by Marx, Harpo
“Birds!” he wailed. “There are birds here! The sickest creatures on God’s earth! Trees! Even the trees are psychotic! Bugs! Don’t tell me there aren’t any insects here because I know there are!” He grabbed my arm. “Harpo,” he said, “what have you done to me? Take me away from here. Take me away from here!”
He wouldn’t stay on Neshobe even long enough for a cup of coffee. We took the launch to Bomoseen and the next train to New York City. Oscar was sunk in a black pit of depression. He spoke not a word to me, not until he’d called his East Coast analyst from Grand Central Station and made an emergency appointment for a two-hour session.
When he came out of the phone booth he was already at peace with himself. He gave me one of his rare, warm grins and said, “Isn’t it great to be back?” He never made any mention of the grim trip to Woollcott’s island, ever again.
We hung around New York for a couple of weeks. I had no facilities that Oscar could mooch, so he used me in other ways. Mostly, I was useful to him as a decoy to pick up dames. Going down Broadway, Oscar would walk three steps behind me. When a good-looking dame passed by he’d yell, “Hey, Harpo! Harpo Marx!” I would stop. The dame would stop. Oscar would rush up and ask her if she’d like to meet his friend, the famous Harpo Marx. Before the dame got to meet the famous Harpo Marx she’d be off and running with Oscar Levant.
One girl he picked up was a chorus girl in a night club. Oscar spent every night in the club where she worked, and their dates would begin at three in the morning, after her last show. This fit just fine into Oscar’s cockeyed schedule of living and sleeping. The only trouble was, the girl lived way the hell out in Brooklyn, which denied him the pleasure of seeing her home. Oscar was not exactly a big spender, mainly because he didn’t have what to spend. So at the end of a date he’d give her a kiss and a nickel for the subway.
One night I went to the club with Oscar. After he picked up his broad, the three of us went to Lindy’s, where we sat around having cheesecake and coffee. When she said it was time for her to go home we discovered it was raining hard outside, coming down in sheets.
Oscar, in a flash of gallantry, announced he would send her home in a cab. It was the least he could do on a night like this. He had the waiter summon a taxi driver from the street. When the cabbie came dripping over to our table, Oscar asked him what the fare would be to the address in Brooklyn. The driver said that since he couldn’t count on a return fare from any place that far out the trip would cost seven-fifty.
Oscar let out a howl. “Seven-fifty?” he said. “Ridiculous! This girl’s a virgin!”
He gave her a nickel and sat out the rest of the night in Lindy’s.
During scenes like this I was apt to forget about the other sides of Oscar. Then something would happen to remind me that no matter what else he did or how many people he humiliated, he was still a genius like none other I had ever known.
Toward the end of our stay in New York I went with Oscar to Harms, the music publishers. While we were there a stranger came in. Oscar recognized the guy and greeted him with the sweetest, sincerest smile I’d ever seen him give to anybody. The man was Russian, from his accent. They talked awhile, then Oscar asked the guy if he wouldn’t please play the first movement of his Second Piano Concerto. Oscar said he’d heard it a few times, and liked it, but he’d never tackled it himself. The Russian was happy to oblige.
Halfway through a passage, he stopped playing. He’d forgotten his own concerto. Oscar was so impatient that he pushed the guy off the stool, took over at the piano, and finished the movement—without once faltering or faking. “Bravol” said the guy who’d written it. “Extraordinary!”
Finally, Oscar introduced me to him. He was Sergei Prokofiev, probably the greatest Russian composer since Tchaikovsky.
When I got back to California, the lease on my Beverly Hills joint ran out, and I was informed that it would not be renewed.
When I told Oscar I had to move, he said, “Harpo, I am profoundly disappointed in you. This is the dirtiest trick anybody has ever played on me.” He walked out of the house, got in his Ford, and drove away. He arrived at the Gershwins’ place just in time for dinner.
For one year and one month I had spent scarcely one waking hour out of earshot of the mumbly, nasal rasp of Oscar’s voice, the oboe under the blanket. Three years later it became familiar to all America, when Oscar appeared on the radio program “Information Please.” Subsequently he became a fairly regular panelist, and his success on the show brushed away enough of his phobias to give him a brand-new charge of confidence.
It was not until 1942 that the guy who’d been one of the best musicians in America for nearly twenty years became, at last, a concert artist. My loss was the public’s gain. Lucky—if you’ll pardon that horrifying word, Oscar—public.
CHAPTER 20 Cherchez la Fleming
Susan.
I didn’t catch her last name. She was seated next to me at a dinner party at the Sam Goldwyns’. Frankly, I was surprised at the Goldwyns, people of their position being coy with me and playing matchmaker. It seemed like every place I was invited to, some unescorted starlet just “happened” to be seated next to me. And every time it happened, an item would appear in Louella Parsons’, Hedda Hopper’s or Winchell’s column a day or two later.
“What’s this about Harpo Marx and Bibi Bensonne?” they used to write. “Insiders say they aren’t kidding.” Or, “Flash! Look for an altar-cation to brew between Paramount’s twinklingest new starlet and Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor—initials, B.B. and H.M.!”
I was a bachelor because that was the way I chose to live. The only thing I was eligible for was to vote. I didn’t mind giving a hopeful kid a boost. I didn’t mind when a press agent quoted me as saying I had worked in a picture with the “lovely and glamorous Miss So-and-so, who has all it takes to become a star.” Any girl with good looks, healthy organs and not too many inhibitions had all it took to become a star in the 1930’s. But when people insisted on marrying me off to those nitwits, it made me sick.
I earned as much money as I needed. I had more offers of jobs and parts than I could possibly accept. I had friends, hundreds of good friends. I had a full social life. I had a satisfying private life, and I intended to keep it private. I never would speak or appear out of costume before the public. I got no satisfaction whatever from seeing my name in print, unless it had to do with a Marx Brothers picture. The very last thing I wanted in this world was personal publicity.
But the matchmakers and gossips wouldn’t leave me alone. What the hell did everybody who was married have against a guy who wasn’t? Why did they feel it was their God-given duty to see that every bachelor got hitched? I didn’t sneak around trying to trick my married friends into getting divorced.
Anyway, this night at Sam Goldwyns’, the starlet-bait was named Susan. The lovely and glamorous Miss Susan-So-and-so.
I wasn’t sore at her, but I was sore at the Goldwyns. Thanks to them I was a sitting duck for the columnists again. There’d be an item in somebody’s column the next day. Suppose I happened to like this kid? I couldn’t make a date with her if I wanted to. If we were seen together a second time we’d be in front-page headlines. What could I do? What I usually did on nights like this—ignore the girl without being unfriendly and, when I had to, talk to her without getting personal.
One thing I had to give the Goldwyns credit for. They had the good taste to pick me out a beaut. It was impossible, I soon found, to ignore this Susan. She was a stunning brunette with a soft, fair complexion and a gorgeous figure, and she had something besides good looks. She gave signs of actually being bright. She had an easy, honest laugh. And she still hadn’t caught the Hollywood affliction of “table-hopping eyes.” When she talked to you she didn’t gaze around the room to see if anybody important was watching her. She looked at you directly, and challenged you to look straight at her. There was something taunting and impudent about the way her eyes sparkled. This I liked.
“You’re so New York,” she said. “You’re not one of those Beverly Hills wolves. I can’t stand them!”
I hated to disappoint her, but I had to confess that I too lived in Beverly Hills, along with the rest of the bums. “I know,” she said. “Near the corner of Elevado and Bedford. Oscar Levant stays with you. He drives a Ford with only one headlight working. You have a big white dog with black spots. I think the dog was with you in Horse Feathers.”
“Yah,” I said. “His name is Kayo. How’d you know?”
“I’ve seen all of your pictures three times,” she said. “The Marx Brothers are my favorite act and you’re my favorite Marx Brother.”
“I mean about where I live, and Oscar and his car,” I said, and she said, in a stage whisper, “I’m a prowler.”
I told her she’d better be careful. I had a morbid fear of prowlers and kept silver police whistles hanging on chains all over the house. “Why silver?” she wanted to know, and I told her that in Beverly Hills the cops wouldn’t come unless you blew on a silver whistle.
This was a dame I could go for. I said, “Do you play croquet?” She said, “You mean what the old folks do with the long sticks down in St. Petersburg, Florida?” Well, so she wasn’t perfect. I could still go for her.
For a while she stared at me without saying anything. “You’ve done something to your hair,” she said, finally. “You wore it a lot longer five years ago.”
“Yah?” I said. “How do you know? I never played straight. You never saw me without a wig, honey.”
She raised her eyebrows and puckered her lips. Her eyes were teasing me. “You don’t remember, do you?” she said.
“Remember what?”
“Five years ago—the first time you saw me.”
I didn’t remember.
“I went to see Animal Crackers, in New York. You picked me out of everybody in the audience and gawked at me—like this.” She popped her eyes and let her mouth hang open. “You didn’t take your eyes off me for one whole scene, and everybody was looking at me instead of the stage. I was so embarrassed I wanted to die, and at the end of the scene I got up and left the theatre. Then afterwards I found out it was part of the act and I was lucky to be the one you picked out for a stooge in the audience because you always looked for the prettiest face you could find. That was when I made up my mind I was going to meet you and apologize in person for walking out on you. We met on Sixth Avenue in front of the Ziegfeld Theatre, during an intermission of some benefit. Remember now?”
I didn’t. I shook my head.
“It’s just as well. When I was introduced to you, I was so shocked I could hardly speak. You looked like a wild man. Your hair stuck out in bushes from under your hat. You gawked at me like you were starving and I was a lamb chop. Before you even got my name straight you asked me for a date. I was a kid of twenty and a starry-eyed fan, and I was scared enough of you in the first place. But to find out that the great Harpo Marx, who was so sweet and appealing on the stage, was in real life a wicked old fiend! I think the only words I spoke to you were ‘How do you do, sir?’ and ‘Oh, no, sir!’ ”
“Are you still scared of me?”
“Try me.”
I gave her my evilest leer. She shook her head solemnly. I tried a depraved Gookie. She laughed. “Guess I’ve lost it,” I said. “No longer wicked.”
“I’m no longer twenty,” she said.
But she didn’t look much over twenty, and now, as I looked at her, something stirred in my memory. The scene of five years ago began to take shape—the lights of the marquee, the theatre crowd milling around during the intermission, and emerging out of the crowd the glowing figure of this little enchantress.
“Excuse me,” I said, trying to put the whole picture together. “When Mrs. Goldwyn introduced us tonight I didn’t get your last name. All I caught was ‘Susan.’ I’m awful on names.”
“I know,” she said. “You call everybody Benson, don’t you?” This girl certainly had the book on me. She must have had more scouts than Notre Dame.
Then she said, “Fleming. My name is Susan Fleming.”
Fleming!
I made a face, this time unconsciously, and she said, “What’s so funny about a name like that? What have you got against Fleming?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I recommend it highly. Everybody should flem at least once a year.”
It was true I had nothing against her name. It was also true that “Fleming” had a very special meaning to me. I had hardly known Susan long enough to tell her what it was. So I vamped and faked until the subject was changed, hoping she’d forget about my strange reaction.
I had known many women in my life, in varying degrees of intimacy, but there had been only one I’d ever felt serious enough about to want to marry. She was named Fleming.
When I first came to Hollywood, I had met an extraordinary girl named June Fleming. We went steady for nearly four months. June was an active, independent gal. She was a crackerjack tennis player, and she flew her own airplane—a real competitor and a hell of a lot of fun to be with. I decided I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life.
We had a date for a Saturday night, which was my deadline for proposing to her. On Friday, June crashed into a mountain flying back from Palm Springs and was killed.
Susan Fleming.
So what about this one? She was the first girl I’d met in a long time that I wanted to keep on seeing for a long time. But I wondered if the name might be a bad omen.
It was tough to beat down the temptation to ask Susan for a date. After dinner I found out she was no mere starlet. In her newest picture, Million Dollar Legs, she was doing the lead—and boy, was she equipped for the title role! I also found out that her sitting next to me was not the Goldwyns’ idea, but her own.
Still, I resisted. Whether I was a jinx to Flemings or they were to me didn’t matter. I couldn’t take a second chance. I had to be sensible. We said good night, and that was that.
That, however, was not that, not at all. Two mornings later Susan Fleming called me up. She was very angry. Her voice sizzled and crackled, and I was afraid sparks might shoot out of the telephone and burn my ear. “Mister Marx,” she said. “I take back everything I said to you at the Goldwyns’. You are one of them. You’re nothing but a publicity-crazy, ambitious, big-headed Beverly Hills wolf.”
She sizzled and crackled on, with more unladylike variations of the same theme. She sputtered out and I got a chance to get in my first word, which was: “Yah?”
That was all I got in. She was off again. Who was I kidding? What a dope she’d been to fall for my line! A man who didn’t put on airs? A lover of the simple life? “Phooey!” she said. “A fraud! I know all about you and your friend Winchell. I know the whole story of how you had to dress him up in a costume to sneak him into Cocoanuts when the Shuberts had him on their blacklist.”
“Yah?” I said, and she said, “Yah! Don’t try to play innocent. Don’t tell me you didn’t read his column this morning. You probably have it pasted in your scrapbook already. Well, I want to serve you notice here and now, Mister Marx, that I will not stand for being used as an excuse to get your stupid name in the paper.”
I laid the phone receiver down gently, and went to get the papers from the breakfast table. When I came back she was still squawk-squawking. I found the item in Walter Winchell’s column: “West Coast spies report Harpo Marx, Hollywood’s most reluctant bridegroom, huddling and cuddling with actress Susan Fleming, the cutie with the Million Dollar Legs. Weakening mebbe, Harpo? . . .”
I felt like jumping up and down and yelling whoopee! Instead, I kept yelling “Miss Fleming!” until she stopped yapping. Then I said, “Miss Fleming, I must ask you to get off the wire. I have to call my lawyer right
away, or you might be in trouble.”
“Trouble? Me?”
“Trouble. You. I have advised my attorney to bring suit against you and your press agent for invasion of privacy.”
“My what?” she said. “I’d starve before I stooped to hiring a press agent!”
That did it. All resistance, good sense and superstition flew out the window. I didn’t give a damn what any columnist wrote. I didn’t care if we hit the front pages. I was going to see my second Fleming again.
“Tell you what’s the best idea,” I said. “Let’s settle out of court. How about if I pick you up at seven tonight and we find some quiet place to eat?”
She thought for a moment, then said, “How formal shall I be? What kind of a ‘quiet place’ do you have in mind?”
“I have in mind a nice little spot out in Malibu.”
“Your beach house?”
“Well, it happens to be a short walk from there, now that I think of it.”
“I was right the first time. You’re not a burn. You’re still a fiend.”
“Seven o’clock?”
“Seven o’clock. You don’t mind if Mother comes along?”
“No—that’s swell. I’ll bring Jimmy Fidler and that’ll make four for bridge.”
“You still haven’t told me how formal.”
“I’ll be wearing a black tie.”
“Oh, goody me. I get to dress up twice in one week. Seven o’clock?”
“Seven o’clock.”
When I arrived at Susan’s apartment I was wearing a black tie. I was also wearing a bushy black wig, a derby, striped trousers, cutaway coat, a sweatshirt, ballet slippers (which I always wore when I performed, so I could feel the harp pedals), and one black sock. The other sock was my tie.
Susan met me at the door. She was dressed fit to kill, in a turquoise evening gown. I threw her a Cookie. She smiled pleasantly and said, “You can tell a New Yorker anywhere by the cut of his clothes. Isn’t it disgusting the things men wear in public out here? Come on in—Mother’s dying to meet you.”