Harpo Speaks! Read online

  For all I know, Solly is still hopefully waiting for the fiddle with pedals on it.

  Fargo, North Dakota. As the season neared the end, we all got bored with ourselves, our act, and the rest of the company. Thirty weeks was a long time. It was Groucho who cracked under the strain first. Groucho was filling in for the m.c., who’d been fired off the bill. He introduced “The Creole Fashion Plate”—a female impersonator—as “The Queer Old Fashion Plate,” whereupon Groucho was fired off the bill.

  (The most fascinating performer I knew in those days was a dame named Metcalfe who was a female female impersonator: To maintain the illusion and keep her job, she had to be a male impersonator when she wasn’t on. Onstage she wore a wig, which she would remove at the finish, revealing her mannish haircut. “Fooled you!” she would boom at the audience in her husky baritone. Then she would stride off to her dressing room and change back to men’s clothes. She fooled every audience she played to, and most of the managers she worked for, but her secret was hard to keep from the rest of the company. Every time she went to the men’s room, half the guys on the bill would pile in after her.)

  And so, back to Chicago. Home was the weary, footsore trouper, home from the distant provinces. Summer was a-coming, and all was well with the world. Minnie was in the living room, pasting up her scrapbook. Frenchie was in the kitchen, cooking sauerkraut and ribs. And Grandpa was on the porch, rocking in his chair, watching the automobiles go by and calling out the makes aloud: “Fort. . . Moxfell . . . Fort . . . Dotsch . . . Shtoots . . . Pockart . . . Moxfell . . . Fort . . .”

  This was the second summer of the First World War. Gummo was the only one of us to be called up in the draft, and he was serving with the army at a camp near Chicago. I was serving with Chico, in a card room in the back of a cigar store on 45th Street. Actually, there were two cigar stores at that location, with two card rooms, back to back. This proved to be a most fortunate arrangement.

  There was a city law that all games had to cease at one o’clock in the morning. Late this night, I was playing pinochle in one card room and Chico was playing in the adjoining place. At five minutes to one, Chico’s game broke up, and he came over to kibitz me. I had just been dealt a fabulous hand in spades, and I had the bid, four hundred points. The curfew was creeping up on me and I began to sweat. If I lost this hand I’d be broke for the rest of the summer.

  Chico gave my cards a quick look over my shoulder. He signaled me to stall, then moseyed around the table and out of the room, by the back way. I stalled. Half a minute later I was wanted on the telephone. It was Chico, calling from next door. “Blank your ace of diamonds,” he said, “and lead the jack of trump. . . .”

  In his brief amble around the card table Chico had memorized all the opposing hands. He told me exactly how to play. I rushed back and followed his instructions and on the stroke of one o’clock I hauled in the stakes and the kitty.

  The only guy who was a match for Chico at pinochle was a Chicago character named Pete Penovitch. Pete had wonderful looks—a natural disguise for a gambler. He was a big six-footer, but baby-faced, with sleepy eyes, and a shock of prematurely white hair. He looked like an overgrown, lazy kid. But he was far from lazy. He had the busiest mind I ever encountered, and a photographic memory to go with it. When he played he demanded total concentration and never tolerated so much as an ash tray on the table to distract him.

  Pete won at gambling any way he could, fair means or foul, and managed to make more than a few enemies over the years. Even when I first knew him, when he was in his early twenties, he would never sit with his back to a door. I remember the first time I ate out with Pete. When his stack of wheat cakes came, he lifted the one on top and ate the second flapjack first. By force of habit, he was unable to deal even wheat cakes from the top of the deck.

  Later on, when Pete was one of Al Capone’s bodyguards, he got in a bad jam. His mouthpiece advised him to get out of town-way out of town—until the heat was off. “Okay,” said Penovitch, “I’ll go on a hunting trip.” “Great,” said the lawyer. “Where’ll you go?”

  “Milwaukee.”

  “Milwaukee? What the hell are you going to hunt in Milwaukee?”

  “Oh,” said Pete, “cats, dogs, whatever they got around there.”

  For a while he ran a gambling casino in Chicago. When he first opened he showed me his layout. He was really proud of the joint. His roulette wheel alone, he said, could pay the nut. It was rigged so the house couldn’t lose—even if the players had every number covered. “If that ever happened,” he said, “the pill would jump off the wheel, hop out the door, and roll down Michigan Avenue.”

  Pete used to come around to the house and shoot pool with us, sometimes with his friend Nick the Greek. Our basement was in a continuous uproar. Everybody shot pool in those days, even Grandpa, who was nearly a hundred years old. Grandpa never had to wear glasses, and he continued to smoke his pipe, roll his own cigars, call out the cars, and shoot pool, right up to the end.

  The only one of us who couldn’t tolerate the mad life day in and day out was Groucho. Groucho had to have privacy, to read. For hours at a time he would read in his Elgin roadster, parked on 33rd Street. Once he finished a book sitting in his car in a garage, while it was hoisted up on chains, being repaired.

  To be truthful, life was not all pool and pinochle for the rest of us either. We played for a lot of army camps that summer. And long before the summer was over, Minnie got the bug again. It was time for a better circuit. It was time for her boys’ next rise in class.

  Once again, Minnie did it. She got us a week’s booking into one of the best showcases in town, the Wilson Avenue Theatre. The Wilson was under Albee management, and it paid the same scale as the Chicago Palace. (E. F. Albee was the all-powerful Emperor of big-time vaudeville, who ruled from a throne room above the New York Palace—the Palace.)

  After our run at the Wilson, we were signed for thirty weeks on the Orpheum circuit. This was it! We had risen in class as far as we could go, short of playing the Palace itself. The Marx Brothers were on the Big Time.

  CHAPTER 10 But Can You Carry It on the Chief?

  WE HEADED WEST for our first swing on the Orpheum-time aboard the Santa Fe Chief. Being greenhorns, we listened to the veterans on the train. One thing you should always remember, they told us, no matter how rich you got. The cardinal rule on the Orpheum was: “Never buy anything you can’t put on the Chief.”

  I already knew about this. When we were signing for the tour, the guy in the front office said to me, “But what about the harp?” “What do you mean, what about the harp?” I said. “I mean,” he said, “can you carry it on the Chief?” I told the guy where I had hauled a harp, through all kinds of weather, through wrecks and washouts, on all kinds of freight cars and baggage cars. I never made a jump without it, and never lost it. “I knew a guy on the Pantages-time,” I said, “who lost a coffin, with his wife’s body in it, but I never lost my harp.”

  Another greenhorn on the Chief was the fiddle player from Waukegan whom we had broken up so badly the night Chico first joined the act. He now called himself “Ben Benny,” and was half of the musical act, “Benny and Woods.” Benny didn’t know what kind of a living hell he was headed for. For thirty solid weeks he had to follow the Marx Brothers on the bill.

  Hollywood, California. While I was playing the Orpheum in Los Angeles, the boys convinced me I should try for a job in the movies. I was a natural for silent pictures, they said. I didn’t talk anyway, and I was pretty good at stunts and pratfalls. I was given a screen test, by some assistant director at M-G-M. I flunked it. The guy didn’t even say, “Wait until you hear from us.” He said, “Get outta here and don’t come back.”

  Like any rubberneck tourists, we tried to get into the Douglas Fairbanks studio to watch the leaping, dashing, swashbuckling Fairbanks shoot a picture. We couldn’t get past the gate. There was a high stucco wall around the studio—no chance of sneaking in. But Groucho wouldn’t give
up. He plunked himself down on the sidewalk, facing the studio wall. “Let’s sit here for a while,” he said. “Maybe he’ll jump this way.” We sat for a long time, but Doug never jumped our way.

  Lately, on the road, I had been seeing lots of movies. But Fairbanks I only saw if I couldn’t find a Chaplin picture playing anywhere. Charlie Chaplin was my idea of comic genius. I would watch a Chaplin picture four, five or six times over. What an artist!

  I had a chance now to see some of the great acts in vaudeville, too. I think my all-time favorite was Blossom Seeley. Now, there was a gal with class. She was one of the first to carry her own lighting with her. She was said to have been the first artist to use the dramatic effect of an overhead baby spotlight. Once when a dancer on the bill heard this he sniffed and said, “Why, Leonardo da Vinci used an overhead baby four hundred years ago in ‘The Last Supper’!”

  I also saw some pretty unusual artists while traveling on the Orpheum. I think the most original were “Collins and Hart,” who featured a cat that blew a whistle. On this point, George Burns, that erudite historian of vaudeville, agrees wholeheartedly. “Nobody ever stole that act,” he said.

  Montreal, Quebec. Here I ran into the inimitable Wingy Tuttle, part-time jewelry salesman and full-time character. “You don’t want to stay in a hotel,” Wingy told me. “Come over and stay with me. I’m living with some friends here. They won’t mind if you move in the apartment too.”

  I thanked him, and after the show I went to the address he had given me. Right away, Wingy and his friends invited me to join them for a late dinner. It was a good, home-cooked dinner. Then, after dinner, half a dozen girls came trooping in. Staying here, I said to myself, was going to be a lot better than two weeks in a hotel.

  Then a Chinese kid came in the apartment, and the next thing I knew, all the guests—Wingy and his friends and the girls and all —were sitting in a circle on the floor. The Chinese kid started cooking something over a little alcohol burner. He put the stuff he cooked into a pipe and started passing the pipe around the circle.

  I had taken lodgings in an opium den.

  I stayed there nevertheless until our show closed, and it was a lot better than any hotel. No wild chases in the corridor, no fights or noisy poker games. All night, every night, everybody but me sat on the floor smoking the pipe and talking in low voices. It was the most peaceful place I ever stayed in.

  When it came time to leave Montreal, Wingy said he’d like to buy me a going-away present. I told him he’d done enough for me already—forget it. I knew that he had to live by his wits, and that sometimes his supply ran low. But Wingy insisted. He had to send me off in style.

  Before train time he took me into Jaeger’s, a shop that sold expensive Scotch woolens. He had the clerks in Jaeger’s going crazy, filling the order for my going-away assortment: a cashmere overcoat, two cashmere suits, two dozen argyle socks, sweaters, trousers, neckties and shirts, all the best, the very best.

  Wingy paused to ask me, casually, when my train pulled out. I told him, in twelve minutes. He turned to the manager and said: “I want everything altered and pressed and packed and delivered to Mr. Marx’s Pullman car in eleven minutes.”

  When the manager said that this would be quite impossible, Wingy blew his top. He rose up to his full height and pounded on the counter and shouted, “Do you know what this means, my good man? This means I am forced to cancel the whole order! That ain’t all! I and Mr. Marx will never again so help us put on another stitch of Scotch-type goods!”

  He hauled me out of the shop and hailed a taxi to rush us to the station. At the station he insisted he should at least pay the cab fare. But then he found he had left home without a nickel on him. I slipped him a five-spot. Wingy said he was ashamed to take it. But he took it—only, he said, because he knew I would understand, being such a good pal, the embarrassing spot in which he found himself in.

  It was the most beautiful touch I was ever a victim of. Yet I regarded—and still regard—Wingy Tuttle’s show in Jaeger’s as a gesture of true friendship. It was the only way he knew how to express his affection, and it took real guts to carry it off. I never had a nicer sendoff from anywhere.

  New York City. One of our great contemporary heroes was Benny Leonard, the lightweight champion of the world. Show people and fighters always seemed to have a great affinity for each other. With Benny Leonard we felt a special bond. He was also from the East Side of New York, and he was no bigger than we were.

  When we were on the Orpheum-time, we often crossed paths with Leonard, who was making a tour doing exhibition bouts. We caught each other’s shows and spent all our free time horsing around together. He let us take turns sparring with him, and we taught Benny some of our stage routines.

  Benny’s manager and constant companion was Billy Gibson, the hustler and operator who later handled Gene Tunney. Gibson, one story was, had been set up in business and given a percentage of Benny Leonard by the notorious Arnold Rothstein. There were a lot of stories about Billy Gibson, who was an irrepressible little butterball. Once he was having a drink with some friends in a speakeasy. Another patron, beefy and drunk, came over and asked if he was Benny Leonard’s manager. Gibson said, proudly, that he was. The drunk said it was nothing to be proud of—he could lick that Jew-boy with one punch. Gibson put down his drink. He challenged the stranger to say that again. The stranger said it again. Gibson hauled back and cut loose a roundhouse right smack on the other guy’s jaw. It was like hitting a rock. The drunk just stood there and gave him a wink. “Well,” said Billy, “maybe you could,” and went back to his drink, nursing his sore hand.

  It was Billy who came up with the proposal that the Marx Brothers and Benny Leonard go on tour together. Right away we agreed.

  So now we were in New York again, getting ready to go on the road in the Benny Leonard troupe. Benny had commissioned Herman Timberg to write a new act for us. The result was On the Mezzanine, an act which lasted an hour, and was practically a show in itself.

  It was in On the Mezzanine that I first did a piece of business that was to be my favorite for many years. The scene was a hotel suite. A good-looking girl is on the phone. “But how will I know you?” she asks, then says, “Oh—you’ll be wearing a brown suit with a white carnation.” Enter Groucho, Chico and me, all in brown suits with white carnations. We have overheard the conversation at the other end of the phone. On our heels the hotel dick comes in. The hotel’s silver has been stolen, he says, and a witness reported that a guy in a brown suit with a white carnation pulled the job. He grills Groucho and Chico, gets nothing but gags. He turns to me and says, “You’ve got an honest face. You don’t want to be a crook, do you?” I nod my head yes. “You just stay away from these other two guys,” he says. “They’ll only get you into trouble.” I make a contrite face, stick out my lower lip, and shake my head.

  Impressed by sparing me from a life of crime, the detective shakes my hand. A knife falls out of my sleeve and bounces on the floor. The detective shakes harder. Three more knives fall out. Intrigued, he shakes my other hand. Half a dozen knives clatter to the stage. He shakes both hands, and still more silver comes spilling out.

  When I first did the bit, I had twenty pieces up my sleeves. I eventually worked up to dropping three hundred knives, with a silver coffeepot tumbling out of my coat for a finish.

  We tried out On the Mezzanine in a neighborhood theatre on 14th Street, and knew we had a winner. Benny Leonard packed up his gloves and I packed up my knives and on the road we went.

  St. Paul, Minnesota. I worked out a new refinement on the knife-dropping gag. I would single out a dame in the audience, sitting down front. All the time the detective was shaking the cutlery out of my sleeves I would give this dame a frozen stare, kind of a modified Gookie.

  The dame I singled out this night in St. Paul fainted dead away when I began to stare at her. We had to stop the show. I felt terrible. I jumped down into the orchestra pit, where the ushers had carried the lady.
When she came to and opened her eyes and saw me leaning over her, she fainted again.

  Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The only complaint we ever got from the public over our material was while we were on the road with Benny Leonard. At one point in On the Mezzanine Groucho, Chico and I—I can’t remember what it had to do with the scene —limped across the stage in a parody of “The Spirit of ’76.” A committee of professional patriots complained to the theatre manager that this was disrespectful to Old Glory and the great traditions of the U.S.A. and should be cut from the show. So far as I know, it was the only time we ever offended anybody. We never worked “dirty.” We never used any Jewish expressions onstage. Our comedy may have been broad, and pretty hokey at times, but it was clean. We never resorted to a bedroom or bathroom double-entendre, as a lot of comics did, to get a laugh out of a tough audience.

  And so, back to New York. With the Benny Leonard troupe disbanded, we thought we’d try our luck working out of New York City. I had been having attacks of tonsillitis off and on for months now (it was a good thing I didn’t have to use my voice onstage, because half the time I didn’t have any voice), and I decided now was a good time to have my tonsils removed.

  Chico said he knew just the doctor for me. This guy was good and the price was right—$32.50 and ask no questions. Chico could dig up a bargain in any line you wanted to name, from wholesale haberdashery to cut-rate tonsillectomies.

  I called the number he gave me and the doctor made an immediate appointment for the operation. The office was up in Harlem, in the basement of a private house. When I got inside I heard the doctor’s voice but I couldn’t see him. He was standing behind his desk. He was a dwarf.