April 30, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in college, Steve Stoliar’s dad wanted him to get a job, but Steve didn’t want to work at Taco Bell… so he called up Groucho Marx.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and we've already brought you
the story of how UCLA undergraduate Steve Stolier saved a
Marx Brothers movie from extinction. But here's the story of
how Steve called up Aaron Fleming, Groucho's manager, and landed
the job of his dreams.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
In the summer of seventy four, I had two or
three summer jobs fall through, for which I remain eternally grateful,
and my dad was pressuring me, I don't want you
sitting around on your fanny all summer long. I want
you to find some job. They may need a bus
(00:55):
boy at this restaurant, or you could go get interviewed
at Taco Bell. And I thought, I don't want to
do any of that, but he's never gonna let up
on me. So I called Aaron Fleming, figuring I had
nothing to lose, and I said, is there anything at
all that you think maybe I could sort of help with?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
And she said, well, actually, it's funny you call because
I used to be Groucho's secretary, but now i'm his
manager and we need someone to handle all of the
fan mail that's been coming in, and also to organize
all of his memorabilia, which is going to be donated
(01:42):
to the Smithsonian after he's gone. And we need someone
who really knows their marsh brothers.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
And I'm thinking, please please please please please please please
with you, And in my mind's eye, I have this
sort of tex av cartoon image of me zipping out
of the house and instantly appearing on the doorstep of
Groucho's house while Aaron is still on the phone explaining
(02:11):
the job to me. It wasn't quite like that, but
that's how it felt. And I thought that I would
be working maybe in an office building, maybe twice a
month he'd come by to sign checks or something. She said, Oh, no,
you'll have your own room to work in at Groucho's
house and you can make your own hours. And I thought,
(02:35):
and they're gonna pay me to do this. And so
I drove to Groucho's house in Beverly Hills, and I
was so nervous, but it worked out, and sure enough,
there was a room that had been a painting studio
that his last wife, whom he had divorced in sixty nine,
(02:58):
had used, and came my office and Groucher would often
shuffle down the hall to or from his room or
the living room or dining room, and we would chat.
And it was a very egalitarian household. I was to
sit at the lunch table when Groucher would have lunch.
(03:19):
It wasn't a sense that the help ate in the
kitchen or anything that haughty, and so I would be
lucky enough to be there when George Burns would come over,
or Steve Allen would come over, or some of his
former writers, or if it was just just in quotes,
Groucho and maybe a nurse, or Groucho and Aaron, it
(03:43):
would just be us, and I could ask him all
these questions that I'd had that I thought if I
could ever meet him, I'd want to know this. And
he appreciated the fact that I cared about and knew
about all of the things that he had experience instant
that he cared about, and that we had similar you know,
(04:03):
we both liked tinpan Alley and George Gershwin and Irving
Berlin and the humorists of the Algonquin round Table. One
time he called me into his room and gave me
a twenty dollars bill, and he said, go down to
the record store and get me some records, you know
what I like. And it meant so much to me
(04:26):
that he had assumed that I would know what to
get instead of having to explain it. But I mean,
those days at the lunch table were so rich, and
I came to appreciate him on three different levels. First
of all, he was Groucho Marx, the guy in the
(04:47):
grease paint mustache, swirling around on screen, insulting Margaret Dumont
in Duck Soup and Night at the Opera. And second
he was someone who personally knew people that to me
didn't exist in three dimensions and in color, people like well,
(05:07):
like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, James Thurber he was
friends with W. C. Fields. The idea that he knew
these people personally, you know, and I would get insight
into what they were like from him firsthand, you know,
not something he'd read or heard about, but he was there.
And then on the third level, he was a man
(05:29):
from eighteen ninety. He was a nineteenth century human being,
literally a Victorian, since she was on the throne when
he was born, although he was born in New York
and not in England, and his first hand memories went
from before the right brothers to after the moon landing,
(05:50):
which is a staggering chunk of American history, world history.
I asked him once, what's the earliest you remember? And
he thought moment, and he said, I guess probably the
Spanish American War, which was eighteen ninety eight. And he
(06:10):
and his brothers had initially started out as a singing
act in vaudeville in the early nineteen hundreds, before they
started adding comedy. They would sing harmony popular songs, and
you know, they did okay at that. But Graucho's career
went back so far that he actually was one of
(06:32):
the performers at a special charity benefit performance at the
Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Enrico Caruso was also
on the bill that night, and the money was to
go to the aid of victims of the San Francisco
earthquake of nineteen oh six. For a history buff like me,
(06:57):
and as I say, I had been a history major,
although I shifted to motion picture television after I had
been working at Grouchos a while because it was just
impossible to ignore how strongly I was drawn to that world.
You know, he would have health problems now and again
(07:17):
he'd have a small stroke or something like that, and
I would think, oh jeez, this is it. This is
I think about three weeks into my working there, he
had a slight stroke and I thought it was great
while it lasted, but now the coach is going to
turn back into a pumpkin. And you know that morning
that I showed up that he'd had a stroke and
(07:39):
the housekeeper said, please keep your voice down, mister Marx
has had a stroke. But the nurse asked that you
go back to his room because she needs some help.
And I expected him to be, you know, lying on
the floor, unable to speak, unable to move, and instead
he was sitting in bed, propped up in his pajamas
(07:59):
and muck reading the La Times. And he said, is
the ambulance here yet? I said no, it figures and
goes back to his reading and I thought, gee, he's
really taking this in stride. He's not banging at death's door.
He's reading the La Times. And it was just that
the nurse needed help getting him in to take a
(08:21):
leak in the bathroom because his balance was off from
that stroke. So I, you know, I was happy to
help out, and he bounced back from that and from
a lot of other health setbacks, even though he was
in his mid eighties by then.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And you're listening to Steve Stollier's story and in the
end Groucho Marx's story too, And what a lucky guy
indeed that those summer jobs fell through. Is what an opportunity,
an opportunity of a lifetime in Groucho's house, no less
his hero, so many Americans heroes. By the way, he
was a child of the Victorian Age, and his comedy
was rebuttal to the Victorian age its properness, and Oi
(09:03):
Groutshow was a revolutionary in his day. He really stretched
the boundaries of what comedians were allowed to do and
not do. And my goodness, what we learned listening to
this is that even people like Groutchow want to be appreciated, right,
the legends appreciate appreciation, and we can never forget that.
When we come back more of this remarkable story here
(09:24):
on our American Stories, And we're back with our American stories,
and the story of Steve Stolier, a college student who
(09:44):
saved a long lost Marx Brothers movie and then landed
the job of his dreams working as Groutcho marks his
personal assistant and archivist. Let's return to Steve and his.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Story, and it just became this remarkably rich experience for
me that ended up lasting not three weeks as I
had thought that morning, but three years, the last three
(10:16):
years of Groucho's life. And so I was able to
get to know and talk with and with Groucho, my hero.
I also got to meet Zeppo the night that he
came up there for dinner from Palm Springs. I had
(10:38):
brought the young lady I was dating, a nineteen year
old blonde who was very bright and very personable and
very attractive, and he really took a liking to her.
He sort of picked up where Chicko left off in
terms of having an eye for the ladies. And he
had recently lost his last wife to Frankson, who dumped
(11:01):
him and went for Sinatra, and that was Barbara Marx Sinatra.
So he was back to being a bachelor. And he said,
you know, Steve, you and Linda should visit me in
Palm Springs sometime. And I said, well, I don't know.
I was there when I was about nine and it
(11:22):
just it was sweltering. And he said, well, when we're
there in the summer, and I said yeah, and he said, well,
you know, Steve, it's also cold in Alaska in the winter.
It was true that Zeppo did have a great sense
of humor that really didn't get a chance to shine
on screen. I had heard that he could be very funny,
(11:46):
and I had, you know, a charm and charisma, and
people are always skeptical of that because he was sort
of wooden and didn't have the lion's share of funny
stuff to do. And the few movies he was in,
was I happy as a performer, and once he once
he left the act after Duck Soup in nineteen thirty three,
(12:09):
he became a very successful agent, handling such obscure has
beens as Clark Gable and Carol Lombard and Barbara Stanwick
and Robert Taylor and Lucille Ball and Landa Turner. So
he did really well and never looked back. But anyway,
(12:30):
a few months later Linda and I broke up. I
had a couple of photos that I wanted Zeppo to sign,
so I mailed them to his address in Palm Springs,
and in my cover letter, I said, by the way,
Lynda and I broke up. So I know you've been
around the block a few times. If you have any
(12:51):
advice for the love lorn And a few days later,
my phone rings save as Zeppo marks. I hope I'm
not inconveniencing. No, no, how I got the photos you sent. God,
I was good looking back then. But listen, I have
a question for you, and I don't want to step
(13:13):
on your toes. You understand that, because the last thing
in the world I'd want to do would be something
to upset you. Oh, okay, do you think that Linda
would go out with me? And I thought, what I mean?
She was nineteen, I was twenty, and he was seventy four,
but a young seventy four, but seventy four, And I said,
(13:39):
I don't know. I mean she enjoyed.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
You know, she got a kick a because really, tell me, honestly, Steve,
if this is at all uncomfortable for no, no, no,
no no, I said, so let me let me ask her,
and okay, I would appreciate it. And again if it's any.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
No, no, no, no no. So I saw her at
s and I asked her about it, and she laughed,
also finding it strange and funny. But thought, you know,
what the heck, I want to have the experience of
going on a date with Zeppo Marx. So they went
out once. He took her to dinner in San Diego
(14:21):
and then drove to Tijuana and attended a Hilai game
at a stadium, and then took her home. And I
talked to him afterwards, and he said, Steve, I want
to tell you I never even kissed a good night.
You should know that she's very nice, but all she
did was talk about herself. And then I saw her
(14:43):
on campus and she said, you know, Zeppa was really nice,
but all he did was talk about himself. And I thought,
that's a really interesting symmetry there. And then at parties
at Graucho's, whenever Zeppa would be there, he would make
a point of introducing is someone and say, this is Steve.
He's a nice young man. He and I dated the
(15:05):
same girl, but he got further with her than I did.
That was like my official introduction. So anyway, I have
the distinction of being able to say that Zeppo Marx
and I dated the same girl. I also got to
meet the other living Marx brother, Gummo, who to those
(15:27):
who aren't that familiar with the Marx brothers. It's even
more obscure because Gummo was the straight man before Zeppo
on the stage, and then he was drafted during World
War One and left the act. So at the time,
seventeen year old Zeppo took his place, and Gummo also
(15:48):
became an agent and did very He became Groucho's agent, actually,
and did very well. He was never that much interested
in performing. So I got to meet three out of
five of the March brothers, which is, you know, approximately
three more March Brothers than most people ever got a
chance to meet. Harpo and Chico had died in the
(16:09):
early sixties, unfortunately, so I was never able to meet them.
But when I would watch Groucho and Zeppo and Gummo
talking amongst themselves, which was great, I thought, what must
it have been like with all five brothers in their
youth sitting around the table. It must have been hysterical.
(16:33):
Groucho had a cook named Robin, who was tall and
thin and blonde and young. When Zeppo and Gummo had
come up for dinner and I was there for that dinner,
Zeppo said Robin said she'd marry me, but I don't know.
I think she's too tall for me. Groucho said, well,
(16:54):
what part of it do you want? And Zeppo said,
I'll take as high up as I can read each
and Gummo said, what do you want with her feet?
So there's a Gummo anecdote, which is extremely rare, but
evidence of the kind of goofy humor they had amongst themselves,
(17:15):
that quickness. It was just it was all still there
under various layers of rust. I was very fortunate because
of my Groucho association, I became friends with Dick Cavit.
That was another case where because of my insecurities, I
thought when Groucho was gone, my link to Dick Cavot
(17:40):
would be over. But instead he called me from New
York the week Groucho died and he said, listen, I
hope just because Groucho is gone, we're not going to
lose touch. And by the way, I hope you don't mind,
but I've shown some of your letters to Woody and
(18:00):
he says they're very well written. And I sort of
had to empty the urine out of my shoes that
Cabot was calling me to say, hey, don't drop me
as a friend and saying, I hope you don't mind,
but Woody Allen thinks your letters are well written. So
that was something. And in fact I did end up
(18:22):
moving to New York in nineteen eighty two and spending
a few years there writing for Dick Cabot at HBO,
and had many remarkable adventures in Manhattan, including getting to
meet Woody Allen and Catherine Hepburn and lots of other
stuff before I returned to LA to take another job.
(18:45):
And it was so great when I was working at
Groucho's to be able to comfortably meet these people and converse,
because I think they figured since I was inside the house,
I must be okay, whether I'm Groucho's grandson or something
like that. If I'm sitting at Graucho's lunch table, it
might must be okay. So there wasn't any nobody. There
(19:07):
were no star trips there. There was people that were
very down to earth, and I tended to find that
the old people who were legends were much more down
to earth and personable than some of the people who
had recently become famous. Aaron Fleming tended to have younger friends,
(19:29):
Elliott Gould and George Siegel and Budcourt and Sally Kellerman
and streisand to a lesser degree, and I found myself
instantly drawn to Groucho's old gang. I felt much more
that I belonged there, even though I was nineteen and
they were in their seventies and eighties, than I did
(19:52):
towards Aaron's sort of quirky group of neu veaux stars.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
And especial thanks to Robbie for superb production and great storytelling,
and especial thanks to Steve Stollier as well. Steve Stollier's
story rout Jo Marx's story here on Our American Story
This is our American Stories, and we've already brought you
the story of how UCLA undergraduate Steve Stolier saved a
Marx Brothers movie from extinction. But here's the story of
how Steve called up Aaron Fleming, Groucho's manager, and landed
the job of his dreams.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
In the summer of seventy four, I had two or
three summer jobs fall through, for which I remain eternally grateful,
and my dad was pressuring me, I don't want you
sitting around on your fanny all summer long. I want
you to find some job. They may need a bus
(00:55):
boy at this restaurant, or you could go get interviewed
at Taco Bell. And I thought, I don't want to
do any of that, but he's never gonna let up
on me. So I called Aaron Fleming, figuring I had
nothing to lose, and I said, is there anything at
all that you think maybe I could sort of help with?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
And she said, well, actually, it's funny you call because
I used to be Groucho's secretary, but now i'm his
manager and we need someone to handle all of the
fan mail that's been coming in, and also to organize
all of his memorabilia, which is going to be donated
(01:42):
to the Smithsonian after he's gone. And we need someone
who really knows their marsh brothers.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
And I'm thinking, please please please please please please please
with you, And in my mind's eye, I have this
sort of tex av cartoon image of me zipping out
of the house and instantly appearing on the doorstep of
Groucho's house while Aaron is still on the phone explaining
(02:11):
the job to me. It wasn't quite like that, but
that's how it felt. And I thought that I would
be working maybe in an office building, maybe twice a
month he'd come by to sign checks or something. She said, Oh, no,
you'll have your own room to work in at Groucho's
house and you can make your own hours. And I thought,
(02:35):
and they're gonna pay me to do this. And so
I drove to Groucho's house in Beverly Hills, and I
was so nervous, but it worked out, and sure enough,
there was a room that had been a painting studio
that his last wife, whom he had divorced in sixty nine,
(02:58):
had used, and came my office and Groucher would often
shuffle down the hall to or from his room or
the living room or dining room, and we would chat.
And it was a very egalitarian household. I was to
sit at the lunch table when Groucher would have lunch.
(03:19):
It wasn't a sense that the help ate in the
kitchen or anything that haughty, and so I would be
lucky enough to be there when George Burns would come over,
or Steve Allen would come over, or some of his
former writers, or if it was just just in quotes,
Groucho and maybe a nurse, or Groucho and Aaron, it
(03:43):
would just be us, and I could ask him all
these questions that I'd had that I thought if I
could ever meet him, I'd want to know this. And
he appreciated the fact that I cared about and knew
about all of the things that he had experience instant
that he cared about, and that we had similar you know,
(04:03):
we both liked tinpan Alley and George Gershwin and Irving
Berlin and the humorists of the Algonquin round Table. One
time he called me into his room and gave me
a twenty dollars bill, and he said, go down to
the record store and get me some records, you know
what I like. And it meant so much to me
(04:26):
that he had assumed that I would know what to
get instead of having to explain it. But I mean,
those days at the lunch table were so rich, and
I came to appreciate him on three different levels. First
of all, he was Groucho Marx, the guy in the
(04:47):
grease paint mustache, swirling around on screen, insulting Margaret Dumont
in Duck Soup and Night at the Opera. And second
he was someone who personally knew people that to me
didn't exist in three dimensions and in color, people like well,
(05:07):
like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, James Thurber he was
friends with W. C. Fields. The idea that he knew
these people personally, you know, and I would get insight
into what they were like from him firsthand, you know,
not something he'd read or heard about, but he was there.
And then on the third level, he was a man
(05:29):
from eighteen ninety. He was a nineteenth century human being,
literally a Victorian, since she was on the throne when
he was born, although he was born in New York
and not in England, and his first hand memories went
from before the right brothers to after the moon landing,
(05:50):
which is a staggering chunk of American history, world history.
I asked him once, what's the earliest you remember? And
he thought moment, and he said, I guess probably the
Spanish American War, which was eighteen ninety eight. And he
(06:10):
and his brothers had initially started out as a singing
act in vaudeville in the early nineteen hundreds, before they
started adding comedy. They would sing harmony popular songs, and
you know, they did okay at that. But Graucho's career
went back so far that he actually was one of
(06:32):
the performers at a special charity benefit performance at the
Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Enrico Caruso was also
on the bill that night, and the money was to
go to the aid of victims of the San Francisco
earthquake of nineteen oh six. For a history buff like me,
(06:57):
and as I say, I had been a history major,
although I shifted to motion picture television after I had
been working at Grouchos a while because it was just
impossible to ignore how strongly I was drawn to that world.
You know, he would have health problems now and again
(07:17):
he'd have a small stroke or something like that, and
I would think, oh jeez, this is it. This is
I think about three weeks into my working there, he
had a slight stroke and I thought it was great
while it lasted, but now the coach is going to
turn back into a pumpkin. And you know that morning
that I showed up that he'd had a stroke and
(07:39):
the housekeeper said, please keep your voice down, mister Marx
has had a stroke. But the nurse asked that you
go back to his room because she needs some help.
And I expected him to be, you know, lying on
the floor, unable to speak, unable to move, and instead
he was sitting in bed, propped up in his pajamas
(07:59):
and muck reading the La Times. And he said, is
the ambulance here yet? I said no, it figures and
goes back to his reading and I thought, gee, he's
really taking this in stride. He's not banging at death's door.
He's reading the La Times. And it was just that
the nurse needed help getting him in to take a
(08:21):
leak in the bathroom because his balance was off from
that stroke. So I, you know, I was happy to
help out, and he bounced back from that and from
a lot of other health setbacks, even though he was
in his mid eighties by then.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And you're listening to Steve Stollier's story and in the
end Groucho Marx's story too, And what a lucky guy
indeed that those summer jobs fell through. Is what an opportunity,
an opportunity of a lifetime in Groucho's house, no less
his hero, so many Americans heroes. By the way, he
was a child of the Victorian Age, and his comedy
was rebuttal to the Victorian age its properness, and Oi
(09:03):
Groutshow was a revolutionary in his day. He really stretched
the boundaries of what comedians were allowed to do and
not do. And my goodness, what we learned listening to
this is that even people like Groutchow want to be appreciated, right,
the legends appreciate appreciation, and we can never forget that.
When we come back more of this remarkable story here
(09:24):
on our American Stories, And we're back with our American stories,
and the story of Steve Stolier, a college student who
(09:44):
saved a long lost Marx Brothers movie and then landed
the job of his dreams working as Groutcho marks his
personal assistant and archivist. Let's return to Steve and his.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Story, and it just became this remarkably rich experience for
me that ended up lasting not three weeks as I
had thought that morning, but three years, the last three
(10:16):
years of Groucho's life. And so I was able to
get to know and talk with and with Groucho, my hero.
I also got to meet Zeppo the night that he
came up there for dinner from Palm Springs. I had
(10:38):
brought the young lady I was dating, a nineteen year
old blonde who was very bright and very personable and
very attractive, and he really took a liking to her.
He sort of picked up where Chicko left off in
terms of having an eye for the ladies. And he
had recently lost his last wife to Frankson, who dumped
(11:01):
him and went for Sinatra, and that was Barbara Marx Sinatra.
So he was back to being a bachelor. And he said,
you know, Steve, you and Linda should visit me in
Palm Springs sometime. And I said, well, I don't know.
I was there when I was about nine and it
(11:22):
just it was sweltering. And he said, well, when we're
there in the summer, and I said yeah, and he said, well,
you know, Steve, it's also cold in Alaska in the winter.
It was true that Zeppo did have a great sense
of humor that really didn't get a chance to shine
on screen. I had heard that he could be very funny,
(11:46):
and I had, you know, a charm and charisma, and
people are always skeptical of that because he was sort
of wooden and didn't have the lion's share of funny
stuff to do. And the few movies he was in,
was I happy as a performer, and once he once
he left the act after Duck Soup in nineteen thirty three,
(12:09):
he became a very successful agent, handling such obscure has
beens as Clark Gable and Carol Lombard and Barbara Stanwick
and Robert Taylor and Lucille Ball and Landa Turner. So
he did really well and never looked back. But anyway,
(12:30):
a few months later Linda and I broke up. I
had a couple of photos that I wanted Zeppo to sign,
so I mailed them to his address in Palm Springs,
and in my cover letter, I said, by the way,
Lynda and I broke up. So I know you've been
around the block a few times. If you have any
(12:51):
advice for the love lorn And a few days later,
my phone rings save as Zeppo marks. I hope I'm
not inconveniencing. No, no, how I got the photos you sent. God,
I was good looking back then. But listen, I have
a question for you, and I don't want to step
(13:13):
on your toes. You understand that, because the last thing
in the world I'd want to do would be something
to upset you. Oh, okay, do you think that Linda
would go out with me? And I thought, what I mean?
She was nineteen, I was twenty, and he was seventy four,
but a young seventy four, but seventy four, And I said,
(13:39):
I don't know. I mean she enjoyed.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
You know, she got a kick a because really, tell me, honestly, Steve,
if this is at all uncomfortable for no, no, no,
no no, I said, so let me let me ask her,
and okay, I would appreciate it. And again if it's any.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
No, no, no, no no. So I saw her at
s and I asked her about it, and she laughed,
also finding it strange and funny. But thought, you know,
what the heck, I want to have the experience of
going on a date with Zeppo Marx. So they went
out once. He took her to dinner in San Diego
(14:21):
and then drove to Tijuana and attended a Hilai game
at a stadium, and then took her home. And I
talked to him afterwards, and he said, Steve, I want
to tell you I never even kissed a good night.
You should know that she's very nice, but all she
did was talk about herself. And then I saw her
(14:43):
on campus and she said, you know, Zeppa was really nice,
but all he did was talk about himself. And I thought,
that's a really interesting symmetry there. And then at parties
at Graucho's, whenever Zeppa would be there, he would make
a point of introducing is someone and say, this is Steve.
He's a nice young man. He and I dated the
(15:05):
same girl, but he got further with her than I did.
That was like my official introduction. So anyway, I have
the distinction of being able to say that Zeppo Marx
and I dated the same girl. I also got to
meet the other living Marx brother, Gummo, who to those
(15:27):
who aren't that familiar with the Marx brothers. It's even
more obscure because Gummo was the straight man before Zeppo
on the stage, and then he was drafted during World
War One and left the act. So at the time,
seventeen year old Zeppo took his place, and Gummo also
(15:48):
became an agent and did very He became Groucho's agent, actually,
and did very well. He was never that much interested
in performing. So I got to meet three out of
five of the March brothers, which is, you know, approximately
three more March Brothers than most people ever got a
chance to meet. Harpo and Chico had died in the
(16:09):
early sixties, unfortunately, so I was never able to meet them.
But when I would watch Groucho and Zeppo and Gummo
talking amongst themselves, which was great, I thought, what must
it have been like with all five brothers in their
youth sitting around the table. It must have been hysterical.
(16:33):
Groucho had a cook named Robin, who was tall and
thin and blonde and young. When Zeppo and Gummo had
come up for dinner and I was there for that dinner,
Zeppo said Robin said she'd marry me, but I don't know.
I think she's too tall for me. Groucho said, well,
(16:54):
what part of it do you want? And Zeppo said,
I'll take as high up as I can read each
and Gummo said, what do you want with her feet?
So there's a Gummo anecdote, which is extremely rare, but
evidence of the kind of goofy humor they had amongst themselves,
(17:15):
that quickness. It was just it was all still there
under various layers of rust. I was very fortunate because
of my Groucho association, I became friends with Dick Cavit.
That was another case where because of my insecurities, I
thought when Groucho was gone, my link to Dick Cavot
(17:40):
would be over. But instead he called me from New
York the week Groucho died and he said, listen, I
hope just because Groucho is gone, we're not going to
lose touch. And by the way, I hope you don't mind,
but I've shown some of your letters to Woody and
(18:00):
he says they're very well written. And I sort of
had to empty the urine out of my shoes that
Cabot was calling me to say, hey, don't drop me
as a friend and saying, I hope you don't mind,
but Woody Allen thinks your letters are well written. So
that was something. And in fact I did end up
(18:22):
moving to New York in nineteen eighty two and spending
a few years there writing for Dick Cabot at HBO,
and had many remarkable adventures in Manhattan, including getting to
meet Woody Allen and Catherine Hepburn and lots of other
stuff before I returned to LA to take another job.
(18:45):
And it was so great when I was working at
Groucho's to be able to comfortably meet these people and converse,
because I think they figured since I was inside the house,
I must be okay, whether I'm Groucho's grandson or something
like that. If I'm sitting at Graucho's lunch table, it
might must be okay. So there wasn't any nobody. There
(19:07):
were no star trips there. There was people that were
very down to earth, and I tended to find that
the old people who were legends were much more down
to earth and personable than some of the people who
had recently become famous. Aaron Fleming tended to have younger friends,
(19:29):
Elliott Gould and George Siegel and Budcourt and Sally Kellerman
and streisand to a lesser degree, and I found myself
instantly drawn to Groucho's old gang. I felt much more
that I belonged there, even though I was nineteen and
they were in their seventies and eighties, than I did
(19:52):
towards Aaron's sort of quirky group of neu veaux stars.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
And especial thanks to Robbie for superb production and great storytelling,
and especial thanks to Steve Stollier as well. Steve Stollier's
story rout Jo Marx's story here on Our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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