November 24, 2022 • 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. In the summer of seventy four,
(00:34):
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 jobs. They
may need a bus boy at this restaurant, or you
(00:57):
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
(01:18):
sort of help with? And she said, well, actually, it's
funny you called because I used to be Grouchow'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
(01:41):
going to be donated to the Smithsonian after he's gone,
and we need someone who really knows their March brothers.
And I'm thinking, please, please please please please please please
with you, And in my mind's eye, I have this
sort of textaver cartoon image of me zipping out of
(02:04):
the house and instantly appearing on the doorstep of Groucho's
house while Aaron is still on the phone explaining 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,
(02:27):
you'll have your own room to work in at Graucho's
house and you can make your own hours. And I thought, there,
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,
(02:51):
there was a room that had been a painting studio
that his last wife, whom he had divorced in sixty nine,
had used, and that came my office, and Groucho 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
(03:16):
sit at the lunch table when Groucher would have lunch.
There 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 in quotes, Groucho
(03:40):
and maybe a nurse, or Groucho and Aaron, it 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 experienced instant that
(04:00):
he cared about, and that we had similar you know,
we both liked Tin pan 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 dollar bill, and he said, go down
to the record store and get me some records, you
(04:22):
know what I like. And it meant so much to
me 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
(04:44):
of all, he was Groucho Marx, the guy in the
grease paint mustache, swirling around on screen insulting Margaret Dumont
and 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
(05:06):
like well, like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, James Thurber
he was friends with WC. 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.
(05:27):
And then on the third level, he was a man
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 firsthand memories went from
before the Right Brothers to after the moon landing, which
(05:50):
is a staggering chunk of American history, world history. I
asked him once, what's the earliest you remember? And he
thought him 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 Groucho'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 shift did 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 he'd have a small stroke or something like that,
(07:19):
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
that morning that I showed up that he'd had a
stroke and the housekeeper said, please keep your voice down,
(07:42):
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 and mucklucks, reading the La Times. And he said,
(08:04):
is the ambulance here? Yeah? I said, noah, 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 leak in the bathroom because his balance was
(08:24):
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. And you're
listening to Steve Stoller's story, and in the end, Groucho
Marks's story too, And what a lucky guy, indeed, that
(08:47):
those summer jobs fell through. There's 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. It's properness. And boy, graut Show
was a revolutionary in his day. He really stretched the
boundaries of what comedians were allowed to do and not do.
(09:10):
And my goodness, what we learned listening to this is
that even people like Groutshow 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
on our American Stories, And we're back with our American stories,
(09:41):
and the story of Steve Stoler, a college student who
saved a long lost Marks Brothers movie and then landed
the job of his dreams working as Grout show Marks,
his personal assistant and archivist. Let's return to Steve and
his story, and it just became this remarkably rich experience
(10:09):
for me that ended up lasting not three weeks as
I had thought that morning, but three years, the last
three years of Groucho's life. And so I was able
to get to know and you know, talk with and
with Groucho, my hero. I also got to meet Zeppo
(10:33):
the night that he came up there for dinner from
Palm Springs. I had 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 Chico
left off in terms of having an eye for the ladies.
(10:56):
And he had recently lost his last wife to Frank Sinatra,
who dumped him and went for Sinatra, and that was
Barbara Marx Sinatra. So he was back to being a bachelor.
And he said, he said, you know, Steve, you and
Linda should visit me in Palm Spring sometime. And I said, well,
(11:18):
I don't know. I was there when I was about nine,
and just it was sweltering and he said, well, when
were you 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
(11:40):
get a chance to shine on screen. I had heard
that he could be very funny and 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. In the
few movies he was in, he was happy as a
(12:00):
performer and once he once he left the act after
Duck Soup in nineteen thirty three. He became a very
successful agent, handling such obscure has beens as Clark Gable
and Carol Lombard and Barbara Stanwick and Robert Taylor and
(12:22):
Lucille Ball and Landa Turner. So he did really well
and never looked back. But anyway, 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
(12:44):
cover letter, I said, by the way, Linda and I
broke up. So I know you've been around the block
a few times. If you have any advice for the
love lorn And a few days later, my phone rings
save a Zeppo Maks. I hope I'm not inconveniencing. No, no,
how I got the photos you sent. God I was
(13:06):
good looking back then. But listen, I have a question
for you. And I don't want to step 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
(13:30):
was twenty, and he was seventy four, but a young
seventy four, but seventy four, And I said, I don't know.
I mean she she enjoyed. You know, she got a
kick out because it 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,
(13:53):
I would appreciate it. And again if it's any no, no,
no no no. So I saw her at Cool 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
(14:18):
took her to dinner in San Diego and then drove
to Tijuana and attended a high A lie 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
(14:40):
was talk about herself. And then I saw her 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 Groucho's, whenever Zeppa would be there, he would make
a point of introducing to someone and say, this is Steve.
(15:03):
He's a nice young man. He and I dated the
same girl, but he got further with it 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
(15:23):
meet the other living Marx brother, Gummo who. To those
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,
(15:44):
seventeen year old Zeppo took his place, and Gummo also
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
(16:05):
chance to me. Harpo and Chico had died in the
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
(16:27):
youth sitting around the table. It must have been hysterical.
Groucho had a cook named Robin, who was tall and
thin and blond 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.
(16:50):
I think she's too tall for me. Groucho said, well,
what part of it do you want? And Zeppo said,
I'll take as high up as I can read, and
Gummo said, what do you want with their feet? So
there's a Gummo anecdote, which is extremely rare, but evidence
(17:10):
of the kind of goofy humor they had amongst themselves,
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 Cavot.
(17:31):
That was another case where because of my insecurities, I
thought when Groucho was gone, my link to Dick Cavot
would be over. But instead he called me from New
York the week Groucho died and he said, listen, I
hope just because Groucho's gone, we're not going to lose touch.
(17:54):
And by the way, I hope you don't mind, but
I've shown some of your letters to Woody and 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
(18:14):
Woody Allen thinks your letters are well written. So that
was something. And in fact I did end up 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
(18:34):
Woody Allen and Katherine Hepburn and lots of other stuff
before I returned to LA to take another job. 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,
(18:56):
I must be okay, whether I'm Groucho's grandson or something
like that. If I'm sitting at Groucho's lunch table, it
must be okay. So there wasn't any nobody, There 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
(19:20):
earth and personable than some of the people who had
recently become famous. Aaron Fleming tended to have younger friends
Elliott Gould and George Siegel and Bud Court and Sally
Kellerman and streisand to a lesser degree, and I found
myself instantly drawn to Groucho's old gang. I felt much
(19:45):
more that I belonged there, even though I was nineteen
and they were in their seventies and eighties. Then I
did towards Aaron's sort of quirky group of nouveaux stars,
and especial thanks to Robbie for superb production and great storytelling,
and especial thanks to Steve Stolier as well. Steve Stolier's
(20:09):
story rout Joe Marks's story here on our American Stories
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. In the summer of seventy four,
(00:34):
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 jobs. They
may need a bus boy at this restaurant, or you
(00:57):
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
(01:18):
sort of help with? And she said, well, actually, it's
funny you called because I used to be Grouchow'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
(01:41):
going to be donated to the Smithsonian after he's gone,
and we need someone who really knows their March brothers.
And I'm thinking, please, please please please please please please
with you, And in my mind's eye, I have this
sort of textaver cartoon image of me zipping out of
(02:04):
the house and instantly appearing on the doorstep of Groucho's
house while Aaron is still on the phone explaining 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,
(02:27):
you'll have your own room to work in at Graucho's
house and you can make your own hours. And I thought, there,
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,
(02:51):
there was a room that had been a painting studio
that his last wife, whom he had divorced in sixty nine,
had used, and that came my office, and Groucho 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
(03:16):
sit at the lunch table when Groucher would have lunch.
There 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 in quotes, Groucho
(03:40):
and maybe a nurse, or Groucho and Aaron, it 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 experienced instant that
(04:00):
he cared about, and that we had similar you know,
we both liked Tin pan 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 dollar bill, and he said, go down
to the record store and get me some records, you
(04:22):
know what I like. And it meant so much to
me 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
(04:44):
of all, he was Groucho Marx, the guy in the
grease paint mustache, swirling around on screen insulting Margaret Dumont
and 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
(05:06):
like well, like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, James Thurber
he was friends with WC. 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.
(05:27):
And then on the third level, he was a man
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 firsthand memories went from
before the Right Brothers to after the moon landing, which
(05:50):
is a staggering chunk of American history, world history. I
asked him once, what's the earliest you remember? And he
thought him 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 Groucho'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 shift did 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 he'd have a small stroke or something like that,
(07:19):
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
that morning that I showed up that he'd had a
stroke and the housekeeper said, please keep your voice down,
(07:42):
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 and mucklucks, reading the La Times. And he said,
(08:04):
is the ambulance here? Yeah? I said, noah, 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 leak in the bathroom because his balance was
(08:24):
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. And you're
listening to Steve Stoller's story, and in the end, Groucho
Marks's story too, And what a lucky guy, indeed, that
(08:47):
those summer jobs fell through. There's 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. It's properness. And boy, graut Show
was a revolutionary in his day. He really stretched the
boundaries of what comedians were allowed to do and not do.
(09:10):
And my goodness, what we learned listening to this is
that even people like Groutshow 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
on our American Stories, And we're back with our American stories,
(09:41):
and the story of Steve Stoler, a college student who
saved a long lost Marks Brothers movie and then landed
the job of his dreams working as Grout show Marks,
his personal assistant and archivist. Let's return to Steve and
his story, and it just became this remarkably rich experience
(10:09):
for me that ended up lasting not three weeks as
I had thought that morning, but three years, the last
three years of Groucho's life. And so I was able
to get to know and you know, talk with and
with Groucho, my hero. I also got to meet Zeppo
(10:33):
the night that he came up there for dinner from
Palm Springs. I had 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 Chico
left off in terms of having an eye for the ladies.
(10:56):
And he had recently lost his last wife to Frank Sinatra,
who dumped him and went for Sinatra, and that was
Barbara Marx Sinatra. So he was back to being a bachelor.
And he said, he said, you know, Steve, you and
Linda should visit me in Palm Spring sometime. And I said, well,
(11:18):
I don't know. I was there when I was about nine,
and just it was sweltering and he said, well, when
were you 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
(11:40):
get a chance to shine on screen. I had heard
that he could be very funny and 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. In the
few movies he was in, he was happy as a
(12:00):
performer and once he once he left the act after
Duck Soup in nineteen thirty three. He became a very
successful agent, handling such obscure has beens as Clark Gable
and Carol Lombard and Barbara Stanwick and Robert Taylor and
(12:22):
Lucille Ball and Landa Turner. So he did really well
and never looked back. But anyway, 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
(12:44):
cover letter, I said, by the way, Linda and I
broke up. So I know you've been around the block
a few times. If you have any advice for the
love lorn And a few days later, my phone rings
save a Zeppo Maks. I hope I'm not inconveniencing. No, no,
how I got the photos you sent. God I was
(13:06):
good looking back then. But listen, I have a question
for you. And I don't want to step 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
(13:30):
was twenty, and he was seventy four, but a young
seventy four, but seventy four, And I said, I don't know.
I mean she she enjoyed. You know, she got a
kick out because it 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,
(13:53):
I would appreciate it. And again if it's any no, no,
no no no. So I saw her at Cool 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
(14:18):
took her to dinner in San Diego and then drove
to Tijuana and attended a high A lie 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
(14:40):
was talk about herself. And then I saw her 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 Groucho's, whenever Zeppa would be there, he would make
a point of introducing to someone and say, this is Steve.
(15:03):
He's a nice young man. He and I dated the
same girl, but he got further with it 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
(15:23):
meet the other living Marx brother, Gummo who. To those
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,
(15:44):
seventeen year old Zeppo took his place, and Gummo also
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
(16:05):
chance to me. Harpo and Chico had died in the
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
(16:27):
youth sitting around the table. It must have been hysterical.
Groucho had a cook named Robin, who was tall and
thin and blond 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.
(16:50):
I think she's too tall for me. Groucho said, well,
what part of it do you want? And Zeppo said,
I'll take as high up as I can read, and
Gummo said, what do you want with their feet? So
there's a Gummo anecdote, which is extremely rare, but evidence
(17:10):
of the kind of goofy humor they had amongst themselves,
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 Cavot.
(17:31):
That was another case where because of my insecurities, I
thought when Groucho was gone, my link to Dick Cavot
would be over. But instead he called me from New
York the week Groucho died and he said, listen, I
hope just because Groucho's gone, we're not going to lose touch.
(17:54):
And by the way, I hope you don't mind, but
I've shown some of your letters to Woody and 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
(18:14):
Woody Allen thinks your letters are well written. So that
was something. And in fact I did end up 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
(18:34):
Woody Allen and Katherine Hepburn and lots of other stuff
before I returned to LA to take another job. 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,
(18:56):
I must be okay, whether I'm Groucho's grandson or something
like that. If I'm sitting at Groucho's lunch table, it
must be okay. So there wasn't any nobody, There 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
(19:20):
earth and personable than some of the people who had
recently become famous. Aaron Fleming tended to have younger friends
Elliott Gould and George Siegel and Bud Court and Sally
Kellerman and streisand to a lesser degree, and I found
myself instantly drawn to Groucho's old gang. I felt much
(19:45):
more that I belonged there, even though I was nineteen
and they were in their seventies and eighties. Then I
did towards Aaron's sort of quirky group of nouveaux stars,
and especial thanks to Robbie for superb production and great storytelling,
and especial thanks to Steve Stolier as well. Steve Stolier's
(20:09):
story rout Joe Marks's story here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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