Groucho Marx and the Broadway Murders Read online

  After taking a deep breath, she told him, “My son wants to be just like you.”

  “You mean the poor lad wants to be middle-aged, wrinkled, balding, and incontinent?”

  “No, no. He wants to be a movie comedian and you’re his absolute favorite,” she explained. “Why, he worships the ground you walk on.”

  “Ah, then I’m sorry I walked through the stockyards during the layover in Chicago.”

  Smiling and frowning at the same time, the plump woman said, “He’s seen all the Marx Brothers movies at least three times. And he knows every line in A Night at the Opera by heart.”

  “That’s something. Chico never even knew all of his own lines.” He prepared to circle the woman and push on into the dining car.

  She extracted a sheet of blank hotel stationery from her purse. “Could you sign this for him?”

  Groucho accepted the sheet, rested it against the corridor wall, and uncapped his fountain pen. “What’s the lad’s name?”

  “Stanley.”

  “‘Dear Stanley,’” Groucho said aloud as he wrote, “‘your mother picked my pocket on the Twentieth Century Limited. I’ll let it go this time, but if she does it again I suggest you have her carted away. Your humble servant, Elihu Root (a.k.a. Groucho Marx).’”

  As he handed the sheet of paper back to her, she said, “You’re a funny man, Mr. Marx.”

  “One of us has to be and, alas, the task fell to me.” He entered the dining car.

  Jane and I were already there, seated at a table midway along.

  “He looks gloomy,” observed my wife as Groucho came slouching toward us.

  “He always looks gloomy. Most great clowns are tragic figures at—”

  “I bet it has something to do with that Variety he’s clutching.”

  “Greetings, my children.” Groucho seated himself across from us, placed the tabloid on the table in front of him. “Who would you say, offhand, is the greatest interpreter of Gilbert and Sullivan in the entire civilized world?”

  “Martyn Green?” suggested Jane.

  “Let me rephrase the question,” he said. “Who’s the world’s greatest interpreter of Gilbert and Sullivan who happens to be sitting at this table with you?”

  “You?” she asked.

  “Right the first time.” Groucho turned to an inside page of the show business paper. “Someone left this periodical in the observation car and, borrowing it, I discover therein the news that there have already been not one but two versions of The Mikado on Broadway this year.”

  “Sure, The Swing Mikado and The Hot Mikado,” said Jane. “Both flopped, so they won’t be competing with you.”

  “Even so, it plants the notion in the public mind that The Mikado is a clinker,” complained Groucho. “They’ll think it’s another Room Service.”

  “You’re giving them the tried-and-true version,” I pointed out. “Not a swing adaptation.”

  “People will flock to see you,” predicted Jane. “Don’t fret.”

  “Well, I have to admit I am a potentially fabled performer in the Gilbert and Sullivan area,” he said with obvious false modesty. “Why, not since the glorious days when D’Oyly Carte first staged The Mikado—or even earlier, when they put the D’Oyly Carte before the horse—has anyone performed Gilbert and Sullivan the way I do.”

  “All too true,” acknowledged Jane.

  He closed the tabloid. “Let’s just hope that Olsen and Johnson don’t decide to do their version,” he said and picked up his menu card.

  “I found out something interesting about the case,” I told him.

  “We don’t have a case, Watson,” he reminded. “You are but a humble radio writer and I am a roving Savoyard. We are not in the gumshoe trade at the moment.”

  “You ought” put in Jane, “to hear this anyway, Groucho.”

  “Very well, my boy, you may tell me. But please don’t use that annoying Swedish accent you’ve been affecting of late.”

  Nodding, I filled him in on what I’d found out from May Sankowitz about the romances the late Nick Sanantonio had allegedly carried on with Dian Bowers and Willa Jerome. I concluded, “I’m not exactly sure it has a damn thing to do with what happened to Manheim and Arneson. But it is sort of interesting.”

  “Like the flowers that bloom in the spring, Rollo, it probably has nothing to do with the case.” Leaning back in his chair, Groucho took a cigar out of his coat pocket. “Big-time gamblers tend to be irresistible to women. Chico’s the same way. Whereas myself, who limits his activities in that area to bingo and pitching pennies, am notably unlucky in love.”

  “Did you know about Dian and Sanantonio?” Jane asked him.

  He shook his head. “I hadn’t the faintest scintilla of a notion,” he admitted. “Matter of fact, up until last Tuesday I didn’t even know what a scintilla was.” Unwrapping the cigar, he lit it. “But, since we no longer have any interest in this particular mess, I’m not going to worry my pretty little head about who’s doing what to whom.” He exhaled smoke. “I advise you two cherubs to do the same.”

  The streamliner was clacking through the night and we were in the vicinity of Cleveland. From the lower bunk Jane said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “No good will come of it.” Up in my berth I’d been reading the new issue of Black Mask I’d picked up at a newsstand in the Chicago railroad station. I estimated I was less than five minutes from dozing off.

  “About that newest Hollywood Molly radio show synopsis you cooked up this afternoon, Frank.”

  “You want to upgrade your rating from ‘okay’ to ‘super terrific’?”

  Jane hesitated, then said, “When it comes to writing radio shows, you’re the expert.”

  “Absolutely true, yes. But?”

  “Well, I’ve done all my own writing on the comic strip,” she continued. “Not that you haven’t been a great help as an editor on the continuities, obviously, and you’ve helped me work out some plot snags and polish dialogue now and then.”

  “You forgot to mention that I’m a whiz when it comes to punctuation.”

  “Hey, you’re starting to sound like you’re getting miffed up there.”

  “I am not miffed,” I assured her from my upper bed.

  “All the other sample story lines we’ve worked out to present to the radio people in New York are just fine,” Jane said. “But this new one of yours … well, it just doesn’t suit Molly.”

  “You sound like some movie studio executive.”

  “See, you are miffed.”

  “Nope, I’m disheartened to realize I married a woman who talks like an associate producer.”

  “Whenever you get angry you try to insult me and—”

  “Calling you an associate producer isn’t an especially vicious—”

  “You always get this way. Really, Frank, a little harmless criticism and you blow up like a—”

  “What harmless criticism? What I’m hearing is that my ideas stink.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Just because I happen to be between radio or movie assignments, doesn’t mean I can’t come up with a—”

  “Let me, please, get to my point before you start moaning and groaning up there.”

  “Oh, now the fact that I have, once again, sacrificed my comfort to try to sleep in this lofty perch so that you can bask in the comfort of the lower—”

  “All I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t want to have a murder-mystery plot on the Hollywood Mollyradio show.”

  I said, “You thought the idea was great this afternoon.”

  “I thought it was okay. After thinking it over, I decided that—”

  “Having Molly’s actress pal, Vicky Fairweather, fall in love with a big-time Los Angeles gambler is a good notion, Jane,” I insisted. “Plus which, it’s topical. Then when the gangster gets killed, Molly’s friend is accused of murder and she has to play detective so—”

  “Don’t tell me the whole stupid idea over again, if
you don’t mind.”

  “Stupid, huh? I wrote radio scripts for Groucho Marx for two years, but I’m stupid. I sold a screwball movie script to—”

  “Groucho’s standards and mine aren’t the same,” my wife pointed out from below. “I’d prefer not to have Molly acting like an idiot and trying to solve murder cases on my radio show.”

  I took a deep breath in and out. “Write your own damn show then,” I told her. I turned off my light and maintained a hurt silence.

  The Twentieth Century Limited rushed on through the night.

  After about fifteen minutes Jane said, “Frank?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I suppose one murder wouldn’t hurt.”

  “No, you’re probably right. It doesn’t fit with Molly.”

  Jane said, “We can talk about it tomorrow. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Sixteen

  Early on Monday morning Groucho was leaving the lounge car, where he’d sung “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” twice, signed three autograph albums, and insulted two Manhattan-bound stockbrokers, when he encountered Dr. Dowling in the gently rocking corridor of the streamliner.

  The plump personal physician of Willa Jerome was pale and slightly rumpled, but close to sober. “I’m not sure we’ve met, Mr. Marx,” he said, halting in Groucho’s path.

  “If we’d met it would be indelibly etched in your memory, sir,” Groucho assured him. “A female equestrian, for example, who met me, only briefly, in Bangor, Maine, in the spring of nineteen-twenty-six, has never been able to forget the occasion and on the anniversary each year she puts a bouquet of yellow roses on the spot. This is extremely difficult, since the spot in question happens to be beneath a—”

  “What I meant was—I’ve been pretty much under the weather all the way from Los Angeles and my memory is a little fuzzy in spots,” he explained. “I’m Dr. Daniel Dowling, traveling with Willa Jerome’s party.”

  “Ah, I wasn’t aware she brought a party along. I wonder why I wasn’t invited.”

  Dowling smiled, a bit ruefully. “I heard that your friend Mr. Denby was injured. Is he all right now?”

  “Yes, Frank’s fine. He’s sitting up and taking nourishment,” Groucho answered. “He’s also taken the purse of a little old lady who’s traveling to Manhattan to open a drive-in seraglio.”

  Dowling said, “I hear, too, that you and Denby have been investigating what happened to Manheim on the Super Chief.”

  “Very briefly.” Groucho took out a cigar. “We’ve since retired from the case.”

  “What’s your theory as to what went on?”

  “I wasn’t on the job long enough to come up with a full-fledged theory .”

  “So you don’t suspect anyone in particular?”

  Groucho elevated his left eyebrow. “Do you?”

  “No, not at all,” said Dr. Dowling. “It’s only that I was, naturally, curious. That sort of thing is unusual on a trip east.”

  “It rarely even happens on a trip west, for that matter.”

  Dowling chuckled without much enthusiasm. “Well, it’s been pleasant to meet you, Mr. Marx,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll meet again in New York.”

  “Worse things have happened,” observed Groucho, moving on.

  Our train pulled into Grand Central Station at a few minutes shy of 10:00 A.M. By a few minutes after, Jane and I were following a Red Cap and our assorted baggage along the strip of red carpet that the New York Central System spreads out for passengers disembarking from the Twentieth Century Limited. According to the promotional handout, the piece of broadloom we were treading on was exactly 260 feet long.

  Groucho, guitar case swinging at his side, was slouching along with us toward the gate leading to the main concourse. “Why, may I ask,” he said, “are all these other travelers traipsing on my carpeting?”

  “The red carpet treatment is for everybody,” said Jane.

  His eyebrows rose. “You mean, Brünhilde, that this isn’t part of the exclusive welcome that Mayor LaGuardia has arranged to commemorate my advent in Manhattan?”

  “Seems not.”

  Groucho sighed. “On previous visits I was treated like royalty,” he said. “Of course, the royalty they treated me like was Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, but even so it was heartwarming.”

  “The least you would expect,” said Jane sympathetically, “is the key to the city.”

  “On my last sojourn LaGuardia did give me the key to the city. Not this city, admittedly, yet the thought was there.”

  Jane noticed that I was frowning at the crowd of recent passengers that was marching up ahead of us. “Something wrong?” she inquired.

  “I just noticed May Sankowitz walking up there about twenty or so people ahead of us,” I said. “Looks like Len Cowan, the dancer, is with her.”

  Stretching up, Groucho peered ahead. “He is, Rollo,” he confirmed. “Which is deuced odd, since the entire Step Right Up troupe was supposed to have remained in Chicago.”

  “Maybe he isn’t through heckling Manheim.”

  Glancing around, Jane said, “I don’t see any sign of Manheim or his protégée.”

  “They’re remaining aboard the train until the peasantry has withdrawn,” explained Groucho. “Then they’re holding a small press conference out under the clock.” He shook his head forlornly. “Ah, I well remember when I was the darling of the newspapers and reporters flocked to interview me. I was also, until they got a closer look at me, the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi and for good measure the—”

  “Julius Marx,” exclaimed a somewhat nasal voice. “Welcome to the world’s largest flea market, sometimes known as Manhattan.”

  An extremely dapper man of about forty, grey haired, grey suited, and wearing a snap-brim grey fedora, was hurrying along the train platform toward us.

  “Leo, companion of my childhood,” said Groucho.

  “It’s Leo Haskell,” Jane told me quietly as the two men embraced.

  “Who?”

  “Haskell, the poor man’s Walter Winchell,” she elaborated. “He writes the Broadway Beat column for the New York Daily Tab.”

  “Oh, that Haskell.”

  “I’m touched,” Groucho was saying, “that you came to greet me, Leo, and welcome me to—”

  “To be honest, Groucho, I’m here to interview this week’s hot cinemaiden,” the Broadway columnist told him. “Dian Bowers they call her out in Tinselvania. But, listen, I can always use an inch about you. What’s this I hear about you walking the planks on Broadway again, in some Japaretta?”

  “I’ll be doing The Mikado at the—”

  “Word is that the latest celluloid opus you and your brothers have perpetrated is a massive stinkeroo of the first order. True or false, Groucho?”

  “It is a wee bit fragrant, Leo, but—”

  “And what the heck’s the lowdown on Manheim? Did somebody really try to ventilate his clockwork en route to the Apple? Did they attempt to close his drapes for good or—”

  “Whoa. Give me a chance to read the subtitles under your dialogue, Leo.”

  “Whoops, there’s Willa Jerome, the lithesome Limey lass, and her entourage coming our way,” said Haskell, looking beyond Groucho. “I’ll be ankling, Groucho. Give me a jingle.” He left us.

  We started walking again. “That was Leo Haskell,” said Groucho.

  “So we gathered,” I said.

  “In my youth, which is now officially known as the Dark Ages, my brothers and I shared several vaudeville bills with Leo. He was a mere hoofer in those days and hadn’t yet discovered his God-given ability to mangle the English language and peer through keyholes.”

  Jane and I parted with Groucho in front of the terminal and in less than a half hour we were in our hotel suite on Central Park South.

  Wearing her slip and a candy-stripe blouse, Jane was sitting cross-legged on the love seat in the living room of our suite at the St. Norbert Hotel. She had a copy of the latest New Yorker open on her lap and
was studying the Goings-On About Town section.

  I was standing by a high, wide window and gazing down at the afternoon Central Park far below.

  “How about Buddy Ebsen?” asked Jane.

  “In what context?”

  “As a dancer starring in this new musical Yokel Boy. We could see if we can get tickets for that or—”

  The phone rang again.

  I answered it. “Yeah?”

  “Is this Miss Danner’s secretary?” inquired a very polite female voice.

  “Actually I’m one of her valets,” I said. “But I can convey a message.”

  “This is Mr. Diggs’ secretary at Empire Features Syndicate,” she said. “Might I speak to her?”

  “Sure. Hold on.”

  Jane untangled herself from the love seat and I handed her the receiver. “Yes, hello,” she said. “Oh, certainly. We like the suite very much and I want to thank you all for arranging it for us. Tomorrow afternoon?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Tomorrow at two o’clock for our first meeting at the syndicate okay by you?”

  I was back at the window watching Central Park South. “I’m only a humble lackey, mum. Mine is not to reason why, mine—”

  “Yes, that’ll be fine,” she told the phone, thumbing her nose at me. “Oh, really? Yes, that would be swell. I’ll get back to you on that, Miss Spaulding. Fine. Good-bye now.” Hanging up, Jane returned to her chair. “Miss Spaulding, who’s the private secretary of the syndicate president, says they can get us whatever theater tickets we might want.”

  “Can they give us a roll of nickels to use at the Automat, too?”

  Jane stood up again, eyeing me. “Boy, you’re sure being a sourpuss,” she observed. “Are you still upset because my syndicate is treating us to this hotel suite and all the—”

  “I guess I am, yeah. Freeloading off Empire Features isn’t exactly the way I like to—”

  “Well, I think it’s swell,” she said, hands on hips. “And, Frank, this is something I earned. Me, with very little help from anybody else. The way I see our marriage—sometimes you earn the money, sometimes I do, most times we both do. So don’t begrudge me the times when I’m doing terrific in my chosen profession, huh?”