Harpo Speaks! (46 page)

While we waited for the cops to come, the car thief telephoned, asked for Oscar, and made a full confession. The thief was Sam Behrman.

Driving home, Behrman had suddenly become aware that a car was following him. It didn’t appear to be a police car, so Sam tried to shake it. He made several quick turns, then tried to outrace whoever it was. Fast as he went, the other car stayed on his tail. He decided to zoom for home.

The car followed him all the way into the driveway and stopped right behind him. Sam was in a sweat, and very apprehensive. He dreaded any kind of violence. But he was also by this time very sore. Instead of bolting for the house and calling the police, he went to have it out with his pursuer. But the car behind him was empty. It was Oscar Levant’s Ford, locked bumper-to-bumper to the Cadillac.

Sam remembered then: in parking, back at Sonya Levien’s, he had whanged back into another car. But bashing other cars was a common occurrence with Sam, and he’d said nothing about it to anybody.

The only damage done was to Behrman’s good nature. He was given a blistering three-hour verbal beating by Oscar. The subject was “Infantilism, or the Use of the Automobile (Mother Symbol) as an Instrument of Hostility.”

When Behrman returned to New York after that stint in Hollywood he left a big emptiness in the house. Oscar and I both sensed this, and talked ourselves into an awful case of homesickness. We decided to take the cure: a trip to New York. We packed our bags and got on the eastbound Chief.

I had the lower berth and Oscar the upper in the Pullman. It was midsummer, and hot as blazes the first night out. It was going to be rough for normal people to sleep, let alone insomniacs. In this respect I wasn’t normal, of course. I had no trouble. The last thing I remember before drifting off was Oscar thrashing, groaning and rattling his bottle of sleeping tablets in the berth above me.

An hour later I woke up. Oscar was hanging over my berth, his head poked upside-down through the curtains, screaming at me. I asked him what was the matter.

“You son of a bitch,” he said, “I don’t mind your sleeping, but do you have to smile in your sleep?”

What the hell, I said. If that bothered him, why didn’t he stop looking at me?

“Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference,” said Oscar. “Even if I don’t look at you I lie up here knowing you’re down there smiling. I’ve taken five pills and I can’t take any more and you’re driving me out of my mind.”

I knew it was no gag. This kind of torture was as real and as painful to Oscar as if he’d been put on the rack. “Look,” I said, “I’ll sleep on my stomach with my face to the pillow. Would that help?”

“Try it,” he snapped. I turned over. Oscar retreated back into his berth and all was quiet. After a few minutes, he called down, “Much better!” A few minutes after that we were both asleep.

Aleck was on his island for the summer and he was expecting us. He was eager to meet my “young musician friend,” of whom he had heard so much. Oscar had reservations about Woollcott, but after the build-up I gave him all the way across the continent, he was eager to meet my old “father-transference figure.”

We stayed in New York only long enough to catch a train for Bomoseen. The nearer we got to Vermont, the worse Oscar’s anxiety got. He sat in the dining car drinking coffee and sulking. He refused to look out the window. When we got off at Bomoseen he was too shaken to speak. On board the launch crossing to the island, he gripped the seat and stared in frozen panic at the bottom of the boat.

When he got on Neshobe Island he was a wreck. Aleck came down to the dock to meet us. Oscar offered him a limp, sweaty hand and muttered something unintelligible. Then the shock of where he was hit him with a jolt. Never in his life had Oscar been so out-of-doors.

“Birds!” he wailed. “There are birds here! The sickest creatures on God’s earth! Trees! Even the trees are psychotic! Bugs! Don’t tell me there aren’t any insects here because I know there are!” He grabbed my arm. “Harpo,” he said, “what have you done to me? Take me away from here. Take me away from here!”

He wouldn’t stay on Neshobe even long enough for a cup of coffee. We took the launch to Bomoseen and the next train to New York City. Oscar was sunk in a black pit of depression. He spoke not a word to me, not until he’d called his East Coast analyst from Grand Central Station and made an emergency appointment for a two-hour session.

When he came out of the phone booth he was already at peace with himself. He gave me one of his rare, warm grins and said, “Isn’t it great to be back?” He never made any mention of the grim trip to Woollcott’s island, ever again.

We hung around New York for a couple of weeks. I had no facilities that Oscar could mooch, so he used me in other ways. Mostly, I was useful to him as a decoy to pick up dames. Going down Broadway, Oscar would walk three steps behind me. When a good-looking dame passed by he’d yell, “Hey, Harpo! Harpo Marx!” I would stop. The dame would stop. Oscar would rush up and ask her if she’d like to meet his friend, the famous Harpo Marx. Before the dame got to meet the famous Harpo Marx she’d be off and running with Oscar Levant.

One girl he picked up was a chorus girl in a night club. Oscar spent every night in the club where she worked, and their dates would begin at three in the morning, after her last show. This fit just fine into Oscar’s cockeyed schedule of living and sleeping. The only trouble was, the girl lived way the hell out in Brooklyn, which denied him the pleasure of seeing her home. Oscar was not exactly a big spender, mainly because he didn’t have what to spend. So at the end of a date he’d give her a kiss and a nickel for the subway.

One night I went to the club with Oscar. After he picked up his broad, the three of us went to Lindy’s, where we sat around having cheesecake and coffee. When she said it was time for her to go home we discovered it was raining hard outside, coming down in sheets.

Oscar, in a flash of gallantry, announced he would send her home in a cab. It was the least he could do on a night like this. He had the waiter summon a taxi driver from the street. When the cabbie came dripping over to our table, Oscar asked him what the fare would be to the address in Brooklyn. The driver said that since he couldn’t count on a return fare from any place that far out the trip would cost seven-fifty.

Oscar let out a howl. “Seven-fifty?” he said. “Ridiculous! This girl’s a virgin!”

He gave her a nickel and sat out the rest of the night in Lindy’s.

During scenes like this I was apt to forget about the other sides of Oscar. Then something would happen to remind me that no matter what else he did or how many people he humiliated, he was still a genius like none other I had ever known.

Toward the end of our stay in New York I went with Oscar to Harms, the music publishers. While we were there a stranger came in. Oscar recognized the guy and greeted him with the sweetest, sincerest smile I’d ever seen him give to anybody. The man was Russian, from his accent. They talked awhile, then Oscar asked the guy if he wouldn’t please play the first movement of his Second Piano Concerto. Oscar said he’d heard it a few times, and liked it, but he’d never tackled it himself. The Russian was happy to oblige.

Halfway through a passage, he stopped playing. He’d forgotten his own concerto. Oscar was so impatient that he pushed the guy off the stool, took over at the piano, and finished the movement without once faltering or faking. “Bravo!” said the guy who’d written it. “Extraordinary!”

Finally, Oscar introduced me to him. He was Sergei Prokofiev, probably the greatest Russian composer since Tchaikovsky.

When I got back to California, the lease on my Beverly Hills joint ran out, and I was informed that it would not be renewed.

When I told Oscar I had to move, he said, “Harpo, I am profoundly disappointed in you. This is the dirtiest trick anybody has ever played on me.” He walked out of the house, got in his Ford, and drove away. He arrived at the Gershwins’ place just in time for dinner.

For one year and one month I had spent scarcely one waking hour out of earshot of the mumbly, nasal rasp of Oscar’s voice, the oboe under the blanket. Three years later it became familiar to all America, when Oscar appeared on the radio program “Information Please.” Subsequently he became a fairly regular panelist, and his success on the show brushed away enough of his phobias to give him a brand-new charge of confidence.

It was not until 1942 that the guy who’d been one of the best musicians in America for nearly twenty years became, at last, a concert artist. My loss was the public’s gain. Lucky-if you’ll pardon that horrifying word, Oscar-public.

Unknown

CHAPTER 20

Cherchez la Fleming

Susan.

I didn’t catch her last name. She was seated next to me at a dinner party at the Sam Goldwyns’. Frankly, I was surprised at the Goldwyns, people of their position being coy with me and playing matchmaker. It seemed like every place I was invited to, some unescorted starlet just “happened” to be seated next to me. And every time it happened, an item would appear in Louella Parsons’, Hedda Hopper’s or Winchell’s column a day or two later.

“What’s this about Harpo Marx and Bibi Bensonne?” they used to write. “Insiders say they aren’t kidding.” Or, “Flash! Look for an altar-cation to brew between Paramount’s twinklingest new starlet and Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor-initials, B.B. and H.M.’

I was a bachelor because that was the way I chose to live. The only thing I was eligible for was to vote. I didn’t mind giving a hopeful kid a boost. I didn’t mind when a press agent quoted me as saying I had worked in a picture with the “lovely and glamorous Miss So-and-so, who has all it takes to become a star.” Any girl with good looks, healthy organs and not too many inhibitions had all it took to become a star in the 1930’s. But when people insisted on marrying me off to those nitwits, it made me sick.

I earned as much money as I needed. I had more offers of jobs and parts than I could possibly accept. I had friends, hundreds of good friends. I had a full social life. I had a satisfying private life, and I intended to keep it private. I never would speak or appear out of costume before the public. I got no satisfaction whatever from seeing my name in print, unless it had to do with a Marx Brothers picture. The very last thing I wanted in this world was personal publicity.

But the matchmakers and gossips wouldn’t leave me alone. What the hell did everybody who was married have against a guy who wasn’t? Why did they feel it was their God-given duty to see that every bachelor got hitched? I didn’t sneak around trying to trick my married friends into getting divorced.

Anyway, this night at Sam Goldwyns’, the starlet-bait was named Susan. The lovely and glamorous Miss Susan-So-and-so.

I wasn’t sore at her, but I was sore at the Goldwyns. Thanks to them I was a sitting duck for the columnists again. There’d be an item in somebody’s column the next day. Suppose I happened to like this kid? I couldn’t make a date with her if I wanted to. If we were seen together a second time we’d be in front-page headlines. What could I do? `What I usually did on nights like this-ignore the girl without being unfriendly and, when I had to, talk to her without getting personal.

One thing I had to give the Goldwyns credit for. They had the good taste to pick me out a beaut. It was impossible, I soon found, to ignore this Susan. She was a stunning brunette with a soft, fair complexion and a gorgeous figure, and she had something besides good looks. She gave signs of actually being bright. She had an easy, honest laugh. And she still hadn’t caught the Hollywood affliction of “table-hopping eyes.” When she talked to you she didn’t gaze around the room to see if anybody important was watching her. She looked at you directly, and challenged you to look straight at her. There was something taunting and impudent about the way her eyes sparkled. This I liked.

In nearly every respect the girl was un-Hollywood-like, and refreshing. She didn’t want to talk about agents, contracts, who was having an affair with who, or even about herself. Mainly, she wanted to talk about me.

“You’re so New York,” she said. “You’re not one of those Beverly Hills wolves. I can’t stand them!”

I hated to disappoint her, but I had to confess that I too lived in Beverly Hills, along with the rest of the bums. “I know,” she said. “Near the corner of Elevado and Bedford. Oscar Levant stays with you. He drives a Ford with only one headlight working. You have a big white dog with black spots. I think the dog was with you in Horse Feathers.”

“Yah,” I said. “His name is Kayo. How’d you know?”

“I’ve seen all of your pictures three times,” she said. “The Marx Brothers are my favorite act and you’re my favorite Marx Brother.”

“I mean about where I live, and Oscar and his car,” I said, and she said, in a stage whisper, “I’m a prowler.”

I told her she’d better be careful. I had a morbid fear of prowlers and kept silver police whistles hanging on chains all over the house. “Why silver?” she wanted to know, and I told her that in Beverly Hills the cops wouldn’t come unless you blew on a silver whistle.

This was a dame I could go for. I said, “Do you play croquet?” She said, “You mean what the old folks do with the long sticks down in St. Petersburg, Florida?” Well, so she wasn’t perfect. I could still go for her.

For a while she stared at me without saying anything. “You’ve done something to your hair,” she said, finally. “You wore it a lot longer five years ago.”

“Yah?” I said. “How do you know? I never played straight. You never saw me without a wig, honey.”

She raised her eyebrows and puckered her lips. Her eyes were teasing me. “You don’t remember, do you?” she said.

“Remember what?”

“Five years ago-the first time you saw me.”

I didn’t remember.

“I went to see Animal Crackers, in New York. You picked me out of everybody in the audience and gawked at me-like this.” She popped her eyes and let her mouth hang open. “You didn’t take your eyes off me for one whole scene, and everybody was looking at me instead of the stage. I was so embarrassed I wanted to die, and at the end of the scene I got up and left the theatre. Then afterwards I found out it was part of the act and I was lucky to be the one you picked out for a stooge in the audience because you always looked for the prettiest face you could find. That was when I made up my mind I was going to meet you and apologize in person for walking out on you. We met on Sixth Avenue in front of the Ziegfeld Theatre, during an intermission of some benefit. Remember now?”