Zeppo, p.26
Zeppo, page 26
Tim has an indelible childhood memory of innocently setting off Zeppo’s temper when his father asked him to fetch a beer. At around the age of six Tim wasn’t even sure what a beer was. Zeppo explained, “It’s Pabst Blue Ribbon. You’ll see a big blue ribbon on the can.” Tim found the beer in the refrigerator and put it on the floor. He kicked it toward the dining room where he picked it up and handed it to Zeppo, who had not noticed how Tim transported the can. Tim says,
He thanked me and opened it. The beer shot straight up to the ceiling and began dripping down on his head. He turned to me and said, “What did you do? Did you shake this up?” I said I hadn’t and when pressed further I told him I had kicked it into the room. My mother was laughing hysterically, almost falling off her chair at the other end of the table. Tom was mortified, thinking I might get killed. My father was steaming and just couldn’t say anything.
Zeppo was not the sort of parent who could find humor in a child not knowing the result of kicking a can of beer across the floor. Zeppo’s hair-trigger temper could be set off by anything. Marion told Tim of an evening when she and Zeppo were watching What’s My Line? on television. One of the panelists guessed the contestant’s occupation a little too quickly for Zeppo. He began shouting that the game was rigged and hurled a shoe at the television set.
In consideration of the conditions at home described by Tom and Tim, it defies logic that Zeppo and Marion would find themselves defendants in a lawsuit that alleged they failed to exercise adequate parental control over one of their sons. But the fact that this happened essentially confirms the boys’ recollections that they were on their own during the day once school let out.
On September 13, 1953, Tim was throwing rocks and hit eight-year-old Denise Singer, the girl who lived across the street at 517 North Beverly Drive, just above her left eye. Her father Mortimer Singer—described in the press as an oil company executive—filed a $300,000 lawsuit against Zeppo, Marion, and Tim. The suit claimed that Zeppo and Marion were negligent because they failed to control Tim’s known penchant for throwing rocks at people. The extent of the girl’s injury was not clear from newspaper accounts, but Denise Singer Vogel says,
I was struck above the eye, and it caused hemorrhaging behind the eye. I was in Children’s Hospital for about ten days and ended up having four surgeries to save the eye. I had nothing but eye specialists for years after that. I was left with limited vision and a permanently dilated eye. As a child it was embarrassing because my eye looked different, and kids would tease me.
There’s no doubt that Tim threw the rock that hit and injured Denise Singer. But there’s a pretty good chance that the exorbitant financial recovery sought in the lawsuit may have had something to do with syndicated columnist E. V. Durling’s September 5, 1953, item—published only days before the incident—that noted, “Zeppo Marx is by far the richest of the Marx Brothers.” Denise recalls her father’s reaction to the incident. “He was livid and was going to go as far as necessary to get revenge.”
As for Tom and Tim, Denise recalls, “They were both little hellions in the neighborhood. Zeppo and Marion would go off on vacations and leave the housekeepers to watch them and they didn’t watch them very closely.” Mortimer Singer had every reason to be angry and was totally justified in filing a lawsuit. The timing of the incident and the newspaper article added up to an expensive problem for Zeppo.
To Zeppo it seemed as though everyone was after his considerable fortune. A year earlier there had been trouble with organized labor at the new Marman plant. The contract between Marman and the International Association of Machinists had expired on August 31, 1952. The union demanded a fifty-cent hourly wage increase for tool and die makers and a ten-cent hourly increase for all other workers. Marman offered a five-cent hourly increase for all workers and adjustments for some classifications of machinists. Tool and die makers were being paid $2.25 per hour at the time. Negotiations broke off and the workers went on strike at both Marman plants on September 14.
During the labor negotiations, A. Dale Herman retired from his position at Vickers and became the vice president and general manager of Marman. Zeppo began to see the growing company as too much trouble—a situation that replicated his experience with the Zeppo Marx Agency when he turned over the management of the company to Alan Miller. The strike at Marman came as news of the recently completed expansion of the West Los Angeles plant was reported in the West Los Angeles Independent:
Increased demand for the company’s line of engineered clamps, straps and couplings is given as the reason for the expanded facilities. . . . Today the largest manufacturer in its field in the United States, Marman has developed a line of standardized products which formerly required special designs. Among these is the famous V-Band coupling [the Marman Clamp] which has largely replaced the old bolt type of fastening device for ducting on aircraft. Production is now five times the pre-Korean level and employment has increased to 700.
Mass pickets and acts of violence at both Marman plants eventually resulted in a judge issuing a restraining order prohibiting the picketing. A. Dale Herman’s daughter, Rita Mae Joyce recalls, “My father was worried. He told me and my sister to be careful going to the bus stop and around school.” The Herman family lived in Encino, twenty miles from the picketing at Marman, but everyone was uneasy about the violence. Marman petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for an election to determine whether the union represented the Marman workers. The union withdrew its claim of representation and several of its members were cited for contempt of court for violating the restraining order. Could some of Zeppo’s friends have used their influence with the union? He’d been involved in the organization of the Hollywood talent agencies and their affiliation with labor unions as a form of leverage with the studios, so he knew this game well. It was a mess, but Marman resumed normal operations.
Rita Mae Joyce would occasionally accompany her father to Marman:
I remember going on weekends. There would be nobody there. Dad had some business to work on and I would wander around. Zeppo had a very pretty office with sliding glass doors. Outside the glass doors was a Doberman Pinscher watchdog named Slim. Dad would say, “Don’t get too close to the doors because Slim might throw himself into the glass and break it.” It was a lavish, modern office. Very showy. Zeppo’s desk was quite large, but he wasn’t there that much. My father pretty much ran everything.
She also remembers Zeppo taking her and her father on a tour of the North Beverly Drive house during the construction. “We went over there a couple of times to see the progress on the house. Zeppo was very nice, walked us through the house and told us what each room would be.”
Zeppo took a less active role in the company after the 1952 strike. In early 1954 he sold the Inglewood plant and consolidated Marman’s business to the expanding West Los Angeles location. He commented on the company in the July 12, 1954, issue of Newsweek:
When a person can take his hobby and turn it into his primary business interest, as I have been fortunate enough to do, he has few worries over what he will do when he retires. Ever since I worked as a mechanic in an eastern automobile plant, I have been an avid home-workshop enthusiast.
With labor strife at Marman taken care of there was still the matter of Tim’s rock-throwing case going to trial. Zeppo and Marion fought constantly during this period, and Zeppo frequently fled to Las Vegas as the marriage deteriorated. Tom recalls, “When we were on Rodeo Drive, I remember hearing them fighting a lot in that house. That was around a year before we moved into the new house. I don’t think we lasted even six months on Beverly before they got divorced.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Other Marx Brothers
ON MARCH 19, 1954, MARION TRAVELED TO LAS VEGAS AND FILED FOR divorce on the grounds of cruelty. The minimal six-week residency requirement in Nevada provided the fastest way out of the marriage. The barely lived in house at 524 North Beverly Drive was sold to producer Harry Tugend for $150,000—a relative bargain considering the opulence of the home and its features.
Zeppo rented an apartment in Beverly Hills and a house in Palm Springs. He made plans to build his new permanent residence at Tamarisk Country Club near Palm Springs. Regarding the divorce, Zeppo’s statement to the press was short: “We’re friends, but we’re better living apart.” He made no mention of what was better for Tom and Tim. Tom says,
During this time we were being punished a lot. We were both getting into a lot of trouble. My mother didn’t want to deal with two mis-behaving kids and a divorce, so they just packed us off to military school. It was one of the things that totally ruined my life. I was never the same after that. A lot of freedom, and then suddenly—BAM! Military school where there’s zero freedom. You’re told what to do every minute of the day.
The boys were pulled out of Hawthorne Elementary School near the end of the spring semester, just before Marion left for Las Vegas. She and Zeppo sent them to Mount Lowe Military Academy in Altadena, around thirty miles from Beverly Hills. Ten-year-old Tom was in the fifth grade and nine-year-old Tim, the fourth. Set at the foot of the Sierra Madre mountains on thirty-six acres, the bucolic setting of Mount Lowe Military Academy offered no hint at what life there would be like for Tom and Tim.
Tim says, “When they were in the final stages of the divorce, we briefly visited Marion in Las Vegas and then we got sent away to this place that turned out to be a 24/7, twelve months a year tour for a couple of years. We never had any contact with Zeppo about it. We just got shipped out to Altadena.” If the boys expected any of the comforts of home, the closest they came was the eavesdropping equipment installed in the dorm rooms. Like Zeppo, the headmaster of the school, Major John Hayden Dargin, listened in on the boys’ conversations.
The atmosphere was more like a prison than a school, with barbed wire at the top of the fences. Other adopted children of Hollywood celebrities were also sent to Mount Lowe, including Roy Rogers Jr. and his brother Sandy. In July 1955, twelve-year-old Christopher Crawford, son of Joan Crawford, escaped from Mount Lowe with another cadet. They were apprehended five miles away by sheriff ’s deputies and brought back several hours later. It was young Crawford’s fourth such escape. Other cadets were known to rub poison oak on their faces hoping it would get them sent home. For the peace of mind of having Tom and Tim basically incarcerated, Zeppo and Marion paid $95 per month for each boy. Tim says,
When we got to military school, Tom took it very seriously. Within a year or so he was a second lieutenant. I got to be a sergeant or a corporal, or some crap like that. They had a battlefield, and there were bunkers, and we’d have war games. Tom blamed me for getting us sent to military school, probably because of the rock throwing incident. But it was Zeppo and Marion trying to figure out what they were going to do with their lives. They didn’t want us around while they were figuring that out.
The divorce became final on May 17, 1954. It marked the end of an era during which Marion had carved out a place for herself in the Hollywood hierarchy without even an inkling of a career of her own. She was a dear friend and confidant to many and was trusted with the most sensitive information in Hollywood. Columnist Ed Sullivan, writing in the Hollywood Citizen-News in 1940, when leaving Hollywood to return to New York, praised Marion with words that would have seemed appropriate fourteen years later as she and Zeppo split up: “I’ll miss pert Marion Marx, good-looking frau of the Zeppo, and her breezy ad libs on the passing parade of celebs.”
There was a property settlement involving corporation stocks and other assets. Marion received a significant number of shares in Marman Products and half of the proceeds from the sale of 524 North Beverly Drive. It’s unclear whether she was able to document any proceeds from the sale of the agency. Zeppo would pay $1,000 a month for Marion’s support and $200 a month for child support—which basically covered the cost of Tom and Tim being at Mount Lowe. Marion rented an apartment on Doheny Drive and kept her membership at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. Tom recalls, “The club was her whole life. All her friends were there, and she went every day. Zeppo never went there much. He had his own club, which was Hillcrest Country Club, where he played golf. I was there maybe once.”
Marion would maintain relationships with Zeppo’s brothers and their wives for many years. She’d been part of the family since the Broadway days and was especially close with Harpo and Susan. They all knew Zeppo hadn’t treated Marion well for years and offered their support while remaining loyal to Zeppo. Loyalty ran deep in the Marx family, but a divorce didn’t preclude them from staying in touch with an ex-wife or two.
Groucho had great respect for Marion and recognized all she had done for Zeppo. They had a warm, if intermittent, correspondence over the years. By the time Zeppo and Marion split up Groucho had a couple of ex-wives himself. Two months after their divorce was finalized Groucho married for the third time. Eden Hartford was born three years after Zeppo and Marion were married. She was forty years younger than Groucho. In an unpublished memoir she wrote in the early 1980s, Eden compared her husband and brother-in-law:
Zeppo and Groucho were the most alike in temperament of the brothers but that is where the resemblance ended. Zeppo was an ardent card player for high stakes and a member of the Friars Club in Beverly Hills—a club especially for card players. Groucho could never understand how people could spend half the day and sometimes night playing cards. A congenial evening of five-card stud or draw poker at Harpo’s mixed with an equal number of jokes was his limit. When Zeppo invited Groucho to the Friars Club for lunch one day he was appalled. Groucho came home after that lunch looking perplexed.
“The Friars Club asked me to become a member. Do you know who I sat next to at lunch? My barber and my tailor. Afterwards they all played cards. I had to get a ride home. There wasn’t a comedian in the crowd.”
I had to laugh at the picture it brought to mind, but Groucho was serious. “Take a letter.” I sat down at the typewriter. “Gentlemen, I don’t care to be a member of a club where I have lunch with my barber and my tailor, and as for playing cards . . .” He stopped.
“If I write that letter, I’ll never get a decent haircut or a suit that fits. Forget it. I’ll sleep on it.” He did and the next morning he had me write the oft-quoted line: “I do not care to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”
While Marion was in Las Vegas, Zeppo began dating Joyce Niven, a twenty-four-year-old model. Within a couple of weeks of the divorce decree coming through, they began being frequently seen together around Hollywood and Las Vegas. By the spring of 1955 the gossip columns began suggesting they would soon be married. If Miss Niven was interested in Zeppo’s money, there would soon be a lot more of it. On March 31, 1955, Zeppo sold Marman Products to another defense contractor, the Aeroquip Corporation of Jackson, Michigan. The May 1955 issue of Aeroquip’s company magazine The Flying A, described Marman’s operation for its employees.
Marman Products Company manufactures clamps, couplings and straps and is recognized as a leader in that field. A line of check-valves and flanges was recently introduced for use with hot-air ducting and fuel lines on aircraft, chemical and food processing appliances.
Seventy-five percent of the Company’s total volume goes to assemblers for inclusion on aircraft, and an additional ten percent is sold directly to air force bases and replacement depots. Industrial and commercial concerns in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia account for the remaining fifteen percent of Marman’s production. Practically all aircraft products are manufactured of stainless steel for airframe and engine application on jet aircraft. Gross sales for the last twelve months totaled approximately four and a half million dollars.
Marman had clearly become the most successful concern Zeppo was ever involved with. He liked and admired Aeroquip founder Peter F. Hurst, a German immigrant who started his company in much the same way that Zeppo started Marman. Most importantly for Zeppo, Hurst—like Lew Wasserman and Jules Stein in the MCA acquisition of Marx, Miller & Marx—agreed to keep the terms of the sale confidential. Veteran Aeroquip employees Mike Lefere and Al Wagner recall the deal being worth between $2.5 and $3 million in cash and stock.1 Zeppo was proud that Aeroquip kept the Marman name active in its product line for decades and was pleased to maintain some interest through his Aeroquip stock.2
One small detail needed to be taken care of before the transaction could be completed. Marman’s contract with James T. King stipulated that Marman could not transfer rights in King’s clamp patent without his permission. On July 20, 1955, King and Marman agreed to retroactively terminate the 1948 contract effective May 31, 1955. This allowed King to make his own deal with Aeroquip. King would continue to receive royalties on the clamp, but Zeppo’s assertion that King became phenomenally wealthy was greatly exaggerated. James T. King died in 1966 at the age of seventy-six with no indication that he became wealthy as a result of his association with Zeppo or Marman.
A. Dale Herman was not interested in working for Aeroquip and left to start his own company closer to his home in Encino. There were no hard feelings. Zeppo and Herman continued their friendship. Herman’s daughter Rita remembers her father enjoying lunches at Hillcrest Country Club with Zeppo and friends like Edward G. Robinson, George Jessel, and of course, Zeppo’s brothers. Herman’s company was successful and did business with Lockheed and Boeing. And he would continue to tinker on various inventions with Zeppo in their off hours for many years. Herman and his family also visited Zeppo in Palm Springs.
Zeppo liked owning successful businesses, but the agency and Marman both had begun to cause problems that made him want to cash out. His next business venture was one that looked relatively easy. There would be no union trouble or spoiled, petulant actors. With Harpo, Gummo, and Marx Brothers business manager Alexander Tucker as his partners, Zeppo became a citrus rancher. They formed a partnership and called the property in Coachella—thirty-seven miles southeast of Palm Springs—the Martuc Ranch. Zeppo discussed the ranch in a March 1959 feature story in Palm Springs Villager magazine.
