Zeppo, p.23
Zeppo, page 23
Zeppo’s description of King cannot be verified but based on what can be determined about him, King was quite accomplished. Born in England in 1890, he emigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1911 and worked as a carpenter before beginning a career in airplane manufacturing. He married in 1912 and had a son and daughter by 1918. He became an aeronautical engineer when Canada entered World War I in 1914 and was also involved in ground crew training.
When the United States entered the war in 1917, King taught aviation mechanics at Dunwoody Naval Institute in Minneapolis. In 1918 he was the coauthor of the book Airplane Construction and Assembly. After the war King supervised airplane manufacturing for Fokker and worked in the air mail business as an aviation inspector for Western Air Express. He eventually moved his family to Long Beach, California. When he applied for his clamp patents, he was living in Burbank, less than a mile from Lockheed Air Terminal—now known as Hollywood Burbank Airport. As an airport maintenance supervisor for Western Air Express, King earned an annual salary of around $2,400—which placed him squarely in the middle class.
On July 1, 1943, King signed an agreement granting Marman the exclusive right to manufacture, use, and sell the patented clamps throughout the world for the life of the patent. King was to be paid a percentage of the retail price of any clamps sold, but if his total revenue during any year failed to exceed $4,000, he had the power to terminate the agreement unless Marman paid the difference between his revenue and $4,000. Under the agreement Marman could not license King’s patent to others or assign the agreement without King’s permission. Marman did retain the right to institute patent infringement suits on King’s behalf. Marman also had the right to purchase the patent for a lump sum.
King was involved with Marman prior to the signing of the agreement. On his April 1942 World War II draft registration, he listed himself as self-employed—but with the Marman plant in Inglewood as his place of business. King’s deal with Zeppo looked much more promising than his future as a middle-class aircraft industry worker. After fifteen years with Western Air Express, James T. King was not getting rich.
On March 19, 1947, King filed an action against Marman in the Los Angeles Superior Court asking for an accounting for money due him as well as for damages for breach of contract. An out-of-court settlement was reached on April 28, 1948, and the parties executed a new contract that was substantially the same as the 1943 agreement with the exception that Marman’s right to purchase the patent for a lump sum was removed. James T. King would apply for and be granted a total of six patents associated with his clamp. None of his subsequent patents were assigned or licensed to Marman. There were, however, nineteen additional patents related to the clamp assigned to Marman by eight other inventors—including one by A. Dale Herman. But Marman certainly acknowledged the value of King’s patents. Marman sued National Utilities Corporation for patent infringement in 1954 and cited four patents in the lawsuit—three of which were held by James T. King. The court would decide in favor of Marman in June 1957.
In 1947 James T. King became a founding director of Los Angeles Airways, Inc., a company that transported mail and cargo from airports to post offices by helicopter. He and his wife continued living modestly in their 1,700-square-foot house in Burbank. His son lived next door. Hardly the stuff of a chauffeur driven Cadillac and a yacht. If James T. King became a millionaire as a result of Marman’s use of his patents, he certainly did not live like one. King clearly made some money, but the big winner on the Marman Clamp project was Marman.
With Zeppo usually at the Marman plant, Marion spent much of her time at Marwyck and the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. But she had also spent a lot of time with Barbara Stanwyck and her son, Dion. Stanwyck ultimately chose time with her son over the more frivolous aspects of her life—like shopping with Marion. And Susan and Harpo, after having adopted their son Bill in 1938, were planning to expand their family. Stanwyck doted on Dion, and Harpo and Susan were thrilled to be parents. Perhaps inevitably, Marion began thinking about having children—although her maternal instincts had probably not been stirred by playing tennis with Groucho’s son Arthur.
Zeppo and Marion lived in a community filled with children—many of them adopted. There had been a lot of discussion of unwanted babies and adoption in Zeppo and Marion’s circle of friends. In 1942 Zeppo turned forty-one and Marion thirty-nine. The clock was ticking away on parenthood, but the bigger obstacle for Marion and Zeppo was the fact that children—whether conceived by them or adopted—were of no interest to Zeppo, who barely had the energy to drag himself to the Clover Club to gamble while juggling three businesses.
At the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, manager Milton Holmes—surrounded by stars and producers—couldn’t help but try to get back into the movie business. He started offering story ideas and initially found no takers. Zeppo could have easily taken him on as an agency client but did not. Holmes was in over his head gambling with the stars at the Clover Club as he peddled his story ideas there with the same results. He became closer with Clover Club manager Eddy Nealis and began inviting him to play tennis at the club. Several members were not amused—some because Nealis was part Mexican, and others because he was a notorious gangster and bookmaker. They didn’t mind seeing Nealis at night in the Clover Club, but in daylight on the court at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club he seemed threatening. To make matters worse, Nealis was accused of skimming money from charity events he ran for some of the members at the Clover Club.
Eventually Milton Holmes’s persistence paid off. He got Cary Grant interested in his short story “Bundles for Freedom,” which had been published in Cosmopolitan in June 1941. Grant got RKO to pay Holmes $30,000 for the rights and it became the basis for the 1943 film, Mr. Lucky. Grant and his partner, played by Paul Stewart, operate a gambling ship and receive their draft notices. A dying associate is classified 4F—medically unfit to serve. The partners play a game of poker dice with the winner taking the dying man’s identity—and 4F status. His partner cheats, but Grant’s character wins anyway. Milton Holmes, engaged by RKO as a screenwriter, gave the cheating partner character the name “Zepp.” Zeppo had a reputation in gambling circles for being uncompromising and many thought he didn’t always play honestly. Some of the Clover Club crowd no doubt enjoyed a laugh when they saw Mr. Lucky.
Following the sale of their home at Marwyck, Zeppo and Marion rented a house on Devonshire Street in Northridge, not far from the ranch. But they were looking for something bigger and wanted to get back to Beverly Hills. After less than two years in Northridge they briefly rented a large house on Sunset Boulevard before buying 1001 North Rexford Drive, a large colonial style house built in 1921.
It was at that address that their lives would change dramatically. They were growing apart and there were the first signs of trouble in the marriage. Marion was generally understanding about Zeppo’s gambling—his habit of mostly winning probably made that easier for her. But she was finding it harder to turn a blind eye to the womanizing, even though Zeppo was very discreet about it. The success of Marman Products and the Zeppo Marx Agency wasn’t enough to keep Marion happy while her husband began to spend many evenings out of the house without her. She wanted something more and Zeppo reluctantly went along with her plan.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Trouble in Paradise
THE CRADLE SOCIETY WAS FOUNDED IN 1923 BY FLORENCE DAHL WALrath in Evanston, Illinois. The mission of the organization was to furnish needful care for homeless babies and aid in securing for them permanent homes and legal adoption. To help promote adoption as a positive way of building families, Mrs. Walrath reached out to Hollywood.
In the early 1930s Miriam Hopkins and Joe E. Brown were among the first movie stars to adopt children from the Cradle Society. George Burns and Gracie Allen followed. Later Bob and Dolores Hope would adopt four children from the Cradle Society. Over the next two decades adoptions from numerous agencies caused a minor population explosion in Hollywood. Walt Disney, Helen Hayes and Charles MacArthur, Hedy Lamarr, Bud Abbott, Irene Dunne, Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone, James Cagney, Joan Fontaine, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Milton Berle, Donna Reed, Fred MacMurray, and Henry Fonda all became adoptive parents.
In some cases, Hollywood adoptions did not go as planned—ranging from unhappy to disastrous. Al Jolson and Rudy Keeler’s son was estranged from Jolson from boyhood until his father’s death. Lana Turner’s daughter stabbed her mother’s mobster lover to death in what was deemed a case of justifiable homicide. Both children of Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers were estranged from their parents, and their son made a widely reported suicide attempt in 1958.
On the far end of the disastrous adoption spectrum are the children who wrote books vilifying their parents—the daughters of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford being the leaders in that field. Closer to home, Zeppo and Marion saw the blissfully happy situation at Harpo and Susan’s house as well as the traumatized boyhood of Dion Fay—most of the trauma coming courtesy of Frank Fay. Barbara Stanwyck was a devoted mother—at least in the beginning.1
While Susan and Harpo were making plans for their second adoption, Marion and Zeppo brought ten-day-old Thomas Marx home from an orphanage in Los Angeles on July 4, 1943. A month later Susan and Harpo brought home an infant they named Alexander from an orphanage in Salt Lake City. Tom’s adoption became legal on April 20, 1944—thirteen days after the birth of a baby that Zeppo and Marion would adopt from the same Salt Lake City orphanage where Susan and Harpo found Alex.
In the summer of 1944 Harpo and Susan adopted two more children, Jimmy and Minnie. Zeppo and Marion named their second boy Tim, and his adoption became legal on February 15, 1945. Zeppo’s sudden acceptance of fatherhood came largely as a result of Harpo’s influence. Marion and Susan became even closer with five new babies between them. Zeppo was happy to be a father if Marion did most of the work. The only concession Zeppo made to fatherhood was giving up motorcycle riding. He’d been riding regularly for a few years with a group that included Robert Taylor, Van Heflin, Ray Milland, Andy Devine, and Clark Gable. In July 1944 Zeppo sold his motorcycle to Gable. Marion had been concerned about Zeppo’s recklessness and thought he might get himself killed on the bike.
Things were busier than ever at Marman, and Alan Miller and Gummo were seeing much less of Zeppo. Henry Willson had been promoted to vice president in August 1942 and Miller, Willson and Gummo expanded their roles in the operation of the agency. Zeppo recognized Willson’s value and when rumors of him taking a job at RKO made the rounds in 1940, Zeppo had given him a new contract and a raise. But the ambitious Willson quit in June 1943 and took Rhonda Fleming with him as he went to work for David O. Selznick.2
Gummo told Richard J. Anobile, “[W]e had quite an office, but Zeppo didn’t pay much attention to it. It ended up that Miller and I ran the office and after a couple of years I finally told Zeppo, ‘I’m not satisfied with being an employee. I either want a partnership or I want to get out.’ So, we formed a partnership.” Zeppo did for Gummo what Groucho, Harpo, and Chico had for years refused to do for him. They announced the news on May 15, 1945, with a full-page advertisement in Daily Variety:
Zeppo Marx Agency
Announces
A Change of the Firm Name
To
Marx, Miller & Marx, Inc.
The arrival of two children almost simultaneously had a significant impact on Zeppo and Marion’s marriage. They met and got married at the height of the Roaring Twenties and lived for only themselves for nearly twenty years. For them the nonstop fun of the Roaring Twenties didn’t end until Tom and Tim came along. Susan and Marion had playdates with five babies—and Harpo. Zeppo rarely participated. Tim Marx recalls,
Zeppo was closer to Harpo than he was to anybody else. That was the house we all used to go to. We didn’t go to Groucho’s house much. We’d go to Chico’s apartment occasionally, but we would always go to Harpo’s house. Harpo was a clown, a funny guy that would make the funny faces that you see in the movies. He would have us sit next to him while he played the harp and he got us to try to play the harp, which we could not do, but he would laugh. He would think that was funny.
While his family played at Harpo’s house, Zeppo was fully engaged at Marman Products. In addition to the Marman Clamp, which by this point was available in several sizes and varieties, Marman was manufacturing numerous aircraft parts and working on new inventions to keep the company relevant in the coming postwar manufacturing business. A large part of Marman’s business during the war was supplying fighter planes and battleships with Marman Clamps to secure cargo—including bombs—during transport.
The parts and nuclear materials for the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945—each weighing 10,000 pounds—were first secured to the decks of transport ships by several very large Marman Clamps and brought to the remote island of Tinian near Guam, where they were assembled. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft—named the Enola Gay in honor of Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets—was fitted with what would ultimately be the most famous and important Marman Clamps ever manufactured. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb, known as “Little Boy,” was dropped on Hiroshima. On August 9 another B-29 Superfortress named Bockscar, similarly equipped with Marman Clamps dropped the second bomb, known as “Fat Man,” on Nagasaki. Six days later Japan surrendered and the war in the Pacific was over.
Marman would remain a major defense contractor for the United States military, but the company also tried to make some useful products for everyday American life. Zeppo played around with a significant idea he eventually lost interest in and never patented. He should have. It was roll-on deodorant. Closer to his heart was the Marman Twin, a dual-engine motorized bicycle. The engine had been designed during the war by another defense contractor, Jack & Heintz. The thirty-pound engine produced 3.5 horsepower. There had been other motorized bicycles, but adapting the twin engine, which was originally designed for drone aircraft, was what set the Marman Twin apart from the earlier attempts.
Zeppo worked on the Marman Twin with Theodore A. Woolsey, one of the staff inventors at Marman. Woolsey, a trade school engineering teacher before being hired by Zeppo, had assigned his patent for modifying the Marman Clamp to the company. In April 1948, Popular Science wrote that the Marman Twin “provides an easy cruising speed of 35 m.p.h. without strain, leaving ample reserve power and speed for emergencies. . . . In tests it has given more than 100 miles on a gallon of gas.”
The first Marman Twins were sold in 1948. They were expensive at $129.50 and more of an interesting novelty than an overwhelming success. Zeppo’s enthusiasm for motorcycles and his motorized bicycle idea did not result in significant profits for Marman, but civilian life found plenty of uses for the Marman Clamp, which continued to lead the way for Marman’s product line.
Tom Marx recalls, “I had heard about something called Marman Products, but I didn’t know what he did. I never went there. I heard they made parts for airplanes.” In the fall of 1948, Tom entered kindergarten at Hawthorne Elementary School and Tim followed a year later. By that time the atmosphere was starting to become tense at the Rexford Drive house. Zeppo bought a lot in Beverly Hills, very near Gummo’s house, and planned to build a new house. Gummo’s son Bob recalled building a fruit stand on an empty lot at the corner of North Beverly Drive and Carmelita Avenue in Beverly Hills:
In my yard we had grapefruit and lemons. Several neighbors had huge avocado and orange trees in their back yards. Well, I really wasn’t stealing, because if I hadn’t taken the fruit and avocados, they would have been allowed to rot on the trees. When the fruit was arranged professionally it looked quite good. Sometimes the people whose fruit it was, would buy it back from me and say, “I have avocado trees, but the fruit isn’t nearly as good as what you sell.” I did a really nice business for several months. One day a bulldozer came and leveled the lot and my little red fruit house with it. As it turned out, it was my own Uncle Zeppo that put me out of business, when he purchased the lot.
Looking back at that time, Tom Marx concludes Zeppo and Marion “liked the idea of having kids, but really, kids just got in their way. They didn’t really want to have kids. I don’t know why they did it. Probably because people would ask, ‘How come you don’t have any kids.’ It was probably something to do with their status. But as far as actually wanting the kids, and playing with the kids, forget it.” Tim Marx says,
Marion wanted kids. I’m not so sure that Zeppo did, but he went along with it. At that point, they were fine. On Rexford Drive they were, for the most part, a very compatible couple—lots of friends over, playing cards, they entertained quite a bit. They had the greatest relationship. She dressed him to the nines. He was always the paragon of style. Gambled a lot. She went everywhere with him, always on his arm. When I was in third or fourth grade, Marion and Zeppo started full tilt having problems. She alleged it was because he was running with everybody in town. He’d go to Las Vegas. Here’s this woman, that woman. Word was getting back somehow.
By the time Tom and Tim came along the agency had become less interesting to Zeppo, and he considered it something of a burden. He told Charlotte Chandler,
[T]he agency business kept flourishing. Gummo kept bringing in clients, and my partner [Alan Miller] is bringing in clients, and I brought in clients, and I’m selling them. Now, we’ve got about 250 clients in this agency business doing fabulously. We were the third largest agency in the business. But in the meantime, I didn’t like it because they drove me crazy, these actors and directors and everything. They came in and they said, “Why didn’t I get that job? Gable got it!” Well, this little punk who was getting a hundred dollars a week with Goldwyn or something, he wanted Gable’s part that was out at Metro. So, you had to contend with those things in the agency business. You had to be their manager, you had to be their analyst. You had to do everything for some of those people. And it got to me. So, I just sold out.
