Brief Encounters Read online

  For a long time after this I was spooked about getting behind the wheel under anything but a sunny sky with a cloudless horizon.

  That sudden utter loss of control was bad-dream material happening in waking life. It was akin to suddenly going blind or becoming paralyzed. A vital element of the life and the world you knew was suddenly gone. Control was gone. You were plunged from normal existence into helplessness. Anything you did made things worse.

  That summer I’d been in a production of Richard III (Shakespeare’s, of course, as distinct from, say, Soupy Sales’s Richard III), and a line from it sounded in my head the next morning. All night the darkest aspects of the experience had replayed themselves in fitful dreams. And in that way of dreams, the psychic pain was somehow worse than in the actual events. The bard’s line that sounded was, “I would not spend another such a night / Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days.”

  Nor another such a day.

  What can we learn from this? What’s the moral here? Just this. If you ever get caught in this bad-dream situation with that ogre from hell, Freezing Rain, when the wipers stop removing the drops,

  (a) Take your foot off the gas.

  (b) Hope it is a dream.

  MARCH 16, 2012

  Groucho Lives! (In Two Places)

  For the Groucho Marx fans of this column who continue to plead for more, the information contained herein, if new to you, might just make your day.

  There are two very different books out, both of which are musts to grace the bookshelves of the Groucho addict: Robert Bader’s Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales: Selected Writings of Groucho Marx and Steve Stoliar’s Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House.

  Those who may have read these books when they first appeared need not feel left out. Both are updated and expanded editions. Both contain abundant new stuff.

  Woody Allen has said that of the greats, Groucho had the richest number of gifts. He could sing, dance, and act, and beyond those fairly common gifts, when you add the distinctive voice, faultless instinct for wording, genius wit, hilarious physical movement, rich supply of expressions, and physical “takes”—and the list goes on—it arguably adds up to the most supremely gifted comedian of our time.

  And there’s one thing more. He could write. A born scribe. And many a Groucho fan is unaware of the degree to which this was true.

  This problem has been put to bed by Bader’s book. (Full disclosure: I know Rob from the masterful job he did putting together the Dick Cavett Show DVD sets.) Bader, too, can write, and in a fresh, humorous, scholarly, and entertaining way, with shrewd analysis and observations about the products of Groucho’s pen and typewriter.

  If your reaction to this is “So what did he write?” this book holds the answer. In his early years, and aside from his books, Groucho’s written pieces appeared widely, including in the beloved magazine College Humor and, yes, The New Yorker. Bader has found and retrieved priceless specimens of Groucho’s impressively large output from all over, some of the pieces early enough to have been bylined “Julius H. Marx,” Groucho’s vrai nom. Open the book to any page and try not to laugh.

  Prime among the delights for me are speeches Groucho gave at colleges and elsewhere through the years. As you read them, it’s almost like having him present. So tone-perfect are these pieces that you can’t help hearing the famous voice and its witty inflections in your mind’s ear. It’s a wonder.

  A Marx Brothers fanatic virtually from birth, Bader is an intrepid researcher and gets stuff nobody’s got. For another, coming book, he can be found one day in the Lincoln Center Library or, on another, in local newspaper files in, say, Red Oak, Iowa, sleuthing out yellowing local Marx Brothers clippings, reviews, and material from their vaudeville days.

  Groucho preferred the company of writers to that of actors. In Los Angeles, when he took me to the Hillcrest Country Club for lunch, he steered us past a table of beckoning movie faces to the writers’ table, where I met fabled “names” from a lifetime of reading screen credits. He told me once, “I’d rather be known as an author and remembered for my writing than for all the rest of it.” (He told others that, too, of course.) He was immensely proud of having been a houseguest of his pen pal T. S. Eliot. The only problem, he said, was that Eliot kept addressing Groucho’s then wife, Eden, as “Mrs. Groucho.”

  Groucho was a well-read, well-educated man (the “self-” method) and the only ninth-grade dropout I ever met who had read all of Iris Murdoch’s novels. I think he was quietly delighted when I, with my (envied) Yale degree, had to confess to having read not one.

  Steve Stoliar, while still college-aged, was part of the successful campaign to force the 1974 rerelease of Animal Crackers, the Marxes’ 1930 film, then inexplicably in mothballs and in danger of being lost, deteriorated, and forgotten. This brought him to Groucho’s attention. Sufficiently impressed by Steve’s knowledge of the world of Marx, Groucho offered him a job and he “woke up” inside his hero’s house, transformed from mere fan into archivist, general amanuensis, and companion to his personal god. A dream that he hadn’t dared to dream had come true. How many of us can say that?

  Raised Eyebrows is an invigorating read. A gulping Stoliar got used to opening the front door to a who’s who of the arts and letters: S. J. Perelman, Bob Hope, Steve Allen, Morrie Ryskind, Jack Lemmon, George Burns, and many more cherished friends.

  Guests, after dinner, were treated to a cabaret with their host by the piano singing, with perfect pitch, “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady,” “Father’s Day,” “Show Me a Rose,” “Omaha, Nebraska (in the Foothills of Tennessee),” and other favorites, often with Marvin Hamlisch volunteering at the keyboard.

  Raised Eyebrows could easily have been written as a delightful memoir only. It is that, but much more. There’s no way Stoliar could have avoided dealing with the rhino in the room: the enigmatic, half-mad Erin Fleming, the young woman who came into Groucho’s life at a crucial time and who became, in a complex and bizarre way, his Lady Macbeth. As you’ll see, she was equally adept at doing wondrous things for Groucho, and appalling ones.

  Depending on whom you ask, she was either the best or worst thing that could have happened to the aging star, who provided her a pass into a world of fame and the big time that she could never have otherwise achieved. In my view, she was both: the worst and the best. Young and pretty and vivacious when Groucho met her, Erin and her ambition worked—some would say wormed—their way into his home and she became, in effect, his life manager. Her story as told by Stoliar is the stuff of one swell hair-raising novel or movie.

  On the plus side, she got Groucho up and out of near despair at a time when he was feeling forgotten. (A woman who lived near Groucho described how, in a deeply lonely period of his life following a divorce, he would walk his dog in front of his neighbors’ homes, hoping, she said, to be invited in for a drink, a visit, or a meal. That gets to me.)

  Another paradox about Groucho was the contrast between his claim to be shocked by the dirty talk and material of the 1960s and ’70s and his own propensity for the hilarious filthy remark.

  “I don’t belong in this age,” he said once on my show, where he also discussed the Broadway musical Hair and its then shocking nudity. “I was going to go buy a ticket,” Groucho said, “but I went back to my hotel room, took off my clothes, looked at myself in the mirror, and saved eight dollars.” (He’d have saved a lot more today.) Would-be comedy writers: note the perfect ad-lib wording, syllable count, and cadence.

  Bader did some bowdlerizing of Groucho’s stuff in the original edition of his book, and has kicked himself for it. In the interval he decided to restore everything, feeling it was not his duty to deny the reader Groucho unadulterated. (Congratulate me for not using the phrase “letting it all hang out.”)

  Stoliar’s update on Erin Fleming revisits the old question about whether she eventually attained the state of genuine madness. Long-memoried viewers of Ted Koppel’s Nightline, on th
e very night the verdict in the crazy Erin Fleming v. Bank of America trial came down against her (there is much to Google on this case), would not need a degree in psychiatry to diagnose what appeared to be someone certifiably unhinged. Imagine the lack of charm and appeal it would take to cause a jury to decide against a young woman, in favor of so revered an institution as a bank! At one point, viewers of news coverage of the trial got to see Fleming point across the courtroom and shriek at a Bank of America attorney, “That man murdered Groucho Marx!”

  Stoliar’s update section also includes some fascinating information about Erin’s mystery-enshrouded demise.

  The truth is, Marx devotees will need to get both books. And if you’re not a devotee, get them anyway. Fix a drink, light a fire (I won’t add “only if you have a fireplace”), put one book on each side of you, and dip alternately. There are so many worse ways you could spend your time.

  Trying as usual to think of how to close this off—a problem Groucho never had in his letters—I remembered an example. He once ended:

  Well, Richard (I’d say “Dick” but my secretary is a spinster), I’m running out of things to say. And they should be running out of me.

  Anyway, good-bye ’til hell freezes over. And if you’ve read this far, there’s something wrong with you.

  Groucho

  MARCH 30, 2012

  They Dressed Like Groucho

  You could say, with partial plagiarism: It was the best of nights. It was the worst of nights.

  I remember thinking that it might be a long time before I saw so many happy people in one place. The place was Carnegie Hall and the people were fans—worshippers might be the more appropriate word—of Groucho Marx.

  At least half the eager throng was a young, college-type crowd; it was at the peak of the time when the Marx Brothers—and I, to some extent—were campus heroes. The controversial (mildly put) Erin Fleming (see previous column), the young woman who was running Groucho’s life and household for both good and ill—had hauled the frail fellow out into public once more.

  To the dismay of friends and relatives, who feared that in these sadly waning years, Groucho, with formidable powers decreasing noticeably, lacked the stamina, let alone the desire, to perform again, Erin had lined up a series of “concerts,” the true purpose of which many felt was less to get Groucho back in the limelight than to get Fleming into it with him.

  There were two fears. Would he be physically able to get through a full-length concert, enfeebled as he was most days then, and what would it do to him if only a handful of people showed up? Could he survive that? That latter fear proved unfounded.

  When the big night came, I had the cabdriver let me off out front, instead of at the stage door, to assess the crowd.

  There was a touching aspect to the milling, chatting, laughing throng. Some carried pictures of Groucho and his siblings, some had painted on Groucho mustaches. Hurrying back to the stage door I must have seen at least a dozen fully-got-up Grouchos complete with swallowtail coat. There were even a few Harpos and Chicos. (I saw no Zeppos.) Nice kids in a troubled time.

  It was 1972—not a nice time in the country—and there was something so sweet about these kids that I couldn’t manage to ditch the thought that some equally nice kids might have loved to be there but for their having been, just two years earlier, shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State.

  Pushing dark thoughts aside, I went inside and up to the dressing room. I recall now that the words and melody of Groucho’s friend Harry Ruby’s “Everyone Says I Love You” began to play in my head in Groucho’s voice, sung by him on my show a few years earlier. This was going to be a great evening.

  I entered the dressing room and was horrified. Groucho was slumped on a couch looking more frail and papery than I had ever seen him. The famous voice was a hoarse whisper. I thought of those milling kids outside in a near frenzy to see their hero and here he (all but) lay before me, looking like moribundity warmed over. Clearly it would be a miracle if we could get him downstairs and to the stage, let alone through a two-hour concert.

  “How do you feel, Grouch?” I asked with forced brightness.

  “Tired.”

  And then: “Did I ever tell you about the time George Kaufman…” It was an anecdote he’d told me at least four times. Not a good sign.

  I went over to Erin, energetically finishing her makeup, and said, “What are we going to do?”

  “He’ll be fine,” she said cheerily and, undaunted, went on with last-minute preparations. Was this blindness? Madness? Or was it something else? It reminded me, somehow, of one of those performances that heroic mothers of dying children are able to summon, bustling about with a chipper air and saying with a smile, “Today, we’re going to read a lovely story.”

  I couldn’t decide if Erin was crazy or I was. The music in my head—in that weird way the mind has of selecting appropriate music—had switched to the theme from The Blue Angel. It crossed my mind to thwart Erin by whisking Groucho up and out a side exit and putting him to bed. But I figured both she and the audience would hunt me down and lynch me in Central Park. Instead—and although no one’s ever explained why it must—the show went on.

  I remember going up a few steps and onto the famous stage in front of the great curtain, to a bombardment of cheering and applause. Was this all for me, I humbly thought, or because I was clearly the instrument by which they would soon see Groucho? I managed to convince myself it was some of each.

  (A side note: I recently re-found a letter in which Groucho thanks me for my services that night and adds, “The record people are crazy about your introduction and want to use it on the record. I’ll look into it. I expect they’ll be owing you some payment.” If that was true, it still is.)

  Back to our story. Scanning the packed house from the stage and spotting Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in aisle seats, I launched into the introduction of “a few people that should be mentioned.”

  “Among them: Rufus T. Firefly (explosion of applause), J. Cheever Loophole (again)—hold your applause to the end, please—Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, Otis B. Driftwood, Captain Jeffrey Spaulding … and the one, the only, Groucho.”

  The join in the curtain moved a little and Groucho shuffled forward.

  The place went wild. A truly moving hero’s welcome. The rafters, and your eardrums, seemed threatened by the bellowing, stomping, whistling, clapping, and unbridled cheering. You could see people laughing already to the point of tears.

  His performance consisted mostly of an unenergetic reading of his favorite anecdotes from three-by-five cards; a thing I feared might turn even that audience to stone.

  But a sort of miracle took place. They were so pre-sold to have the time of their lives that they barely seemed to notice any difference between the all-but-drained Groucho onstage and the capering madman of the movies. And, as an actor still susceptible to a booming audience, mercifully he did “come up” a lot.

  Still worried and thanking the gods that we got to intermission, I went back and suggested cutting an energetic musical number between Groucho and Erin in the second act in order to conserve the old man’s energy.

  Erin—already costumed for the number—gave me a look that brought to mind the chilling close-up of Laurence Olivier as Richard III, looking down at the tart-tongued little child prince he will soon murder. I backed off, retaining my status as perhaps the only person in her life she never had harsh words with. And maybe she knew best. Somehow those gods, and she, got us this far and through the rest of the evening—and in fact, as it turned out, many more.

  I was told later that a small mob of the kids, including some of the costumed ones, who couldn’t get into the sold-out hall, simply hung around outside, seemingly content to be at the same place where their hero was. And some got the treat, cheering, of seeing him get into the limo at the stage door.

  The evening also provided, for me, one of what I call “through the looking glass” incidents. It could also be called �
�How did I, specifically, get here?” It’s kind of corny to talk about it, and some doubt the genuineness of the feeling as merely an opportunity to drop a name or two. It’s the feeling of: How did I ever manage to get from being a kid seeing Groucho on the screen of the Grand movie theater in Grand Island, Nebraska, to now being in the backseat of a long black car with him? (If you know, please provide the answer.)

  After all these years, I still don’t know exactly what I feel about all this. I’m so close to the forest as to be almost one of the trees. Yet it seems that whatever manipulations and self-promotions and hectoring Erin may have been guilty of, she did bring a good measure of light and cheer into Groucho’s last years.

  At his house in Beverly Hills, she frequently stage-managed dinner parties with his cronies and admirers. She fed him straight lines, she set up anecdotes by bringing out awards and letters and mementos from the famous; and around dessert time, when he became restless, she got him to the piano to regale everybody with Harry Ruby songs, or the Gilbert and Sullivan numbers for which he had such a passion. Doubtless overtaxing him at times, but also putting him where he loved to be: on, and the center of attention.

  I once heard Henry Kissinger say about Richard Nixon something like “Just about anything you could say about him would be true.” So of Erin. For better or worse, she brought a near-dead man back to life repeatedly, even if she seemed to risk killing him in the process.

  And very near the end, he was still able to bring his own light and cheer. Visiting a friend in the hospital, an exhausting chore at his age, he was able to say, as the elevator door closed, “Men’s tonsils, please.”

  Steve Stoliar (author of Raised Eyebrows) reports that near the end, when vital signs were low, a nurse entered Groucho’s bedroom with a thermometer.

  “What do you want?”

  “We have to see if you have a temperature, Mr. Marx.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said the barely audible figure in the bed. “Everybody has a temperature.”