Hello, I Must be Going

by Charlotte Chandler

  GROUCHO

  He was half a horse?

  BILLY

  Yeah. He was the back end of a horse.

  GROUCHO

  Which year?

  BILLY

  I don’t remember, but this is my first recollection of you. And I remember you just roaring with laughter. Zep was a great storyteller, apparently, and he made you laugh. I’d only seen you make other people laugh, and he was the one who made you just buckle over with laughter. And I remember your telling me three or four years ago that Zep was the one man you thought was a terribly funny man and made you laugh.

  GROUCHO

  He was.

  BILLY

  I also remember you shooting pool at the Hillcrest house. And I remember you playing the guitar. I’m going way back.

  GROUCHO

  I played it today. Not pool, the guitar.

  BILLY

  There was a story that you told about one time…

  GROUCHO

  It’s not true.

  BILLY

  (Laughing) I’m sorry. But you were going to a pool hall in Philadelphia with Dad, and there were these pool sharks. They wanted to challenge you to a game, and you said, “I’ll be right back. I have a friend in town who plays, and I’ll come back and play with him.” You were an adequate pool player. You weren’t a great pool player…

  GROUCHO

  Chico was a great pool player.

  BILLY

  But what happened was, you left, went back to the hotel, and I guess it was Dad who came back with another guy. He broke and ran two hundred balls. The guy was pool champion Willie Hoppe.

  GROUCHO

  (To Jessel) Tell ’em about the owl.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Can you hear that again?

  I

  Groucho told me it was one of his favorite stories.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  I’ve told this story on several occasions. I told it at a dinner of The Lambs, which I resigned from years ago, to Alfred Lunt, a very sensitive guy. Particularly because of him, I gave the story a profundity it doesn’t deserve. Well, years ago, alas and alack, there was a thing called vaudeville, long since practically forgotten—a great lost art. And particularly in Chicago, where there was a circuit called the Western Vaudeville Circuit. The actors that played on this toured throughout Dubuque and Joliet, and maybe Toledo…

  GROUCHO

  I was one of ’em.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  …had no ambition at that time to go to Broadway or anything like that. They just wanted to earn enough money to spend the summer, maybe, in Muskegon or some summer place. There was a restaurant called Henrici’s on Randolph Street in Chicago where all the vaudeville actors either ate or stood outside. Most of them who weren’t working would keep the collar on from when they were working that had greasepaint on it so they looked like they worked the night before.

  Of this motley group there was an act called Pennavessi and Gilbow—a German comedian and his partner. They weren’t too good, but Mrs. Pennavessi was a very attractive blond girl, very corpulent and young, who was an idea of particular beauty in Lillian Russell’s day. The guy who booked the circuit was a man called Tink Humphreys. Every time Pennavessi and Gilbow needed any work, she’d go up and see Mr. Humphreys, and come down with at least a week’s work. They would wait patiently, and as they stood there, she came running toward them. “You got a week?” “I got three weeks! We open in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday.” “Jeez, how wonderful!”

  There were no contracts or unions then, so every town you played, if the manager gave a bad report, you were canceled. So, anyway, Pennavessi went one way, Gilbow went the other to tell their other fellow performers of their good fortune. Pennavessi walked into Peppino, accordion player. Peppino said, “What’s new, Penny?” “New? We got three weeks. We open in Dubuque on Sunday.” And Peppino says, “Jeez, I’m sorry you’re opening in Dubuque.” “Why? Is the audience bad?” “Well, that ain’t so bad. It’s a very old theatre, and there’s been an owl in the balcony for about thirty-five years. The manager’s very eccentric. I don’t care how big a hit you are with the audience, that manager looks at the owl, and if it hoots, he sends the act away.” So Pennavessi says, “Oh, what the hell. We get along with animals. We played with ostriches, Cohn’s crabs…”

  Now, the other guy, Gilbow, meets some friends of his, and he tells them about his good fortune. And his friend says, “I’m sorry you’re opening in Dubuque.” “You mean on account of the owl?” “Well, that ain’t so bad. But the stage manager is the best-looking man you ever saw in your life. Curly hair, open white shirt. Pennavessi will lose his wife sure as hell.” “No! She loves him.”

  Anyhow, they come to Dubuque. They come in to rehearse their music, and the stage manager sees Mrs. Pennavessi, puts her in the star dressing room. She’s not even in the act! He puts them down in the cellar with a pink stool.

  The manager is there, the owl is watching the rehearsal, and the show goes on. They go on to a very sparse audience and they tell a few jokes. By this time, the stage manager has his arm around Mrs. Pennavessi in the wings. She’s watching the show. The straight man sings a song, the comedian sings a parody. By this time, the stage manager is taking several physical liberties with Mrs. Pennavessi. And then they get to the big joke, and when the straight man says to the comedian, “Where did you move from Three Rivers, Michigan?” they look around, and the stage manager is doing it to Mrs. Pennavessi. And the straight man gives the cue again. “Where did you move from Three Rivers, Michigan?” Pennavessi says, “Jeez, look what that guy is doing to my wife!” And the straight man says, “Fuck him! Watch the owl!”

  BILLY

  Groucho, I always meant to ask you. Was it true that Dad had a couple of drinks one night and saw an adagio dance for the first time…

  GROUCHO

  A what?

  BILLY

  An adagio dance. You know, where the lady is thrown all over the place by the man. And Dad had a couple of drinks, and he never drank, and he’d never seen this kind of act before, and so he went out and started to attack the man?

  GROUCHO

  No. That’s not true.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  The funniest thing that ever happened in a vaudeville act was an act called Duffy and Sweeney.

  GROUCHO

  Oh, what a great act!

  GEORGE JESSEL

  And they were both drunkards. At the Winter Garden in New York, they would come out in some tights, or whatever they had on, and suck a lollipop. Duffy would say, “My partner will show you where a half-pint bottle hit him.” Sweeney had a cut in his head. Then he would say, “We’ll make up a song. Most people make up a song as they’re going along. We’re going to do it as it’s coming back. (Singing) See that gentleman over there? See that gentleman over there? You can tell he’s over there, ’cause I can see he’s over there.” Then they’d both get under the piano and they’d say, “Let’s phone the act over tomorrow.”

  Well, for New York, that was fine. But they played New Orleans, and the theatre had been a church, and the dressing room still had stained-glass windows. I was on the bill. They went on with their act, and they were hissed and booed. They wouldn’t get off, and then one of ’em said, “My partner’s just gone off the stage to get a baseball bat. He’s gonna walk through the audience and beat the Jesus outa you.”

  When they got to the dressing room, the manager said, “You can’t go on. You’re drunk.” Duffy said, “Would I do this if I was drunk?” And he pushed his hand through the stained-glass window and cut himself to pieces. Now, this is the finish.

  I had a guy with me whom you knew well. (To Billy) He was a great pal of your father’s—used to play pinochle with him. Sam Bennett. He was a very meticulous fellow, and he put the pants under the mattress at night to see that they were pressed. That kind of guy. He and Joseph L. Browning—remember him?—he and Browning were playing pinochle. It was an important hand. If yo
u play the hand in spades, it’s double. You lose double or you win double. A very important hand to Sam Bennett. He studied it quite a while. He needed 140 points, and he started to play the hand. Now Duffy—this is during Prohibition—had been drinking Ed Pinure’s hair tonic.

  GROUCHO

  That’s very good.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  He came in blind. And Bennett is counting his hand. In the meantime, Duffy’s peeing on him. All over his pressed suit, all over everything. Bennett never said a word, and he never stopped counting until he got 140 points. Then he turned around and hit Duffy in the nose.

  GROUCHO

  My father went into business with a colored man, and the name of the act was Marx and Washington. The colored man’s name was Washington. They weren’t in show business. They were in pressing. They got a new kind of pressing machine to press trousers and they expected to press about 500 pair of pants a day, but they only pressed three pair of pants a day. They went bankrupt because they had paid about $500 for this machine. It was a new machine that pressed pants very rapidly. They had a lot of spare time. But isn’t that a great name for a vaudeville act, “Marx and Washington”?

  GEORGE JESSEL

  In those days in vaudeville when you got to the stage door, there was a big sign: “Any act mentioning ‘damn,’ ‘hell,’ or ‘God’ will immediately be dismissed. Do not send your laundry out until we have seen your act.”

  GROUCHO

  (To Jessel) I wanna ask you: Did you ever play the Gus Sun Circuit?

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Sure. East Liverpool, Ohio, Springfield, Hamilton…

  GROUCHO

  I know. He used to book in ten acts, and they’d all go on the first show. Then he’d pick five of ’em, and throw the rest out. There were no contracts in those days.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Now there’s one about George M. Cohan that you’ve gotta hear. Did you know John Golden?

  GROUCHO

  Of course. Very well.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Cohan hated John Golden. When Cohan didn’t like anybody, he used to tell me how he’d get rid of a guy. He had a signal. When Cohan and I would be sitting in the Plaza, if a guy he wanted to get rid of walked over, he’d say to me, “Do you know Jim?” And I’d say to the guy, “Would you please leave us alone. We’re talking business.” As soon as Cohan said “Jim,” I knew that he thought the guy was a louse.

  Now, Golden owned part of the Grand Opera House with Cohan in Chicago. He got hold of me and said, “I can’t see George Cohan, and this is business. You’re with him every night. Tell him I want to see him on business. No show business. This is to make money. I want to get rid of the theatre.” I said, “I’ll fix it. We see very few people, and when we don’t like a guy, we call him ‘Jim.’ That means we get rid of him, but I’ll arrange for you to meet him.”

  So I told George, “Look, Golden’s got some business with the theatre. Meet him tomorrow in the bar in the Plaza, the Oak Room.” He said, “Oh, Christ, I’ll meet him. But you come in ten minutes later. I don’t want to sit with the guy.” Ten minutes later, I came in, and Cohan was talking to Golden. As I came in, George said to me, “You know Jim Golden, don’t you?” And Golden ran out of the building. Cohan said, “I told you that guy was crazy.” I said, “No, I told him about the guy named Jim.”

  GROUCHO

  I was a song plugger for Jerome Remick. I sang a song in Philadelphia standing in a theatre box, and I got twenty-five dollars every week for singing (He starts to sing) “In dear old Georgia, my southern home.”

  GEORGE JESSEL

  (To Billy and me) That’s how they used to get acts to sing a song. Then they sold sheet music, you see.

  GROUCHO

  We were called song pluggers. I was a song plugger, and so was Ruby.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Then Ruby did a vaudeville act with Harry Cohn. Ruby played the piano, and Harry—he called himself Harry Edwards—sang songs. And Jack Benny was just a plain violinist, no jokes. Cantor used to do a funny thing. He’d say for several people in the audience to pick out cards, anywhere. He’d give out about ten cards, and then say, “All right, now look at them and remember what they are. Thank you. And now I will sing you a new song.” You could do anything then. And if a guy had a writer, oh, my goodness! If you didn’t do your own stuff, you were really a bum.

  GROUCHO

  I was crazy about writers.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  You didn’t need them.

  GROUCHO

  Yes I did.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  You needed a premise.

  GROUCHO

  (Singing) “Oh, premise me…” (To Billy) You found out who your real mother and father were, didn’t you?

  BILLY

  Yeah, I found out. One was a Jewish-Polish cantor.

  GROUCHO

  Like Eddie?

  BILLY

  No, not like Eddie. A real Jewish cantor. And one was a Polish-Catholic piano teacher. I found this out quite by accident. They were both very musical, and that’s how I got some music in me.

  GROUCHO

  How did you learn to play the piano?

  BILLY

  By force.

  I

  When did you start playing?

  BILLY

  Alex Woolcott used to come over when I was about two or three years old, and put me on his knee and say, “I’m just a widdle wabbit wunning awound in da sunshine.” That’s what he would say to me and bounce me on his knee. And I would proceed to hum some theme from a Beethoven symphony—I don’t know what it was. Then one day when I was five years old, Dad decided I should take piano. And that’s when I started taking piano lessons. But I remember Woollcott bouncing me up and down. And I don’t remember him at all. I just remember being bounced up and down. And I remember not seeing Woollcott ever again. He died not long after.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  He was in love with your father.

  BILLY

  I think he was. I really believe that.

  I

  Who were some of the other people you remember coming to your house?

  BILLY

  You know, the night I remember more than any other was when all five Marx Brothers showed up. Dad usually spent his time at the [Hillcrest] roundtable with famous people—(To Jessel) like you and the others. But there were rarely famous people at our table at night, because he wanted to spend it with the family. So it’s hard for me to remember. The one night I remember at our house more than any other was when all five brothers were there, and Zeppo was telling these stories, and Groucho was falling literally on the floor with laughter. And I remember turning to my mother and saying, “I’ve seen Groucho laugh. I’ve seen him smile. But I’ve never seen him have tears in his eyes with laughter.” That’s one night I remember. I just don’t remember famous people being over there, or any of that nonsense.

  I

  Was it rare that the five Marx Brothers were all there together?

  BILLY

  Very. In fact, that was the only time I saw them all together, except at Hillcrest.

  I

  Do you remember that night, Groucho?

  GROUCHO

  Not very.

  I

  (To Billy) Do you remember the first Marx Brothers picture you ever saw?

  BILLY

  The first movie I ever saw was The Big Store, at the Orpheum Theatre. My dad took me, and at the end of the picture…

  GROUCHO

  Harpo was on roller skates.

  BILLY

  So were you. Only there was somebody playing you who didn’t look like you. It was another person.

  GROUCHO

  That was me. I was playing the stunt man.

  BILLY

  There was a double for you. And there was a double for Harpo. I couldn’t stand the ending of it. That bothered me.

  GROUCHO

  Why didn’t you leave?

  BILL
Y

  I couldn’t. Dad was fascinated.

  I

  Did your father like to watch his films?

  BILLY

  I have no idea. That’s the only film I ever watched with him. Other than Night in Casablanca. Most people don’t like Casablanca, but I like that film. I thought it was a good film.

  GROUCHO It’s one of the worst pictures we ever made.

  BILLY

  I know, but I liked it.

  I

  Which are your favorite Marx Brothers films?

  BILLY

  Horse Feathers. And then Duck Soup and A Night in Casablanca. If you ask me which is the best picture they ever made, it’s Night at the Opera. But if you ask me what’s my favorite picture, it’s Horse Feathers and Duck Soup, and then Night in Casablanca. I think they’re funnier. And then I like Monkey Business. I like the Paramount pictures better. I really do. They’re funnier. I don’t feel they’re as good, but I like them more.

  I

  Which picture did your father like best?

  BILLY

  Duck Soup. That was his favorite film. I would say that of all the pictures, the really best comedy is in Night at the Opera. But as far as just sustaining my interest, it seems to me Night at the Opera took away from the Marx Brothers. Like there were production numbers and a lot of stuff, but what I really wanted to see was the Marx Brothers.

  GROUCHO

  (To Jessel) Tell ’em about Norma Talmadge.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  She was a wonderful woman. Until the third drink, she had the manners of a princess. Courted, she was like a queen. Third drink, she’d pee on the floor.

  GROUCHO

  Tell ’em about the diamond ring.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  I don’t remember. She threw the ring in the toilet?

  GROUCHO

  You had a fight, and you gave her the ring, and she threw it back at you. She said, “I don’t want anything at all to do with you.” (To Billy and me) So she threw him out and slammed the door. He rang the bell, and she opened the door. He said, “I’m sorry I can’t make up with you, but is it all right if I use the swimming pool?”

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Yeah, yeah. That’s true.