIE RYSKIND
Let me tell you something that is very true, Grouch, Tuscaloosa may or may not be great, but when you say it, it becomes terrific. You had that aggressiveness when you came on.
GROUCHO
Hey! Do you want to watch my show tonight? At eleven o’clock?<
br />
MORRIE RYSKIND
Yes, sure. The great verve he had—that was the thing that made Grouch. He’d come in and attack.
You know, I got a call from somebody the other day. They wanted the rights to Animal Crackers on the stage. Can you imagine Animal Crackers without Groucho, Harpo, and Chico? You just can’t do it. You can write a show and then you cast it, as we did for Of Thee I Sing; but to write a show for the Marx Brothers, you must tailor it. Otherwise you haven’t got a show. Nobody gives a damn if the boy loves the girl or not. Berlin wrote some excellent music for our show, but nobody paid any attention, because these guys could ruin anything.
One day Chico came to Joe Santley and said, “Joe, are you gonna use me? If not, is it all right if I go out for about an hour? I’ve got a headache.” Joe said, “Sure, but be back.” So the hour came and passed. Joe Santley came in and said, “Morrie, where the hell is Chico?” I said, “I don’t know what the hell you let him go for.” He said, “Where could he be?”
So I had an idea. This was in Astoria, and I called up the New York Bridge Club, and I said, “Is Chico Marx there?” They said, “Yes,” and I said, “Tell him I want to talk to him.” They said, “He can’t talk now. He’s got a six-no-trump hand.” I said, “I don’t give a damn what he’s got. Get him over here, will you?” Chico had to grab a cab from there and come over for the scene.
GROUCHO
You know, somebody asked Chico how much money he lost gambling, and he said, “Find out how much Harpo has. That’s how much I lost.”
MORRIE RYSKIND
That’s so true. You fellows had to bail him out of Chicago…
GROUCHO
A couple times.
MORRIE RYSKIND
…or they would’ve killed him.
GROUCHO
When we were playing in Detroit, he disappeared for a week over in Canada, in Windsor, and Harpo and I had to do the show alone.
I
(To Morrie) What did you like best of the things you wrote for the Marx Brothers?
MORRIE RYSKIND
I think the general feeling is that A Night at the Opera was the best thing.
GROUCHO
Kalmar and Ruby had written an original script for A Night at the Opera, and we said it was no good. Thalberg said, “What do you want?” We said, “Get Kaufman and Ryskind.”
MORRIE RYSKIND
That’s when Thalberg called us up.
I
What were your impressions of Thalberg?
MORRIE RYSKIND
I’d known Thalberg vaguely before. He was a young giant around here, you know. At the age of sixteen or something, he was running Universal. Well, anyway, I knew Thalberg was a big name, and of course he’d done some big stuff. But when we came out here, I said, “I’m gonna work at the hotel, if you don’t mind.” He said, “I don’t care. Fine.”
So I’d work at the hotel, and when I finished about ten pages of script, I thought I’d come over, so I called him up, and I said, “I’ve got some stuff that I think you ought to see.” So when I got there, he sat there and read it, and he didn’t even smile. Never a crack. Now, by this time I’m dying, you know. Then he turned to me and said, “Morrie, that’s some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever read.”
GROUCHO
We asked George [Kaufman] what he thought of Thalberg, and he said, “He’s another Sam Harris.”
MORRIE RYSKIND
That’s as great a compliment I think you could ever pay anybody. Sam Harris was a great guy. I’ve never forgotten. Do you remember how we got Margaret Dumont?
GROUCHO
Through Sam Harris.
MORRIE RYSKIND
I wrote a line for this guy when we were trying out A Night at the Opera in Salt Lake. He tried it, and nothing happened. He says, “Morrie, let me do it again.” I’m the kind of guy who says, “I won’t argue with you,” so we did it again that night and for two days. In spite of everything, he kept trying it. Finally I said, “You’ve tried it four times. What the hell, if they don’t laugh at it now, they’re not ever going to laugh at it.” He said, “Just once more.” And he came out and he got one of the biggest laughs in the show. You know why? He’d put one of the accents in the wrong place, and what they were laughing at wasn’t the joke, but the wrong accent.
ERIN
There’s so much left out of the movie version of Animal Crackers.
MORRIE RYSKIND
Yes. But I think that these versions are all cut. Even when I see A Night at the Opera, I know there’s a scene missing.
GROUCHO
I remember one part that was cut. It was in a speech I gave. One line was “This would be a better world for children if the parents had to eat the spinach.”
MORRIE RYSKIND
I think my favorite scene for the boys was in Animal Crackers where they’re looking for the stolen painting, and they’ve gone all through the house, and no painting. So they decide to search the house next door. But there is no house next door, so they decide to build one! That, I think, is the best nonsense I’ve ever seen.
GROUCHO
The nonsense I liked best was when I dictated a letter to Zeppo. Hungerdunger.
MORRIE RYSKIND
You know, we never really gave a break to Zeppo because we couldn’t. But offstage Zeppo was a very funny guy.
I
Do you remember any examples of Zeppo’s humor?
MORRIE RYSKIND
I’ll tell you one story which I think is slightly risqué. Zeppo was, after all, my agent. There was a period of about a month once when I was trying to get ahold of Zeppo and couldn’t. I was getting bloody mad, and I was thinking, “Why can’t I get this guy?” So I raised a little hell, and finally he came up to me and I said, “Zep, I’ve been trying to get you for a month.” He said, “Well, I’m going to tell you something. I’m being psychoanalyzed.” I just looked at him. If you knew Zeppo the way I did, for Zeppo to ever sit down and say that…even if he actually was being psychoanalyzed! So I said, “For God’s sake, why?” He says, “I was masturbating.” Of course, that wasn’t true. He was giving an alibi. I said, “What happened? Are you cured now?” And he said, “No, but I know why.”
GROUCHO
You know who I’d have liked to have met? Somerset Maugham. He went to the opening night of Cocoanuts—he had to pay a hundred dollars for his seat because he couldn’t get a ticket for the damn thing. I always wanted to meet him.
MORRIE RYSKIND
He was one of my favorite authors, I think—one of the greatest guys of that period. I was stunned when I learned that he was…(Long pause)
ERIN
Bisexual.
MORRIE RYSKIND
I don’t know if he was bisexual or not. I thought he could picture men and women together so marvelously.
GROUCHO
He wrote Rain, and Sam Harris produced that. I want to tell a story. Am I permitted?
MORRIE RYSKIND
Yeah, but keep it dirty.
GROUCHO
After the Lindbergh baby was killed, there was terrible anxiety throughout the country. Nobody knew whose children were next to be grabbed. I was living out in a house on Sunset Boulevard, and I went to bed that night, and I heard a car in the driveway. So I looked out the window, and there was an empty car there—a Ford, an old Ford with nobody in it. So first I took Arthur and Miriam, and put them in my wife’s room and locked the door. I’m meeting Arthur for lunch tomorrow. He’s fifty years old now. Anyhow, the police came and took the car away. About half an hour later, I looked out the front door, and there was another car there. This was the maid from next door and her boyfriend making love in the car. That’s all there is to the story, except that ten years later I was at the Mayfair Club in New York, and I was dancing with Ginger Rogers, and Larry Hart came up to me and said, “Did you ever find out about that car in your driveway? It was me.” That’s the whole story. It’s not very interesting, so I think I’ll shut up a
gain.
MORRIE RYSKIND
I loved Ginger Rogers for one reason especially, and I’ve never forgotten her. I’d done a picture—I’ve forgotten which one—and I was over at RKO, and I’m walking along right in front of a newsstand. I saw Ginger. I hadn’t seen her since the theatre, so we embraced each other. On the stand was a picture of the cover of Photoplay or one of those things, and there was Ginger, the most glorious thing you’ve ever seen. And she said, “Morrie, tell me something: do you think I’ll ever look like that?” I think we’d better be going now.
GROUCHO
Aren’t you going to watch my show?
MORRIE RYSKIND
We’ll watch it at home. Of course we’re gonna watch it.
GROUCHO
Afterward I’m going to get a massage.
MORRIE RYSKIND
By whom?
GROUCHO
By a pretty girl. Maybe I’ll give her a massage.
MORRIE RYSKIND
May I have a copy of this Playboy? The one with your interview?
GROUCHO
Sure, go ahead. I haven’t read it yet.
MORRIE RYSKIND
Fat chance. I’ll bet you could recite it word by word.
MARY RYSKIND
Did you at least look at the centerfold?
GROUCHO
No, I’m not interested in naked broads.
MORRIE RYSKIND
When Harpo was going abroad, he bought a French book.
GROUCHO
Harpo was with a broad.
MORRIE RYSKIND
So am I. And I said to him, “What is this thing?” He said, “I’m going abroad, after all.” Harpo didn’t quite make the eighth grade, but he studied French. So I said, “What are you up to?” And he said, “I’ll tell you. Every day I start at the first page. That gets me sleepy, and I go to sleep. Then the next day I wake up and start at the first page again.” Here was Harpo, who was probably the least read of the brothers, and yet those guys loved him—Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw…
ERIN
Did he read their books?
MORRIE RYSKIND
I don’t know if he read their books, but they loved him. Harp, as I said, was a simple, outgoing person…
ERIN
But he had all these intellectual friends…
MORRIE RYSKIND
Hello, I Must be Going Page 44
