Harpo Speaks! (19 page)

Saturday night we got a wire from the Albee office, telling us we were booked for two weeks in New York City-one week at the Royal and one week at the Palace. The Palace! We were zooming now and nothing could stop us.

And so, back to New York. We were taken in tow by a guy named Murdock, Albee’s chief-of-staff. Murdock had a passion for honey. He had pots of honey on his desk and he carried a jar of honey in his pocket. But no matter how much he ate, it didn’t seem to affect his disposition. He was paid to be tough to actors.

Murdock told us we were a very lucky act, before we went onstage at the Royal. Mr. Albee had great confidence in us, to have booked us into the Palace sight unseen. So now, he said, we’d better go out there and give ‘em hell, and prove the boss’s judgment was right.

Well, we went out there, on the stage of the Royal, and we were a dismal flop.

The audience was predominantly Jewish. They had come thinking we were a Jewish act. From the moment Groucho came on and made jokes in English instead of Yiddish, they sat on their hands. All of our relatives turned out to see us, too. When not one of them was mentioned once in our act they all got sore, and when we came out for bows they sat on their hands.

Murdock didn’t bother to come backstage after the show. He and the rest of the front-office boys had left the theatre by the front door. Before we had gotten out of costume, we got the fatal call: we were canceled out of the Palace.

Minnie wouldn’t give up. She flew over to headquarters and bearded Murdock in his den. She cited the record, she quoted reviews, she explained and she apologized. She pleaded and begged and wheedled and fussed and fumed and ranted and raved. Murdock fled into the inner office for an emergency transfusion of honey. When he came out, Minnie started in on him all over again.

He had met his match. He gave in. It was the only way he could get Minnie out of his office. The Marx Brothers could play a week at the Palace, he said-but, they would have to open the bill. The opening act was the floor-mat of vaudeville. If you opened the bill, your status was only slightly higher than that of the ushers. For an established act, this could be suicide.

Minnie said we’d do it. The Palace was the Palace. We’d show them.

The Palace, New York. We opened the bill at the Palace. For the first six or seven minutes our act was a total waste, while the audience-notorious latecomers at the Palace-got seated. Then the laughs began to come. We finished in a riot.

Murdock had been watching from the back of the house, like a vulture. When we went off, he came back to our dressing room. “Maybe,” he said begrudgingly, “you aren’t as bad as you looked at the Royal.”

We were moved up to third on the bill. We got such a reception that the next act raised a stink with the management. It was unfair to follow the Marx Brothers, the way we got the audience all riled up. We were moved to the first spot after the intermission. Then we got complaints from the next two acts that came on after us.

Before the week was over we were closing the show, where nobody had to follow us.

We were held over for a second week. In the middle of the week Frenchie arrived from Chicago, in a style befitting the father of the newest stars of New York vaudeville-on the Twentieth Century Limited, with a lower berth all to himself.

Frenchie had come, as it turned out, not only to bask in our new glory, but to resume his old job as Laugh Starter. He thought he was doing us a favor. We tried to explain that while it had been helpful for somebody to start the audience laughing back in Fargo or Muskogee, we really didn’t need a Laugh Starter at the Palace.

Nevertheless, Frenchie watched all our performances from the middle of the house. He didn’t have to start any laughs, but he did meet some interesting people.

One matinee he sat next to a guy who kept shaking his head during the act. Frenchie asked him what his trouble was. The guy said he was feeling sorry for the boy on the stage, the one with the red curly hair who played on the harp.

Why did he feel sorry for him?

Why, because the poor boy couldn’t talk. He was a mute. And it was a crime and a shame to make a kid with an affliction like that work in vaudeville and make a fool of himself in front of the public.

Frenchie reassured him that it was all part of the act. Off the stage, Harpo could talk. He was perfectly normal. The stranger knew better. That kid up there was a mute. You could tell from the way he behaved.

Frenchie was getting hot under the collar. He was about to reveal who he was, when the guy said, “You wouldn’t like to make a little bet on it, would you, Mac?”

Indeed Frenchie would. “A dollar-even money?” the guy wanted to know. Frenchie considered this carefully. He was a wild pinochle player, but he was a very timid bettor. A dollar was a lot to gamble at even money. Frenchie shook his head. “I’ll give you two to one,” the guy said. Frenchie thought: What would Chico say? Chico would say the price wasn’t right. Frenchie shook his head. The guy was pretty sure of himself now. He raised the odds again, and again. Finally Frenchie agreed they had a bet, at five to one. For a price like that he could take a chance.

“How are we going to prove it so you’ll know I’m right?” the guy asked, and Frenchie said they would go backstage after the show and talk to Harpo. “They won’t let us go backstage at the Palace,” the guy said, and Frenchie said, “Sure, why nod?”

The two of them came into the dressing room after the show. “Hoppo,” said Frenchie, “I wand you to meed a frent of mine.” I shook hands with the stranger and said that any friend of my father’s was a friend of mine. The stranger laughed. He handed Frenchie a five-spot and said it was a dirty trick but it was worth it if I’d give him my autograph. Frenchie couldn’t understand why the fellow called it “a dirty trick.” It was a legal bet, they had shook hands on it, and he had won it fair and square.

Chico, when he heard the full story, was never prouder of his father.

We decided that since we were successes now, we would pension off Minnie and send her back to Chicago with Frenchie. If anybody ever had, Minnie had earned herself a permanent vacation.

The Emperor’s Throne Room, New York. The first Marx brother to get in trouble after Minnie’s retirement was me.

Frank Fay, the famous monologist and m.c., was staging a series of shows he called “Sunday Concerts,” in out-and-out defiance of Albee’s monopoly. Fay wasn’t the most popular guy in vaudeville, but we all admired him for this. It took a lot of guts to buck the Empire. One day during our run at the Palace, Fay called me up and asked if I would appear on one of his Concerts-as a single, since he knew that any act working for Albee was forbidden to play for him.

I told him I’d be glad to. I didn’t see any harm in it. What difference would it make? I was on the program as “Arthur” Marx, not “Harpo.” I didn’t even play the harp. I did a piano number and a brief pantomime bit.

Apparently it did make a difference. On Monday morning I got a call from the front office. I was summoned to appear before Mr. Albee promptly at twelve o’clock noon. I was prompt, and I was scared. To me, E.F. Albee was more powerful than the President of the United States. I was passed through three barricades of secretaries and into the inner sanctum, the throne room of the Emperor, where very few common subjects had ever set foot.

He was sitting at his desk, eating lunch. He asked me if I’d like to join him for a bite. I politely refused. In my condition, I couldn’t have kept down a teaspoonful of chicken broth. He told me to sit down, and apologized for eating in front of me. He ate. I sat. When he finished his lunch he offered me a cigar, and lit one for himself.

We smoked our cigars. Albee talked about this and that, show-business small talk. I said nothing. I waited for the ax to fall.

Finally the boss stood up. I stood up. Now it comes, I said to myself. But Albee just smiled, shook my hand, and said, “Well, it was nice of you to come and chat with me, Harpo. I hope you’ll do it again.”

That was the end of my audience with the Emperor. He had never come to the point of why I had been summoned, but the point was clear enough. Everything I did was watched and reported on. I had better keep my nose clean. The next time I was called to the throne there would be no cigars or small talk.

Albee ruled in mysterious ways, but he was all-powerful. I kept my nose clean.

Cleveland, Ohio. On our last night at the Albee Theatre in Cleveland, Groucho, Zeppo and I were sitting around the back stage lounge while the movie part of the show was on. Chico rushed in with startling news. “Our next date is all set,” he said. “We’re going to play London, England.”

Who said so? we wanted to know. Abe Lastfogel, said Chico. He’d just talked to him on the phone. Lastfogel handled our bookings out of the William Morris office, our new agents. And where did Abe get the idea of sending us to London? From Chico, it turned out. Chico had called him that morning and said we were ready for a change of scene, like maybe England or someplace.

It took a little time, but we managed to find out exactly why Chico was so hot for a change of scene.

It seems that Chico had been cleaning up on the Cleveland locals at pool, until two nights ago, when a sharpie turned up and clipped him for twenty bucks. This hurt. Chico swore revenge.

By a fortunate coincidence, the great billiard artist Willie Hoppe-who was, naturally, an old friend of Chico’s-was then in town on an exhibition tour. He agreed to do Chico a favor. Chico got some dark glasses and a checkered cap for Willie, had him turn up his coat collar, then took him over to the poolroom where the sharpie hung out. There he introduced him as a “friend from the show,” who’d enjoy a friendly game or two.

Hoppe played strictly according to Chico’s script, and shot a serious, awkward game. But bad as he was the sharpie let Hoppe beat him. Thereupon a bet of twenty-five bucks was made on the next game. On his first shot, Chico’s “friend from the show” ran two hundred and twenty balls.

Before the sharpie paid him off, wondering where the hell he’d come from, an old guy walked in the poolroom and recognized Chico’s ringer clean through the disguise.

“Why, you know who you’re playing with?” said the old guy. “That’s Willie Hoppe!”

And that was why Chico was eager to put as much space as he could between himself and Cleveland, Ohio. Still, regardless of how the booking came about, a trip to London sounded mighty good to all of us.

London, England. Everybody said the Marx Brothers would be an instant sensation in London. Music-hall slapstick was the English audiences’ special cup of tea. Us they would eat up like kippers and crumpets.

So what happened? We opened at the London Coliseum and we were razzed off the stage.

It was a worse fiasco than the Royal, much worse. People began to hoot and whistle and throw pennies at us. Groucho went to the footlights and said, “We came all the way from America to entertain you, so you might at least throw shillings.” We had never been so humiliated in public in all our professional years.

The manager was fit to be tied. But he wasn’t disappointed in us. He thought we were great. He explained what had happened. The Marx Brothers, being headliners, were billed over the Premiere Danseuse, a dame who had never been demoted to second billing at the Coliseum. The Danseuse was hopping mad. So she organized a claque to give us our come-uppance, and supplied them with coins to throw at us.

The dancer won. She got back her top billing at the Coliseum and we were switched to another theatre, the Alhambra. At the Alhambra we were a smash. London couldn’t get enough of us. We couldn’t get enough of the Londoners, either. We’d never known such doting, unrestrained audiences. Not only that, we found that the English everywhere gave actors and vaudevillians special treatment. In hotels and cafes, on ships and buses and trains, we got top priority and so did our baggage. It was a far cry from the days of one-night stands at home, the days of stale bread pudding, bug-ridden hotels, crooked managers, and trudging from town to town like unwanted gypsies.

Here there was genuine kindness and dignity in show business -even between the most eminent impresarios and the seediest performers. One scene I will never forget. We were presented in England by a famous promoter and sportsman named Cochran. When Cochran called for auditions to round out our show at the Alhambra, a mob turned up. Every act in the British Isles-except the Coliseum Danseuse-wanted to share the bill with the balmy Marxes. Cochran, who hated to say no to anybody, had the painful duty of turning down ninety-eight percent of the hopefuls.

One of these was an aged hoofer-he must have been damn near eighty-who’d obviously spent his last copper getting his costume out of mothballs and into immaculate condition. He came out in gray suit, gray derby, gray spats, gray shoes, and swinging a gray cane-straight out of a Victorian music hall-and went into his song and dance. He put up a courageous, dapper front. But his bones creaked, and his voice had rusted to a croak. It was an embarrassing moment.

Cochran, down in the orchestra, raised a hand to stop him. “I thank you very much,” he said unhappily. “I shall let you know.”

Then, instead of retreating in defeat and humiliation, to make room for the next act, the ancient hoofer stepped grandly down to the footlights. He leaned over and pointed his cane at the conductor.

“Maestro,” he said, “would you please play four bars for me to go off with?”

The conductor complied. The old gentleman danced offstage to the music, waving his derby, as if it were his fourth curtain call. Everybody in the house, including the impresario, broke into applause.

The only disagreeable thing about England, that trip, was the climate. It was chilly and damp when we got there and it kept getting chillier and damper. I never once got really warm, outdoors or in. Chico and I shared an apartment near the theatre, where the only heat came from an open coal grate. Our last night there was the coldest yet. As the last of our scuttle of coal was burning out, we decided the only way we could keep from freezing was to bundle up in all the clothes we had with us and stay up and play pinochle, instead of going to bed. But the chill came creeping through every layer of every shirt, sweater, suit, raincoat and overcoat we had on.