Zeppo, p.28
Zeppo, page 28
Lillian Sherlock was seen with Zeppo again when they caught comedian Mort Sahl’s act at the Interlude, another Hollywood nightclub, but after that she was done with him. The following year she married comedy writer Harry Crane and remained with him for the rest of her life. But Joyce Niven persevered. She may have been justifiably upset when she saw Zeppo with another woman at the Mocambo. He had taken her there only weeks earlier to see Frank Sinatra. On the other hand, she was there with a burly ex-boxer.
A month after the Mocambo incident, Dorothy Kilgallen wrote in her “Voice of Broadway” column, “Zeppo Marx, recently headlined in a brawl involving two ladies, has forsaken both of them in favor of Betsy Duncan.” Duncan was a twenty-five-year-old red-haired actress and singer. She had recently appeared in Pal Joey at the La Jolla Playhouse and appeared on television with Bob Hope and on the Tonight Show. She frequently performed at the El Mirador in Palm Springs. Zeppo caught her act at the newly opened Slate Brothers nightclub in Los Angeles and moved quickly, proposing marriage almost immediately. He told friends he was crazy about her.
Duncan had her sights set on marrying a wealthy man and didn’t take Zeppo’s proposal seriously. She was simultaneously dating clothier Sy Devore. Zeppo was so good at keeping his net worth a secret that Betsy Duncan had no idea how much money he had. She would ultimately marry Ever Hammes, the heir to the InSinkErator garbage disposal fortune. All was soon forgiven with Joyce Niven and Zeppo began dating her again in August 1957.
Three years after his divorce from Marion, Zeppo was searching for a wife. But he was mostly limiting his search to blonde models less than half his age. He had never let being married interfere with his longtime passion for chasing women, but the big difference for the post-divorce bachelor Zeppo was the public display of his social life. His frequent notices in the Hollywood and Las Vegas gossip columns, telling of various beautiful young women on his arm could be interpreted as a mid-life crisis, or an inexpensive way of advertising his availability to any young gold-diggers looking for a rich older man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Barbara Moves In
ZEPPO HAD BEEN SUFFERING FROM HEARING LOSS FOR SEVERAL YEARS, and the situation became very noticeable during his bachelor years in Palm Springs. Gummo’s son Bob, who was building homes in the area, saw Zeppo frequently during this time. He recalled, “I ran into Zep and whoever the blonde bimbo of the week was at the movies. She had a pair of coke-bottle eyeglasses and could barely see. He was hard of hearing. During the movie I heard him say loudly to her, ‘What did they say?’ Then she asked him, ‘What are they doing?’ I can’t imagine why they bothered going to the movies.”
Zeppo had learned about a new operation that could greatly improve his hearing. Developed in 1952 by Dr. Samuel Rosen, the procedure then known as the “Rosen stapes operation” offered a cure for otosclerosis, a condition that prevents sound waves from reaching the auditory nerve as a result of hardening of the soft tissue stapes bone. The operation, now known as a stapedectomy, replaces the stapes bone with a synthetic substitute. Zeppo had the operation in 1956 on one ear with good results. Asked by a reporter why he’d gotten the surgery Zeppo replied, “So I can hear the applause if I return to acting.”
Zeppo never stopped pursuing Barbara Blakeley and saw her whenever he was in Las Vegas, but she read the gossip columns and seeing things like the Mocambo fistfight made it difficult for her to take Zeppo seriously as a romantic possibility. There were also reports that Zeppo was dating Nancy Valentine, a former model who’d recently signed a movie contract with Howard Hughes. Barbara had her young son to think about, and Zeppo didn’t seem like a good influence. The compulsive high-stakes gambling was also problematic for a woman who was trying to get away from Las Vegas. But Barbara was looking for security and she also saw newspaper accounts of Zeppo’s business and investment dealings.
In April 1956 there were reports of Zeppo purchasing a Safeway store in Redding, California, for $541,000. It was a more nuanced deal than the simple purchase of a retail store. Safeway was in business with Webb & Knapp, a large real estate development company owned by wealthy builder William Zeckendorf. Zeckendorf owned the Chrysler Building and the Astor Hotel in New York and was behind the land deals for such projects as Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Century City in Los Angeles and the United Nations building in New York. Webb & Knapp had $250 million in undeveloped properties in several cities around the United States and Zeckendorf had an interesting plan to turn these into revenue generating properties quickly.
His idea for Safeway stores offered an unusual opportunity for investors with cash or good credit. When Zeppo bought the Redding store it was already built and operational, but for future investors land would be purchased as a lot and a store would then be built to Safeway’s specifications. Safeway would then sign a thirty-year lease with the owner that would include an option for the retail chain to buy the store at the end of the lease. Safeway’s rent payments would cover the monthly mortgage and allow for some profit each month. For his Redding investment, Zeppo took a mortgage for $422,285.69 with the Safeway store and the land it was built on as security for the loan. It was easy enough for him to put up the initial investment of roughly $120,000 and start collecting rent from Safeway.
Zeppo liked the Safeway deal enough to buy additional stores in Blythe, California, and Kansas City, Missouri. He also purchased one in Portland, Oregon, as an investment for Marion, an indication that they had come through the divorce on reasonably good terms, and that he was looking after her financial future—notwithstanding the money he hid from her in the divorce.
Zeppo’s Safeway stores provided net income each month and their mortgages were being paid off at the same time. He told friends the stores were a “hedge against inflation.” Barbara admired Zeppo’s largesse in setting up an investment for his ex-wife, but she also wondered why Zeppo had virtually no contact with his two sons. Things were better between Zeppo and Marion, but she was handling all decisions about Tom and Tim herself. In the spring of 1957 Marion pulled the boys out of Robert F. Wagner Junior High School on East 76th Street in Manhattan and sent them to the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey.
Tim recalls,
We were sent off to boarding school. Marion wanted to have her own life and she didn’t want my brother or me around. Tom was very serious in his studies. He was a very bright guy. I got thrown out of the Peddie School for using the common slur a thirteen-year-old kid would have used in 1957 to describe a professor whose sexual orientation seemed threatening. I wasn’t out a week and was back at some other school in Connecticut.
Marion didn’t want the boys at separate schools, so she sent them both to the Cheshire Academy, in Cheshire, Connecticut. Tom once again blamed Tim for the abrupt relocation. Other than agreeing to pay for the tuition, Zeppo remained uninvolved in the decision. Tom began blaming Tim, Marion, and especially Zeppo, for his troubles. Tim suggests, “Tom lost his sense of humor when Marion and Zeppo split. And he has always insisted that military school ruined his life.”
By the fall of 1957 Zeppo was starting to tire of his on-again, off-again relationship with Joyce Niven. He renewed his efforts with Barbara and sent her a gift—a Ford Thunderbird convertible. The recently introduced car, which set Zeppo back roughly $3,500, had its engine ruined when Barbara’s former boyfriend poured sugar in the gas tank. Barbara was more impressed in October when Zeppo sent her son Bobby a bicycle for his seventh birthday. The very wealthy man described by Tom and Tim as being tight with money when it came to his two sons would be almost unrecognizable to them. But Zeppo had an unlimited budget when it came to gambling and women.
Barbara found Zeppo charming and realized that he could offer a better life for her and Bobby. Her former husband, a bartender and would-be singer named Robert Harrison Oliver, never made any child support payments and had skipped town. Bobby Marx, then known as Bobby Oliver, recalls, “I had some pretty traumatic experiences in Las Vegas as a kid. I was bullied by some local kids who tied me up and almost burned me alive. My mom saved me, but said, ‘That’s it. We’re out of Las Vegas,’ and I was sent to military school.” Barbara moved to Long Beach—close enough to Los Angeles to resume her modeling career. Initially she lived in her parents’ house, but eventually found her own apartment. But she found it nearly impossible to find modeling work and was almost penniless.
In her book Barbara wrote, “One day Zeppo called to see how I was. When I told him the truth, he made me an offer. ‘Come to Palm Springs,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ll set you and Bobby up in your own place. You can commute back to L.A. to model whenever you want.’ With all other options running out, I had little choice but to accept.” Bobby says, “I was still in military school at the time, and I think Zeppo was perfectly happy with that. I’m sure a seven-year-old kid was not in his vision of the future.”
At first Zeppo rented a two-bedroom apartment for Barbara and Bobby near the Racquet Club in Palm Springs. Bobby was mostly out of sight in the beginning, but when he’d be home from military school Barbara had a room waiting for him. Eventually they moved into Zeppo’s house at Tamarisk. Barbara wrote, “Bobby and I tried to settle into our new life, but it wasn’t as easy a transition as I’d hoped.” Zeppo gave Barbara a hard time whenever Bobby was home. She wanted to take him out of military school and have him live with them full time. Zeppo paid the tuition for military school and Bobby continued to be only an occasional irritant for him.
Zeppo may not have been aware of the devastating effect military school had on his sons—particularly Tom. Pressuring Barbara to keep Bobby in military school seems like he considered it the only option. He was willing to pay whatever the cost to keep Tom, Tim, and now Bobby, out of his way. Barbara wrote, “Zeppo had no paternal instincts whatsoever, despite having adopted two children in his previous marriage.” He told friends he never wanted children and that his marriage to Marion was falling apart by the time she suggested that adopting a couple of kids could save it. His position was that if children helped their relationship, that would be okay. But if they didn’t at least Marion would not be alone when they split up.
With Barbara in Palm Springs Zeppo was suddenly placed in the position of needing to mend his relationship with Tom and Tim. He wasn’t going to convince Barbara that he’d be a good father figure for her son if he had no relationship with his own sons. Tim says,
Marion did not want us to be on good terms with Zeppo. She thought he was responsible for screwing up their marriage. She blamed him for us having to be with her. That sort of screwed up her life. And he’s fancy-free banging everything he can get his hands on, and she resented that. Zeppo called Marion and said, “Look, it’s about time I see them. I haven’t seen them. You’ve held them from me.” To Marion at that time, we were pawns. I think he finally got fed up and said, “Send them.” So, we went to Palm Springs at the end of the school year in 1958.
Tom and Tim were greeted by Zeppo’s butler, a fifty-eight-year-old black World War II veteran named Ulysses Grant Sheffield, and his forty-eight-year-old wife Versa, Zeppo’s maid. The Sheffields handled everything around the house, which the boys couldn’t help but notice was even more opulent than the Rexford and North Beverly houses. Recalling the trip Tom says, “He wasn’t married to Barbara yet. She was living in the house with him. She had her own bedroom, which we used when we stayed there. She slept with him, I guess. Her son wasn’t there. He was in military school. That was what people did back then. If they didn’t want you around, they just shipped you off to military school.”
Tim’s memories of the visit are dominated by a case of viral pneumonia that landed him in the hospital for several days. But otherwise, he recalls, “Zeppo was terrific. He couldn’t do enough for us. Horseback riding, golf, whatever. His Weimaraner dog, Fleet, would jump into the pool with us.” Tom remembers the trip quite differently. “He was placing bets on the phone all the time. After that visit, that was it for us. He hated us after that. He didn’t want to have anything to do with us.” It would be the last time Tom ever saw Zeppo. He was fifteen years old.
Zeppo wanting the boys to visit him may have seemed like a turning point to Marion, since he was usually trying to get them to be wherever he wasn’t, but she was unaware that he was mostly concerned with showing Barbara that he had a good relationship with his sons. He was pleased that the boys were doing well at Cheshire Academy, but the reality of it was that he paid the bills for whatever school they’d most recently been shuttled off to and expressed little interest in their lives. The effect was devastating to Tom, but Tim was more pragmatic and accepted whatever Zeppo could offer without expecting more. Tim offers some insight about his brother. “Tom didn’t think he got a fair shake out of life. Zeppo wasn’t too interested. Tom would have had a whole different life if he could have looked at things a little bit differently. He was certainly a smart and talented guy, but he just couldn’t get past some of the problems in our childhood.”
The long-retired actor put on a great show demonstrating a good relationship with his sons for Barbara—who was understandably skeptical, since this show was going on while her son was away at military school. She had to wonder why it wasn’t Bobby going horseback riding, playing golf, and splashing around in the pool with Zeppo’s dog. When the boys went back to New York Zeppo showed off Barbara to his brothers at a big dinner party. He was preparing for Barbara to become a member of the family.
When Groucho married Eden, part of the ritual had been to introduce his new bride into the family at large gatherings filled with show business reminiscing and a lot of laughter. It was at these family dinners that Zeppo got the laughs he never got in the act. In his book Bill Marx recalls a gathering that took place at Harpo and Susan’s house that he was lucky enough to witness when he was growing up.
Zeppo was regaling us with stories of their vaudeville years. This one was about the time when the two guys who were to be the front and back end of a horse that was an integral part of some silly sketch, got sick at the last minute, so Zeppo and Groucho, who weren’t in the sketch, agreed to fill in and be the horse for that performance. Unfortunately, neither one of them had ever been inside a horse to practice the coordination between the two that was required.
As Zeppo was describing their ineptitude, Groucho started to laugh out loud, and when Zeppo got to the point where they couldn’t see where they were going and wound up falling off the stage and onto the musicians in the pit, Groucho was himself falling off the couch with uncontrollable laughter. I turned to my mom and said, “I’ve seen Groucho crack a smile at a good joke. I’ve seen him even sort of laugh at a good story. But I’ve never seen him with tears in his eyes with laughter as I am seeing tonight.”
Mom told me that Zeppo was the only one she knew who could make Groucho laugh like that. Zeppo was a very funny, gifted raconteur and accomplished dialectician, who somehow was able to tweak Groucho’s funny bone like no other person.
A dinner with all five Marx Brothers assured Zeppo that Barbara would see him at his funniest and most charming, but he didn’t get the result he was hoping for after he introduced Barbara to the assembled Marxes. Barbara’s generally whitewashed memoir is surprisingly candid on her introduction to the family.
Zeppo took me to meet his family only because he was pressing me to be his wife. Whenever I saw him getting up steam to propose, though, I quickly changed the subject or began an argument—anything to distract him. I didn’t want to be backed into a corner and have to turn him down, so I stalled him repeatedly. He was kind and generous, but I really didn’t want to marry him. One of my chief reasons for avoiding his impending proposal, though, was that he wasn’t great with Bobby. . . . Although he tried for my sake to connect with my son, he always seemed relieved when Bobby went back to the military academy or to visit his grandparents. . . . Modeling in L.A. had never lost its allure and still seemed a realistic possibility, so after five months in this idyllic date palm oasis, I scooped up Bobby, kissed Zeppo goodbye, and headed a hundred miles west.
There might have been another reason for the timing of Barbara’s departure. On July 31, 1958, newspapers across the country carried a story with headlines like, “Zeppo Marx Sought in Gambling Probe,” “Zeppo Marx Sought for Questioning about Syndicate” and “G-Men Hunt Zeppo Marx to Testify.” It shouldn’t have been difficult to find him, but further headlines like “Zeppo Marx Proves Elusive” followed.
Treasury agents tracked down Gummo, who was quoted in the press saying, “He was around Los Angeles three or four days ago.” He also added that they might find him at his ranch near Blythe. Gummo had to know that Blythe was a hundred miles from the Martuc Ranch, but Zeppo might have considered it noble for his brother to have thrown the feds off his trail. Gummo’s son Bob recalled his father telling agents, “You’re not looking too hard. He’s either on a broad or a horse,” but that quote did not make it into the newspapers. Some of Zeppo’s friends told agents they last saw him leaving Hillcrest Country Club and that he might be heading for Palm Springs. Bill Marx recalls seeing Harpo hang up the telephone looking disconsolate. He asked his father what was wrong, and Harpo replied shaking his head, “It’s your Uncle Zeppo. The feds are after him. He’ll probably get away with it—whatever it is.”
When he was finally located after agents had searched for him for thirty-six hours, Zeppo told a reporter, “I know none of the people named in newspaper stories concerning the syndicate.” He added that he was dumbfounded as to why anyone would subpoena him. The following day Zeppo accepted the subpoena at the office of his attorneys, Laurence W. Bielenson and Allen E. Sussman, who issued this statement:
