February 25, 2025 • 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
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and up next we bring
you a story of how one devoted Marx Brothers fan
went on to uncover a long lost Marx Brothers movie.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Here's Steve Stollier to tell us his story.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I am currently a screenwriter and author and also do
voiceover work, but I was not always in the business,
although I was always interested in show business. When I
was a but a small child in Saint Louis, which
is where I was born, I would see I Love
(00:55):
Lucy episodes where wherever Lucy and Desire go they seemed
to run into famous celebrities. So I assumed that's what
Los Angeles or Hollywood was like. Our family moved to
LA when I was pushing eight years old, and on
the airplane that we took, Andy Griffith was sitting several
(01:21):
roads in front of us, and Red Skelton was sitting
in the road directly in front of us, and so
I thought, wow, it really is like I Love Lucy.
There's celebrities everywhere. We haven't even landed in Hollywood, and
there's two stars who I know who they are, and
I watched their shows. This is cool. And Red Skelton
(01:43):
was very cool. He kept entertaining my sisters and me
the whole flight. For me, he kept one of those
little those pop guns where you push the back and
a cork on a string comes out. He had that
tucked into his suit jacket, and every now and again
he would just turn around and shoot me with his
pop gun. This was, of course, before there were any
(02:07):
airline safety restrictions. I don't know that you could bring
a pop gun onto a plane now, but in nineteen
sixty two there was no problem with it. So I
had already met two famous people by the time our
plane touchdown. As I say, I've always had a fascination
(02:27):
with famous people, and specifically the Marx Brothers. And then
within that subset is Groucho, my favorite of the Marx brothers.
I'm not sure exactly when I became aware of him
(02:48):
slashed them, but I did have an Uncle Joe and
Saint Louis, who was balding, wore glasses, had a mustache,
smoked a cigar, and wiggled his eyebrows, so that when
I did discover the real grou show, I thought, he's
just like Uncle Joe. That's interesting. And my parents used
(03:08):
to quote lines from March Brothers movies like being vaccinated
with a phonograph needle. So when I finally discovered their
films and became aware that I am watching the March
Brothers in this movie that was probably around early high school,
(03:29):
and I wondered where they'd been hiding all my life,
and I wanted to see all their movies. And this
is perhaps difficult to grasp for the gen X and
millennial generations, but we could not simply view what we
wanted to view by punching it up on a device,
(03:51):
or even watching Turner classic movies, or even having the
DVD or videotape I had to. We would get the
TV Guide each week and I would go through it
with a pencil, and I would circle the movies I
wanted to see, which invariably were old movies that they
(04:15):
put on in the wee twilight hours of the middle
of the night early morning, after Johnny Carson and after
Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show, into that strange nether world of
local car commercials, and I would just sort of will
myself to stay awake. I don't know how I did it.
(04:37):
I mean, now I'll drift off on the couch at
ten thirty but back then, if they were showing monkey
Business starting at two forty eight, I just made myself
stay up and watch it, and then I could knock
that off my list of movies I had to see.
So it was very difficult trying to see them. And
(05:00):
there was one, you know. I read whatever scant books
there were and articles that came out about the March
Brothers or Grau show, and I quickly became aware of
the fact that their second film, Animal Crackers, which had
been a very successful stage play in the late twenties
(05:20):
and then was their second film made at Paramount in
nineteen thirty. I hadn't seen that, and I wasn't able
to see it because when Paramount sold their early films
to MCA Universal in the late fifties, it included Animal Crackers,
but because of basically a technological error, they didn't renew
(05:48):
the copyright on Animal Crackers, so the rights had reverted
back to the authors and composers of the stage play,
and for the longest time Universal didn't I think it
was worth spending money on an old black and white
March Brothers movie to clear the rights and reissue it.
So it just became this phantom filmy. They owned it,
(06:11):
but they couldn't show it. And in the meantime they
redistributed all of their early paramount films and syndicated those
in television, and you may have seen they would have
that big shield at the beginning that would say, uh
MCATV release. And I used to want to go up
to the TV with a marxalot and add an an
(06:33):
after uh MCATV because it just bothered me. But Animal
Crackers was not included that in those packages. So it
was this great unseen March Brothers film, and it was
supposed to have been one of their best. I mean,
Groucho played Captain Spalding, so his theme song Hooray for
(06:55):
Captain Spaulding came from that. A lot of his quoted
lines like I shot an elephant pajamas came from that.
And when I graduated high school, I began to attend
UCLA first as a history major, because I really didn't
think you could make any kind of living in entertainment
(07:17):
unless you were just astonishingly talented and had endless perseverance.
And I didn't put myself in either of those categories.
So while I continue to love watching old movies and
study up on all these people. I figured I would
be a history major and maybe teach history something like that.
(07:42):
And I saw that a print of Animal Crackers was
going to be shown at a revival House theater in
Orange County in December of seventy three, and I wasn't
sure how they were able to show it, but I
didn't care, and all of my friends piled into one car.
(08:10):
This was also during a gasoline crisis, an oil crisis,
when gas was being rationed, but we didn't mind blowing
most of a tank of gas to be able to
finally see this missing link in the Marx Brothers Small Cannon.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
And you're listening to Steve Solier and he is telling
the story of the lost Marx Brothers film. And by
the way, it is a small cannon. But if you
do get a chance, it is easy to see these movies.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
By the way, there was a time when it was impossible.
You just had to wait for them to appear on TV.
And you did have to read that TV guide. And
I remember circling all my favorite things too, and all
of Americans did.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
And that was it. That was it.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And by the way, duck Soup, Animal Crackers and Horse
Feathers with a way to go and watch it with
the kids. It's the cleanest and yet most subversive comedy
you'll ever see. A lot like what they were doing
with Wiley Coyote and Bugs Bunny and just delightful, clever stuff.
And they were never pushing a line, and yet they were.
When we come back more with Steve Stolier his story
(09:15):
about a missing Marx Brothers movie here in our American Stories,
(09:39):
and we're back with our American stories in Steve Stollier's story,
and we've learned that due to a filing era, Animal
Crackers had become unavailable to the public. When we last
left off, Steve had found a bootleg copy that was
being shown about forty minutes away from his home, and
he and his friends from college while they hopped in
a car in the middle of a gas shortage to
(09:59):
finally this film off their bucket list.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Let's return to Steve.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I mean they only made twelve or thirteen movies in all,
so it was a substantial coup to be able to
finally see Animal Crackers. It was a terrible print. It
was a bootleg dupe of a dupe, and the images
were murky, and the sound was hole, couldn't hear it, literally,
(10:27):
but the point was, oh my god, we're watching Animal Crackers.
I figured that you couldn't find Groucho's name in the
phone book and just call him up to tell him
that it was playing. But from looking through the Beverly
Hills phone book, I did know that Harry Ruby was
(10:48):
in the Beverly Hills phone book. Harry Ruby had co
written the songs for Animal Crackers and had also worked
as a writer on several of the early Mark Brothers films,
and was one of Groucho's closest friends. So I called
him up and he didn't answer, but a nurse answered
(11:10):
and took my name and phone number. And I think
if he himself had answered, none of what transpired would
have taken place, because he wouldn't have had my name
and number. It was just a matter of conveying to
him to tell Groucho that it was playing at this
Animal Crackers was playing in Orange County. But because she
(11:34):
took my name and number, I got a call from
Harry Ruby, which at the time was one of the
most exciting things that ever happened to me, because this
was one step removed from Groucho himself, and I had
a nice chat with him about several things, and he said, well,
I'll tell Grouch about this. And I thought, oh my god,
(11:56):
he's going to tell my hero about this. And I
called all my friends and told them. And then New
Year's Day of seventy four, I got a phone call
from a woman named Aaron Fleming. And I'd kept up
on articles about what Groucho was up to, and I
knew she was very close to Groucho. She had sort
(12:20):
of become his manager, and she'd had arranged a series
of one man shows in nineteen seventy two where Groucho
would transfix the audience for ninety minutes or so and
take home a bunch of money. I did attend the
one in la in December seventy two and was able
(12:45):
to see Groucho at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. My friend
and I were sitting towards the back. Our tickets were
nine dollars and fifty cents, which was a fortune and
would not even pay for parking. Now, the Dorothy Chandler,
see that as it may, and he was quite old
and frail, which was it really took the wind out
(13:07):
of me to see him that way, because the press
had led me to believe that good old Groucho at
eighty something or other just as sharp as ever. And
instead this old man shuffled out and said, I want
to take a bow for Hoppo and for Checko, because
without them I wouldn't be a head at I and
(13:29):
he read off c cards. But it was still just
electrifying realizing that I was in the same room as Groucho,
and I clapped so hard my hands stung the next
morning because I wanted I know this sounds weird, but
I wanted vibrations from my applause to reach his ear
(13:50):
drums because I knew that was as close as I
was ever going to get to him. So anyway, getting
back to January of seventy four, when I got this
call from Aaron Fleming. She had been on stage with
Groucho at the evening with Groucho, and she had gotten
the message from Harry Ruby about animal crackers, and what
she wanted to know was how could they show it,
(14:12):
How was it legal for them to show it, how
did they get the rights to it? How did they
And of course I didn't know any of this. I
was just this kid that was a Mars Brothers fan,
and she wanted to take me with her to Universal
Studios to go up to the office of Sidney J. Sheinberg,
(14:32):
the president of Universal, as sort of an exhibit a
of a kid who would drive all the way to
Orange County to see Animal Crackers, And so she was
hoping that that would make the difference and then Universal
would clear the rights and release the movie. I was skeptical,
but I was flattered all the hell that she wanted
(14:53):
to be in touch with me, and she and Groucho
they had to go because they were going to see
Woody Allen's Sleeper. Also, while I was on that call,
I said, while I have you here, I wanted it.
Something has been on my mind for a while. Some
of the books I've seen say Groucho was born in
(15:15):
eighteen ninety five, and others say eighteen ninety and I
wondered which one was the real date. And she said,
just a minute, Groucho, what year were you born?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And in the.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Distance, I hear eighteen ninety And she said, did you hear?
And I said yes, And I thought, oh my god,
he's in the room with her. I can't handle this,
I talked to friends and we thought it would be
a better idea rather than just having this one kid
(15:48):
try to argue the case to re release the movie.
I would form a committee at UCLA, a petition drive,
and we would get hundreds or thousands of signatures from
like minded young people that we would want to see
this movie and would pay to see it if it
(16:08):
came out. So from friends and I formed the Committee
for the re release of Animal Crackers. We set up
a table on Brew and Walk, which is where all
of the causes had tables for either gay rights, ending
the war in Vietnam. And then you had this group
of kids trying to get an old March Brothers movie
(16:30):
off the shelf, and people were so suspicious about signing
the petition. You know, this was right during Watergate, and
someone said, you know, is the government going to get
a copy of this? Does the FBI get a God? No, No,
it's just you have to be a registered voter. Do
I have to print and put together? No, it's just
(16:50):
to get this movie. And I was staying in touch
with Aaron Fleming, and she arranged for Groucho to come
to UCA and alerted the press about our cause, and
sure enough, in spring of nineteen seventy four, Aaron and
Groucho came to UCLA. I said, Groucho, I am very
(17:14):
happy to be meeting you after all this time, and
he said, well you should be. And Aaron said, this
is Steve Stolier. He's the one trying to get animal
crackers re released. And Groucho said, well, did you get it?
And I said not yet, but we're working on it.
And he said, you're better or I'll fire you. And
(17:37):
I said, I didn't realize I was working for you.
How much are you paying me? And he said a
little less than nothing, And it was just this most
remarkable pinch me, is this really happening? We sat side
by side answering reporters questions about the movie, and I
remember one reporter said, mister March, what is the purpose
(18:02):
of your appearance here today? And he said, I expect
to get lunch, and she said, but besides that, I
may get dinner. So there was still a lot of
you know, I was so disheartened after seeing how frail
and old and shaky he was at the Dorothy Chandler
Pavilion in seventy two, but here he was still being
(18:26):
Grouchow with his silliness and twisting phrases. And that was
very heartening after having been disheartened. So we talked to
the press and they ran their stories, and sure enough
Universal relented and decided to reissue the film. They would
(18:47):
show it in LA and New York and then be
done with it. It's like here, here it is, go
look at it. Leave us alone. We have more important
movies to worry about. It had a reprom at the
UA Westwood, and I went in a tuxedo and my
family went and the other members of the committee. It
(19:10):
was like our night, and Aaron and Groucho were there
and we watched Animal Crackers, a fresh print clear you
could see what was going on, and it ended up
breaking the house record that had been set several years
earlier by the French Connection. And it was very gratifying
for me to be at a coffee shop in Westwood
(19:32):
and look across the street and see a line of
kids and T shirts and blue jeans and tennis shoes
waiting to pay money to see this March Brothers move.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
What great storytelling And thanks to Robbie for bringing it
to us, and a special thanks to Steve Stolier and
by the way, to find out more, order Steve's book
Raised Eyebrows, My Years inside Grouch Show's House, and they're
a whole bunch more stories like this one you can
find that at Amazon.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Are all the usual suspects.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
The story of Steve Stolier his effort to get animal
crackers re released his story here on our American Stories
This is our American stories, and up next we bring
you a story of how one devoted Marx Brothers fan
went on to uncover a long lost Marx Brothers movie.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Here's Steve Stollier to tell us his story.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I am currently a screenwriter and author and also do
voiceover work, but I was not always in the business,
although I was always interested in show business. When I
was a but a small child in Saint Louis, which
is where I was born, I would see I Love
(00:55):
Lucy episodes where wherever Lucy and Desire go they seemed
to run into famous celebrities. So I assumed that's what
Los Angeles or Hollywood was like. Our family moved to
LA when I was pushing eight years old, and on
the airplane that we took, Andy Griffith was sitting several
(01:21):
roads in front of us, and Red Skelton was sitting
in the road directly in front of us, and so
I thought, wow, it really is like I Love Lucy.
There's celebrities everywhere. We haven't even landed in Hollywood, and
there's two stars who I know who they are, and
I watched their shows. This is cool. And Red Skelton
(01:43):
was very cool. He kept entertaining my sisters and me
the whole flight. For me, he kept one of those
little those pop guns where you push the back and
a cork on a string comes out. He had that
tucked into his suit jacket, and every now and again
he would just turn around and shoot me with his
pop gun. This was, of course, before there were any
(02:07):
airline safety restrictions. I don't know that you could bring
a pop gun onto a plane now, but in nineteen
sixty two there was no problem with it. So I
had already met two famous people by the time our
plane touchdown. As I say, I've always had a fascination
(02:27):
with famous people, and specifically the Marx Brothers. And then
within that subset is Groucho, my favorite of the Marx brothers.
I'm not sure exactly when I became aware of him
(02:48):
slashed them, but I did have an Uncle Joe and
Saint Louis, who was balding, wore glasses, had a mustache,
smoked a cigar, and wiggled his eyebrows, so that when
I did discover the real grou show, I thought, he's
just like Uncle Joe. That's interesting. And my parents used
(03:08):
to quote lines from March Brothers movies like being vaccinated
with a phonograph needle. So when I finally discovered their
films and became aware that I am watching the March
Brothers in this movie that was probably around early high school,
(03:29):
and I wondered where they'd been hiding all my life,
and I wanted to see all their movies. And this
is perhaps difficult to grasp for the gen X and
millennial generations, but we could not simply view what we
wanted to view by punching it up on a device,
(03:51):
or even watching Turner classic movies, or even having the
DVD or videotape I had to. We would get the
TV Guide each week and I would go through it
with a pencil, and I would circle the movies I
wanted to see, which invariably were old movies that they
(04:15):
put on in the wee twilight hours of the middle
of the night early morning, after Johnny Carson and after
Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show, into that strange nether world of
local car commercials, and I would just sort of will
myself to stay awake. I don't know how I did it.
(04:37):
I mean, now I'll drift off on the couch at
ten thirty but back then, if they were showing monkey
Business starting at two forty eight, I just made myself
stay up and watch it, and then I could knock
that off my list of movies I had to see.
So it was very difficult trying to see them. And
(05:00):
there was one, you know. I read whatever scant books
there were and articles that came out about the March
Brothers or Grau show, and I quickly became aware of
the fact that their second film, Animal Crackers, which had
been a very successful stage play in the late twenties
(05:20):
and then was their second film made at Paramount in
nineteen thirty. I hadn't seen that, and I wasn't able
to see it because when Paramount sold their early films
to MCA Universal in the late fifties, it included Animal Crackers,
but because of basically a technological error, they didn't renew
(05:48):
the copyright on Animal Crackers, so the rights had reverted
back to the authors and composers of the stage play,
and for the longest time Universal didn't I think it
was worth spending money on an old black and white
March Brothers movie to clear the rights and reissue it.
So it just became this phantom filmy. They owned it,
(06:11):
but they couldn't show it. And in the meantime they
redistributed all of their early paramount films and syndicated those
in television, and you may have seen they would have
that big shield at the beginning that would say, uh
MCATV release. And I used to want to go up
to the TV with a marxalot and add an an
(06:33):
after uh MCATV because it just bothered me. But Animal
Crackers was not included that in those packages. So it
was this great unseen March Brothers film, and it was
supposed to have been one of their best. I mean,
Groucho played Captain Spalding, so his theme song Hooray for
(06:55):
Captain Spaulding came from that. A lot of his quoted
lines like I shot an elephant pajamas came from that.
And when I graduated high school, I began to attend
UCLA first as a history major, because I really didn't
think you could make any kind of living in entertainment
(07:17):
unless you were just astonishingly talented and had endless perseverance.
And I didn't put myself in either of those categories.
So while I continue to love watching old movies and
study up on all these people. I figured I would
be a history major and maybe teach history something like that.
(07:42):
And I saw that a print of Animal Crackers was
going to be shown at a revival House theater in
Orange County in December of seventy three, and I wasn't
sure how they were able to show it, but I
didn't care, and all of my friends piled into one car.
(08:10):
This was also during a gasoline crisis, an oil crisis,
when gas was being rationed, but we didn't mind blowing
most of a tank of gas to be able to
finally see this missing link in the Marx Brothers Small Cannon.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
And you're listening to Steve Solier and he is telling
the story of the lost Marx Brothers film. And by
the way, it is a small cannon. But if you
do get a chance, it is easy to see these movies.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
By the way, there was a time when it was impossible.
You just had to wait for them to appear on TV.
And you did have to read that TV guide. And
I remember circling all my favorite things too, and all
of Americans did.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
And that was it. That was it.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And by the way, duck Soup, Animal Crackers and Horse
Feathers with a way to go and watch it with
the kids. It's the cleanest and yet most subversive comedy
you'll ever see. A lot like what they were doing
with Wiley Coyote and Bugs Bunny and just delightful, clever stuff.
And they were never pushing a line, and yet they were.
When we come back more with Steve Stolier his story
(09:15):
about a missing Marx Brothers movie here in our American Stories,
(09:39):
and we're back with our American stories in Steve Stollier's story,
and we've learned that due to a filing era, Animal
Crackers had become unavailable to the public. When we last
left off, Steve had found a bootleg copy that was
being shown about forty minutes away from his home, and
he and his friends from college while they hopped in
a car in the middle of a gas shortage to
(09:59):
finally this film off their bucket list.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Let's return to Steve.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I mean they only made twelve or thirteen movies in all,
so it was a substantial coup to be able to
finally see Animal Crackers. It was a terrible print. It
was a bootleg dupe of a dupe, and the images
were murky, and the sound was hole, couldn't hear it, literally,
(10:27):
but the point was, oh my god, we're watching Animal Crackers.
I figured that you couldn't find Groucho's name in the
phone book and just call him up to tell him
that it was playing. But from looking through the Beverly
Hills phone book, I did know that Harry Ruby was
(10:48):
in the Beverly Hills phone book. Harry Ruby had co
written the songs for Animal Crackers and had also worked
as a writer on several of the early Mark Brothers films,
and was one of Groucho's closest friends. So I called
him up and he didn't answer, but a nurse answered
(11:10):
and took my name and phone number. And I think
if he himself had answered, none of what transpired would
have taken place, because he wouldn't have had my name
and number. It was just a matter of conveying to
him to tell Groucho that it was playing at this
Animal Crackers was playing in Orange County. But because she
(11:34):
took my name and number, I got a call from
Harry Ruby, which at the time was one of the
most exciting things that ever happened to me, because this
was one step removed from Groucho himself, and I had
a nice chat with him about several things, and he said, well,
I'll tell Grouch about this. And I thought, oh my god,
(11:56):
he's going to tell my hero about this. And I
called all my friends and told them. And then New
Year's Day of seventy four, I got a phone call
from a woman named Aaron Fleming. And I'd kept up
on articles about what Groucho was up to, and I
knew she was very close to Groucho. She had sort
(12:20):
of become his manager, and she'd had arranged a series
of one man shows in nineteen seventy two where Groucho
would transfix the audience for ninety minutes or so and
take home a bunch of money. I did attend the
one in la in December seventy two and was able
(12:45):
to see Groucho at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. My friend
and I were sitting towards the back. Our tickets were
nine dollars and fifty cents, which was a fortune and
would not even pay for parking. Now, the Dorothy Chandler,
see that as it may, and he was quite old
and frail, which was it really took the wind out
(13:07):
of me to see him that way, because the press
had led me to believe that good old Groucho at
eighty something or other just as sharp as ever. And
instead this old man shuffled out and said, I want
to take a bow for Hoppo and for Checko, because
without them I wouldn't be a head at I and
(13:29):
he read off c cards. But it was still just
electrifying realizing that I was in the same room as Groucho,
and I clapped so hard my hands stung the next
morning because I wanted I know this sounds weird, but
I wanted vibrations from my applause to reach his ear
(13:50):
drums because I knew that was as close as I
was ever going to get to him. So anyway, getting
back to January of seventy four, when I got this
call from Aaron Fleming. She had been on stage with
Groucho at the evening with Groucho, and she had gotten
the message from Harry Ruby about animal crackers, and what
she wanted to know was how could they show it,
(14:12):
How was it legal for them to show it, how
did they get the rights to it? How did they
And of course I didn't know any of this. I
was just this kid that was a Mars Brothers fan,
and she wanted to take me with her to Universal
Studios to go up to the office of Sidney J. Sheinberg,
(14:32):
the president of Universal, as sort of an exhibit a
of a kid who would drive all the way to
Orange County to see Animal Crackers, And so she was
hoping that that would make the difference and then Universal
would clear the rights and release the movie. I was skeptical,
but I was flattered all the hell that she wanted
(14:53):
to be in touch with me, and she and Groucho
they had to go because they were going to see
Woody Allen's Sleeper. Also, while I was on that call,
I said, while I have you here, I wanted it.
Something has been on my mind for a while. Some
of the books I've seen say Groucho was born in
(15:15):
eighteen ninety five, and others say eighteen ninety and I
wondered which one was the real date. And she said,
just a minute, Groucho, what year were you born?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And in the.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Distance, I hear eighteen ninety And she said, did you hear?
And I said yes, And I thought, oh my god,
he's in the room with her. I can't handle this,
I talked to friends and we thought it would be
a better idea rather than just having this one kid
(15:48):
try to argue the case to re release the movie.
I would form a committee at UCLA, a petition drive,
and we would get hundreds or thousands of signatures from
like minded young people that we would want to see
this movie and would pay to see it if it
(16:08):
came out. So from friends and I formed the Committee
for the re release of Animal Crackers. We set up
a table on Brew and Walk, which is where all
of the causes had tables for either gay rights, ending
the war in Vietnam. And then you had this group
of kids trying to get an old March Brothers movie
(16:30):
off the shelf, and people were so suspicious about signing
the petition. You know, this was right during Watergate, and
someone said, you know, is the government going to get
a copy of this? Does the FBI get a God? No, No,
it's just you have to be a registered voter. Do
I have to print and put together? No, it's just
(16:50):
to get this movie. And I was staying in touch
with Aaron Fleming, and she arranged for Groucho to come
to UCA and alerted the press about our cause, and
sure enough, in spring of nineteen seventy four, Aaron and
Groucho came to UCLA. I said, Groucho, I am very
(17:14):
happy to be meeting you after all this time, and
he said, well you should be. And Aaron said, this
is Steve Stolier. He's the one trying to get animal
crackers re released. And Groucho said, well, did you get it?
And I said not yet, but we're working on it.
And he said, you're better or I'll fire you. And
(17:37):
I said, I didn't realize I was working for you.
How much are you paying me? And he said a
little less than nothing, And it was just this most
remarkable pinch me, is this really happening? We sat side
by side answering reporters questions about the movie, and I
remember one reporter said, mister March, what is the purpose
(18:02):
of your appearance here today? And he said, I expect
to get lunch, and she said, but besides that, I
may get dinner. So there was still a lot of
you know, I was so disheartened after seeing how frail
and old and shaky he was at the Dorothy Chandler
Pavilion in seventy two, but here he was still being
(18:26):
Grouchow with his silliness and twisting phrases. And that was
very heartening after having been disheartened. So we talked to
the press and they ran their stories, and sure enough
Universal relented and decided to reissue the film. They would
(18:47):
show it in LA and New York and then be
done with it. It's like here, here it is, go
look at it. Leave us alone. We have more important
movies to worry about. It had a reprom at the
UA Westwood, and I went in a tuxedo and my
family went and the other members of the committee. It
(19:10):
was like our night, and Aaron and Groucho were there
and we watched Animal Crackers, a fresh print clear you
could see what was going on, and it ended up
breaking the house record that had been set several years
earlier by the French Connection. And it was very gratifying
for me to be at a coffee shop in Westwood
(19:32):
and look across the street and see a line of
kids and T shirts and blue jeans and tennis shoes
waiting to pay money to see this March Brothers move.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
What great storytelling And thanks to Robbie for bringing it
to us, and a special thanks to Steve Stolier and
by the way, to find out more, order Steve's book
Raised Eyebrows, My Years inside Grouch Show's House, and they're
a whole bunch more stories like this one you can
find that at Amazon.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Are all the usual suspects.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
The story of Steve Stolier his effort to get animal
crackers re released his story here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.