Groucho
Part 1
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 6/4/99
Comics Buyer's Guide
REVISED SOMEWHAT 8/18/17
He sounded like a terrorist on the phone. "Groucho is going to die tonight," he said, feeling as utterly ambiguous about that prognosis as I did. It was August 18, 1977 and he was wrong. Groucho didn't die until the following day.
The caller was a friend who shared my fascination and interest in the man born Julius but known ubiquitously as Groucho Marx. And this was no fanatic, faddist cult we were part of, not a chance. We were but two of the many who have seen and relished Marx Brothers movies and come away, able to parrot, verbatim, chunks of Groucho patter.
We were all saddened at the cessation of Groucho, though perhaps not with the timing. Those of us who saw the man in his later years were saddened by his deterioration. Old age is poignant in many ways but it was notably sorrowful in a man famed for his rapier wit. Always so quick, always so clever, the words now came slowly and painfully for Groucho and they were usually words uttered before and with better timing.
(Is there no spectacle more woebegone than a great man within spitting distance of being declared Past Tense? Stan Laurel, in his declining years, wisely eschewed public appearance in the face of exorbitant offers. He wanted the last remembrance of Stan Laurel to be of the vague little man, eyes epoxied half-shut, juxtaposed with Oliver Norvell Hardy, not of an old man who couldn't recognize the time to get off the stage.)
Groucho's death was, of course, expected. Earlier that same week, not so expected, Elvis Presley had died. When Elvis expired, all three TV networks quickly cobbled up "Man and the Legend" specials to air that very night. If you tuned in any (they were all the same) you heard people who were fourteen when "Heartbreak Hotel" hit — or perhaps sixteen for "Return to Sender" — talk about how Elvis had changed their lives.
Okay, so maybe he did. Then Groucho died and all us Marx fans waited for similar specials. Surely, considering the number of times he had recently been shunted to and from hospitals, there were documentaries all racked up to go: Reels of career retrospect to be aired along with celebrity reactions and details of the passing. So we waited.
Nothing.
The Tonight Show started right on time despite the fact that John Davidson was guest-hosting and delaying him a half-hour scarcely needs much of a reason. A week or two later, ABC — with no advance ballyhoo at all — trotted out a quickie with Dick Cavett hosting old clips.
(Though I suppose we should be satisfied; when each of the original Three Stooges died — not that they're in quite the same category as Groucho — the networks took no note at all. One of the Los Angeles stations, upon the death of Larry Fine, did a little mini-obit within its regular newscast in which they interviewed Moe Howard. Moe was in tears, his lower lip trembling as he spoke of how he had lost his best friend, Larry. They cut directly from this to a vintage clip of Moe smashing crockery in his best friend's face and ripping handfuls of hair from his best friend's head. A few months later when Moe died, they simply replayed both segments. Grisly.)
It was all a bit disconcerting, I suppose, because Groucho Marx had meant a lot in a lot of our lives. What follows are a few of his intersections with mine.
Let's change her name to Pauline because I've never known a girl named Pauline. She was very, very pretty in a way that could set your gonads registering Ten on the Richter scale. And I wanted to go out with her. Boy, did I want to go out with her. She had been seated next to me in my Physiology class back in High School and I'd had a hard time learning anything because of the proximity of Pauline's Physiology.
And now here it was a few years later and we were both in college, though not — for the good of my academic standing — in any of the same classes. I wasn't certain that she remembered me so it was hard to summon up the chutzpah to approach her on campus.
I had opportunities by the fleet rate: Every day, I saw her walking around, usually alone. It would be of little danger to just stroll up to her, ever so nonchalantly, and strike up some wondrous reminiscence over our mutual frog-dissection. But still…
Has there never been the man with enough fortitude to risk failure even when he knows it won't hurt too badly? I mean, what was I risking by striking up a conversation with the lady in question? A smidgen of my ego, already stockpiled in quantity? "What," I asked myself, "is the worst that can happen?"
I thought for a second and answered myself: "She could scream and start throwing heavy objects at you." No, I didn't think that was possible. Still, I was hesitant. Always, there's that mental leash that, as soon as you say I'll do it, says No, you won't. Every time in my life that I've ignored that leash, no matter what it was preventing me from doing, and pressed onward, it has turned out to the good for me. But it's there and sometimes we all let it restrain us.
That's why we love watching Groucho: There's nothing he won't do. He'll accost any woman with the most salacious of overtures and the ones not worth accosting, he'll insult. In A Night at the Opera, when a pompous official is about to read what promises to be pompous — and long — speech, Groucho merely steps up and makes confetti of it and that ends that. Wouldn't we all like the nerve to be so brazen?
In Duck Soup, newly-installed as the President of Freedonia, he earnestly and openly promises to get the country into war, raise taxes, and make certain that anything anyone enjoys will be promptly banned. Who, apart from Walter Mondale, has ever declared such a platform? Before that, in Horse Feathers, he is a college dean who steadfastly vows to eliminate all vestiges of learning. No one in all of moviedom ever got to a point so quickly.
Finally, I decided to lay my tremulous self-esteem on the line and approach the fair Pauline. The very next time I spotted her on campus, I swallowed hard and advanced.
I saw her walk into the campus cafeteria and the residue of Cowardice within me demanded that I make it look like a chance encounter. Circling around to another door, I emerged into the seating area just as Pauline was coming out of the cafeteria line with a tray of Jell-O and yogurt. "Well," said I through a Niagara of Flop Sweat, "Fancy meeting you here!"
She seemed to have no objection to my sharing her table so I sat down and launched into my wittiest repartee. She laughed at the jokes. She even laughed at the straight lines. Today, I know better and shun such women as if they have bubonic plague. Back then, I was eighteen and not so discerning.
One of the things she laughed at was when I mentioned the Alps and then said "And the lord Alps those that Alp themselves." Then, giving credit where due, I added, "That's from Horse Feathers, with the Marx Brothers, of course."
"I've never seen the film," Pauline replied.
"Well," I said, "it may not be as good as A Night at the Opera, but it's certainly a good film."
"I've never seen that one, either."
"How about Duck Soup?" I asked.
"Never saw that one."
"Day at the Races?"
Nope.
"Monkey Business?" I acted horrified at this life-pattern that was emerging. "Surely, you've at least seen Monkey Business!"
"I've never seen any Marx Brothers movie," she said.
I did about four minutes on how she was missing out on one of life's great experiences (I think I even added "besides me, of course." I was really spreading the Bandini around that day). I finally got around to remarking, "Say, I think the Encore Theatre is showing a couple of good Marx Brothers films this week."
I was still maintaining this conversation on a purely platonic plateau which, in addition to being tough to enunciate is also much safer when you're not certain if she's married/engaged/dating a gorilla/whatever. I said, "Tell your boyfriend to take you to see them." Then I began silently praying that she would say, "I don't have a boyfriend at the moment."
Pauline said, "I don't have a boyfriend at the moment." Heaven.
I wish I could give this whole story a happy ending, especially in light of how morose this article will be getting. Pauline and I were an item for a few months but we didn't get married and have four kids named Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo. It would make a nice ending but it just didn't happen. Sorry.
I never thought it was possible to actually meet the Only Groucho. Given that he seemed to exist in a different reality, and on the screen instead of real life, there didn't even seem to be any point to fantasizing about it. But then one Sunday afternoon around 1969, I found myself at the Hillcrest Country Club, which was and still is just outside the city limits of Beverly Hills, California.
Hillcrest was founded by the wealthier and Judaic folks of Hollywood after being refused admission to other, non-Jewish country clubs. Upon entering, I had always been reminded of the anecdote about when Groucho applied to a restricted club and was told flatly that Jews weren't allowed in the pool. To which he replied, "My daughter is only half-Jewish. Can she go in up to her knees?"
In order to become a member of Hillcrest, your family had to be (a) wealthy and (b) Jewish. My family was just half-(b) but we had some friends who were 100% both and they occasionally invited us there. I remember on the way in that day, seeing the famed Comedians' Round Table. Gathered around it, telling anecdotes between bites of bagel and lox, were Jack Benny, George Burns, Danny Kaye, Phil Silvers, Milton Berle, Jan Murray, a gent I think was Larry Gelbart, one token non-Jew (Danny Thomas) and one or two others. The visual — just seeing them all there — was so exciting, I didn't even think of who wasn't there. Groucho wasn't there.
Neither was George Jessel but when I went to the men's room, I spotted him sitting at a bar in the next room. He was wearing a suit that Spike Jones would have rejected as being in bad taste, and he had a dozen or more military-style medals pinned over the breast pocket. He was loudly lecturing a long-suffering bartender on how any day, the exalted President Nixon would do the right thing and round up the staff of The New York Times and execute them for treason. I do not recall this happening.
Again, everything was so fascinating that I didn't think, "Hey, I wonder if Groucho is here." But soon after, I was loitering at the buffet spread because they were out of breakfast steaks to go with my pancakes and sausage — the place isn't that Jewish — and someone was allegedly bringing more out. Just then, the man next to me said, "Try the whitefish." I looked over towards him.
It was Groucho Marx.
Here's what I was talking about with that mental leash: All the time around Hollywood, I spot celebrities. I can spot an old character actor at a hundred paces. Very rarely do I approach any of them. I'm about to, but then that leash yanks me up short and says, What are you going to say to him/her? You'll only make a fool of yourself.
If I had seen Groucho across the room, I probably wouldn't have hustled over and said howdy. He was once rude to some friends of mine who waited for him outside a Dick Cavett taping. Erin Fleming, acting as go-between, said, "Groucho, these boys would like to meet you," to which Groucho responded, "Well, they've met me," and kept on walking. I wouldn't have wanted that to happen, so I was glad to be forced into a spot where I had to speak to the man, even if it was just for a moment.
"I said, try the whitefish," he repeated. And I could feel my brain laying rubber, racing for something to say back.
"I thought the password was Swordfish," I finally replied.
"Are you one of those kids who's seen every one of my movies a hundred times?"
Acting a shade embarrassed, I said, "A thousand times."
"Which one is your favorite?"
"Either A Night at the Opera or Horse Feathers," I responded. "Depends on which one I saw last."
"Which one did you see last?"
"A Night in Casablanca," I told him.
"Oh, that was a piece of…" and here he used a word that they won't let me use in this publication.
We talked for ten minutes about nothing worth preserving for posterity. He mentioned the name of George S. Kaufman and grumbled about how kids my age had no idea who Kaufman was. I said I certainly did know who Kaufman was and I recited enough play titles to prove I wasn't bluffing. He was pleased at that; more so that I also knew who Franklin P. Adams was and that I'd been motivated to read up on them (and Alexander Woollcott and Marc Connelly, et al) by mentions in books by and about the Marx Brothers.
I told Groucho about how I'd wooed ladies by whisking them off to Marx Brothers films. Groucho was quite interested in that. He said, "Imagine kids getting laid because of our movies. I couldn't get laid because of them."
At a gracious moment, I returned to my table, thinking loudly that I could now boast of having met Groucho Marx…perhaps the only person alive I really wanted to meet. It was at that moment, I believe, that I lost what little "star-fever" I might ever have had. After all: Once you meet Groucho Marx, who is there to get excited about?
I didn't expect to ever be in the same room with him again but as it turned out, I was — several more times. I'll tell you all about them next week…