Hello, I Must be Going

by Charlotte Chandler

  GROUCHO

  That was a very funny speech you made at Benny’s tribute.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  It was all right, I guess.

  GROUCHO

  Well, they laughed at it.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  You played with Sarah Bernhardt, didn’t you, Julius?

  GROUCHO

  Yeah. She got a thousand dollars for each performance, and she got paid before she went on. She had one leg, and I had two legs, and I only got $200 a week.

  BILLY

  Was she any good?

  GROUCHO

  She hardly had a leg to stand on.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Well, in the first place, Billy, since there was no sound in those days, everybody projected and overacted. And she played plays by Racine and Dumas, like Camille and so on, and you could rant and cough and all. You had to project. Jolson never saw a microphone until he was age seventy. We had to talk to the audience. Mrs. Fiske was as close to the modern stage actress that I can remember. She and George M. Cohan could act in a theatre and play with their backs toward the audiences.

  GROUCHO

  It was safer that way.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Ears were attuned to listening to the actor. I played the Majestic Theatre in Chicago with Bernhardt. And do you remember her leading man, Julius?

  GROUCHO

  No, who?

  GEORGE JESSEL

  A big handsome French fairy. Before Sarah Bernhardt there was another Jewess by the name of Rachel, who they say was the greatest actress in the world. She was a very religious girl, and she slept with Napoleon III, Dumas, father and son, Victor Hugo, and the Empire City Quartet. When she died, she had a funeral cortege of a quarter of a million people to her grave on a rainy day in Paris.

  Now, I bought some books on her, and I wanted Lizzie Taylor to make a movie about her. But Miss Taylor had just married Dick Burton, and they stayed in bed for three years, didn’t read the book, and played gin rummy during short sessions. I always see this picture—and now you could do it in a movie, ’cause now you can do anything—of Rachel lighting the Sabbath candles on Friday, and having two guys waiting in the hay for her.

  GROUCHO

  And one was Chico.

  BILLY

  (To Jessel) Do you remember an act called Clark and McCullough? My dad talked about them.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Oh, my goodness, yes.

  BILLY

  What was their act like?

  GEORGE JESSEL

  Well, McCullough was to Clark as Zeppo was to Groucho. Bobby Clark was a very, very funny comedian, and beloved by the critics. There are certain comedians who are beloved by the critics, and can do no wrong. Ed Wynn, Bobby Clark…

  GROUCHO

  Jack Benny.

  GEORGE JESSEL

  …Jimmy Durante. And our host.

  Groucho made friends and influenced people for a long time, but not in the manner of Dale Carnegie. Walking with me in New York, Groucho was gleefully approached by a woman:

  “I’m very glad to see you, Groucho,” she bubbled.

  “You ought to be,” he said.

  Frequently when people he didn’t know were introduced to him in response to an effusive “I’m happy to meet you,” Groucho would say, “You ought to be.”

  On that day when he passed through the Pearly Gates, one could imagine St. Peter saying, “We’re so happy to have you here, Mr. Marx,” to which Groucho, halo askew, probably replied, “You ought to be.”

  Backward

  When I told Groucho that I planned to have a Backward instead of a Foreword, and that I planned to have it near the end of the book, he said, “Why don’t you have it in the front of the book?” I asked him why.

  “Because I’m backward,” he said. “I guess the Foreword should be in the back of the book, because by that time, you should know you don’t like the book. Of course, you could have the Backward in the middle of the book, then you’d only have to read half.”

  The idea to write this book grew out of Groucho’s pleasure over the interview he had done with me. He told me at that time that it was “…the only thing anybody ever did about me that came out right, where everything in it was the truth.” After the interview appeared, Groucho wrote this letter to Playboy:

  February 15, 1974

  Mr. Murray Fisher

  PLAYBOY

  919 North Michigan Avenue

  Chicago, Illinois 60611

  Dear Mr. Fisher,

  I went to Hefner’s house the other night to see the Ali-Frazier fight on closed circuit TV and I accidentally came across an advance copy of the March issue in the Ladies Room. I want to congratulate you on the excellent interview which your magazine printed about me in that issue. If I’d have known it was going to be that good I’d have charged you a veritable fortune for it, at the least a dozen boxes of Havanas. Did you know that Bill Cosby only gives me one at a time, and I have to supply my own Cuban?

  Charlotte Chandler did a magnificent job of reporting. She’s quite a dame. If I was twenty years younger I’d marry her and propose to you at the same time. She wrote everything I wanted to say without changing one word of my dialogue (for a change).

  Anyway, it was quite an evening. Ali won. I ate a piece of Barbi’s birthday cake and it wasn’t even her birthday, and the girls were beautiful. Good interviewers are rare. So was my steak.

  This has been quite a week and it’s only Tuesday. At the moment I’m as punchy as Frazier. I was just informed that I’m getting the Academy Award on April 2nd. Heaven help Ali when he meets Foreman. He better have a pistol in his hand. I’m rooting for him, he’s a fine boxer in the great tradition.

  I tried to call Charlotte Chandler to thank her, but found she has gone to Spain, so I got Spanish fly instead. If you ever see her again, tell her I’m prepared to give her the most priceless gift any man can ever give a woman.

  Hoping this finds you yours of the fifteenth—i.e., to wit in re the above; brevity is the sole of wit. Have you got one on you?

  My best to you and that peculiar gang at Playboy.*

  Forever,

  GROUCHO

  When Groucho and Erin called me in Barcelona, they just missed me. Then, as I was arriving at my hotel in Madrid, the concierge rushed up to inform me that there was a call from the United States, from the same person who had been trying to reach me for hours. The transatlantic phone call was from Erin to tell me that Groucho was going to receive the special Oscar and that he wanted me to come for the ceremony, which I did.

  At Groucho’s house, after returning from the dinner party that followed the Oscars, Groucho and Erin and I indulged in an alcohol-free toast.

  “To Oscar and Groucho, in reverse order,” I suggested.

  “No,” Groucho said, abstaining. “I should have had it sooner when Chico and Harpo were here.” He raised his glass. “To One Cheer—may she get a second one.”

  In December 1974, I was staying at Groucho’s house, where I shared his everyday-but-not-routine life from early morning until late at night, when we received word that Erin was returning from Paris and that Zeppo was arriving for a short visit. I started putting my things together to free his guest room. Groucho asked me where I was going and why. He was rather sharp.

  “Don’t you like it here?” he asked.

  I assured him that I did.

  “Then why are you going?”

  “Zeppo is coming, and he might want to use my room,” I suggested.

  “Zeppo likes you, and both of you can share the room.”

  “I’ve been here quite a while.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Groucho countered chivalrously.

  I gave him an oversize chocolate bar that I had brought with me for that moment of departure. Written on it was “Hello, I must be going.”

  He read it, and then said rather tenderly, “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Groucho, I want to stay. But I feel th
ere are only two times to go: too soon, or too late. I prefer to leave too soon.”

  He smiled and accepted my choice. I moved to the Beverly Hills Hotel, but stayed long enough to celebrate Christmas with Groucho.

  Any human life observed for a given time will be interesting, and it will also be boring, for real life is not paced like a film. The amazing thing is that Groucho actually was the sort of person who would have been a hero to his own valet, if he had had one.

  The mirror influences the reflection, and this portrait of Groucho has to have been influenced not just by what Groucho said and how he said it, but also by how I heard it. My intention was to be relatively objective; absolute objectivity is impossible, and perhaps not even desirable. One cannot really stand in anyone else’s shoes, and only subjective objectivity is possible. Therefore, this represents an impressionistic verbal portrait of Groucho.

  Groucho performed not only for audiences, but on audiences; just as Stokowski elicited different sounds from his players to suit the acoustics of different concert halls, Groucho adjusted his performance to suit the characteristics of his audience. I hope that he is presented here as seen and heard through many pairs of eyes and ears, as well as through my memories and impressions of his memories and impressions. He once suggested, long ago, that I call this book Groucho and I, but I preferred Groucho and i. It was my hope that he would speak for himself in this book. He always did anyway.

  A great deal of what Groucho says here has never been said before. Some of it has already been told or written about. But he was the sum of his eighty-plus years, and none of us really begins anew at any given moment. To edit out what he said just because he had said it before would distort any portrait of the man as he was. Also, for Groucho some of the old stories were the best, for they had stood the test of time. Nevertheless, in his middle eighties he came up with new material every day in Beverly Hills, smog or shine. He could still be the Groucho of the leering visage, but, being a humorist rather than a comic, he was sensitive to changing circumstances, so that his reactions changed too. He didn’t just depend on unwise cracks or lapse into his anecdotage. He still excepted rather than accepted the “normal” rules of social conduct per se. Somewhat straitlaced, very straight-faced, always evenly paced, he still disgraced the social Graces.

  Groucho had a strong style which is subject to analysis and to interpretation, to imitation, but not to duplication. He himself was not given to extensive analysis of his own style, or of anyone else’s. His tendency was toward the intuitive belief that feelings and emotions, happiness and luck, as well as humor, would vanish if subjected to undue introspection. Whenever I asked him any question that touched on his style, he avoided any erudite attempts to explain his humor, responding simply, “I’m a funny-looking jerk,” or, “I’m a character.”

  For Aristotle, the ethos of the speaker determined his credibility. Ethos represents the sum of overt and covert characteristics brought to the occasion from past and present situations by an individual. It determines his persuasiveness and success. Groucho’s ethos always greatly enhanced the humor of whatever he said.

  The monomial Groucho (whose first name alone was sufficient along with Bing, Liz, Elvis, and Jackie) was, even in his eighties, immediately recognizable. LeRoy Neiman, drawing him in New York, commented, “When you’re drawing a person, sometimes you discover that he’s already a drawing.” Groucho was a charismatic figure who made people smile when they saw him, laugh when he spoke. The image that he brought with him made things funny or funnier. Morrie Ryskind pointed out that when he told the same funny story Groucho had told, no one laughed. Groucho shunned mellifluous tones, vivid metaphors, soaring similes, but as Dick Cavett told me:

  “His voice has a magic ability to turn any straight line into hilarity. He says, ‘You certainly could have fooled me,’ or he says, ‘That’s the silliest remark I’ve ever heard,’ and it’s funny in Groucho’s voice.”

  While considering modesty a form of hypocrisy, Groucho perhaps best summed up his own irreverent attitude toward even himself in the title he suggested to me for this book: Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories.

  Groucho usually had the last word, and he ought to have it now.

  “What should it be, Groucho?” I asked him.

  “I trust you, One Cheer. You know me better than I know me.”

  I persevered. “I want it to be your word.”

  Groucho smiled approvingly, then spoke:

  “Selah!”

  Postlogue: “Never say goodbye, say auf Wiedersehen”

  When I left Groucho after meeting him for the first time, I was admonished, “Never say goodbye.” Groucho always expected me to remember this, even on the phone, and I did. “Until soon,” I would say instead. As our relationship grew, he ended long-distance phone calls with “I love you,” which replaced “Goodbye.”

  Groucho reminded close friends, “Say auf Wiedersehen. Hasta la vista. Au revoir. Say anything. But never say goodbye.”

  While Groucho never recommended old age as anything but the best of the available bad choices, he managed in many ways to live his late years quite fully, remaining active, productive, successful, and not lonely. The prayer he said every night before going to sleep best expressed for Groucho his philosophy of life:

  “Unborn yesterday, dead tomorrow; why fret if life be sweet?”

  GROUCHO

  This is the last year I’m gonna be around. I’m not sorry, because I’ve had a good life. I’ve been around nearly a hundred years and I’m tired. You know what I’m sorry about?

  I

  What?

  GROUCHO

  I’m not gonna get to read that book you’re writing about me.

  I

  Wait for me. If you could do that, I’d write slowly…

  GROUCHO

  I don’t want you to sugarcoat me. I’m no saint. You know how I can tell how old I am? Nobody ever says the word “death” to me anymore.

  You’d think nobody’s dying anymore. Death took a holiday. That’s when I knew how old I was. It’s like they keep saying, “You’re looking good, Groucho,” and I know what this old face looks like. I don’t talk about death ’cause there’s too much of it and nothing you can do about it.

  There was some pain, along with the great pleasure, for Groucho’s friends who knew him in his middle eighties. Saddened by the memory as he recalled the moment, Woody Allen told me, “I called him when he was in the hospital. He sounded very weak, but he seemed pleased I’d called. We talked, and he asked when I’d be in California, and we talked a little more, and then I realized he thought I was Cavett. It made me feel terrible.”

  In New York one afternoon LeRoy Neiman came by to see Groucho, who, in a rather expansive mood, talked more than usual. He told some favorite stories, some more than once. When LeRoy Neiman left, I walked to the elevator with him, and then returned to find Groucho looking depressed.

  GROUCHO

  Did I repeat myself a lot?

  I

  In the hall LeRoy told me, “He’s awesome. Thank him for me. It was a gas!”

  GROUCHO

  Someone told me Nunnally said I was telling him the same stories all the time.

  I

  I was with you at their house several times, and it didn’t seem that way to me. I’m certain Nunnally wouldn’t have said that.

  GROUCHO

  Do I do it with you?

  I

  I hear you tell some of the same stories many times because you’re telling them to a different person each time, and I happen to be with you. I think it would be difficult or impossible for anyone to know and see so many people and not ever repeat a story. Besides, you never tell it twice the same way.

  GROUCHO

  I’m not afraid of dying. The only thing I’m afraid of is senility. I don’t want them keeping somebody alive, somebody who used to be me.

  After Groucho’s spectacular eighty-fifth birthday party, the pageantry came to an en
d, and the public Groucho virtually disappeared. Then, following a hip operation and another stroke, Groucho could no longer take those treasured walks through Beverly Hills. The little things in life became increasingly a struggle. Groucho told me, “Nothing can be taken for granted.” The extraordinary life of Groucho Marx was in its waning phase.

  I remember our last phone call:

  GROUCHO

  How’s the book coming along?

  I

  When I started it, it was my hobby. Now I’m its hobby.

  GROUCHO

  We’ll be on all the talk shows together, except I’ll be dead.

  The hostilities which had always existed between Erin Fleming and Groucho’s only son, Arthur, accelerated. Erin, whose role in Groucho’s life was considered by some to be detrimental to Groucho’s well-being, was removed from her post as temporary conservator.

  Longtime friend Nat Perrin accepted the post himself, although he expressed the sad realization, “It’s not really Groucho Marx anymore. He seems in good spirits for a few hours, then tires rapidly and loses interest in staying awake.”

  Arthur and Erin faced each other in court, where the testimony was generally sensational. The sworn statements of witnesses depicted her as screaming, swearing, raging, threatening, slapping, physically shaking Groucho, generally tyrannizing him, and actually endangering his person. Erin denied these allegations.

  Indeed, there was room for a mitigating interpretation of the testimony. A partially deaf Groucho couldn’t hear her unless she screamed. A Groucho who was retreating from the rigors of life was sometimes jerked back from apathy into reality both verbally and physically by Erin in a manner regarded as cruel by some who knew and loved Groucho. Given the choice of Erin as she was or the loss of Erin, Groucho seemed willing to accept the Sturm und Drang and its repercussions. To at least some extent, he seemed to relish her fervor and his position as an object of passion. “Anyway, I know I’m still alive,” he told me once after one of Erin’s rampages. In court Erin asserted that Groucho had wanted to marry her or adopt her.