Book Marx...

Groucho Lives! (In Two Places)

By DICK CAVETT
March 30, 2012

For the Groucho Marx fans of this column who continue to plead for more, the information contained herein, if new to you, might just make your day.

There are two very different books out, both of which are musts to grace the bookshelves of the Groucho addict: Robert Bader’s “Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales: Selected Writings of Groucho Marx” and Steve Stoliar’s “Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House.”

Those who may have read these books when they first appeared need not feel left out. Both are updated and expanded editions. Both contain abundant new stuff.

Woody Allen has said that of the greats, Groucho had the richest number of gifts. He could sing, dance and act, and beyond those fairly common gifts, when you add the distinctive voice, faultless instinct for wording, genius wit, hilarious physical movement, rich supply of expressions and physical “takes” — and the list goes on — it arguably adds up to the most supremely gifted comedian of our time.

And there’s one thing more. He could write. A born scribe. And many a Groucho fan is unaware of the degree to which this was true.

This problem has been put to bed by Bader’s book. (Full disclosure: I know Rob from the masterful job he did putting together the “Dick Cavett Show” DVD sets.) Bader, too, can write, and in a fresh, humorous, scholarly and entertaining way, with shrewd analysis and observations about the products of Groucho’s pen and typewriter.

If your reaction to this is, “So what did he write?” this book holds the answer. In his early years, and aside from his books, Groucho’s written pieces appeared widely, including in the beloved magazine College Humor and, yes, The New Yorker. Bader has found and retrieved priceless specimens of Groucho’s impressively large output from all over, some of the pieces early enough to have been bylined “Julius H. Marx,” Groucho’s vrai nom. Open the book to any page and try not to laugh.

Prime among the delights for me are speeches Groucho gave at colleges and elsewhere through the years. As you read them, it’s almost like having him present. So tone-perfect are these pieces that you can’t help hearing the famous voice and its witty inflections in your mind’s ear. It’s a wonder.

A Marx Brothers fanatic virtually from birth, Bader is an intrepid researcher and gets stuff nobody’s got. For another, coming book, he can be found one day in the Lincoln Center Library or, on another, in local newspaper files in, say, Red Oak, Iowa, sleuthing out yellowing, local Marx Brothers clippings, reviews and material from their vaudeville days.

Groucho preferred the company of writers to that of actors. In Los Angeles, when he took me to the Hillcrest Country Club for lunch, he steered us past a table of beckoning movie faces to the writers’ table, where I met fabled “names” from a lifetime of reading screen credits. He told me once, “I’d rather be known as an author and remembered for my writing than for all the rest of it.” (He told others that, too, of course.) He was immensely proud of having been a houseguest of his pen pal T. S. Eliot. The only problem, he said, was that Eliot kept addressing Groucho’s then-wife, Eden, as “Mrs. Groucho.”

Groucho was a well-read, well-educated man (the “self-” method) and the only 9th-grade dropout I ever met who had read all of Iris Murdoch’s novels. I think he was quietly delighted when I, with my (envied) Yale degree, had to confess to having read not one.

Steve Stoliar, while still college-age, was part of the successful campaign to force the 1974 re-release of “Animal Crackers,” the Marxes’ 1930 film, then inexplicably in mothballs and in danger of being lost, deteriorated and forgotten. This brought him to Groucho’s attention. Sufficiently impressed by Steve’s knowledge of the world of Marx, Groucho offered him a job and he “woke up” inside his hero’s house, transformed from mere fan into archivist, general amanuensis and companion to his personal god. A dream that he hadn’t dared to dream had come true. How many of us can say that?

“Raised Eyebrows” is an invigorating read. A gulping Stoliar got used to opening the front door to a who’s who of the arts and letters: S. J. Perelman, Bob Hope, Steve Allen, Morrie Ryskind, Jack Lemmon, George Burns and many more cherished friends.

Guests, after dinner, were treated to a cabaret with their host by the piano singing, with perfect pitch, “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady” “Father’s Day,” “Show Me a Rose,” “Omaha, Nebraska (In the Foothills of Tennessee)” and other favorites, often with Marvin Hamlisch volunteering at the keyboard.

“Raised Eyebrows” could easily have been written as a delightful memoir only. It is that, but much more. There’s no way Stoliar could have avoided dealing with the rhino in the room: the enigmatic, half-mad Erin Fleming, the young woman who came into Groucho’s life at a crucial time and who became, in a complex and bizarre way, his Lady Macbeth. As you’ll see, she was equally adept at doing wondrous things for Groucho, and appalling ones.

Depending on whom you ask, she was either the best or worst thing that could have happened to the aging star, who provided her a pass into a world of fame and the big time that she could never have otherwise achieved. In my view, she was both: the worst and the best. Young and pretty and vivacious when Groucho met her, Erin and her ambition worked — some would say wormed — their way into his home and she became, in effect, his life-manager. Her story as told by Stoliar is the stuff of one swell hair-raising novel or movie.

On the plus side, she got Groucho up and out of near despair at a time when he was feeling forgotten. (A woman who lived near Groucho described how, in a deeply lonely period of his life following a divorce, he would walk his dog in front of his neighbors’ homes, hoping, she said, to be invited in for a drink, a visit or a meal. That gets to me.)

Another paradox about Groucho was the contrast between his claim to be shocked by the dirty talk and material of the 1960s and ’70s and his own propensity for the hilarious, filthy remark.

“I don’t belong in this age,” he said once on my show, where he also discussed the Broadway musical “Hair” and its then-shocking nudity. “I was going to go buy a ticket,” Groucho said, “but I went back to my hotel room, took off my clothes, looked at myself in the mirror and saved eight dollars.” (He’d have saved a lot more today.) Would-be comedy writers: Note the perfect ad-lib wording, syllable count and cadence.

Bader did some bowdlerizing of Groucho’s stuff in the original edition of his book, and has kicked himself for it. In the interval he decided to restore everything, feeling it was not his duty to deny the reader Groucho unadulterated. (Congratulate me for not using the phrase “letting it all hang out.”)

Did I mention that both books are updated from previous versions and that both contain enough rich new stuff to delight the heart and mind of the earlier reader? Stoliar’s update on Erin Fleming re-visits the old question about whether she eventually attained the state of genuine madness.

Long-memoried viewers of Ted Koppell’s “Nightline,” on the very night the verdict in the crazy “Erin Fleming vs. Bank of America” trial came down against her (there is much to Google on this case), would not need a degree in psychiatry to diagnose what appeared to be someone certifiably unhinged. Imagine the lack of charm and appeal it would take to cause a jury to decide against a young woman, in favor of so revered an institution as a bank! At one point, news-coverage viewers of the trial got to see Fleming point across the courtroom and shriek at a Bank of America attorney, “That man murdered Groucho Marx!”

Stoliar’s update section also includes some fascinating information about Erin’s mystery-enshrouded demise.

The truth is, Marx devotees will need to get both books. And if you’re not a devotee, get them anyway. Fix a drink, light a fire (I won’t add “only if you have a fireplace”), put one book on each side of you and dip alternately. There are so many worse ways you could spend your time.

Trying as usual to think of how to close this off, a problem Groucho never had in his letters, I remembered an example. He once ended:

Well, Richard (I’d say “Dick” but my secretary is a spinster), I’m running out of things to say. And they should be running out of me.
Anyway, good-bye ’til hell freezes over. And if you’ve read this far, there’s something wrong with you.
Groucho

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/groucho-lives-in-two-places/