Zeppo, p.25
Zeppo, page 25
The company Zeppo kept was starting to worry his brothers, who according to Harpo’s son Bill, threatened to disown him, a process by which the brothers could assure there would be no connection between Zeppo and their assets. Adding to his brothers’ concerns, Zeppo was still getting attention in the press for his frequent involvement in public fistfights. When he attended the July 6, 1951 Manny Madrid–Chu Chu Jimenez fight at Hollywood Legion Stadium, Zeppo—not the boxers in the ring—made the headlines.
The Los Angeles Times reported on the action the next day: “The 3,500 fans were treated to a bonus bout of sorts during the seventh round of the feature. Zeppo Marx of the Marx Brothers got the bum’s rush from the stadium cop after swinging a couple of times at Mirror photog Neil Clements. Marx complained that Clements’s camera was obstructing his view. Clements didn’t complain. He just kept shooting pictures.”
When they weren’t discussing the prospect of disowning Zeppo, his brothers liked the idea of being in business with him. In March 1950 all five Marx brothers became the largest individual investors in a limited partnership with around a dozen other investors called Stekoll Oil and Associates, Ltd. The plan was to develop land in Northern Texas for oil exploration. Texas oilman Marion Stekoll was the head of the operation and among the investors were friends George Burns and Norman Krasna. Drilling for oil was as much of a gamble as any game Zeppo played in Las Vegas, but many wealthy celebrities got into the oil business as a tax shelter, knowing they’d lose money for at least a little while. Chico, who always seemed to bet against the odds, might have been the only investor thinking he’d strike oil immediately. The other brothers—particularly Groucho and Zeppo—needed some business deductions that would ease their hefty tax burdens.
Zeppo’s losses, as occasionally reported in the press, kept his balance sheet reconciled. In a December 1947 column from Miami, Ed Sullivan wrote,
In the top card games here, the big players insist on washable decks of cards—so none of the players yields to the temptation to mark them. Noted player who was reputed to have won $400,000 from Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx and coast bookies Mooney and Lou Levy at gin rummy a year ago, playing gin rummy for $40 a point, is the biggest bettor on the Florida scene, and his presence here is a cinch to attract other high rollers.”
Zeppo’s concern about his winnings getting into the press may not have been unfounded. On May 10, 1952, the British magazine Picturegoer ran this item:
It happened to Zeppo Marx. Somebody recognized him the night he was in on a lucky streak. The Marx “make” made print and Uncle Sam made more than 40,000 in additional taxes. Was Marx mad!
Zeppo had become an important and influential man in Las Vegas. For Labor Day weekend in 1952, he invited a group of friends to be his guests at the Flamingo Hotel. The group included Groucho and his new twenty-two-year-old girlfriend, and future third wife, Eden Hartford, Norman Krasna and his wife, and Arthur Sheekman and his wife, actress Gloria Stuart, who remembered the trip in her memoirs:
Zep was up in Vegas a great deal (we always wondered if he was in a gambling syndicate). It was a very crowded weekend, and our hotel, one of the most popular in town, was jammed with people. Reservations, of course, were very tight, but because we were with The Boys, we had a lovely room.
While I unpacked, Arthur went downstairs to the little credit kiosk, and they asked what his limit was. He didn’t want to seem excessive—but he also didn’t want to be extravagant. Instead of saying, “The sky!” which was his style, he said, “Two hundred dollars.” Well, by the time he got back to the room, the hotel had made a terrible mistake! The manager had made a terrible mistake! The desk clerk had made a terrible mistake and our room had been rented! The message was we had to vacate by 3 PM! Of course, they wanted it for the high rollers. We had to get hold of Zeppo. It was early in the afternoon, Zeppo was nowhere in sight, and Groucho couldn’t help us. It was only Zep that could. We had him paged, we left messages on his phone, we knocked on his door and slipped notes under it, and started repacking. Finally Zep surfaced and we were allowed to keep our room.
His friends needn’t have worried. Zeppo was enough of a high roller to cover a few nice rooms at the Flamingo.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Boys Will Be Boys
WHILE THE FAMILY LIVED AT 702 NORTH RODEO DRIVE, THE SECond home Zeppo rented during the construction of the North Beverly Drive house, Tom became very close with one of his little league teammates, Robbie Sedway. Robbie’s father was Moe Sedway, who had become Gus Greenbaum’s partner in the Flamingo Hotel following the death of Bugsy Siegel a few years earlier. It may be coincidental that Zeppo rented a home just a short bike ride from the Sedways, but he was well acquainted with Moe Sedway from his frequent trips to Las Vegas.
Tom recalls,
The thing that I was happy about during my childhood was the friends that I had. I had this one friend, Robbie Sedway. He was the son of Moe Sedway, the manager of the Flamingo Hotel. In other words, he was mob. He was my best friend, and I was over there every day. We played baseball and football together.
Tom and Tim were too young to understand or have knowledge of the connection between the 1947 killing of Bugsy Siegel and the Sedway family, but Robbie Sedway shared details of the notoriously unsolved murder in the October 2014 issue of Los Angeles Magazine. It has generally been assumed that Siegel was killed by order of Meyer Lansky for spending the mob’s money too freely—while probably taking some for himself—and going way over budget in building the Flamingo. Bee Sedway, wife of Moe and mother of Robbie, told a different story that she took to her grave. When Robbie was dying of cancer, he broke a long-standing promise never to tell.
Moe Sedway was the man watching the mob’s money when Siegel brought his Las Vegas vision to life as elaborately as possible. Siegel tired of Sedway constantly bothering him about the spending and called a secret meeting with his associates. He told them he wanted to have Moe Sedway killed. Word got back to the Sedways. Bee and Moe realized they had to have Siegel killed first before he killed Moe. Bee suggested that they have Matthew “Moose” Pandza do the job. Moe knew that Pandza, a crane operator and small-time bookmaker with no connections to the mob, was having an affair with Bee. Moe wasn’t much concerned with that since he himself was having as many affairs as time would allow during his frequent trips to Las Vegas. This was one of the main attractions to the town for Zeppo as well. Marion would have been relieved to learn that all Zeppo did in Las Vegas was gamble.
The theory that Lansky had Siegel killed over money is questionable. The Flamingo posted a $250,000 profit after a rough start just as Siegel was about to meet his fate, but some accounts suggest that the profitable period was temporary. Robbie Sedway provided his mother’s proposal for a never-published book to Los Angeles Magazine in 2014. In it she quoted an attendee of the Siegel meeting in Las Vegas repeating Bugsy’s plan to her: “I’ll have Moe shot, chop his body up, and feed it to the Flamingo Hotel’s garbage disposal.” Bugsy Siegel was killed on June 20, 1947, when a lone gunman fired several shots through the living room window of his girlfriend’s house in Beverly Hills as he sat on the sofa reading a newspaper. Bee Sedway died in 1996 with the secret that her boyfriend, Moose Pandza, was the gunman. It was only when Robbie Sedway was dying that he decided the secret should not die with him. Yet the Sedway story has not resulted in the Bugsy Siegel murder case being considered solved. But, of course, Bee Sedway’s version of the events cannot be verified. It remains one of several theories.1
Moe Sedway suffered a heart attack in 1952 at the age of fifty-seven while flying to Miami with his mistress. He died the following day. Bee, who had married Moe when she was seventeen, became a thirty-three-year-old widow. At Sedway’s funeral, Zeppo and his brothers were honorary pallbearers along with several other notable Hollywood figures including George Raft, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Eddie Cantor, Danny Thomas, and Tony Martin. Moose Pandza was one of the actual pallbearers. When Zeppo and Marion finally moved into 524 North Beverly Drive, Bee Sedway and Moose Pandza were living at 614 North Beverly—the same house where Bee had lived with Moe. Eventually people in the neighborhood—including Tom and Tim—assumed that Moose was the father of Robbie and his older brother Richard. In Robbie’s case people close to the family who knew Moe suspected that Moose was Robbie’s biological father.
Robbie told Los Angeles Magazine that they were regularly visited by FBI agents after the Siegel murder. Neighborhood parents warned their children not to go to that house or to associate with those boys, but Zeppo and Marion made no such requests. They may not have even known about Tom’s friendship with Robbie. Tim and Tom both recall Moose Pandza fondly as a neighbor who let them use his pool. If he was Bugsy Siegel’s killer, he was also, by all other accounts, a very nice guy who occasionally played ball with the neighborhood kids. His only major brush with the law came in 1953 when he knocked Bee down in a Sunset Boulevard bar and assaulted the police officer who came in to assist her.
The FBI had other business in Beverly Hills in the wake of the Bugsy Siegel killing. The Clover Club remained one of the town’s most popular gambling joints and offered a nearby convenience to its wealthy, famous customers—a very high-class brothel. Just above the Sunset Strip on Harold Way, less than half a mile from the Clover Club, Marie Mitchell—alias Brenda Allen—operated her business with the full knowledge and support of the Los Angeles Police Department. Several high-ranking members of the police force were on her payroll and many others were clients. She was also affiliated with Mickey Cohen, the most powerful mobster in town.
She was naturally shocked when her place was raided on May 4, 1948. She told the officers who arrested her that she would have their jobs. She was not entirely incorrect in that statement, as later there would be firings and resignations at very high levels of the department as a result of the case. But she had been too confident in her position and had offered an attractive young woman she spotted in the neighborhood an opportunity to make some easy money. The woman turned out to be a police officer who, without the knowledge that half of the vice squad was on Brenda Allen’s payroll, thought she had discovered the biggest prostitution ring in the city.
The Los Angeles Times reported on May 6, 1948, “Hollywood was agog yesterday over a black card index file confiscated by vice squad policemen who late Tuesday night arrested three young women and a man on morals charges.” The unfortunate man was not famous, but he was identified in the press as a movie producer. Benjamin Berk was actually a prop man and later a production manager at 20th Century Fox, hardly the type of Hollywood celebrity the newspapers implied would be named. The San Francisco Examiner reported that police “seized a ‘little black book’ which officers said would rock Hollywood to its foundations if its contents were revealed.” The press ran daily stories about the Brenda Allen client file and there were demands it be released to the public. The Times report said, “On the cards containing names of many notables of the film colony, were written dates of the visits, the hostess who entertained the guest and the fees charged.” There was no shortage of powerful people in city government, the police force and the organized crime community that did not want Brenda Allen’s client file released. Mickey Cohen even had audio recordings of Allen discussing her business with high-level police department officials as insurance against this sort of problem. But the press would not let go of the story. The Los Angeles Daily News reported,
[O]n occasion the entire organization was put at the disposal, for a staggering price, of some flush potentate of the moving picture mecca. . . . The hosts of such royal bacchanals as these supposedly were the men of wealth and prominence in Hollywood screen and radio circles whose names constitute the special gilt-edged client list detectives found among Brenda’s carefully kept records.
While Brenda Allen’s client list remained out of the public eye, men who knew they were on it had to notice an important line in the Daily News story: “[O]fficers may drop around at some of the movie city’s most respectable homes in the course of the investigation.”
Marion was aware by this point of Zeppo’s chronic womanizing, but he had managed never to humiliate her publicly. To the relief of numerous important Hollywood figures, municipal judge Joseph Call sealed the file in August 1948, instructing the court clerk that the file “contains the names of dignitaries in the radio and motion picture field and of prominent executives. Public disclosure of its contents would be ruinous to the careers and private lives of these men. Seal it well, Mr. Clerk, and see that it stays sealed.”
The names were never made public, but the FBI took an interest and made its own investigation. Among the names listed in the FBI files are stars Orson Welles, Mickey Rooney, and George Jessel; restaurateur Mike Romanoff; producer Hal Roach Jr., the owner of the Downbeat nightclub; the owner of the Orpheum theater chain; and several agents. Everett Crosby—brother and agent of Bing Crosby—Ernie Orsatti and Zeppo Marx were the most well-known agents in Brenda Allen’s little black book. Zeppo’s address was recorded as 8732 Sunset Boulevard, the office of Marx, Miller & Marx, so when the FBI came calling, the agency had been out of business for almost a year. But Zeppo was not difficult to find.
In June 1951, Marman Products was doing well enough to expand. The increased demand for aircraft parts coincided with the August 1950 congressional approval of $12 billion for United States military activity in Korea. The Defense Production Act of 1950 authorized the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend money to defense contractors that wanted to expand their operations. Zeppo applied for and received a $1.25 million loan to Marman, which he used to purchase the land and build a second plant at 11214 Exposition Boulevard in West Los Angeles. The new facility increased Marman’s capacity by 300 percent.
Even though his company’s success was primarily the result of being a defense contractor, Zeppo continued searching for that magical product that would secure a position for Marman as the manufacturer of something useful to the general population. On June 14, 1950, he submitted a patent application for his vapor delivery pad for distributing moist heat. The therapeutic use of heating pads presented challenges at this time and Zeppo’s invention offered solutions for several of the problems. His application provides details for regulating constant temperatures and describes the use of flexible materials that would allow the pad to be wrapped around limbs. The patent was granted on March 18, 1952, but Zeppo did not go any further with the development of his heating pad. With a second plant in operation Zeppo employed a workforce of 450. It was the latest example of his inability to rest on his laurels. Tim says,
Zeppo was the kind of guy who would ask an Olympic gold medalist, “What’s your follow up? Where do you go from there?” Zeppo would build a house and collect all the paintings and all the fine furniture and then say, “Now what do I do for an encore?” So, the encore was, “I’ll build a state-of-the-art house on North Beverly Drive that has an indoor tropical garden where it would rain at the flip of a switch.” Every floor had a warming pipe underneath it where hot water would go through and warm the floors.”
On January 14, 1952, Zeppo’s picture was on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. It was not the sort of publicity that would make his brothers forget about disowning him. The Times reported, “An early morning sidewalk fracas involving one-time actor Zeppo Marx, youngest of the Marx Brothers, and film producer Alex Gottlieb was interrupted yesterday by Beverly Hills police. Officers said they found a strong argument in progress, complete with the swinging of wild roundhouse punches on the sidewalk at the corner of Rodeo Drive and Wilshire Boulevard.”
After being hauled off to the Beverly Hills Police Station with their wives, neither combatant wanted to press charges. Marion told police that Gottlieb approached her and said, “If that punk husband of yours doesn’t leave me alone, there’ll be trouble.” Gottlieb’s wife Polly—the sister of producer Billy Rose—was knocked to the ground trying to break up the fight. Zeppo’s explanation was that Gottlieb had threatened him over the phone about a gambling debt and the dispute had been festering for around a year. The day after the fracas Billy Rose was quoted in the Hollywood Reporter about his sister getting roughed up: “That Zeppo can lick any chorus girl in town.”
Zeppo’s temper had resulted in previous public brawls—and they always seemed to end up in the newspaper. But he also was known to become violent at home over the slightest infraction by Tom or Tim, who says, “You could fart and get hit. It was always with the big brush. He would say, ‘Drop your pants. You’re going to get hit.’” A fancy new house and the expansion of Marman Products did not make life at home any better for Zeppo, Marion, Tom, and Tim. Tom notes that Robbie Sedway enjoyed the benefits of being from a wealthy family:
He always had the best of everything. With us they would say, “Do we have to buy him a new bike?” We had the same bikes for so long they became too small for us, and we couldn’t even ride them. But we finally got new bikes. They hated to spend money on us.
Tim does not recall his bike ever being too small, but he had other problems at home. “Zeppo was the disciplinarian when we were young. Marion didn’t like it at all. She thought he was over the top with it. And she would say, ‘Zeppo, come on. Enough.’” Tom recalls, “Marion wasn’t as strict as Zeppo. She’d say, ‘Boys will be boys.’ One time my friends and I got into a tulip fight in a park on Santa Monica Boulevard. The cops came and hauled us off and called the parents. That was $500. That was a big deal. I got punished a lot for that.” Tim adds, “As we got older, Marion became the disciplinarian, and she had a terrible temper.”
