Zeppo, p.20
Zeppo, page 20
Zeppo and Barbara paid $200,000 for the property and announced their plans for the business they named the Marwyck Ranch. The Van Nuys News reported on November 19, 1936:
San Fernando Valley will soon be the home of some of America’s finest Kentucky thoroughbreds as a result of negotiations being completed this week which involve the purchase of 127 acres of the Porter estate by a syndicate composed of Zeppo Marx, Barbara Stanwyck and Harry S. Hart. The property, which is located at the corner of Devonshire and Reseda boulevards is particularly well adapted to the purpose of its new owners.
Hart, not actually an owner as erroneously reported, and his wife Bertie were hired to manage the business, and like the Zeppo Marx Agency, Marwyck got off to a fast start. Phil Lonergan, the Hollywood columnist for the British magazine Picturegoer reported in the January 9, 1937, issue, “All the buildings will be exact replicas of famous horse breeding farms in Kentucky.” Permits to build two homes on the property were issued in February 1937 and Harry Hart began stocking the stables. A permit for a third home soon followed.
The new owners sent out invitations to the February 28 opening of Marwyck. The Van Nuys News reported
The day Miss Stanwyck and Zeppo Marx opened the ranch to their friends, she rode out to the foothills with Friend Bob Taylor. . . . First, they stopped for a glimpse of the colt born bright and early that morning. It was all legs and quite timid about being viewed. Then they went on over the hill, past the three homes on the three knolls, and then out of sight, leaving a little cloud of dust in their wake.
Stanwyck discussed Marwyck in the March 1937 issue of Radio Stars:
I’ve bought a ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Marion Marx and I have bought 120 acres together. We’re raising horses. Thoroughbreds. We’re going to breed horses, besides caring for our own, we’re going to breed and train and board horses for other people. I’m building a ranch house out there and will live there most of the time. It’s peaceful and quiet. I can have gardens, and it will be wonderful for Dion. It will be home.
Barbara’s new home was a 6,500-square foot English manor with French Normandy and Tudor revival elements. In December 1937, Turf and Sport Digest described Zeppo’s house as “a living memory of the Old South, rising in pillared, white majesty, a bright jewel laid against the mauve velvet of the sheltering Mother Mountains, the Sierra Madres.” Maxine Marx described Zeppo’s Marwyck house for Groucho’s biographer, Hector Arce: “It was the prettiest house I’ve ever seen. . . . Marion designed it from a movie she saw. It wasn’t ostentatious, but the house was totally charming.”
Two architects with long lists of celebrity clients worked on the homes. Robert Finkelhor had designed Harpo’s home on North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills and one for Bob Hope. Paul Revere Williams would design homes for Cary Grant and Groucho, but Zeppo was far more interested in Williams because he had designed E. L. Cord’s Beverly Hills mansion, Cordhaven. It was a way of him displaying how much money he’d accumulated since Cord helped Phil Berg beat him in the 1932 auto race.
Construction at Marwyck intensified in April when Robert Taylor bought an adjacent additional twenty-seven acres of the Porter estate property. On the stable side, Harry Hart never slowed down. Turf and Sport Digest wrote,
For a stud farm that has been in operation less than a year, Marwyck can boast an unusual equine population: one stallion, twenty brood-mares, ten two-year-olds (most of them in active training), fifteen yearlings, and six weanlings. And in addition, several animals which are kept for pleasure and utility purposes. A large percentage of the racing stock is the property of the owners of Marwyck, but a goodly number are “boarders,” to whom group additions are being made almost daily.
One morning the owners of Marwyck found a mangy-looking mule munching on a bale of hay on their property. The mule wore a sign stating, “The Pride of the Marwyck Ranch.” It was a gag gift from Carole Lombard.
As Marwyck took shape at lightning speed in the San Fernando Valley, things were moving even faster back at the Zeppo Marx Agency. Star clients like Barbara Stanwyck, Ray Milland, and Fred MacMurray got most of the attention, but the Hollywood trade papers barely went a week without news of a less-celebrated Zeppo Marx client signing a deal somewhere—actors Keye Luke at 20th Century Fox, Helen Vinson at MGM, Alice Reinhart with B. P. Schulberg Productions, John King at Universal, Joan Fontaine at RKO, and newcomer Stanley Morner—soon to be better known as Dennis Morgan—at MGM. Zeppo prided himself on discovering and developing new talent. His representation of Joan Fontaine started when she first arrived in Hollywood using the name Joan Burfield. Early in their careers Judy Garland and Lana Turner were represented by Zeppo. He also signed little-known New York stage actor Richard Bond, who would work steadily in Hollywood for several years.
Representing writers remained a specialty for Zeppo and 1937 was a great year in that department. He sold two Broadway plays to Warner Bros.—Chalked Out by Lewis E. Laws and Jezebel by Owen Davis, Sr. Laws was the warden at Sing Sing Correctional Facility and several of his books about prison life were adapted into plays and films. Chalked Out became the Humphrey Bogart film You Can’t Get Away with Murder and Jezebel earned Bette Davis her second Academy Award as Best Actress. Zeppo also made studio deals for well-known writers like Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, Bela and Sam Spewack, and Leo Rosten, while also representing writers not as celebrated—Aben Kandel, Barry Trivers, Stephen Morehouse Avery, and Helen Meinardi. He even found film work for a pair of Variety writers he was friendly with, Cecelia Agar and Joe Bigelow. Closer to home Zeppo sold Mervyn LeRoy a screenplay called The Grand Passion, written by Norman Krasna and Groucho Marx. The film would be released by Warner Bros. as The King and the Chorus Girl.
Zeppo also signed Romanian-Gypsy writer Konrad Bercovici and promptly found him work at Universal. Bercovici and Upton Sinclair had been among the expatriate American writers flocking to Paris in the 1920s and Sinclair introduced his friend to Zeppo. Both avowed socialists, the two writers knew Zeppo didn’t care about their politics and was only interested in making money with them. They added to the agency’s diverse array of clients—which ranged from lowly contract players to big stars. Zeppo negotiated a long-term contract for director George Nicholls at Republic and made a deal for Phyllis Loughton, who ran the MGM talent school. No client was too big or too small for the Zeppo Marx Agency.
Zeppo’s brothers had to have noticed his name appearing in Variety and Hollywood Reporter as frequently as many movie stars. It wasn’t long before Groucho, Harpo, and Chico took the obvious next step after having recommended Zeppo to their friends in need of representation. Irving Thalberg’s death during the production of A Day at the Races allowed the Marx Brothers to exercise a termination clause in their contract, which stipulated that if Thalberg became unavailable for a certain period, they could end the agreement. Convinced that Louis B. Mayer wasn’t interested in them—and it was really a contract with Thalberg that had them at the studio—they opted out of the MGM deal.
On September 23, 1937, Variety reported,
Zeppo Marx is holding confabs with Leo Spitz, prez of RKO-Radio, for the appearance of the Marx Freres in three features to be made by Radio within the next two years. If deal is consummated, first picture will be Room Service, George Abbott’s legit production in first year of its Broadway run. Radio paid $255,000 for rights to the play.
The deal would ultimately only result in Room Service. The underwhelming performance of the film at the box office made everyone involved forget about the other two pictures that could have been made at RKO. But Zeppo tried to sell another film starring his brothers. As the Marx Brothers were engaged in their contract dispute with Paramount in 1933, they attempted to become independent producers of their own film, an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize– winning musical Of Thee I Sing. They were never able to finance it, but a fair amount of work was done with the property before they ultimately signed with Thalberg and made A Night at the Opera. The Hollywood Reporter on August 29, 1938, announced Zeppo’s resurrection of the dormant project:
The Marx Brothers next picture for MGM will be Of Thee I Sing, the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart stage success with music by George Gershwin. The deal, which is being handled by the Zeppo Marx Agency for the sale of the musical play, is expected to be sealed this week. MGM is reported to be paying $100,000 for the screen rights to this piece.
It would be the second time Of Thee I Sing would not become a Marx Brothers film.
Regarding his brothers, Zeppo told Richard J. Anobile, in his interview for The Marx Bros. Scrapbook, “When I went into the agency business, I didn’t have them. They probably didn’t think I was good enough. But a lot of good writers and directors and actors and actresses thought I was good enough. I had 250 clients.” He found his brothers difficult to please, adding,
Whatever kind of deal I would get them, they would want to change and make it different. And Chico was always a little put out because he was the one who always wanted to make deals for the boys. . . . So, the only deal I made was Room Service, and I found it so difficult that I didn’t want any part of it. . . . I wanted to get away from the Marx Brothers anyway. I didn’t want the feeling of them telling me what to do anymore. . . . I was my boss and I told people what to do.
Zeppo vented his frustration to Anobile adding, “[U]p until that time, the most money they ever got was for the deal I made for them. . . . I got them a quarter of a million dollars for four or five-weeks work.”
Lucille Ball, a client of Arthur Lyons, costarred with the Marx Brothers in Room Service. During the making of the film, she was briefly represented by Zeppo. In the spring of 1977, Ball taught a six-week class at Sherwood Oaks Experimental College in Hollywood. During one of her lectures, she told students that Zeppo asked her to let him know when she heard about any parts she wanted. She never got any of the roles she mentioned and concluded that Zeppo used the information to get those jobs for other clients. Zeppo’s failure to place Lucille Ball probably spared him any further trouble with Arthur Lyons. But Ball may have unfairly maligned Zeppo. She was having trouble advancing her movie career for years until radio and television made her a star.
Zeppo had taken his own personal income to another level and proved beyond doubt that he could make a lot more money away from his brothers. He knew the lucrative deal he arranged for them would have only been worth a weekly salary around $700 to him had he still been working in the act—and that would have only been paid while they were shooting a film or working on stage. With the average American worker earning $1,780 a year in 1937, it was a good salary by any measure, but Zeppo was driven by ambition and a desire to make more money than his brothers. According to the April 15, 1939, issue of Boxoffice, Zeppo’s reported personal income in 1937 was $78,383—or roughly $1.5 million adjusted for the current economy. (He was on an upward track having earned $56,766 in 1936.)
For comparison, Frank Orsatti reported $69,000 and Abe Lastfogel, the head of the William Morris Agency, reported $64,500. They all trailed the top-earning agent that year. Myron Selznick reported $110,825. Zeppo’s top clients were among the industry’s biggest earners—Barbara Stanwyck at $195,749 and Fred MacMurray at $92,000. Being a successful agent paid well, and so did being a movie star, but in Hollywood there was no doubt who the highest paid man in town was. Louis B. Mayer’s reported personal income for 1937 was $1,296,503.
Zeppo took advantage of what seemed to him like an opportunity to make easy money in Hollywood. Ten percent of many salaries simply added up to much more than he would ever earn as an actor. An amusing Hollywood Reporter item from August 7, 1937, said,
Zeppo Marx was walking around a studio lot in gloom. Another agent approached him with “What’s the matter, Zeppo?” And Zeppo cracked: “It’s not right. Just think of it, all these actors, writers and directors getting 90 percent of their salaries.”
After only a couple of years of operation, Zeppo had recently closed his New York office and arranged for agent Leland Hayward to handle any New York business. Gummo told Richard J. Anobile,
Zeppo came to New York and convinced me that if I was doing so well in New York I could probably do better in California. So, with that, my wife and I packed up and moved west. But when we got here things seemed to change. Instead of me being in charge of the business as I was in New York, I found Zeppo taking over all my people. I discovered I was working for him. I lost all the commission I was getting, and he put me on salary.
Within the agency there was some discontent. In December 1937—only six weeks after Gummo arrived in Los Angeles and set up his desk at the agency—Walter Kane, who had been with Zeppo almost since the very start of the business, quit to start his own agency. Kane had taught Gummo the business thinking he would remain in New York, but his arrival in the Los Angeles office immediately reduced Kane’s position in the agency. Working out of Zeppo’s new offices at 8732 Sunset Boulevard, Gummo also learned that his newest clients were his brothers. In the Anobile interview Zeppo said, “I told Gummo they were all his. I didn’t want any part of it. That was that.” Citing their demands and lack of cooperation, Zeppo concluded, “I had too big a business to fool around with them.” After Gummo’s arrival in Los Angeles, Zeppo quit the Marx Brothers for the second time.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
This Thing of Ours
THE TYPE OF DISPUTE ZEPPO HAD WITH ARTHUR LYONS WAS VERY COMmon among agents. In the spring of 1937, thirteen top agencies formed a protective association—to protect themselves from each other, it seemed. They called it the Artists’ Managers Guild, and only larger agencies were initially invited to join. Smaller agencies left out of the organization considered a separate guild but ultimately decided that defining themselves as being too small for the Artists’ Managers Guild would hurt their businesses.
Pressure from numerous other agents quickly resulted in membership becoming open to all. On July 10, 1937, Daily Variety detailed the mission of the new organization: “Code of ethics will prohibit client chiseling, limit fees charged player, provide for cancellation of contract where player is not actually placed, etc.” Along with Zeppo, charter members included his friends Phil Berg, Leland Hayward, and Frank Orsatti, and at least one agent he didn’t like very much, Arthur Lyons. Other important agents—William Morris, Jr., Myron Selznick, H. E. Edington, Frank Vincent, Sam Jaffee, Charlie Feldman, Ralph Blum, William Hawks, M. C. Levee, Morris Small, and Arthur Landau—also signed on before membership became open to all agents.1
Further down in the Daily Variety article, the real purpose of the Artists’ Managers Guild was revealed. It should have been the headline: “Contact will be made with Screen Directors Guild, Screen Actors Guild and other organizations with view of cooperating and working in unity with all studio organizations, including Motion Picture Producers Association.” The agents were connecting themselves with labor unions at the precise moment that the studios were having a major problem with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE, the union that represented the industry’s craft workers—sound engineers, editors, electricians, prop builders, projectionists, and other technicians.
IATSE was the only union powerful enough to fight back against the unilateral salary cuts imposed by the studios in March 1933 as the Great Depression threatened the studios’ very existence. That summer IATSE workers walked out at eleven studios. Some IATSE workers broke ranks and went back to work, and the studios made secret deals with the rival International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union.
Like many labor actions of the era, order was restored through violence and intimidation. Striking workers at studio gates encountered bands of bat-wielding thugs. Within a week the strike was over. This efficient solution was provided to the studios by Johnny Rosselli, an Italian-born Chicago mobster employed at times by notorious organized crime figures Al Capone and Frank Nitti. Working with Rosselli were small-time Chicago mobsters Willie Bioff and George Browne. Bioff and Browne got their business in Hollywood started by accepting a $20,000 bribe from the Balaban & Katz theater chain in Chicago in 1927. The payment saved the theater owners the expense of wage increases for the members of the stagehand’s union, which Bioff and Browne represented.
After learning how the 1933 strike was settled, Frank Nitti called Johnny Rosselli to Chicago and they formulated a plan to take over all the Hollywood labor unions. Browne was installed as the president of IATSE in 1934, and Bioff began working under Rosselli in Hollywood. Rosselli’s help with the 1933 union trouble was the start of a lucrative mob business in selling protection to the studios.2 Further trouble with IATSE in 1937—at the same time the Artists’ Managers Guild was formed—came as Rosselli had solidified his position and wielded great power over union operations.
Rosselli’s FBI file indicates that the leaders of IATSE could not act without instructions from him. He could secretly cause a problem for the studios and then be paid to make it go away. Through the Artists’ Managers Guild, top agents who otherwise did not have access, availed themselves of Johnny Rosselli’s influence, if not his services. Agents and unions were generally problems for the studios. With even a tenuous connection to the labor unions—and Johnny Rosselli—an agent gained an additional piece of leverage in negotiations.
It didn’t take long for the Artists’ Managers Guild to have its first internal breach. On August 13, 1937—around a month after Variety reported that the top agents would not behave unethically toward one another—Zeppo filed a grievance against his friend Phil Berg, who had signed actor Wayne Morris away from the Zeppo Marx Agency. Zeppo asserted that Berg also indemnified Morris against any legal action that might result from him signing with the Berg-Allenberg Agency. Within a couple of weeks, the matter was resolved amicably and without any need for the services of Johnny Rosselli. The Zeppo Marx Agency and the Berg-Allenberg Agency would jointly represent Wayne Morris. It was an odd solution in that it appeared to reward Berg for poaching Zeppo’s client. Zeppo’s friendship with Phil Berg seems to have overcome any desire on his part to bring in Johnny Rosselli, with whom he had an even longer association.
