Harpo Speaks! Read online

  I’d come a long way as a workingman, too. Since the day I was ambushed by the bakery woodpile and got hooked in my first job, I had been hired and fired on the average of once a month. If a job didn’t offer any possibilities of fun, graft or petty thievery, I was not apt to take it very seriously. Like the time I spent a whole afternoon making a delivery for a butcher. I was bored delivering meat so I took a shortcut, with stopovers at the poolroom, Gookie’s window, the front stoop of my house—where I set my all-time record of 341 tennis-ball bounces—and finally back to the store, where I got fired.

  Selling papers was no good. No loot on the side. Shoe-shining was too much of a grind. Junk collecting was all right, but there was always the threat of being highjacked by an enemy gang.

  If things got real desperate I could hock a pair of Frenchie’s tailoring shears, which was Chico’s old racket. As long as I gave him the pawn ticket, Frenchie never seemed to mind and he never asked for the fifty cents the pawnbroker gave me. The worst I could get was a whisk of Frenchie’s whiskbroom under my chin.

  I was never as blase as Chico about hustling scratch from my own family. It made me feel guilty, so whenever Frenchie packed to go off on a selling trip, I volunteered to go along as his assistant. I helped carry the bundles of “lappas”—the odd pieces of materials—and when Frenchie made his sales pitch I held up the pieces one by one. This required skillful manipulation, since I had to hold the fabrics so the customer couldn’t see the holes or rips. I guess the official designation for my job would be Lappa Displayer and Defect Concealer.

  Sometimes, when things got dull and the family was flat broke, I served as Grandpa’s assistant. Because the language barrier was too great for him, Grandpa never worked in America as a ventriloquist or magician. For some reason unknown to me, he took to umbrella mending, door-to-door, whenever he needed quick cash.

  On his rounds, Grandpa carried a tool kit and a tin can on a wire sling. In the can were coals of charcoal. To get the charcoal white-hot for the soldering iron, the can had to be swung around and around, to fan the fire. My special job with Grandpa was Tin Can Swinger.

  Grandpa’s umbrella business petered out after a few years. People got wise to the fact they could buy new umbrellas for the prices he charged to mend old ones. I was sorry. Tin Can Swinging was one occupation I could have stuck at permanently. It was fun.

  The shortest job I ever had lasted ten minutes. I applied as a helper to an Italian dame who ran a delicatessen near 96th Street, and she hired me as soon as I walked in the store. Then she looked me up and down, with big starey eyes, and asked me to follow her downstairs to the storeroom. When she got me down there she began shaking and breathing hard and making funny wheezy sounds. I was afraid she was having a heart attack.

  The dame had another kind of attack in mind. She asked me to hurry up and take my clothes off. I started to unbutton my shirt, thinking maybe she had a uniform for me. She couldn’t wait. She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her, all over her body, then under her dress. I couldn’t fight loose from her grip. I was never so scared in my life.

  Thank God, the bell on the upstairs door rang before the crazy dame could go any farther. She let go of my hand and returned to the store. My hand, I felt, had been tainted. It was nasty, filthy dirty. I had to wash it, immediately. The only facility in the storeroom was a big, open pickle barrel. So I washed my hand in the pickle juice and ran upstairs and through the store and never went near the joint again.

  My sex education was direct, no punches pulled, and vividly illustrated. I learned a lot more about the subject and its ramifications than most twelve-year-old boys did. But the method had its drawbacks. For years I couldn’t eat pickles.

  At thirteen I attained manhood, according to the Jewish faith. I was bar mitzvah—inducted as an adult member of the synagogue. This didn’t mean, however, that I would start going to shul every Saturday. The rites were performed out of deference to Grandpa, who would have been bitterly hurt if his grandsons hadn’t shown this much respect for their traditional faith. It was the least we could do.

  For the occasion, Frenchie made me a black serge knee-breeches suit (pieced together of unsold “lappas”) and bought me a derby hat. After the ceremony there was a reception for me at 179 with a spread of sweets, pastries and wine. This, naturally, attracted all the relatives, and it was quite a party. I received four presents. Uncle Al gave me a pair of gloves. Aunt Hannah gave me a pair of gloves. Cousin Sam gave me a pair of gloves. (In my bar mitzvah photograph I’m wearing two pairs, one over the other, and holding the third.) Minnie, bless her, gave me a genuine, one-dollar Ingersoll watch.

  The inevitable happened. Three days after my bar mitzvah, my new watch was missing.

  I was pretty damn sore. A present was not the same as something you hustled. I tracked down Chico to a crap game and asked him what about it. He handed me the pawn ticket. I gave the ticket to Minnie and she reclaimed the watch for me. Then a brilliant idea occurred to me. I would show Chico. I would make my watch Chico-proof, so he couldn’t possibly hock it again. I removed its hands.

  Now the watch was mine forever. I wound it faithfully each morning and carried it with me at all times. When I wanted to know what time it was I looked at the Ehret Brewery clock and held my watch to my ear. It ran like a charm, and its ticking was a constant reminder that I had, for once, outsmarted Chico.

  Being a pianist (with a repertoire of two one-finger pieces) and an actor (with a repertoire of one funny face), I began to be more aware of show business.

  Sam Muller, the tailor Cousin Polly married, had a shop on Lexington Avenue not far from the Gookie cigar store. For a while, Sam had the job of making the livery for Mr. Ehret’s coachmen, and he used to display sample uniforms in the window. Sam’s shop became quite a showcase, with the two dummies all dressed up in blue and gold.

  The Star, a melodrama theatre on 102nd Street, gave Sam Muller two free tickets a week for using his colorful window to hang their posters in. When Sam couldn’t use the tickets, he’d give them to Groucho and me. I saw my first stage plays, and I loved them.

  Groucho, having been chosen by Minnie to follow in the footsteps of Uncle Al, had already seen Uncle Al on the stage, and he knew his routines and songs by memory. I decided to take Groucho on as a partner (as Chico had once taken me on, in the cuckoo-clock promotion), when I found out that stores in the neighborhood were paying a penny apiece for cats. I’ve forgotten why they were. There must have been a mouse plague or a cat shortage, or both, that year.

  So now I was a promoter. Groucho and I put on a show in our basement. We performed Uncle Al’s popular sketch, “Quo Vadis Upside Down.” Admission: one cat.

  It was my first public performance. As I remember, we grossed seven cats at the boxoffice but made a net profit of only four cents. Three cats got away. Well, that was show business.

  An exciting place down on Third Avenue was the Old Homestead Beer Garden. Behind the saloon there was a real garden with an open-air stage, where they put on continuous shows in the summertime—with jugglers, comedy teams, trick musicians, yodelers and German bands.

  I used to sneak through the back fence to see the show at the Old Homestead. Sometimes when I got caught I got heaved out. Other times I was put to work, changing the cards on the easel to announce the upcoming acts on the bill. I didn’t get paid for this, but I could see the entire program three times from start to finish. My favorite act at the Old Homestead was The Watson Sisters, who did a comedy prize fight act.

  Prize fighting itself in those days was not a sport, like baseball. It was show business. A heavyweight title bout was to me the biggest show of any year, greater than the St. Patrick’s parade, the election bonfire and The Watson Sisters all rolled into one. This was in spite of the fact that I had never seen a prize fight.

  My supreme idol was James J. Jeffries. On the afternoon he fought Jack Munroe, in San Francisco, I sat on the sidewalk with forty other kids in front of a saloon on
90th Street and Third Avenue. There was a ticker in the saloon. The bartender announced the fight blow-by-blow as it came off the ticker, and some kindly patron was thoughtful enough to relay the vital news to the kids on the street outside.

  When Jeffries knocked out Munroe in the second round, a rousing cheer went up inside the saloon, and all forty of us kids jumped to our feet and started dancing on the sidewalk and swinging at each other with roundhouse knockout punches. I came home with a black eye. I couldn’t have been happier or prouder if I’d come home with the championship belt itself.

  Some of the talk about the Responsibilities of Manhood must have stuck with me after my bar mitzvah, because when I was thirteen I landed my first bona fide job, regular wages and hours and everything. And, indirectly, it had to do with show business. I became a bellhop at the Hotel Seville, down on East 28th Street. The Seville was then a high-class theatrical hotel.

  I worked alternating shifts of six and twelve hours, with twelve hours off between each shift. I was paid twelve dollars a month, plus two free meals during the twelve-hour shift, and I earned fifty cents a week on the side for walking Cissie Loftus’ dog. Cissie Loftus was a famous English music-hall and vaudeville star. Not only that, she was—I thought—almost as beautiful as my mother Minnie.

  I have no recollection of why I was fired by the Seville, but of course I was. My next employment was setting pins in the bowling alley at YMHA—Young Men’s Hebrew Association—on 92nd and Lex. My salary wasn’t half what I made hopping bells, but the hours were better, and I still made enough dough to carry out my present mission in life. My mission was making myself a Neighborhood Character.

  Since I had been pretty much a failure as student, fist-fighter, musician and gambler, I decided to follow up on my Gookie success and play it for laughs. I became, therefore, a Character.

  The costume I sported upon the streets of the East Side now consisted of pointed shoes, tight-bottomed long pants, red turtle-neck sweater, derby hat, and a sty in my right eye. Other adolescents broke out all over with pimples and boils, but not me. I broke out all in one spot—on my lower right eyelid. I couldn’t hide it so I kept the sty as part of the act.

  In my new role, I began hanging around older-type fellows, men of seventeen and eighteen. Their talk was mostly about sex. Specifically, they talked about their weekly exploits, every Saturday, down at a place in Chinatown called the Friendly Inn. It was clear to me that I had to go down to the Friendly Inn and “do it.” Otherwise I would lose whatever standing I had in the sophisticated crowd I hung around with.

  Besides, there were certain masculine urges stirring within me that itched to be assuaged. Besides that, it only cost four bits.

  So down I went, one Saturday afternoon, all gotten up in pointed shoes, tight pants, turtle-neck sweater, derby and sty. I took the El train to Chatham Square and strutted over to the corner of Mott and Hester.

  The downstairs part of the Friendly Inn was an ordinary saloon. The girls worked upstairs. Business was booming this particular Saturday, and the line of upstairs customers ran all the way through the bar, out the swinging doors, and halfway up the block on Hester Street. I got on the end of the line. I was very conspicuously the smallest and youngest male animal anywhere in sight. In front of me stood a big Polish guy who looked seven feet tall and four feet across the shoulders. I sweated buckets trying to look taller. I sweated so much I had trouble keeping the half dollar from squirting out of my fist.

  The line moved with regularity, and not too slowly. Every step forward meant that somebody ahead of me had gotten his money’s worth upstairs and had left the Friendly Inn by the back door.

  When I made it inside the saloon, into the light, a pimp came along the line sizing up the customers. He spotted me and said, “Get the hell out of here, kid! You want to give this place a bad name?” I ducked out of the saloon—and got back on the end of the line. I had already invested five cents cash in the El ride. I was not giving up.

  The next time I got inside, the pimp spotted me and chased me out again. I got back on the end of the line. The third time he saw me he gave up, shrugged, and said what the hell, go on upstairs if I had to have it that bad. I felt I had to have it that bad.

  So I shuffled along in line, step by step, past the length of the bar and up the stairs in back. At the top of the stairs, a fat woman smoking a cigarette gave me a towel, took my fifty cents, and told me to go to room number two.

  The open doorway of room number two was as close as I ever got to the promised land. Inside, a naked woman lay on an iron bed, her knees raised and her legs spread apart. I never saw her face. She said, “Next? Come on, for Christ sake!” I took one look and dropped the towel and ran down the stairs and out the back door of the saloon.

  A couple of my pals, who’d already made the trip to the Friendly Inn that day, were waiting for me uptown. It was plain that they regarded me with new respect. “Not bad, huh?” one of them said. I tilted my derby down over my eyes. “No siree,” I said. “Not bad at all—for four bits.” I walked quickly away, so they wouldn’t see I was still trembling from the shock.

  My manly urges could itch for a long time before they led me to temptation again.

  Groucho got himself a job for after school and weekends as delivery boy for the Hepner Wig Company, down in the theatre district. It was Groucho’s wig job that led to my first memorable piece of acting, a performance that I’m still proud of.

  One day Groucho brought home a large box from Hepner’s, to be delivered early the next morning. We couldn’t resist breaking into it. Inside were a dozen ladies’ wigs, all shades of blond, red and brunette. Then, of course, we couldn’t resist trying them all on in front of the mirror. We primped and postured and giggled and thought we were a couple of prize comics.

  Groucho said it was easy for me to impersonate a dame because I already had a woman’s voice, which was true. My voice refused to change. This gave me an idea.

  “Let me borrow one of the wigs,” I said. “I’m going to have some fun with the Baltzers.”

  The Baltzers were the looniest of all our unrelated Relatives. Old man Baltzer, who was Uncle Al’s special friend, was a pinochle fiend, which was normal. He was also a hygiene fiend, which wasn’t. Baltzer had such a phobia against germs that he would only use the last sheet on a roll of toilet paper.

  The Baltzers had two unmarried daughters. Sister Emmy had resigned herself to being an old maid. She used to give herself parties, sitting in a rocking chair, rocking and talking to herself and eating bananas. Sister Rosie was a better-looking dame, but she never got married either. She had “advanced ideas.” She insisted on “trying a man out first” before she would consent to being engaged. No guy she tried out ever asked for her consent.

  Mama Baltzer was a flighty woman who felt it was her duty to protect her “little girls” from the perils of the outside world, and neither Emmy nor Rosie—who must have been in their thirties at the time—could leave the house without her permission.

  Fortunately Minnie was not home this night, which gave me free access to her wardrobe and cosmetics. I picked out a beautiful blond wig from Groucho’s assortment. The hair was curled in bangs in front, and hung to my shoulders in back. Groucho helped me with the powder and rouge, padded me in the right places, hooked me into a dress, and buttoned me into a pair of Minnie’s kid shoes.

  Groucho followed me uptown to the Baltzers’, far enough behind so as not to give me away, but close enough to help if I should get in any trouble. The minute I got on the streetcar the fun began. When I hauled up my skirt to get money for the fare (Minnie always kept her change in a bag pinned to her petticoat), the conductor gave me a big wink. I winked back at him. I saw him say something to the brakeman, at the other end of the car. They both looked at me and winked. When I moved down that way to get off, the brakeman sidled over and without looking at me ran his hand down my backsides. I moved away. He followed me and gave me another feel.

  When
the car stopped, he said, “How’s about it, girlie?” I fluttered my eyelids and pursed my lips—then threw him a Gookie and swung off the platform. I had never seen such a startled look. Now I had complete confidence in my role.

  A card game was going on in the Baltzers’ living room when I walked in, without knocking. Old man Baltzer was playing with his father, Grandpa Baltzer, Uncle Al, and a friend of Uncle Al’s from Chicago. Sister Emmy was kibitzing from her rocking chair.

  I swished around a little bit, and said somebody told me there were some fellows up here looking to have a little fun. Mr. Baltzer, Uncle Al and the friend were at a loss for anything to say, but Grandpa was at no loss. He reached out and pinched my knee and told me to come sit on his lap.

  Sister Emmy, frozen with horror, started backing away. “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” she said in a faint and shaky voice. “I have to get closer to the fire.” There was no fire. She edged over to the door, and escaped through it to go warn Mama and Rosie.

  I heard the women’s voices in the other room, cackling like three seagulls fighting over a dead fish. I was sashaying around, scaring the daylights out of old man Baltzer by threatening to kiss him. He took out his handkerchief and held it to his face. I could imagine what kind of germs he thought I had on me. Uncle Al, who liked to needle his friend about his phobia, kept egging me on.

  I was sitting on Grandpa’s lap when the three dames burst into the room. When they saw where I was they burst right out again. Then they got hysterical. The three of them, Emmy, Rosie and Mama, ran through the house from room to room—everywhere but the living room—slamming doors and screaming, “Get that prostitute out of this house! Get her out! Get her out!”

  The screaming and shrieking were too much for old man Baltzer. He stood up and said, talking through his handkerchief, that he was going to call the police if I didn’t leave. I stuck out my tongue at him and told him to go ahead and call the cops. He ran out of the apartment—and knocked over Groucho, who was watching the scene through a crack in the door.