Harpo Speaks! (8 page)

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 turtleneck 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 conspicuouslv 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.

At the same time I took off my wig. When they saw it was me, Grandpa Baltzer and Uncle Al started to hoot and howl, and when the womenfolk heard this they screamed and slammed through the house worse than ever.

Old man Baltzer was a good sport, and thought it was a great joke I had pulled. But it took us two hours to get Mama, Emmy and Rosie quieted down, even after they saw me unwigged. And for two weeks afterwards they were too indisposed, with palpitations and nervous attacks, to leave the house.

As I said, it was a performance I was proud of. It made me the family character.

Shortly after my masquerade at the Baltzers’, Groucho made his debut on the stage, singing a solo in the olio at the Star Theatre between shows. (The “olio” was a potpourri in which everybody from fire-eaters and bell-ringers to boy sopranos came on for a quick turn.)

So Groucho was now a professional. I, having no exploitable talent, still didn’t figure in Minnie’s Master Plan. But that was okay with me. I didn’t have the least desire to go out on a stage and perform in front of eight hundred people. The thought of it gave me the shivers. I was content to play the character I was inventing, at home and on the streets, and pick up the laughs wherever I could find them.

Minnie’s brother Harry was also a no-talent guy, but he was dying to get into vaudeville. Uncle Harry Shean couldn’t carry a tune or dance or play any instrument. Minnie and Uncle Al beat their brains out trying to cook up an act for him. Minnie finally got the idea that he should be a ventriloquist like Grandpa had been in the Old Country. Grandpa coached him, but Uncle Harry couldn’t learn to talk without moving his lips.

Then Minnie got a second brilliant idea. They would put my kid brother Gummo, who was small for his nine years, inside the shell of Uncle Harry’s dummy. When Uncle Harry manipulated the dummy’s mouth, Gummo would do the talking. It worked great, in rehearsal. Gummo never forgot a line.

But when they opened the act, Gummo was seized with such stage fright that he couldn’t talk, and when Uncle Harry manipulated the dummy’s lips, not a sound came forth. He was booed off the stage. That was the end of his fling in show business, and probably the beginning of Gummo’s aversion to it.

About this time, Chico became a full-time professional piano player. He was giving the piano the same concentration he had given before to pool and games of chance, and he could play faster and more accurately-with his right hand-than anybody else on our side of Carnegie Hall.

Chico broke into vaudeville as half of the team of “Marx and Shean.” His partner was Lou Shean, Polly’s brother. Cousin Lou was a plain-looking guy who wore thick glasses, but he could sing along with the best of them. During part of their act, Chico would accompany Lou blindfolded on the piano. This got to be the only part of the act that managers wanted. Soon Cousin Lou dropped out entirely and Chico worked as a single.

The first time I saw Chico onstage was in a theatre on 86th Street and Third Avenue. For a finish he played requests from the audience, blindfolded and with a bedsheet spread over the keyboard.

Everybody was getting famous except me. I took to practicing the piano at home like a madman. I got to where I could play “Waltz Me Around Again, Willie” with both hands, then immediately went to work on “Love Me and the World Is Mine.” I still wanted that job on the excursion boat.

Once again, the unexpected happened and changed the course of my meandering career. This time the unexpected happened in the person of a strange young man named Seymour Mintz.

Unknown

CHAPTER 5

Enough Black

Jelly Beans

ONE OF THE passionate hungers of my early life (I had many others but none so fierce) was for black jelly beans. In the penny assortment they sold in those days there was never more than one of licorice, and eating one black jelly bean at a time only intensified my hunger. Penny assortments were few and far between, for me. Candy counters on the East Side were as thief-proof as bank vaults. Candy was one item I couldn’t hustle. No penny in hand, no merchandise.

I told myself I should always save such a delicacy as a black jelly bean for last, like dessert, but I never could. It was like being addicted to peanuts, cigarettes or the opium pipe. One was never enough. The first thing I would do when I got rich, I promised myself, would be to buy all the black jelly beans I could eat.

When I did start making good money, this boyhood hunger had somehow become dormant. I forgot about it. I forgot about it, that is, until one night about fifteen years ago.

My wife Susan and I were going to the movies with Gracie and George Burns in Beverly Hills. On the way to the theatre from the parking lot, we passed a candy shop, the ultra-modern kind that sells old-fashioned candies in glass apothecary jars. I stopped in my tracks. I broke into a cold sweat. I was having a seizure. My old hunger for black jelly beans had suddenly returned, after forty-five years. I excused myself and went into the shop.