Authors: Harpo Marx,Rowland Barber
Tags: #Non-fiction, #Humour, #Biography, #History
When I was in the fourth grade, I agonized for days over a school assignment. I had to write a poem, and I was totally blocked. Dad sensed that I was suffering from some secret dilemma. He wormed it out of me. Now here was a challenge that delighted him. Write a poem! Before dinner was over he had it, raising the poetic art to new heights (well, at least to different heights). I still have a copy of it: “There they go! / I’m betting on Flo! / If she loses / I’ll blow my dough! / Into the stretch / She’s out in front! / But at the wire / Win-I dun’t.”
For the poem I got a B +. For being my ghostwriter, Dad got a big hug.
Whenever Uncle Groucho and Uncle Chico came to the house, they would wind up exchanging hilarious stories with my Dad about vaudeville. I got the impression, when I was little, that vaudeville was some marvelous, mythical kingdom where fathers and uncles came from. When I was twelve, Dad decided it was time to show me what his life had been like before Beverly Hills, before he was in the movies even, time to share the experience of vaudeville, the Harpo side of his life.
He and Uncle Chico had booked themselves into a three-month tour of the British circuit, culminating in a four-week stand at the London Palladium, and Mom and I went along. Dad knew I would not be content just watching from the wings. He assigned to me the grave responsibility of being his Personal Prop Man. I had to make sure the carrot was in the upper-left inside pocket of Dad’s coat, the scissors in the middle right pocket, and the three-hundred knives properly lodged in his left coat sleeve. Soon he promoted me to doing “shtick” onstage. At the cue for his solo spot I would trundle his harp out to him, dressed as an angel. As I turned to exit the audience saw the sign on my back: EAT AT REVELLI’S CAFE. I got a laugh! My very own laugh! Dad was as tickled as I was.
Sometimes the combination of his innocence and his paternal mission to enrich my life caught me off guard. We were walking in London during a day off when we passed a certain theatre. “Let’s go see this show,” Dad said, and in we went. I was mortified at what we saw onstage: comics jabbering in cockney and cavorting with voluptuous showgirls clad only in what used to be called “scanties.” The comics were not only making jokes about forbidden parts of the girls’ anatomies, they were actually touching the parts! I shrank into my seat, overwhelmed with embarrassment. I didn’t dare look at Dad. I knew that my poor father was suffering just as acutely, for having brought me to such a place. To my vast relief he nudged me and muttered, “Let’s get out of here, Billy.” I bolted to the street. When Dad caught up to me, he said, “Well, what’d you think?” I stammered that I didn’t really much care for it.
“Same here,” Dad said. “Big gyp, if you ask me. They didn’t take all their clothes off.”
What it was was burlesque. The theatre was the legendary, notorious Windmill. My father felt it should be part of my education.
Ten years later I came home from the Julliard School of Music, in New York City, with a head full of musical theory and composition. Dad, who could still not read a note, had to find a way to share all this erudition. He promoted me from student to Personal Arranger, and I subsequently produced two record albums of harp solos for him.
Funny thing about Harpo the natural musician. He was not a natural natural. Most people who play by ear pick up first on the melody, and next on the beat. The subtle colors and textures of harmony are usually way beyond them. With Harpo, just the opposite. He was virtually oblivious to melody. His sense of rhythm was, to put it kindly, unpredictable. But harmony! Ahhh! It was sheer sound that sent him into raptures, swamping whatever sense of melody he had. When he discovered a complex new chord, he would play it over and over and over, hours on end, transforming the bay window into a corner of tonal heaven.
I realize now, on re-reading my Dad’s life story, that he performed music the way his father, Frenchie, had performed tailoring: with an unerring feel for fabric and color (harmony) but very little for cutting and fitting (melody and tempo). This gave us a problem when we recorded the record albums. Harpo onstage could hoodwink an audience, getting away with murder in the tempo department. But Harpo on records had to obey the beat or risk sounding sloppy. “I’ve got an idea, Billy,” Dad said. “You stand there and conduct me, O.K.?”
A solution that only Harpo could have thought of. But the idea of a solo conductor conducting a solo performer didn’t work. When he leaned into the harp, concentrating on strings and fingering, he lost eye contact with me and wandered off the beat. “O.K.,” he said. “I got a better idea.” His better idea was that I should lie down on the floor, where he could see me through the strings. So I conducted him lying flat on my back, waving my flippers like a capsized turtle. We made it to the finish line together.
My father was a happy agglomeration of surprises and contradictions. He never got through McGuffey’s First Reader but went on to read, and savor, Tolstoy and Dickens. His favorite words were “perspicacity” and “penultimate.” When challenged he could reel off the correct spelling of “chrysanthemum” or “antidisestablishmentarianism.” At the same time, his list of stage props included “sizzers,” “karit,” “dimund ring” and “telliscoap.” He could recite word for word his bar mitzvah speech from fifty years before-but he never got any further than the line that always rendered him helpless with laughter: “And in conclusion …”
Fiendish competitor that he was on the golf course, the croquet court and the pool table, he was not out to humiliate the other players. His enemies were the pins, the wickets and the corner pockets. He took his pleasure from games wherever he could find it. Once at three o’clock in the morning Mom woke up to discover, with a sinking feeling, that Dad was not in bed. She searched through the house, upstairs and down, getting more apprehensive. No Dad. At last she found him-with four year old Minnie, on Minnie’s bathroom floor. They were in the midst of a rousing game of jacks. Why not? He couldn’t sleep, and it was the only game in town at 3:00 A.M.
He was an unabashed fan, a worshipper of excellence in sports, the arts, literature. But his all-time favorite television star was Cecil, The Seasick Sea Serpent, a hand puppet on “Time for Beany.” If any one of us dared break into the den while Dad was watching Beany and Cecil, we got grounded. Certain areas of our father’s domain were unalterably sacred.
He was an inveterate radio listener. His favorite program was not, as one might think, “Information Please” (those pundits were, after all, descendants of the old Algonquin Round Table). His favorite radio show for many years was something that came on during the afternoon, when all the boys and girls were home from kindergarten: “Uncle Whoa Bill.” The highlight of each hour was Birthday Time. Uncle Whoa Bill’s assistant, one Piggy, would say: “And a Happy Birthday to Sally Green, who is five years old today. Sally-go look in the laundry hamper in your bathroom and you will find a big surprise!” Sally would scamper off to look and she would find, of course, her birthday present-all as prearranged by her mother’s call to the radio station. Uncle and Piggy had worked their magic again!
My father was a true believer in that kind of magic. This led to the gravest family crisis I can remember from those years. One morning-the day after his birthday-Dad was ominously quiet at the breakfast table. Something was bothering him deeply. At length Mom got to the bottom of it. Dad had listened to “Uncle Whoa Bill” the day before with high hopes. But his name was never mentioned. He was genuinely, profoundly, hurt. Mom felt like crawling into a hole. From that year on, as long as the show was on the air, Uncle and Piggy never failed to wish “little Arthur Marx” a Happy Birthday and tell him where his present was hidden. Thus the peer of Dorothy Parker, F.P.A. and Oscar Levant.
Another contradiction: the way he dressed. Dad could harmonize music like an angel, but not the clothes he wore. I can still hear Mom gasp at the sight of Dad coming downstairs before they went out for an evening. His wardrobe was beautifully tailored, his accessories impeccable. But his selection was something else again: e.g., striped tie with checkered shirt under plaid suit. You knew he was in a room. Mom gave up trying to change him; like all the rest of us she loved him for what he was-a free spirit.
I miss him. Harpo I can see on the “Late Show,” along with my crazy uncles. It’s Dad that I miss. Every time I laugh, every time I hear music, the vision of him comes back to nee. I think what I miss most of all are the sounds of my father. Not just the music from the bay window, but also the sound of his voice. His voice was even softer than Groucho’s, although he had the same Upper East Side accent, with the same lyrical, fractured vowels. “Turkey” became “takey,” “hamburger” “hambaiger.” “Oil” became “erl,” but on the other hand, “early” became “aily.” All of which made for a slight confusion when this ardent sun worshiper would announce at dinner that he would be “getting up aily tamarra mawning to erl up before going out on the golf cawss.”
How did he pronounce his name? It came out “Hah-po.”
I would call home on any pretext, just to hear Dad answer the phone. He did not say hello. He said, ever so gently, “Yeaaaaaaah? This is Haaaaah-po.” He made you feel, before you spoke, that you were about to impart some glorious secret to him. There was balm in his voice. If something was troubling you, he wiped it out with those four sweet words.
My father’s choice of title for his autobiography was What’s the Use Talking? I can answer that question: There’s plenty use talking when the subject is you, Dad. And in conclusion . . .
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