Zeppo, p.31
Zeppo, page 31
Friedman and Johnny Rosselli decided the only way to save themselves was to kill George Seach before the trial. If the jury never hears the star witness the case falls apart. Rosselli arranged for mob hit men Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno and Frank Bompensiero to eliminate Seach. The pair headed to Las Vegas to stalk their target, but Seach was whisked away from them and put into protective custody almost immediately. Rosselli and Fratianno naturally had no idea that Bompensiero was an FBI informant. George Seach would testify at the trial, which would begin on June 11, 1968.
Victor Lands made a deal and pleaded guilty to one count of filing a false income tax return and the case against him did not go to trial. He must have had a good lawyer because he was intimately involved with the establishment of the scheme. As the chairman of the house committee at the Friars Club, Lands had allowed the installation of the surveillance system in the card room ceiling under the guise of it being a burglar alarm. Zeppo testified in the trial of the other five defendants on July 3. The Los Angeles Times reported,
Zeppo Marx, who described himself as a retired manufacturer and part-time actor—“not a very good one”—told of playing as a partner of Karl or Briskin against Mathes and Friedman on a few occasions. He said he lost but could not recall how much or whether he paid by cash or check. Several years later, Marx said, he played in two games in which Jacobs was an opponent. He said he lost several hundred dollars each time. Marx described himself as an “average player” and said he never felt that the winners were taking advantage of him.
Phil Silvers was asked how much he lost, and he answered, “Let me put it this way. I’m hitchhiking home.” All five defendants were convicted on December 2, 1968.
Shortly after he testified, Zeppo attended a Friars Club roast honoring Joey Bishop. Comedian Corbett Monica set the tone for the evening: “This dinner is so packed that a lot of Friars couldn’t get in. They’re watching the show through peepholes in the ceiling.” Milton Berle presented Bishop with a bunch of gag gifts, including “a periscope from the boys in the card room.” Zeppo’s involvement in the scandal didn’t amount to much more than publicly exposing his own recklessness as a gambler—again.
In the mid 1960s he’d managed to accomplish something that seemed impossible only a few years before. He’d gotten his name in the newspapers as much, or perhaps even more, than the semi-retired Groucho had. And it was almost always as a result of gambling or his association with mobsters. According to Tim these were the people he was comfortable with: “Gambling and mobsters were the normal course of business for Zeppo—his way of life. Those guys were his buddies.” Citing one example of Zeppo’s high stakes recklessness and impulsiveness, Tim recalls, “He was playing golf with somebody at Hillcrest, and the guy says to him, ‘I’ll bet you $10,000 you can’t make that putt.’ It’s like thirty feet. Zeppo says, ‘Just put your money down.’ And he makes the putt. There wasn’t a bet that Zeppo would turn down if he thought he could win. For Chico it was an addiction. For Zeppo it was a business.”
Zeppo had grown into a comfortable relationship with Bobby who, as a teenager shared some common interests with him.
I remember going to Dodger Stadium with him a lot. He liked to see Sandy Koufax pitch. He was friendly with Lee Walls, who played for the Dodgers for a few seasons in the early sixties, so we’d get to hang with the players a little. When I was fifteen-and-a-half I got a small motorcycle when I got my learner’s permit. Zeppo loved motorcycles. I was fascinated by his stories about riding. He had owned an Arial Square Four—a classic vintage British bike. He’d also owned a Vincent Black Shadow, which was another classic. He told me stories about going on rides with his friends in Hollywood.
After six years with Zeppo and Barbara, Bobby left Palm Springs to spend his final year of high school at a boarding school.
Tim spent the summer of 1965 with Marion and got a job in the mailroom at Universal Studios, courtesy of his uncle Alan Miller. After working as an agent at MCA following the sale of Marx, Miller & Marx, Miller moved on to become the vice president of production at Universal Television. Tim spent an evening with his father that summer. “He and Barbara took me to the Friars Club one night. I stayed with them at his apartment on Charleville. He gave me a sport coat to wear at the club and it was missing a button. My mother always kept him immaculately dressed and I remember thinking he would never have had a coat with a missing button when she was around.” Tim made every effort to have a relationship with his father, but it seemed Zeppo was only marginally interested. Tim had managed to develop a good relationship with Marion—who occasionally questioned his interest in seeing Zeppo.
As far as a relationship with Zeppo was concerned, Tom could not have been less interested. And his contact with Marion was minimal at this point.
Once I got away from them and came to Boston, that was it for me. They had this idea that we were supposed to be businessmen. We were supposed to be successful—which my brother actually accomplished. But I had no interest at all in being a businessman. I had no sense of business at all. I still don’t. I became interested in music when I was around fifteen or sixteen. I went to Berklee for two years and the people there basically hated me. So, I quit.
Tim suggests, “Tom started to think, ‘They don’t know as much as I do.’ So, he blew himself out of Berklee and ended up playing drums in a strip club. Then he’s heavy into drugs. Marion enabled Tom. Sent him money occasionally. Zeppo had no knowledge of his drug use at this point.”
Tim was back in Los Angeles for Christmas in 1965 and visited Zeppo and Barbara in Palm Springs for a few days. He described them as “cordial, but somewhat distant.” It would be his last visit with his father. He borrowed Marion’s car to go see him and recalls, “I’m not so sure my mother wanted me to go, but I wanted to see him. I was greeted at the door by their housekeeper who told me that my father and Barbara were taking a nap. I waited around a while and got to watch their butler pluck a chicken before I finally saw them. I didn’t have much interaction with Barbara at all, but they arranged a date for me, so I took some young lady to a movie. I think Barbara set it up. My date was supposedly the runner-up in the Miss Palm Springs pageant.”
Tim recalls Zeppo’s incredulous reaction when he tried to return some of the money he had been given for the date. “I gave you the money. You can spend it now or spend it later. It’s yours.” Zeppo never issued refunds. He didn’t expect his son to. Before Tim drove back to Los Angeles, he played a round of golf with Zeppo and Barbara. He ran into his Uncle Groucho at Tamarisk and recalls it as one of the handful of times he ever met Groucho.
Tim’s visit essentially marked the end of Zeppo’s relationship with his two sons. When Tim sent Zeppo and Barbara an invitation to his December 1967 wedding, he received a card back from Barbara with a short note saying they had other plans that day. When he sent an announcement of his son’s birth in January 1969, he didn’t even get a card back. Tim suspects Zeppo never saw the invitation or the announcement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Night We Called It a Day
FOR BARBARA LIFE IN PALM SPRINGS IN THE LATE 1960S WAS IDYLLIC AND at the same time boring. She was determined to remain married to Zeppo but wasn’t exactly discouraging the flirtations of Frank Sinatra. In her book she wrote, “When we weren’t seeing Frank socially, Zeppo and I muddled along with dinners and parties as well as keeping up with the constant rounds of gin, golf and tennis—the last often played on Frank’s court, which was the closest.” Zeppo’s jealousy was somewhat hypocritical in light of his own constant infidelity, usually on his boat, but sometimes during trips without Barbara to Los Angeles or Las Vegas.
Zeppo and Barbara took a trip to New York with Groucho and Eden in April 1967. Groucho was promoting his latest book, The Groucho Letters, and one of the highlights of the trip was a tribute to the Marx Brothers at the short-lived Gallery of Modern Art. Zeppo was not especially interested in attending a tribute to the Marx Brothers, but he was fascinated by the founder of the Gallery of Modern Art, Huntington Hartford.
Hartford was one of the richest men in the world and was an heir to the A&P supermarket fortune. He built the museum on Columbus Circle to house his extensive personal collection of modern art. Zeppo had known him briefly when he came to Hollywood in the 1940s and tried to buy RKO and Republic Pictures. Hartford also briefly owned a talent agency. But as much as any of that, Zeppo was also interested in Hartford’s father, who was a manufacturer involved with the invention of the shock absorber. Money, art, and cars were still among Zeppo’s favorite things.
The two-week Marx retrospective began on April 18 and Groucho regaled the audience with stories in between film clips on opening night. Harry Ruby arrived on stage and accompanied Groucho on piano for a couple of songs as Zeppo mostly watched from the audience. But he did contribute the story of Groucho and Harpo turning up at a bachelor party completely naked in the 1920s. It was a rare lapse in Zeppo’s avoidance of anything close to show business.
A few years later he attended the 1970 Broadway opening of Minnie’s Boys with Groucho. The musical about the early life of the Marx Brothers was cowritten by Groucho’s son Arthur. Producer Arthur Whitelaw shared his recollection of the evening with Charlotte Chandler.
Zeppo came to the opening of Minnie’s Boys in New York. I’ll never forget. I said to Zep, “At the curtain I’d love for you to get up on the stage and make an appearance.” And he said, “No, no. I leave all that to Groucho.” And Groucho got up at the end of the show, and he said to the audience, who was then standing and applauding him, “I only wish Harpo and Chico could have been here tonight to witness this.”
When Groucho had acknowledged Zeppo at the Gallery of Modern Art event, Zeppo got up on stage, told a story and got some laughs. Groucho would not make that mistake twice. Thirty-six years after he left the act, there was still no room in the spotlight for the fourth Marx Brother—no matter how rich and successful he’d become.
With Groucho scheduled to do several newspaper and television interviews during the Gallery of Modern Art retrospective, Zeppo tried to keep a low profile. But when Vincent Canby came to the St. Regis Hotel to interview Groucho for the New York Times, Zeppo joined them for lunch at the hotel’s King Cole Bar. Canby wrote, “Zeppo had lox and eggs and traded opinions and stories laced with reminiscence and vitriol.” The article mentioned that Zeppo looked fit and after leaving the Marx Brothers had “become one of Hollywood’s leading talent agents, then became an airplane parts manufacturer and is now the backer of a ‘revolutionary new wristwatch.’”
Zeppo listed himself in the Palm Springs city directory as a fisherman but kept himself busy with occasional projects that interested him. With his old friend A. Dale Herman from Marman Products he was the co-owner of a pair of patents for an automatic pulse rate monitor wristwatch. Herman’s daughter Rita remembers Zeppo suggesting the idea to her father because he was starting to have concerns about his own health, and he wanted to be able to monitor his heart on the golf course.
Zeppo reiterated one of his important business rules to Herman: “Never use your own money. Use other people’s money.” They sought an investor for their idea and on July 18, 1967, Zeppo and Herman signed an agreement with real estate developer and philanthropist Louis H. Boyar. Boyar invested $40,000 to develop a commercially satisfactory combination of their pulse rate monitor invention and a watch movement.
The joint venture, which they named the Lifeguard Watch, was set up with Zeppo owning 51 percent, Boyar 39 percent, and Herman 10 percent. They tried to bring the idea to market for several years, even issuing press releases pointing out that the invention was not yet in production. Herman’s daughter says the project was abandoned when her father began to have serious health problems. Like Zeppo’s idea for roll-on deodorant, the pulse monitor wristwatch was ahead of its time. Fifty years later—after the Marx-Herman patent was no longer viable—the idea came of age and would lead to successful products like the Fitbit and the Apple Watch.
Zeppo in retirement remained on the lookout for innovative ideas. His fellow Friars Club scandal victim Harry Karl was involved with a project that interested Zeppo. Karl owned a Santa Monica company called Sutton Research Corporation, which had started work on creating a nicotine-free cigarette in 1962. Karl offered Zeppo the opportunity to buy three hundred shares of Sutton Research stock for $600.
Six years later, with the idea having caught the attention of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the value of the stock suddenly skyrocketed. Karl never took Zeppo’s $600 and never turned over the stock. Zeppo claimed to have paid the $600 to Karl in April 1968, but Karl still had not turned over the stock when Zeppo sued him in December 1968 for $449,400 or the three hundred shares.
Zeppo’s suit asked the Los Angeles Superior Court to order Karl to pay him either the value of the stock—minus the $600 payment—or to make Karl give him the stock. The lawsuit quietly disappeared the following spring when R. J. Reynolds completed its evaluation of Karl’s product. On March 18, 1969, theNews and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina reported, “Reynolds dropped its experiments with the tobacco substitute made by Sutton Research Corporation . . . saying the substance produces health irritants of its own.” An ironic ending for the chain-smoking Zeppo’s quest for a healthy cigarette. Equally ironic was the end of Zeppo’s long friendship with Harry Karl. On Zeppo’s 1953 Friars Club membership application he had listed the Karl Shoe Company as a business reference.
His frustration with the notoriously difficult Harry Karl was exacerbated by Zeppo’s serious approach to the stock market. Zeppo studied the market, always on the lookout for any competitive edge he could find. His brothers, knowing his tenacity in business, tended to follow Zeppo’s investment advice. Groucho had lost a significant amount of money in the 1929 market crash and was careful once he started investing again, but his respect for Zeppo’s business acumen had resulted in some profitable investments. Zeppo’s latest discovery was Lewis A. Bracker, a brash young stockbroker and investment advisor. In September 1968 Zeppo’s was one of the required member signatures on Bracker’s application to join the Friars Club. Bracker was interviewed for a Los Angeles Times profile on January 24, 1969. The Times called Bracker a “superbroker” and quoted Zeppo as a satisfied client.
“I’m one of the best deal men around,” says Bracker matter-of-factly. “I can smell a deal a mile away. In the conventional sense, I’m not a good broker. I put people into deals I’m close to. I tell them what to buy and when to get out. If they’re smart, they’ll do as I say.”
One client who obeys is Zeppo Marx, of Marx Brothers fame. “He’s excellent,” Marx says. “A brilliant young fellow who does very well for us.” Marx won’t discuss details, but his brothers also deal with Bracker, and Bracker has done well for them.
Bracker did well enough for the Marxes to put Zeppo in front of yet another grand jury. In June 1971 Bracker was indicted on nine counts of grand theft and three of violating California corporate security laws. Zeppo was among thirty witnesses who were called to testify as victims of Bracker. Zeppo’s initial attraction to Bracker may have come because he saw a younger version of himself in him. Bracker, a multimillionaire who drove a Rolls-Royce and lived in a Brentwood mansion, bragged to the Los Angeles Times that in college he majored in ping-pong and flunked math. If Bracker was slightly crooked in his dealings Zeppo may have even considered that a point in his favor. In November 1971 Bracker pled guilty to the securities violations and spent five months in prison. He paid $200,000 in restitution to clients and the grand theft charges were dropped. Shortly after his release from prison Bracker was charged with eleven new counts of grand theft, but by that time Zeppo had taken his business elsewhere.
Barbara’s friendship with Dinah Shore put Zeppo in social situations he often would have preferred to avoid. He never objected to becoming acquainted with powerful people, but for the most part, the people he’d meet at these gatherings bored him. On March 1, 1970, Dinah was the guest of honor at a swanky Palm Springs party at the Thunderbird Heights home of Vondell and Fred Wilson. (Mrs. Wilson was the former child actress Vondell Darr.) The affair celebrated both Dinah’s birthday and the conclusion of her annual tennis tournament. The now twice-divorced Shore was escorted by C. D. Ward, a handsome young aide to vice president Spiro Agnew. Dinah arrived at the affair with Ward, Agnew, and his wife, and Zeppo and Barbara.
The Desert Sun reported, “Before long the Vice President and Bob Hope and Zeppo Marx retired to the Wilsons’ luxurious billiards room to shoot a game or two.” Agnew visited Palm Springs frequently and this new friendship soon resulted in Zeppo being invited to dinner with President Richard Nixon in May 1971.
Zeppo still enjoyed Las Vegas and made frequent trips to the casinos. In the 1960s he’d become acquainted with Nate Jacobson, the president and part owner of Caesars Palace. When Jacobson opened the Kings Castle Hotel and Casino in Lake Tahoe, Zeppo was invited to the grand opening on July 1, 1970. Among the stars in attendance when comedian Buddy Hackett performed in the Camelot Room on opening night were Zeppo’s former agency clients Lana Turner and Barbara Stanwyck, neither of whom he’d seen in years. While at Kings Castle, Zeppo gave a rare interview to Detroit Free Press columnist Shirley Eder in which it was revealed that he’d come to Lake Tahoe on Frank Sinatra’s private jet.
By this point Zeppo had only occasional telephone contact with Tim, who was living in Philadelphia with his wife and son, and no contact at all with Tom, who had been living in Boston trying to make a living as a drummer since dropping out of Berklee. Tom remembers, “Marion wanted to get some tapes to my cousin Bill to see if he could help me because I wasn’t working. I was playing with good musicians like John Abercrombie and Jan Hammer, but I wasn’t working at all. We were all on welfare.” Tom visited Marion in Los Angeles in 1971 and was adamant about not seeing Zeppo. Marion did not suggest the idea at all, but Tom still felt a need to reiterate his disinterest in his father. He made the trip to see his cousin Bill, who had an active career as a composer and pianist and fronted his own jazz trio.
