Harpo Speaks! Read online

  The truth was, the authorities were so intent on nabbing Harry Kabikoff that they didn’t bother to impound my dog, or even check his papers.

  Harry Kabikoff was a fighter, a lightweight, who once made the mistake of trying to clobber Benny Leonard in an exhibition back in St. Paul, and had gotten himself decked by the champ. Kabikoff became quite a pal of Leonard’s after that performance, and of ours too. The day we sailed for England, Harry came to the boat to see us off. When the boat sailed he was still in our stateroom. He had a notion he’d like to try his luck in the English ring. We had to put up bond for him and pay for his fare across. Harry’s luck in the English ring was no better than his luck in the Minnesota ring. He came to see us off at Southampton, and somehow tarried too long in our stateroom again, and we had to pay his fare back home. The Cunard Line was satisfied, but the U.S. State Department was not. So when we landed, all the officials were too busy hunting for the tiger we had smuggled in to bother about the illegal entry of any sheep dog.

  By the time Harry got off the hook, with our help, Hokum was home free, to all intents and purposes a bona fide Yankee Fido.

  New York. Among the other things we brought back from abroad was an inflated opinion of how good we were. The conquest of London had gone to our heads. We got on our high horses and refused to kowtow to the Emperor of the Palace. What the hell, we were now royalty ourselves. The next thing we knew we were in a fight to the finish with E. F. Albee, over a minor issue. It didn’t take long for the finish to come.

  When we worked an Albee theatre out of town, our act lasted forty minutes. It was a sort of afterpiece to the movie on the program. There would be as many as twenty people besides ourselves in the company, including extras, musicians and stagehands. We were on a fixed budget, and this involved a detailed, cent-by-cent accounting. If we ran over budget on production costs, the deficit was made up out of our salaries. Whenever this happened we howled all the way to New York, but it never did us any good. The accounting department was mighty, and it prevailed.

  On returning from England, we were booked to take a company on a swing through upstate New York and over to Cleveland. The itinerary was okay with us, but we told Murdock we didn’t approve of the budget. Specifically, we felt that the allocation for stagehands was $19.50 too high.

  Who the hell were we to question an item on the budget? Murdock wanted to know. We were the Marx Brothers, International Artistes, that’s who the hell we were. We wouldn’t give in. Murdock said we were crazy. The budget had been drawn up by Mr. Albee himself, and it couldn’t be changed. We told him what Mr. Albee could do with his budget.

  The next day Mr. Albee told us what we could do. We could look for work elsewhere. Furthermore, we were never to set foot again in an Albee theatre. Good, said we. Now we were free to go on to bigger things.

  Too late, the sobering import of what we had done sank in. We had kicked ourselves smack off the pinnacle of vaudeville. Too late, we learned that Albee’s power ranged far beyond his own empire. When you were on his blacklist, doors were closed in your face all over town. Still, we were a headline act. What to do? The first thing we did was to send for Minnie. She came charging out of retirement on the next train east.

  Minnie turned the city upside down and at last she found an open door, the door of the Shubert brothers’ office. Nobody warned us, unfortunately, that it was a trap door.

  The Shuberts had come up with the scheme of sending revue companies out on the road, in cut-rate, cutthroat competition with Albee and the Orpheum. These companies were known as “Shubert Units,” and they were headlined by outcasts and exiles from the big-time circuits. This qualified us. We were welcomed with open arms, and papers were signed for the creation of the Marx Brothers Shubert Unit.

  Our new bosses were famous in the theatre, but not for their liberal treatment of performers. A Shubert Unit had to pay its own way. Each unit had an advance man to put out posters and arrange for theatres (which had to be off the beaten track, since all the big houses were controlled by the moguls the Shuberts were fighting). But there was no budget for advance publicity. There was no advance money for the company, or expense money, or even a guarantee. The unit paid itself from week to week out of box-office receipts, on a fixed percentage.

  Under these conditions, we had to stage a full two-hour show, not just a forty-minute act, as we had for Albee. We had to hire variety acts and musicians, and cook up an afterpiece that required a minimum of props and scenery. The more the Shuberts had to lay out in production costs, the more they whittled down the company’s box-office percentage.

  For all this, the Marx Brothers were the Marx Brothers. We’d done it the hard way before and we’d do it the hard way again. We hit the road.

  Buffalo, New York. We landed in Buffalo to find no posters up, no theatre lined up for the unit to play in. Our advance man was running a week behind the show. Business was lousy.

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Business got worse. We had to cut our people from half salary down to one-third salary. Acts were pulling out right and left, and replacing them wasn’t easy. The Shuberts declined to accept our collect calls, or reply to our telegrams for help.

  In Milwaukee, Minnie announced that she had the answer to our troubles. “All this show needs,” she said, “is a little more class, like some new special effects. That’ll pack ’em in.”

  When Minnie spoke these words, I was hearing a voice out of a past that I hoped I had forgotten, a past of hockshop mandolins and fake carnations. I couldn’t believe we had fallen all the way back to this. Just four months ago we had been the guests of honor at the London town house of the Duke of Gloucester.

  But Minnie lived only for the present, and the job at hand. Her present job, in Milwaukee, was to make a breath-taking spectacle out of the Chinese number in the first act. She lit on this number for the simple reason that one of the girls in the unit was stuck on a local boy whose father owned a Chinese restaurant and who agreed to give Minnie all the Chinese props and decorations she wanted, if we would plug the restaurant during the show.

  Minnie had an inspiration. It would be a rain scene. For the special effect, two stagehands would shower rice down from the flies, while lights played through the falling rice for atmosphere. It would be the most thrilling thing ever seen in Milwaukee, Minnie proclaimed.

  It was not, however. That night it was raining hard outside, real rain. The theatre roof leaked. The special-effects rice, sitting high above the stage in two big cans, got pretty wet by the middle of the first act. It came time for Minnie’s new number. When the stagehands got the cue to start the shower, two fat globs of soggy rice plummeted to the stage. The kids onstage didn’t know what hit them. They got the hell off before they could find out.

  Death in Milwaukee, or, China Strikes Back.

  Indianapolis, Indiana. By now our advance man was two weeks behind the show. Bills were piling up. Our credit was exhausted. We were served with a lawsuit. A lawyer had notified us that all our assets—costumes, props and sets—would be attached the minute we arrived in Indianapolis. Sure enough, when we arrived the lawyer was there to greet us, with a deputy sheriff.

  But they were stymied. They couldn’t lay a finger on us, because our assets had already been attached. We had the papers to prove it. Minnie had arranged this, through a friendly lawyer, on our way through Chicago.

  The only place we could find to play in Indianapolis was an amphitheatre that seated like four thousand people, miles from the center of town. When we complained about the size of the joint, the manager told us not to worry. He had a wide, portable screen that could be set up across the middle of the auditorium, giving it a false back, and giving the effect that a half-empty house was really a full house.

  The Indianapolis opening of the Marx Brothers’ Shubert Revue was attended by 128 paying customers. The manager obligingly moved the screen down eight more rows, to the one-quarter mark. Attendance at the second performance was 34.

  Aft
er the second show I saw Minnie pacing the stage, whistling vaguely, squinting at the light borders, and rubbing her hands. I knew what was coming. A new special effect. Ah, but this one was different! No fancy scenery, nothing as tricky as raining rice. This one would be done with lights alone. But what a lighting effect! When word of Minnie’s new spectacle had buzzed around Indianapolis, the house would be jammed to the rafters!

  Minnie worked out her scheme with the spotlight operator. It was simple, she said. While the company sang “Moonlight Bay,” the spotlight man would project the moon and a galaxy of stars on the ceiling and the proscenium, and rippling water on the floor of the stage and the apron. So simple it was genius, true theatrical genius.

  To give Minnie credit, it might indeed have been a brilliant effect. We never had a chance to find out. That night the spotlight operater turned up drunk. He got confused about Nature’s laws, let alone Minnie’s cues. He had the moon and the stars shining on the floor and water rippling all over the ceiling.

  Well, word buzzed around Indianapolis, all right. The total attendance for our fourth show was a nice, round figure. Ten people. Even with the screen behind the second row, it still looked like ten people.

  Now even Minnie had to face reality. We were washed up. We were stranded. We didn’t have enough dough to pay our way out of the hotel. We could sneak out of the hotel, but we still didn’t have train fare to any point beyond Kokomo. We didn’t have enough dough to pay the kids in the company the price of dinner. It was the end of the line for the Shubert unit and it looked like the end of the Marx Brothers, headliners on the Orpheum, the hit of the Palace, and the toast of London. I had seven cents in my pocket.

  Her sons were afraid to say it, but Minnie said it: “We’ll have to wire Al for a loan.”

  We knew that Uncle Al was financially good for our getaway money. He now had a new partner, a guy named Gallagher, and owned half-interest in the most popular song in the country, “Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean.” But Minnie was not exactly sure if she had sent the telegram to her brother’s right address. She wouldn’t admit it, but she was also afraid that even if Uncle Al received the wire, he might decide that this was the last straw, and refuse to bail us out.

  “Boys,” she said, “we can only wait and hope.”

  While waiting and hoping, I went for an aimless walk in the outskirts of Indianapolis. I was depressed, and confused, and I had to be alone. I kept telling myself that something good always happened every time I hit bottom. But I didn’t believe it. What could happen? What could I do? Groucho could go back in vaudeville as a single. Zeppo could go back to Chicago with Minnie, where he’d have no trouble finding a job. He was the only high-school graduate in the family. Chico could land a job as a piano player, on his own terms, anywhere.

  But me? What was I trained to do besides being a Marx Brother? Well, I could play the harp on a New York City ferryboat, for nickels and dimes. Beyond that, nothing.

  As I walked, a long-forgotten voice came out of the past. Miss Flatto. Miss Flatto, waggling her finger at my nose and saying, Some day you’ll realize, young man. Some day you’ll realize! Okay, so now I realized. I had come to no good end, exactly as she had predicted. I was a man of nearly thirty years and here I was stranded in a strange city with seven cents in my pocket and no way of earning cent number eight. Okay, Miss Flatto, I said to the voice in my memory, you’ve had your revenge.

  It was the only time I ever felt sorry for myself.

  I came out of my daze. I was startled to find I was standing watching an auction sale. The inventory of a little general store in the suburbs—groceries, notions and dry goods—was being auctioned off. There were about twenty people there. They must have been jobbers, mostly, because the auctioneer was knocking down the stock in big lots. I was careful to keep my hands in my pockets, so I could resist any crazy impulse to make a bid, and blow my entire capital of seven cents.

  The shelves were nearly emptied out and most of the crowd had left, but I still hung around, having nothing better to do with myself. Finally everything was gone except one scrub brush, the former owner, hovering in the background, the auctioneer, myself, and an elderly Italian couple. The elderly couple had been there all the time. Either they had no money or they were too timid to make a bid on anything. Whichever it was, they exchanged sad looks now that the auction was winding up.

  The auctioneer was tired. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get it over with and not horse around. I have left here one last desirable item. One cleansing brush in A-number-one, brand-new condition, guaranteed to give you floors so clean you can eat off them. What am I offered?”

  The old Italian guy and his wife looked at each other, searching for the key to the right thing to say. The auctioneer glared at them. “All right!” he yelled. “It’s only a goddam scrub brush!” They held on to each other like they had done something wrong.

  I said, quickly, “One cent.”

  The auctioneer whacked his gavel. He sighed and said, “Sold-thank-God-to-the-young-American-gentleman-for-one-cent.”

  I picked up my brush and handed it to the old lady. She was as touched as if I had given her the entire contents of the store. The old man grabbed my hand and pumped it. They both grinned at me and poured out a river of Italian that I couldn’t understand. “Think nothing of it,” I said, and added, “Ciao, eh?”—which was the only Italian I could remember from 93rd Street.

  They thought this was pretty funny, the way I said it, and they walked away laughing. I walked away laughing too. A day that had started out like a nothing day, going nowhere except down, had turned into a something day, with a climax and a laugh for a finish. I couldn’t explain it, but I hadn’t felt so good in years. A lousy penny scrub brush had changed the whole complexion of life.

  When I got back to the hotel the money had arrived from Uncle Al. Just as I anticipated, it had been decided that Groucho should audition as a single, Zeppo return to Chicago with Minnie, and Chico hire out as a piano player.

  To all of these decisions I said: “Nuts.”

  This was the longest serious speech I had ever made in front of the family, and everybody listened. Then everybody started talking. We talked ourselves out, until all our self-pity was gone. What had happened to us was our fault, not the Shuberts’ or anybody else’s. And what was going to happen to us would also be our own doing, not the Shuberts’ or anybody else’s.

  Aboard the east-bound Pennsy. The other passengers on the coach kept complaining, so we bribed the porter a quarter and spent the night in the men’s room of the nearest Pullman car. I tootled on the clarinet and played pinochle with Chico. Groucho smoked his pipe and read a book. Zeppo did deep knee-bends. At the same time we were all working, throwing ideas into the kitty and putting together a show we could do back in New York. None of us stopped to think how idiotic and deluded we were. What show? For whom? We were not only exiled by the moguls, but now even the scavengers wouldn’t touch us.

  Absolutely idiotic. And thank God we were. The train ride from Indianapolis to New York, clacking through the blackness from the end of the line to what looked like the beginning of nothing, was the most momentous jump we ever made. For me, it was the prologue to a new kind of life in a new kind of world.

  CHAPTER 11 The Name Is Woollcott

  IT WASN’T MUCH OF A SHOW, but it kept Chico in pinochle money and the rest of us in eating money. It was a three-day tabloid, or “tab show,” in which everybody doubled in brass. Groucho was master of ceremonies, tenor, and straight man in the afterpiece. Chico doubled as piano player and monologist, besides doing comedy in the afterpiece. I played harp and clarinet, spelled Chico at the piano, and dropped knives. Zeppo was the juvenile and the baritone, and also the prop man and the stage manager. Minnie was leading lady, character woman, producer, company manager, and wardrobe mistress.

  Since we had been thrown to the lions by the lords of the vaudeville jungle, we had to hack out our own circuit. The Marx Brothers Circuit,
justly unsung and unfabled in the annals of show business, was made up of the least known side-street theatres in Brooklyn and the Bronx, with a western swing to Hoboken, New Jersey. Oh, how the mighty had fallen!

  We were surviving, but that was all. The future was a bleak, blank zero. Nobody of importance came to see us because we didn’t let anybody know where we were playing. We were even too ashamed to let our relatives know. Indianapolis looked better all the time. We were broke back there, but at least we still had stature as big-time headliners.

  “Hang on, hang on!” was Minnie’s rallying cry. “I’ll find a wayl”

  It was not Minnie, for once, who led us into greener pastures. It was Chico who found the way. He found it—where else?—in a pinochle game, one Sunday night. He found a live one. A guy with dough. A guy with enough dough to put a legitimate show together.

  The “live one” was a producer named Joseph Gates. He was better known around Broadway as “Minimum” Gates, because of the quaint way he auditioned an actor. A Gates audition consisted of his turning his back on an actor and saying, “So what’s your minimum salary?”

  Actually, Gates’s bank roll was not his own. He had found an angel, a pretzel manufacturer from Hackensack, New Jersey—Herman Broody by name. Broody had promised his girl friend he’d put her on the stage. He had the stage for his girl, but no show. He came to Gates and gave him the dough to build a production.

  So now Gates was looking for a star to build the production around. He had about decided to sign a black-face comedian named Wilson, who had worked as a single on all the big circuits and whose minimum salary was six hundred dollars a week. Chico went to work on Gates. Why not sign the Four Marx Brothers for the show? By sheer coincidence, said Chico, the Marx Brothers’ minimum was also six hundred dollars a week. Gates couldn’t see it. Too many guys in the act. They’d clutter up the stage.