Zeppo, p.33
Zeppo, page 33
That evening at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion brought another encounter with a young Marx Brothers fan. In his memoir, Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House, Steve Stoliar wrote of spotting Zeppo in the parking garage after the performance.
I mustered all my courage, strode over to him and said, “Mr. Marx, I just wanted to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed your work over the years.” “It wasn’t me you enjoyed,” he protested, “It was my brothers.” However right he may have been, there was no denying how exciting it was to have been admonished by a genuine Marx Brother.
Zeppo and Barbara’s divorce was finalized on May 1, 1973. Two days later he responded to a fan letter inquiring about the Marx Brothers, apologizing for his slow reply. “Sorry it took me so long to write to you. I recently went through a divorce. Harpo and Chico are deceased, and I have been lucky to carry on. I still enjoy life.”
On July 13, the Desert Sun reported that Zeppo had moved into a new condominium in Palm Springs. “‘It’s ideal,’ said Marx who is selling his lovely Tamarisk Country Club home to move into the Diplomat. ‘It has everything I’ve been looking for, space, a beautiful view, every convenience, and privacy when I want it.’”
He had all of that at Tamarisk, but his view there included Sinatra’s house, and he had seen enough of that. Zeppo would still have lunch at Tamarisk on occasion, but after he moved, he became a regular at the Canyon Country Club—until he was banned from that establishment. Old habits die hard and Zeppo got into a fight with Rocco Zangari, a low-level organized crime figure thirty years younger. In Zeppo’s view, Rocco violated the cardinal rule of gambling. He wagered more than he had and could not pay up after their gin rummy game. Zangari’s brother Dominick was the owner of Dominick’s Restaurant, a popular spot in Rancho Mirage and a well-known Sinatra hangout. For scuffling with Rocco, Zeppo briefly found himself unwelcome at Dominick’s, but was eventually forgiven.
Steve Stoliar soon began working at Groucho’s house sorting his archives and helping with fan mail. He had a few further encounters with Zeppo and wrote, “I found Zeppo to be charming, animated and very amusing. And he seemed about twenty years younger than he actually was.” Zeppo also met Sto-liar’s girlfriend, and she instantly caught his eye. When she and Stoliar stopped dating and remained friends, Zeppo made his move. Stoliar wrote:
Linda and I stopped seeing each other romantically. About that time, I’d found a couple of vintage photos of Zeppo that I wanted him to sign. . . . I sent the photos to Zeppo along with a note informing him that Linda and I had broken up and wanting to know if a man of his experience had any advice for the lovelorn.
I should have seen it coming. Two days later, I received a long-distance call from the Tamarisk Country Club in Palm Springs:
. . . “Steve? It’s Zeppo Marx, how are you? I got those pictures you sent, and I’ll be happy to sign them for you. God, I was good-looking back then. Listen, I’m sorry to hear about you and Linda, but I was wondering: Do you think she’d go out with me?”
Zeppo was seventy-four and Linda was nineteen. Zeppo described their one date to Stoliar. “I took her to dinner in San Diego and then to a jai alai game in Tijuana. But we didn’t ‘do’ anything. I didn’t even kiss her, Steve. I swear it. You know, she’s very nice, but all she did was talk about herself all evening.” When Zeppo saw Stoliar at a party or event he would introduce him to whoever was nearby by saying, “Have you met Steve? He and I went out with the same girl, but he got further with her than I did.”
Zeppo had much more in common with Roxann Ploss, and they began vacationing together. She too was taken to a jai alai match in Tijuana. In Las Vegas, Zeppo took Roxann to shows with stars like Wayne Newton. She remembers a lengthy backstage visit with Jerry Van Dyke. And of course, they gambled. She observed Zeppo playing chemin de fer and baccarat but suggests that he wasn’t gambling all that much at this point.
He was most passionate about fishing and would occasionally make the thousand-mile drive from Palm Springs to Buena Vista on the Baja Peninsula in a motor home for a fishing vacation. He made a point of telling Charlotte Chandler that he was a commercial fisherman. When Zeppo took Roxann to the Salton Sea the fishing became less enjoyable for him when she caught more fish than he did. She says, “Fishing was never a business for Zeppo. The commercial fisherman thing was just his inside joke. He could just as easily have called himself a professional card shark.”
Beginning in the early sixties, Zeppo had a regular group of fishing buddies that frequently joined him for trips to Mexico on his boat. Eddie Suisman, Leonard Krieger, and Charlie Lubin were wealthy businessmen. The group was rounded out by Chuck Flick, the skipper of Zeppo’s boat. According to Roxann Ploss, none of them would ever discuss any details of what went on during these excursions. It was a very private club. There would have been no need to be mysterious about fishing and playing cards, so these mostly married fishermen probably had some female companionship on their top-secret fishing trips, which continued into the seventies.
Barbara was living in Eden’s former home and had become Sinatra’s constant companion. She wrote of an unusual encounter with Groucho shortly after she moved out of Zeppo’s house.
There was only one person who dared to express his disapproval publicly—Groucho Marx. He came up to us at a charity event one day and said to Frank, “Why don’t you let Barbara go? You don’t want her. Let her go back to Zeppo.” Everyone knew Frank had a trigger temper, but Groucho was a fearless octogenarian. Fortunately, Frank chose not to respond, and I didn’t say a word either, so dear old Groucho repeated his statement before going off with that funny little walk of his. I was both astonished at his nerve and touched that he was still so protective of his little brother Zep.
Barbara would finally marry Sinatra on July 11, 1976.
Groucho’s protective instinct was something Zeppo was not above exploiting. In the wake of the publicity about the Friars Club scandal and his second divorce, Zeppo convinced Groucho that he was in dire financial trouble. Groucho, like everyone else close to Zeppo, had no idea how much money he’d been paid for Marman Products, and the agency deal was mysterious enough that even Gummo’s assessment of it was incomplete—he being unaware that Zeppo likely received an additional undocumented payment not shared with his partners. When a compromised Groucho in his early eighties agreed to pay some of Zeppo’s gambling debts—separately and apart from the monthly stipend he was already paying him—he certainly didn’t consider the steady and significant monthly income from his brother’s Safeway stores. And Groucho probably didn’t give much thought to why he was giving financial assistance to a guy who’d just purchased a new yacht.
Groucho wanted to see Gummo and Zeppo as often as possible and frequently hosted parties at his house. Erin made sure the affairs were filled with younger celebrities like Jack Nicholson, Sally Kellerman, George Segal, and Alice Cooper as well as old friends like George Burns, Harry Ruby, and George Jessel. Zeppo drove in from Palm Springs for as many of these parties as he could manage. It was an opportunity to flirt with young women. Gummo rarely made the scene at Groucho’s house, preferring to avoid the circus-like atmosphere created by Erin. Once he began dating Roxann Ploss, Zeppo brought her to Groucho’s house on occasion. She says, “Erin and I became quasi-friends, something Zeppo warned me against often. It ended as he predicted.”
Apart from persistent problems with his hearing, Zeppo appeared to be a very robust physical specimen in his early seventies. But chain-smoking and less-than-healthy eating habits started to catch up with him. Bobby Marx recalls,
He was always sensitive about his hearing problem. He didn’t want to wear hearing aids. He would speak in a very loud voice and expected you to do the same because he couldn’t hear. He was getting older, which was a tough thing for him. Still vital as a man but getting older. That was a struggle for him because that was a big part of his persona—that macho, virile, tough, attractive guy. A guy who could do whatever he wanted. It was only at the very end that he started to fail. You could see him losing weight and getting thinner, but his attitude was such that he was in control of the situation. He didn’t go out as much. He didn’t play as much golf.
Zeppo developed an aortic abdominal aneurysm—a weakening of the wall of the largest artery in the body. This was the same ailment for which Harpo had his fateful open-heart surgery nine years earlier. Harpo followed the medical advice offered by Gummo, who insisted the surgeons in Los Angeles were excellent and that there was no need to travel to Texas where the pioneers of open-heart surgery, Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, practiced. Susan had suggested going to Texas to see DeBakey, but Harpo took Gummo’s advice. At his advanced age and with the newness of the procedure, there was a good chance Harpo would not have survived an operation in Texas either, but Zeppo was taking no chances.
Zeppo was three years younger than Harpo at the time of his operation, and Harpo had the added disadvantage of a history of heart trouble that included three heart attacks. Zeppo arranged for his operation to be performed by the man who had developed a new method for repairing aortic aneurysms. Dr. Denton A. Cooley was a professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and founded the Texas Heart Institute. Zeppo flew to Houston with Bobby just before Christmas, and Cooley operated on him at St. Luke’s Hospital on December 28, 1973.
Bobby says, “He really had no one else to go with him. My mom encouraged me to do it. He wouldn’t tell anyone he was dating because he didn’t want to show any vulnerability or weakness. He had a big room and I stayed with him.” After initially being discharged, Zeppo and Bobby returned to Houston. Zeppo became ill as soon as they got back to Palm Springs. Bobby explains, “They left a sponge inside of him, or something stupid like that.”
The operation was successful, and he was discharged for the second time in mid-January with instructions to do nothing strenuous—including golf and fishing—for the next several weeks. According to Tim, his father’s well-known arrogance and self-confidence overruled Dr. Cooley’s medical advice. Days after returning to Palm Springs, Zeppo took his boat out and went fishing. Casting a line, he immediately tore out his stitches. At the hospital in Palm Springs Zeppo angrily exclaimed, “It’s not my fault they used cheap fucking thread.”
In February 1974 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Groucho would get an honorary Academy Award for his “brilliant creativity and the unequaled achievements of the Marx Brothers in the art of motion picture comedy.” Groucho spoke to Associated Press writer Bob Thomas, who recorded his reaction to the announcement:
I only wish that Harpo and Chico could be here to share it. No—if only Minnie were here. None of us would have amounted to anything if it hadn’t been for her. What a woman she was! She said that Sam, her husband, could cough all night and she wouldn’t wake up. But if one of her sons coughed just once she would wake up immediately.
Asked if he would collect his Oscar in person at the Los Angeles Music Center, Groucho replied, “Certainly, unless they just want to shove it under the door.” By the time a very shaky and frail-looking Groucho ambled onto the stage on April 2 to collect the award, the sentimental feelings expressed to the Associated Press had diminished—or he more likely followed Erin’s instructions and thanked her while ignoring Zeppo and Gummo in his speech.
Zeppo, sitting in the audience, had no discernible reaction to the slight. In My Life with Groucho, Arthur Marx wrote of a dinner with Gummo and his wife a few days after the ceremony: “Gummo said that he was thoroughly disgusted with Groucho for mentioning Erin in his acceptance speech—‘You’d think she had something to do with the success of the Marx Brothers,’ he complained.”
The ceremony was followed by a party a month later at Hillcrest Country Club thrown by Jack Nicholson, Bill Cosby, and Marvin Hamlisch. Zeppo, fully recovered from his surgery and appearing healthy, attended and mingled with the celebrities—showing a particular interest in any young women that might be willing to go out with him. On May 23, 1974, Groucho, Zeppo, and Gummo attended the premiere of the rerelease of Animal Crackers in Westwood. Zeppo was frequently seen at events with Groucho and attended the February 9, 1975, American Film Institute tribute to Orson Welles at the Century Plaza Hotel with him. Zeppo was accompanied by Marvin Hamlisch’s sister, Terry Liebling. That was an awkward evening for Zeppo. Frank Sinatra was the master of ceremonies and Zeppo ran into Barbara at the event.
That fall Groucho celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday with a celebrity-filled party at his house. Gummo and Zeppo drove in from Palm Springs for the event. Chronicling the affair in Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends, Charlotte Chandler wrote:
Zeppo brought some tuna which he had personally caught and canned. Groucho accepted the token with his customary grace. “You needn’t have bothered coming. You could’ve just sent the tuna.” Zeppo understood and would, in fact, have been worried by any sign of greater sentiment from older brother Julius.
Whatever Zeppo does he does well—canning tuna, playing cards, inventing complex mechanical devices or creating businesses. Uninhibited, and relatively unexhibited, Zeppo had the talent and energy to have been a pioneer, an inventor, a businessman, an agent—even a Marx Brother.
Zeppo began spending even more time in Los Angeles with Groucho, who was deeply depressed over the 1974 deaths of Harry Ruby and Jack Benny. But he was still committed to living in the desert. He was also spending time in San Diego, where he’d moved his boat from the Salton Sea. He sold his Palm Springs condominium and moved to a complex in Rancho Mirage called Desert Island and joined the newly opened Desert Island Yacht Club.
On February 19, 1975, the Desert Sun reported, “The first annual yacht race was led by Zeppo Marx, who recently became a condominium owner at the posh Desert Island development. Marx served as honorary commodore of the Desert Island fleet.” In Son of Harpo Speaks! Bill Marx recalled Zeppo’s time at Desert Island:
[H]e sold his house and moved to a place in Rancho Mirage called Desert Island, which was completely surrounded by a body of water that was always stocked with fish. Zeppo’s no-nonsense approach toward people made him the perfect selection to be the Fish Commish of Desert Island. It was his job to see to it that the fishing limit was two fish per person per day. One day he saw a guy pulling out many more fish than the limit.
Bristling with anger, Zeppo ran out to confront and admonish the man for breaking the rules.
“You SOB! Don’t you know there is a limit of only two fish per day?”
“Yes, I do, but I’m only down here on weekends, so this is two for Monday, two for Tuesday, two for Wednesday . . .”
Zeppo was about to haul off and deck him, when suddenly controlling his temper, he responded, “Hey, fella, you’re good. Real good!” and walked away.
Roxann Ploss remembers the day of Barbara and Frank Sinatra’s wedding. It was at the Annenberg Estate. “To Zeppo it was like adding insult to injury because the entrance was directly across from his balcony at Desert Island. He looked out as the guests arrived and said, ‘I’m going fishing.’ He would never admit it, but he was deeply hurt by the Sinatra-Barbara thing.”
Zeppo had certainly mellowed by this time, but he was still capable of letting his temper get him into trouble. He was awaiting a court date related to an incident that occurred on April 30, 1973—the day before his divorce from Barbara was finalized. Zeppo had met Jean Bodul at the wedding of golf pro Ken Venturi on November 13, 1972, at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage. It was a star-studded event hosted by Frank Sinatra, who by this time was having an affair with Barbara. Zeppo and Barbara were among the five hundred guests who celebrated Venturi’s marriage to Hazel “Beau” Wheat, the hostess at Ruby’s Dunes restaurant, a favorite Palm Springs hangout of Sinatra’s. Sinatra gave away the bride and introduced her friend Jean Bodul to Zeppo.
Bodul was a thirty-nine-year-old divorced mother of a teenaged daughter and lived in a trailer park near Zeppo’s Tamarisk home. Jean had been in a long-term tempestuous relationship with notorious mobster Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno. In The Last Mafioso—Fratianno’s authorized biography—author Ovid Demaris noted the reference to Jean in a January 10, 1969, Fratianno probation report:
“In the summer of 1966,” the report stated, without offering a shred of evidence, “it was learned that subject Fratianno had a girlfriend in San Pedro by the name of Jean Bodul, female, Caucasian. Investigation revealed that Bodul was a prostitute working out of the Hollywood area where she maintained an apartment for just that purpose. She was handling her customers through referral from a known pimp in the Hollywood area. Fratianno made frequent trips to the San Pedro area and was seen on many occasions in the company of Bodul.”
In April 1969, Jean and Jimmy appeared before a Los Angeles grand jury investigating the death of a mobster who very likely died while chauffeuring Fratianno to the airport. Jean regularly pressured Jimmy for marriage. He’d been divorced a year earlier and had agreed to marry her but changed his mind at the last minute. Jean threw a heavy ashtray at his head and ran out onto the streets of Lake Tahoe, where she went on a violent drunken rampage that landed her in jail. In 1970 Fratianno made a plea bargain in an extortion case and became an FBI informant in exchange for his sentence being reduced to probation. The government reneged on the plea deal and sent Fratianno to Chino State Prison for three years. He stopped informing.
Jean didn’t give up on Jimmy, but they still argued whenever they spoke. Demaris wrote, “Jean stopped coming to Chino on visiting days. During that period, Jimmy heard that her drinking problem had worsened. She was living in Palm Springs, only a short drive from Chino, and the rumor was that she was involved with Zeppo Marx. . . . In a pique of temper, Jimmy had removed her name from the list of approved visitors.”
