Zeppo, p.13
Zeppo, page 13
The twelve-page script—simply titled “Four Marx Brothers Radio Sketch”—was written by Morrie Ryskind and Will B. Johnstone. Conceptually it is not unlike the “Theatrical Manager’s Office” sketch in that it allows each of the brothers to effectively introduce himself. Even more unusual than a role for Zeppo nearly equal to those of his brothers is the remarkable inclusion of lines of dialogue for Harpo. When the straight man confronts Harpo with the line, “Harpo Marx! But I thought you never talked.” Harpo replies, “Well, I never could talk, but now a German fellow is teaching me English, so I’m a brother too.” When Zeppo is told he’s the only brother that talks English, he responds, “That’s not my fault. I picked it up from the boys in the gutter.”
George Bye offered the show—which would air three times a week for thirteen weeks—to NBC for the sum of $15,000 per week, a total of $195,000 for the series. Presumably Zeppo’s arrangement with his brothers would have had him remain a salaried employee rather than a participant in this windfall. Bye arranged for the Four Marx Brothers to perform the script for NBC executives in his office, and they were impressed—even with Chico performing from a wheelchair. An NBC interoffice memo dated April 27 states, “Mr. Peterson went down to Mr. Bye’s office, and heard the Marx Brothers do this script. He fell off his chair, it was so funny. Of course, he was able to see them too, which means a lot, but even so as we read the copy, we thought it was grand.” But the price was ultimately too high, and NBC was unable to interest any sponsor in the services of the Four Marx Brothers at their asking price. The radio voice of Harpo Marx would never grace the airwaves, although he would later whistle, honk, and strum his way through several broadcasts.
Production on Horse Feathers resumed in June, and the film was released in August. No one really equated the success of the film with Zeppo’s improved standing within the team. He was still chasing his screenwriting dream as his ticket out of the Four Marx Brothers. After failing to interest any studio in three collaborative dramas, Zeppo made his last attempt as a movie scenario writer by himself—and it was a comedy.
Even a casual comparison of the treatment for Zeppo’s “Muscle-Bound” to his previous efforts reveals that Gouverneur Morris and S. J. Perelman were probably responsible for getting Zeppo’s first three film scenarios on paper. But what “Muscle-Bound” lacks in professionalism as a written work is balanced by its apparent marketability. Variety reported on October 11, 1932, that Universal was interested in it as a vehicle for Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts. But the silly story of a country doctor who accidentally concocts a liniment that provides enough strength and endurance to win a six-day bicycle race ultimately joined Zeppo’s other treatments on Hollywood’s prodigious pile of unsold film ideas. “Muscle-Bound” made the rounds and was seen by enough studio people to have possibly had its main story idea stolen. First National’s 1934 Joe E. Brown film 6 Day Bike Rider has enough elements of Zeppo’s story to make the case, but it could also be a coincidence given the popularity of six-day bike races at the time.
Four unsold film treatments in one year were enough for Zeppo. It became clear in 1932 that he was neither a radio crooner nor a screenwriter. For the moment he still had one more film to make after completing Horse Feathers at Paramount before he could escape the Four Marx Brothers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Great Race
ONE OF ZEPPO’S EARLIEST PASSIONS WAS THE AUTOMOBILE. HAD MINnie not dragged him away from his job as a mechanic at Ford in Chicago when he was a teenager, there’s a good chance he would have continued to pursue a career in the automotive field. But he also could have continued his career as a small-time hoodlum. Getting him away from Chicago was the critical thing that would save Zeppo.
Zeppo’s early days in show business coincided with the continued criminal activities of his boyhood friend Joey Bass, who would also end up in California. While Zeppo was making plans in Hollywood, Bass was on his way to the California State Prison at San Quentin, where he was incarcerated from March 1933 until he was paroled in January 1935. For Bass, stealing cars with Herbert Marx as a teenager led to a string of arrests for embezzlement, securities fraud, grand theft, and passing bad checks. Maybe vaudeville wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to a troubled kid with a penchant for juvenile delinquency. Life could have been very different for Joey Bass had his mother harbored an unfulfilled burning desire to be on the stage.
Zeppo never lost his love for tinkering with engines, and once he was making a solid living, he was a frequent purchaser of luxury cars. Zeppo saw in Errett Lobban Cord the future he might have had if not for show business interrupting his life. E. L. Cord, as he was more commonly known, had been a mechanic, race car driver, and car salesman. In 1924 he became the manager of the failing Auburn Automobile Company in Indiana. He turned the company around and would soon own it, along with several other transportation-related businesses. Cord put his name on a line of luxury cars manufactured by Auburn, and his topof-the-line model for 1930—the Cord L-29 Phaeton Sedan—found an enthusiastic customer in Zeppo Marx. The Four Marx Brothers were photographed in Zeppo’s new car for the April-May 1930 issue of the automotive magazine The Accelerator. With a price tag of $1,695, the L-29 was a relative bargain. The first car ever to have front wheel drive also featured a 125-horsepower, 298-cubic-inch, inline eight-cylinder engine, and three-speed manual transmission. This was a reasonably priced car for the motor enthusiast who might not have had the resources to afford something like the 1930 Cadillac V16 Roadster—with its newly introduced sixteen-cylinder engine and price tag of $5,350. The Cord L-29 was plenty of car for Zeppo—at least in 1930.
In Hollywood, Zeppo and Chico together acquired a 1928 Mercedes-Benz S 26/180 Boattail Speedster, which was regarded as the finest sporting car of the era. Chico, Betty, Zeppo, and Marion—arriving at the home of Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler to play bridge—spotted a 1931 Duesenberg Model J parked on Sunset Boulevard. No longer the teenaged Chicago car thief of bygone days, Zeppo could only admire the car, which he assumed belonged to Jolson. Zeppo soon learned that the Duesenberg belonged to Hollywood agent and fellow car enthusiast Phil Berg, who with his actress-wife Leila Hyams, was also a guest for bridge night at Al Jolson’s house.
Interviewed in Automobile Quarterly in 1980, Berg recalled the evening:
[S]oon enough the conversation turned to these powerful-looking machines and which one of them was faster. Chico, who never would miss a chance to make a bet for a few thousand dollars, challenged me, and I challenged him back. . . . So, we decided to climb into our respective cars then and there and to head for Santa Monica. The first one to get to the beach would win.
Leila Hyams and the other wives adamantly insisted there be no street racing and a safer method of settling the matter would be worked out.
Zeppo and Marion began socializing with Phil Berg and Leila Hyams and their evenings together usually turned into boring affairs for Marion and Leila as the two men endlessly talked about their cars. Zeppo boasted about his skill as a mechanic and said that he could make the Mercedes run faster and better than Berg’s Duesenberg. Berg was incredulous and these discussions would usually become heated. They arranged a race and a $1,000 wager to settle the matter. As word of the race between Berg’s American-made Duesenberg and the German-made Mercedes belonging to Zeppo and Chico got around, all of Hollywood became interested. As the race approached, it was reported in the gossip columns that $25,000 in bets had been placed. Chico was more interested in the gambling. Zeppo took over the automotive aspects of the contest.
Phil Berg was yet another self-made success in Zeppo’s sights as he envied the independence of friends like Gouverneur Morris and Harold Grieve, and admired E. L. Cord from afar. Berg, a year younger than Zeppo, had made himself a millionaire by the age of twenty-six. In Hollywood Berg would become famous as an agent for inventing what would come to be known as the “package deal.” He would acquire a script or story rights; get actors, a writer, and a director interested in the project; sign them up; and then sell the whole thing to a producer. Among the more well-known Berg package deals would be Mrs. Miniver and Rebecca—both Oscar winners for Best Picture—and the Andy Hardy and Dr. Kildare franchises.
Initially with partner Bert Allenberg, and then on his own, Berg also represented many top stars, including Gary Cooper, Deanna Durbin, Wallace Beery, Olivia de Havilland, and Clark Gable. Zeppo soon learned that Berg bought his car from E. L. Cord, who had acquired the Duesenberg Motors Company in 1926. Cord had been liquidating his Duesenberg inventory as the Depression began hurting the luxury car business. Cord, recently on the cover of Time magazine, was renting a home very near Phil Berg and Leila Hyams’s home while Cordhaven, his thirty-two-thousand-square-foot mansion with sixteen bedrooms and twenty-two bathrooms on eighteen acres on North Hillcrest Road in Beverly Hills, was being built. Berg not only bought a Duesenberg for himself, but he also managed to sell several to his clients, endearing himself to E. L. Cord.
The Duesenberg-Mercedes race was set for 5 a.m. on September 25, 1932, at Muroc Dry Lake in the Antelope Valley around a hundred miles north of Los Angeles. The unusually hard surface of the dry lake—an endorheic desert salt pan in the Mojave Desert—was the principal reason for the eventual construction of Edwards Air Force Base around it. The hard natural surface was able to support landings of the heaviest aircraft. It was also an ideal surface for auto racing and sported a five-mile circular track. The race would be three laps around the course. Los Angeles Examiner columnist Harriet Parsons wrote, on September 23: “Zep and Phil, besides putting up a grand apiece, have spent plenty stripping their cars for action. Film folks are taking sides violently and backing up their opinions with sizable wagers. . . . And you’d be amazed at how many celebrities are planning to stay up till dawn for the event.”
E. L. Cord took great interest in the race, as it would be bad for business if his car were to lose. If Zeppo thought he was on a level playing field, he was mistaken; although, like Cord, he was also on the cover of Time magazine shortly before the race. But unlike Cord, Zeppo was pictured in a large garbage can with his brothers. Cord put his Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg racing team to work on Berg’s car and hired Eddie Miller, who had raced for Cord’s team in the Indianapolis 500, to drive the Duesenberg. Miller knew the course well. He had driven a twelve-cylinder Auburn in a five-hundred-mile race at Muroc in August.
Zeppo hired German-born mechanic Joe Reindl to drive his Mercedes. Reindl operated the Hollywood Spring and Axle Company, a foreign motor repair shop on Sunset Boulevard, and serviced the cars of many movie stars. Reindl was the best Mercedes-Benz man in Los Angeles, but he was up against the service department of the company responsible for building the Duesenberg. Both cars were streamlined by having their bumpers, fenders, running boards, and windshields removed. Zeppo and many other car experts believed the smaller, lower, and much lighter Mercedes would leave the comparatively enormous Duesenberg in the dust.
Gummo’s son Bob recalled an automotive invention that would have served Zeppo’s Mercedes well had it not been a complete disaster. Gummo, himself an occasional inventor, and Zeppo developed a nonskid tire together.
Dad and Zeppo set up a demonstration for the executives of the tire companies who were in Akron, Ohio. Zeppo drove the car with the new skid-less tires down a steep hill. When the car reached the spot where Dad and the executives from the tire companies stood, Zeppo applied the brakes. The tires gripped the macadam roadway with a vengeance. The non-skid treads were a phenomenal success! The car, however, ran right out of the tires and went hurtling down the hill sans tires.
Zeppo left the preparation of his car for the race to Joe Reindl.
Zeppo’s friend Mae Sunday—the former daughter-in-law of celebrated baseball player turned evangelist Billy Sunday, and a frequent social companion to many Hollywood figures—chartered a Greyhound bus to bring many movie people to the race. She threw an all-night party on Saturday that led right into the early Sunday morning event. Among the screen star revelers were Bebe Daniels and her husband Ben Lyon. Ben served as the official starter of the race, driving his Lincoln twelve-cylinder Phaeton as the pace car. In the predawn darkness, the gathering crowd included Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Mae West, Wallace Beery, at least another Marx Brother or two, and around a thousand other interested onlookers.
Ben Lyon’s Lincoln kicked off the thirty-five-mile-per-hour rolling start, and Joe Reindl had Zeppo’s Mercedes briefly ahead in the first lap. But the more experienced Eddie Miller quickly guided the Duesenberg into the lead. The Los Angeles Times reported the result on October 2: “Getting away together at thirty-five miles an hour, the two cars careened neck and neck around the five-mile circle. Only inches separated them at the five-mile mark. Then the Duesenberg forged ahead and finished far in the lead.” The Duesenberg’s average speed in the race was reported at 102.5 miles per hour, with a top speed of 108. The Los Angeles Record reported Miller’s gracious explanation of his victory: “[I]t was the Gilmore Red Lion gasoline that gave him the necessary edge to win, so evenly matched were the cars in power and speed.” Presumably this was not a free endorsement. Oil tycoon Earl Gilmore, who helped set up the race, was on hand and a Gilmore Red Lion checkered flag signaled the end of the race.
Almost immediately plans were underway for a rematch. The Los Angeles Times reported on October 7 that the second Zeppo Marx–Phil Berg race would take place at the Legion Ascot Speedway at Valley Boulevard and Soto Street in Los Angeles. Opened in 1924, the track became known for its numerous deadly crashes. By 1933 six drivers had been killed there. By the time it was shuttered in 1936 the number of fatalities had reached twenty-four. The track earned the nickname “Killer Track,” with one of the curves becoming known as “King of the Grim Reapers.” The second race set for October 12 was barely even noticed by the press. It was an added attraction to a card of professional races. On the day of the race, the Illustrated Daily News made clear that this was purely an exhibition. “Both cars will circle the track as fast as possible, but it has been found impossible to race the two cars because of their size and weight.” Columnist Dan Thomas reported Leila Hyams thoughts about her husband’s amateur auto racing, saying, “[S]he’s going to have the car fixed so it won’t go that fast. She’s afraid Phil will get into another race with someone and be killed.”
After the Muroc race Zeppo was gracious in defeat. He and Marion continued to socialize with Phil Berg and Leila Hyams, and even vacationed with them in Palm Springs. There were no hard feelings, but it was clear that E. L. Cord corrupted an amateur race by elevating Berg’s car to professional racing caliber. Having Eddie Miller drive the Berg car was the automotive equivalent of adding Lou Gehrig to the lineup of the underdog baseball team in a little league game. Years later Zeppo may have laughed at the irony of Eddie Miller ending up in the movie business as a journeyman electrician at MGM. Zeppo’s car also got into the movies. The Mercedes was seen in the 1935 MGM film Sylvia Scarlett with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.
Phil Berg happily took Zeppo’s $1,000—or more if the gossip columns had any real information—but Zeppo was not especially worried about gambling losses. In Palm Springs, as stars headed to the desert to avoid the cold weather in Hollywood that fall, there were a lot of high stakes bridge and backgammon games being played and Zeppo held his own. Also vacationing in the desert in the fall of 1932 were Phil Berg and Leila Hyams, who introduced Zeppo and Marion to another agent, Milton Bren. Bren and his wife Marion were part of the Hollywood bridge crowd. Bren, with his partner Frank Orsatti, was also a successful agent and half of the Bren-Orsatti agency. Zeppo noticed the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by Milton Bren and Phil Berg. These men didn’t necessarily have much more knowledge of the movie business than he did. Berg had recently taken on a partner, Bert Allenberg, after having been on his own since starting his agency in 1927. The agency business looked good to Zeppo. It was another option to consider. Bert Allenberg became a partner in a successful agency. Why not Zeppo Marx?
With the Marx Brothers on hiatus as Paramount made plans for their final film due under the 1930 contract, Zeppo was enjoying his leisure time—and winning a lot of money—while exploring future opportunities. With no sponsors willing to meet the radio price for the Four Marx Brothers, Groucho and Chico took to the airwaves as a duo on NBC’s Five Star Theatre. They debuted on November 28. The following day New York Daily News columnist Sidney Skolsky reported, “Zeppo Marx hit the gambling tables last week for more than Groucho and Chico received for their broadcast last night.” Zeppo’s reputation as a gambler didn’t portray him as the genial, happy-go-lucky reckless loser that Chico seemed to be. Maxine Marx wrote in Growing Up with Chico of overhearing Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. remark, at around this time, that Chico was bad enough, “but the one I can’t stand is Zeppo. He plays for blood, and I think he’s crooked besides.”
Zeppo and Marion widened their social circle as they waited for word about the next picture, which Zeppo was sure would be his last. Frequent visitors to their Colonial House apartment in the fall of 1932 included neighbor Alice Glazer (the former wife of writer-producer Barney Glazer), Mae Sunday and her constant companion Dave Harris, and Gary Cooper—recently back in Hollywood after ten months abroad with his married girlfriend Countess Dorothy Di Frasso, formerly American heiress Dorothy Caldwell-Taylor. MGM producer Irving Thalberg and his wife, actress Norma Shearer joined the group occasionally for bridge or backgammon, as did Milton and Marion Bren. Zeppo played high stakes bridge with Irving Thalberg, Milton Bren, and Phil Berg, but when the women played, there was considerably less money involved. Louella Parsons ran an amusing item in her column:
