Zeppo, p.40
Zeppo, page 40
2. The planned duet—“Keep Doin’ What You’re Doin’”—was instead used in the Wheeler and Woolsey film Hips, Hips, Hooray!
CHAPTER 13
1. Orsatti also had other debts he couldn’t pay. He would be greatly embarrassed when Variety published the details of his bankruptcy filing on November 3, 1931, under the headline “Orsatti’s Debts.”
2. Louis Bimberg continued to be plagued by the scandal that caused several members of his family to use his wife’s maiden name (or in Marion’s case, the stage name Benda). He had been separated from his wife for several years when he died at the age of fifty-six on February 2, 1937. He had been living at the Hotel Ruxton on West 72nd Street in New York and had worked as a real estate broker during the final years of his life. Marion had little or no contact with him during that time.
3. After dodging the case for several years by fleeing to Chicago and Miami, Voiler finally went to trial in 1938. The case was dropped when Friedman, by this time serving his sentence for the crime, would not testify against Voiler after recanting the confession in which he implicated him. Smart way to stay alive since Friedman knew Voiler well.
CHAPTER 14
1. Zeppo Marx, Inc. issued one thousand shares of capital stock in August 1934. In addition to Zeppo and his attorney, Loyd Wright, the directors of the company were S. Earl Wright and Herschel B. Green, two other attorneys at the firm Wright, Wright, Green & Wright. The company names “Zeppo Marx, Inc.” and “the Zeppo Marx Agency” became interchangeable.
2. Bing Crosby’s combined earnings from movies, radio, and records would eclipse MacMurray’s income, but MacMurray had the top income among male stars from motion picture work.
CHAPTER 15
1. The success of A Night at the Opera in 1935 resulted in Paramount rereleasing Horse Feathers in 1936—almost immediately following the untimely deaths of two of the film’s stars. David Landau died on September 20, 1935, at the age of fifty-six, and Thelma Todd died on December 16, 1935, at the age of twenty-nine.
2. Joey Bass would spend his later years in Canada. He may have been in hiding, since he was living under the name Joseph Cowan. He died under that name in Toronto on December 8, 1976.
3. Warner took the punishment a bit too far by claiming that the time de Havilland spent on suspension should not count toward the fulfillment of her contract. RKO didn’t go quite this far with Barbara Stanwyck.
CHAPTER 16
1. An advertisement in the 1938 Film Daily Yearbook listed the members of the Artists’ Managers Guild as H. E. Edington–F. W. Vincent Inc.; Hawks-Volck Corporation; Leland Hayward, Inc.; Lyons, McCormick & Lyons; M. C. Levee; Myron Selznick & Company, Inc.; Phil Berg-Bert Allenberg, Inc.; Sam Jaffee, Inc.; The Small Company; The Feldman-Blum Corporation; The Orsatti Agency; William Morris Agency, Inc.; Zeppo Marx, Inc.; and a fourteenth member, Artists and Authors Corporation of America.
2. Testimony at the 1943 extortion trial of the participants in the protection scheme revealed that Paramount, MGM, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. had each paid $50,000 a year between 1936 and 1940 to assure they’d have no union trouble. Smaller studios paid lesser amounts.
3. On January 15, 1935, the Hollywood Reporter noted that Jack LaRue had signed a management contract with the Zeppo Marx Agency.
4. The check for $2,000 was found in Bruneman’s pocket. The additional $200 was a collection fee. The notion of the check being found in a safe deposit box by Bruneman’s widow is contradictory to the original police report. The matter was ultimately settled for $257.
5. The man convicted for the Bruneman murders, Peter Pianezzi, was another low-level mobster. He spent thirteen years of a double life sentence in Folsom Prison before being paroled in 1953. The key witness against Pianezzi later said that he knew Pianezzi was not the gunman, but that he testified against him anyway because “he has done enough things in life to deserve the gas chamber.” Pianezzi maintained his innocence for the rest of his life and was pardoned based on his rehabilitation in 1966 by governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr. Pianezzi was pardoned again in 1981 by Brown’s son, governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. based on the evidence of Pianezzi’s innocence. Pianezzi died in 1992 at the age of ninety.
6. At the same time, they both sold their houses to Jack Oakie who moved into the Stanwyck house with his wife Venita Vardon. They operated Oakvardon Kennels at the property and bred Afghan Hounds descended from Omar and Asra. Shortly after acquiring the property, Oakie sold Zeppo’s house to retired oil man Thomas Quine. A year later Janet Gaynor and her husband, MGM costume designer Gilbert Adrian, bought the house from Quine.
7. J. H. Ryan would buy Zeppo’s former house from Janet Gaynor and Gilbert Adrian in 1952. Harry Hart stayed on at Northridge for a short time before going to work at Louis B. Mayer’s Riverside County ranch in Perris, California.
CHAPTER 17
1. There are patents for similar clamps dating as far back as 1881.
CHAPTER 18
1. Barbara Stanwyck and her son became estranged as a result of her authoritarian treatment of him. A succession of military schools fostered a feeling of abandonment in him, and by the time he turned nineteen, Dion Fay had virtually no relationship with his mother.
2. Henry Willson would go on to great success as the agent who discovered several of the major stars of Hollywood’s so-called beefcake industry of the 1950s. The homosexual Willson’s most prominent discovery was Rock Hudson, and his clients also included Tab Hunter, Rory Calhoun, Troy Donohue, John Derek, Guy Madison, and Robert Wagner.
3. Gummo’s interview with Chaplin’s lawyers also revealed that Bercovici was believed to have stolen a story he sold to Samuel Goldwyn. Bercovici’s $6,450,000 plagiarism suit against Chaplin was settled in 1947 for $95,000.
4. The sale price of Marx, Miller & Marx that Gummo related, adjusted for the current economy, equates to $2.8 million.
CHAPTER 19
1. There are many theories of who killed Bugsy Siegel and why, but none are any more plausible then the Sedway story. Most mob experts agree that an authorized hit would not have been made from outside the house through a window. And a sanctioned mob hit would have needed the approval of Charlie “Lucky” Luciano—who would not have given permission due to Siegel’s close relationship with the powerful Meyer Lansky. Siegel was essentially untouchable as far as the mob was concerned. An outsider—like Moose Pandza—certainly could be the killer.
CHAPTER 20
1. A current valuation of the Marman sale would place the value at between $25 and $30 million dollars.
2. The Eaton Corporation, the current owner of Aeroquip, still maintains a Marman product line of couplings.
3. The Singer family netted $12,581.79 after legal fees of $6,998.33, court costs of $1,505.47, and medical bills totaling $1,414.41 were paid.
4. Marion’s mother had changed her name from Rebecca Bimberg to Eleanor Miller, using her middle name and maiden name, to further disassociate herself from Louis Bimberg—even though they never divorced.
CHAPTER 21
1. Chico had been living with Mary (generally known by her stage name Mary Dee) since moving out of his house and leaving Betty in 1941, but he didn’t marry Mary until 1958 because Betty would not agree to divorce him until she wanted to remarry.
2. Greenbaum had been offered a chance to divest himself of his interest in the Riviera by his mob superiors. His life would have been spared, but he refused to sell. Johnny Rosselli brought the offer to Greenbaum. Rosselli would later say that the hit on Gus Greenbaum was ordered by Meyer Lansky.
CHAPTER 22
1. Susan was finally able to divest of Harpo’s portion of the Martuc ranch when the entire property was sold in 1970.
CHAPTER 23
1. Ted Briskin’s claim to fame was marrying three Hollywood actresses—Betty Hutton, Joan Dixon, and Colleen Miller—between 1945 and 1955.
CHAPTER 24
1. Groucho had become one of the first homeowners in Tamarisk Ranchos in 1958. The community of sixteen homes near the Tamarisk Country Club, but not actually part of it, was built by Groucho’s friend, developer Lou Halper. The house had three bedrooms and three bathrooms and was roughly 2,000 square feet.
CHAPTER 25
1. Using Groucho’s influence, Erin was able to get a small part in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask.) She also appeared with Groucho on episodes of The Dick Cavett Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and The New Bill Cosby Show. These would be her most high-profile appearances. She also had small television roles on Marcus Welby, M.D. and Adam-12, and she appeared as an extra in a few films, including Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
2. Zeppo’s interest in Lyn Ehrhard represents a rare instance of him pursuing a woman somewhat closer to his age than his usual girlfriends—although she was twenty-six years younger than him. Ehrhart, who shrouded herself in mystery and provided no details of herself anywhere, was born on September 21, 1927—only a few weeks before Barbara.
3. Fratianno was relocated to Sudden Valley, Washington, and eventually removed from the Federal Witness Protection Program in June 1989 when he—under the name James Thomas—was arrested for pointing a loaded gun at Jean Bodul and threatening to blow her head off.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. PERIODICALS
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Anonymous. “Making Ready The Cocoanuts: Chat with the Four Marx Brothers amid Hectic Excitement in Their Dressing Room.” Boston Globe, November 1, 1925.
Anonymous. “Aeroquip Acquires Marman Products, Prominent West Coast Manufacturer of Aircraft Clamps and Allied Components.” The Flying A, April 1955.
Anonymous. “Introducing . . . Marman Products Company: Meet the Most Recent Addition to Aeroquip; a New Subsidiary in Los Angeles, California.” The Flying A, May 1955.
Anonymous. “Zeppo Marx: Comic at Home in Palm Springs.” Palm Springs Villager: The Magazine of Fine Desert Living, March 1959.
Benny, Mary Livingstone. “Where My Heart Is.” Radio Mirror: The Magazine of Radio Romances, March 1945.
Beranger, Clara. “The Woman Who Taught Her Children to Be Fools.” Liberty, June 3, 1933.
Borgeson, Griffith. “Madness at Muroc: The Great Duesenberg—Mercedes Match Race.” Automobile Quarterly 18, no. 3 (1980).
Cervin, Paul. “Marwyck.” Turf and Sports Digest, December 1937.
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