Hello, I Must be Going

by Charlotte Chandler

  After the gifts of birthday party number one had been unwrapped, inspected, and commented upon, Groucho felt the urge to sing. Arthur Whitelaw accompanied him on the piano while he sang “Peasie Weasie,” “Show Me a Rose,” and other Groucho specialties.

  Phyllis Newman arrived, bringing with her a cassette greeting from Betty Comden and Adolph Green. “My mission was to get it to Groucho,” she said breathlessly.

  When Phyllis mentioned that she would like to have a picture of Groucho, he reminded her that Adolph already had one. She said that was exactly what she meant: “I want a picture of my own! I don’t just want to be a messenger bearing the tape.”

  Groucho drank in her words, meditated briefly, then went to his bedroom. He returned with a photograph on which he had written, “This picture is for Phyllis, not for Adolph, not for Betty.”

  The tape that Phyllis had brought Groucho contained a comedy sketch about two screenwriters trying to get an idea for a screenplay. It was prefaced by some reminiscences about Groucho:

  “We’re thinking of years ago, when you used to come to parties, and you’d find out when we were going to be on. Then, when we finished, you’d say good night and leave. You had come to watch us! We were embarrassed, but pleased. We worshiped you from afar, and now from anear.”

  After listening to the tape, Groucho exclaimed, “Send them a telegram! Collect.”

  Dear Betty and Rudolph:

  Long time no see. A good thing too. The record is uproarious. In spots it’s even funny. You’ll make a lot of money with this record. Especially if you don’t release it. I love you both as if you were my own. More. Someday we’ll meet in Heaven. New York. Or Philadelphia.

  Sincerely yours,

  H. Hackenbush

  Groucho told us his favorite Betty Comden story:

  “Betty said when she was seventeen, she stuffed a pillow under her dress so everyone thought she was going to have a baby. She got a seat on the subway every time.”

  Groucho returned to his singing with a song by Harry Ruby, “Omaha, Nebraska, in the Foothills of Tennessee.” Afterward he commented soberly, “A part of my life went when Harry Ruby died, a very important part.”

  For another song, “Oh, How That Woman Could Cook!” he sang in a German accent, and asked Arthur Whitelaw to “play it in German.”

  “I can’t play it in German,” Arthur said in mock exasperation.

  “You can’t play it in German? Then what kind of pianist are you? Mozart could have played it in German. Marvin Hamlisch can play it in German.”

  Coincidentally, at this moment, Marvin’s parents called from New York to wish Groucho a happy birthday. Mrs. Hamlisch sang “Happy Birthday” in German while Mr. Hamlisch accompanied her on the piano.

  Numerous telegrams arrived. One was from Woody Allen, who said, “Happy Birthday. Now you owe me a telegram on my birthday.” George Burns, who was out of town doing a show, wired Groucho, “Happy birthday. Don’t stop. Keep busy.” This emphasis on working—wanting to work and wanting to be able to work—was a value shared by George Burns and Groucho. King Vidor sent Groucho a card which read: “Happy birthday Groucho Segovia Marx from King Tildon Vidor.” They both liked to play the guitar and tennis.

  As he looked through all the telegrams and cards, Groucho commented, “I sent Johnny Carson a telegram for his thirteenth anniversary with NBC. I said, ‘Better luck next time.’”

  After the guests had gone home, Groucho squeezed my hand and said, “It’s a night to remember.” This was his real eighty-fifth birthday party. The one that was written about by the press and attended by celebrities took place on the afternoon of Sunday, October 5, 1975.

  Groucho played a big part in the planning of birthday party number two. He always took his frivolity seriously. Besides Erin, Tom Wilhite assisted, arriving several hours ahead of time to help put up the decorations. These consisted mainly of balloons with “Groucho” written across them. There were so many that the décor that day could be described as “Early Balloon.”

  Shortly before four o’clock, when the party was scheduled to start, Groucho took the seat of honor in his living room, where he would receive the guests as they arrived. “This can’t be much of a party if I’m the guest of honor,” he said. “I may leave early.”

  The first to arrive were brothers Gummo and Zeppo, who had come from Palm Springs. They were forty minutes late. No one wants to arrive unfashionably first at a Hollywood party, so most parties usually start much later than the time announced on invitations.

  Zeppo brought some tuna which he had personally caught and canned. Groucho accepted the token with his customary grace. “You needn’t have bothered coming. You could’ve just sent the tuna.” Zeppo understood and would, in fact, have been worried by any sign of greater sentiment from older brother Julius.

  Whatever Zeppo does he does well—canning tuna, playing cards, inventing complex mechanical devices, or creating businesses. Uninhibited, and relatively unexhibited, Zeppo had the talent and energy to have been a pioneer, an inventor, a businessman, an agent—even a Marx Brother.

  After Gummo’s and Zeppo’s arrival the guests began arriving until they started to overflow into other rooms and the patio. Eventually there was a long line of celebrities waiting to greet Groucho and wish him a happy birthday. He was asked again and again, “How does it feel to be eighty-five?” To amuse himself, he varied the answers:

  “I’m crazy about eighty-five.” Or, “It’s better than eighty-four. I think I’ll be eighty-six next year.” Or, “I don’t know why everyone’s making such a fuss. I didn’t get older in one day.” He added more soberly, “They think you get a year older in a day, and all of you gets old at once. It’s a part at a time.”

  Milton Berle asked him how he felt. “Clever,” Groucho answered.

  Elliott Gould greeted him with, “How are you, Grouch?”

  “Compared to what?” Groucho asked.

  Among those who gathered around him were Bob Hope, Peter Sellers, Jack Lemmon, Walter Mirisch, Sally Kellerman, Red Buttons, Carroll O’Connor, Liza Minnelli, Carl Reiner, David Steinberg, Edie Adams, S. M. Estridge, Irwin Allen, Stefanie Powers, Jacque Jones, Jerry Davis, Nat Perrin, Carol Burnett, and a few hundred others. After the general mixing, Bob Hope emceed and Groucho sang. The age range at the party was from eighteen to ninety. “Same as the IQs,” quipped Groucho.

  As he sat down to cut his giant strawberry birthday cake, he announced:

  “Eighty-five and I’m still in perfect health—except mentally.”

  He was helped in blowing out the eighty-five candles by Edie Adams, the actress he would most have liked to play his mother in Minnie’s Boys.

  When Groucho started to sing, the guests all gathered about and listened intently. Far from being inhibited by the audience of celebrities, he relished it and was most at home performing for a gathering of discerning show people. Actually, those who have to stand up there alone on stage center themselves may be more generous in their approval than a “civilian” audience. There was nothing Groucho enjoyed more than singing, and as soon as he took his place beside the piano, the din of conversation ceased instantly. The refugees to the patio returned to the living room. The attention of all, whether they were sitting in chairs, standing, or sitting on the floor, was fixed on the star. Groucho called for a chord: “I’d like a chord, but a rope will do.”

  A mistake in the lyrics of one of the old songs made the empathetic audience feel more like insiders, and Groucho’s own performance soared to greater heights as he felt the reverent enthusiasm of his audience. Liza Minnelli, in black pants and a shimmering silver sweater, sat on the floor at Groucho’s feet working harder as a member of the audience than most people work as performers. She whispered to Jack Haley, Jr., who also nodded appreciatively. Between numbers, she rushed up and embraced Groucho.

  When he sang “Oh, How That Woman Could Cook!” with Billy Marx accompanying him on the piano, Groucho nodded to Grace Kahn. She
was at the party with her daughter, Irene, and Andy, one of the grandsons she and Groucho had in common. Grace Kahn had written this song with her husband Gus in 1916. While he was singing, Groucho looked at her several times.

  “Are you cutting an album or something?” Bob Hope called out. Groucho said softly to the assemblage, “This guy has made me laugh.”

  “You don’t have to say that,” Hope rejoined.

  “If you weren’t here I wouldn’t say it,” snapped Groucho.

  For the grand finale, Erin and Robin joined Groucho in some choruses of “Peasie Weasie.” Robin had sung this song many times with Erin for Groucho privately. Afterward Groucho announced that he had paid only twenty-five dollars for this medley of doggerel. “I guess you got your money’s worth,” Erin commented dryly.

  When Groucho sang, Elliott Gould stopped blowing up and tossing about balloons. After the song, Elliott commented, “That was very good.”

  “I used to be in show business,” Groucho responded.

  Following Groucho, Morgan Ames played and sang one of her own songs, and Bud Cort sang a song which he concluded with a perfect rag-doll backward flop on the floor.

  Groucho was always the center of attention. Whenever he would say something, there were reverent echoes around the room of “Did you hear what he said?” Groucho, hearing this, editorialized, ironically, “Yeah, great line.”

  After the entertainment had ended, he said, “I’m not sleepy. I guess I’ll go to bed,” adding, “The pâté is over,” as he adjourned to his bedroom.

  “Always leave ’em laughing when you say goodbye,” Groucho added. He slipped away relatively unnoticed, as he liked to do.

  Repairing to his bedroom, he donned pajamas and received en pantoufles, then later in bare feet. Groucho could appear formidable even in his pajamas. With his bare feet sticking out from under the covers of his push-button bed, he informed guests who entered the sanctum sanctorum, “I’ve got the cleanest feet in town. It’s one of my few distinctions.” Welcome guests were some of Hollywood’s prettiest girls, who he invited to get under the covers with him; he also invited favored male friends. That’s how People magazine got the picture of Sally Struthers and Carroll O’Connor sitting in bed with him. People covered the event, if not the bed, calling it “You Bed Your Life.” (Jon Nordheimer of the New York Times was also invited.) The picture turned out to be prophetic, for shortly afterward, Groucho’s first book, Beds, was reissued after being out of print for more than forty years.

  Beds were always important to Groucho. This one had a control panel which allowed him to tilt it in any direction he wished. Woody Allen had been intrigued by it, but said he wasn’t asking any specific questions. The backboard consisted of the massive doors of a nineteenth-century circus wagon, rescued from an ignominious fate to serve again in a less peripatetic role. Over the bed was a picture of two little houses that reminded Groucho of the Marx family’s Chicago home on Grand Avenue. “It isn’t really the house we lived in, but it looks like it,” he told guests who “dropped into bed.”

  After Groucho left the main party, the remaining guests made themselves at home, ate the food, visited with each other, gossiped about those who had left, and had the run of the house, except for the master’s bedroom. The party ended about eight-thirty, which is not unusual for Hollywood parties. The successful Hollywood people have to get up early.

  After the party, Groucho summed up his eighty-five years:

  “I’ve been lucky. That’s the most important thing to be—lucky.”

  “I look like George Washington with a mustache”

  For many years Groucho shunned interviews because of how he felt about interviewers. “They don’t listen to you,” he told me. For a time he was so reluctant to do any interviews at all that it was difficult for even his grandson, Andy, to manage one with him.

  “I was in college,” Andy told me, “and I was taking a class called Art of Comedy, and I thought I’d do an interview with Groucho. I had a tape recorder with me and he said, ‘Nobody interviews me with a tape recorder.’ He said, ‘Even for ten thousand dollars, I wouldn’t let Life magazine use a tape recorder. You’ll have to write everything down on cards,’ which I did. About halfway through he told me I was a lousy interviewer, that I had no questions, I didn’t know how to interview anybody, and all that stuff.”

  Eric Lax accompanied Groucho to Ames, Iowa, for Groucho’s opening “concert,” and he covered the event for Life. He told me that in interviewing Groucho, “I was more nervous than I’d ever been interviewing anyone before. I wanted to get every word, but he told me I couldn’t use a recorder. I listened as hard as I could, drove away a short distance, and scribbled frantically.”

  After that, Groucho changed his mind, and we did the interview out of which grew the friendship out of which grew this book.

  I

  How do you see yourself?

  GROUCHO

  In a mirror.

  I

  What sort of person looks back at you?

  GROUCHO

  A backward person.

  I

  How would you describe that person?

  GROUCHO

  Well over four feet tall. (Raising his eyebrows) Did you ever see Lincoln without a beard?

  I

  No.

  GROUCHO

  Well, I look like George Washington with a mustache. That’s from On the Mezzanine. Where do you want to begin, in the middle?

  I

  We might try the beginning. What was your childhood like?

  GROUCHO

  A knock came on the front door and everyone in the house hid in the closet or someplace. Because we didn’t have the rent. My mother would go to the door and talk the landlord out of the twenty-seven dollars a month we owed.

  Harpo used to skate in Central Park on the reservoir with one skate. And he used to have to tie it on with a rope. I was poor and thrifty. I saved up for four jawbreakers. I was sucking on one with three under my hat. There were some big bullies approaching. I said, “I don’t have anymore.” One of them hit me. I was thirty minutes lying in the snow. Then I took one of the jawbreakers out from under my hat and sucked on it.

  We slept four in a bed. Two at each end. There were ten of us and one toilet. That I call pretty poor, but we didn’t know it. We were happy. We loved our mother and father.

  I

  Then you didn’t mind being poor?

  GROUCHO

  I always wanted to be rich. I still want to be rich.

  I

  But I’ve often heard you say, “I’m a very rich man.”

  GROUCHO

  I’m a lucky man.

  I

  What did you feel being rich meant?

  GROUCHO

  You can support poor relatives if you have some. You can buy decent clothes, you can afford to have a decent automobile, you can afford to live in a nice house—I think I’m very lucky to have all those things.

  I

  When did you begin feeling rich?

  GROUCHO

  When I could stop and pick up something off the street without looking first to see if anyone was watching me. Of course, you can do that when you’re really poor, too. And when you’re rich you don’t have to eat everything on your plate. You don’t have to look at the prices first when they give you a menu in a restaurant. You walk because you feel like walking. And they can’t come and take away the piano.

  I

  Tell me about your adopted sister, Polly.

  GROUCHO

  Polly was my mother’s sister’s baby, and when the baby was born, her husband ran away. She was left alone with the baby. And my mother adopted Polly and raised her. She had a big behind, but she was kinda pretty. She wore glasses. So, there was a tailor named Sam Müller, with two dots over the u. He was a good tailor. My father was a lousy tailor. My father could never make a suit properly ’cause Chico always stole the scissors and then hocked ’em. But Sam Müller, with two dots ov
er the u, was a good tailor. He used to make suits for fifty dollars. That was a lot of money in those days, when bread was a nickel a loaf. And four cents for the day-old bread. My mother was determined to hook Sam Müller into marrying Polly. Now, my mother had my father cook a good meal, because he was a good cook and invited Sam over a few times, and said that Polly had cooked the dinner. My mother finally persuaded Sam to marry Polly. The wedding was in the Bronx at the Royal Casino. Harpo and I went in the lavatory, and there were two urinals there. We jumped up and down on these, and they sheared off. The water started running where the marriage was taking place. And the landlord of the casino came rushing out, and he said, “That’ll be two hundred dollars.” Now, we didn’t have ten dollars, so Sam Müller had to put up the money, the two hundred dollars to get the urinals repaired. Then the wedding went on. And they lived happily ever after. They had four children.

  I

  After that did he ever notice Polly’s cooking?

  GROUCHO

  Probably, but they were happy. Anyway, it was too late. He was hooked. I told you it was through my father’s cooking that my mother got plenty of jobs for us.

  I

  What were his specialties?

  GROUCHO

  Oh, he could make anything, including my mother. Which he frequently did. Funny thing—my father was a Frenchman and my brother was an Italian. That’s why I always wear a beret. My father was born in Alsace-Lorraine. He thought Ed Sullivan was a Jew. He used to call him “Ed Solomon.” My father never hit us. He would take a whiskbroom when he was angry, and he would bring it up here, right by your nose, and he’d keep telling you what was wrong with you. But he never hit us. And he’d put the whisk broom down. He’d say, “Junger, junger junger…” He spoke Plattdeutsch. He was a lousy tailor. He would make a suit, and one sleeve would be down to here, and the other one would be up to here. But he always got new customers because he could speak Plattdeutsch.

  I