Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Robert Bader Encore

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

GGACP celebrates January's National Book Blitz Month and the recent release of the book "Zeppo: the Reluctant Marx Brother" by presenting this ENCORE of a 2017 interview with author,  archivist and Marx Brothers fanatic Robert S. Bader. Also in this episode: Gummo goes to war, Harpo “courts” Amelia Earhart, Groucho cashes in on “Skidoo” and Gilbert pals around with Chico’s daughter. PLUS: Swain’s Rats & Cats! The real-life Sunshine Boys! Bugsy Siegel buys the farm! Dennis Hopper plays Napoleon! And the mystery of the disappearing Marx Brother!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. ["I'm Not a Man"] Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre once again.

We're recording at Nutmeg with our engineer Frank Ferdorosa. And our guest this week is a writer, editor, producer, archivist and author with numerous television and documentary credits including Dick Cavett's Vietnam, Dick Cavett's Watergate, the legendary Bing Crosby, You Bet Your Life, The Lost Episodes, and The Dawn of Sound, How Movies Learned to Talk. Recent DVD productions include The Honeymooners, Lost Episodes, 1951-1957, and The Best of the Danny K Show. At the tender age of eight, his grandmother served him a grilled cheese sandwich and sat him down in front of the TV during a broadcast of the movie Monkey Business, leading to a lifelong love affair

with the four unforgettable individuals known as Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zepo. His fascination with the Marxists led him to produce Marx Brothers TV Collection and edit a collection of Groucho's writings called Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales. His latest book is the very first comprehensive history of the Brothers' live performances, entitled Four of the Three Musketeers, the Marx brothers on stage. Please welcome to the show a man of many talents and someone who was born to be a guest on this podcast,

Robert S. Bader. Thank you, that's the best introduction ever. It's the best one you're ever gonna get, buddy. I can't ever beat that. Well, we try. That was about you, right? I hope so. If it wasn't, I gotta meet guy. He sounds great. Hilbert stayed up writing that. Yes. He stayed up late. No it just popped into my head. All off the top of his head. By the way those,

before we talk about the Marx's, those Cavett docs are terrific. Yeah. So bravo. Thank you. What a great archive to be able to work with. Yeah. Basically, we were able to do those shows because of all the stuff that's in that archive. Well, the Watergate show alone. I mean, it's just terrific. Dick interviewed all of those guys while it was happening. And Dick Haver was supposed to be here with you. Yes, but you blew him off. Yeah, yes.

Well, it was complicated. I think he's like stuck on a plane. Yeah, he wasn't gonna be here till tomorrow and we needed to do this show today. So, we will have Dick back. He's been here twice already. Yeah. He was a first guest. We'll see if he's willing to come back after this indignity. Gilbert wants to know, did Harpo have a fling with Amelia Earhart? I believe this is true. Now, you've obviously read deep into the book. Oh, one of us did.

That suggestion comes up very far into this very heavy book. But the fictitious love affair he talks about in Harpo Speaks is a composite of several girlfriends. And because of his circumstances with his wife, he doctored up this fictitious character to eliminate the possibility that it could be Amelia Earhart by having her die in a crash in 1931. But there is some documentation of his knowing her.

Fascinating. So there is a chance that Harpo may have fucked Amelia Earhart. I'd say there's a damn good chance. Who are we going to ask? So, in Amelia Earhart, it was a lesbian, was she not? I think she was a switch hitter. She was married to a guy named George Putnam, who was, as in the Putnam & Sons publisher, George Putnam. And he moved to Hollywood, because she wanted to move to Hollywood, and he got a job in the story department at Paramount.

So she had a studio pass, and she was hobnobbing with all the movie stars There's photos of her on the lot with Cary Grant and Marlena Dietrich. She just loved being around movie stars. And was it true that when she was on the plane last, she started masturbating, thinking about Harpo and that's why she crashed? I think when they finally fight that a reporter, that could very well be there. See, now, of all these showbiz stories that I love to tell, which generally involve Danny Kay, Laurence Olivier, Danny Thomas... He knows a thing or two about Danny Kay. I know these stories.

He knows a little bit. He's a Danny Kay archivist. And of course, Cesar Romero. You left out Forrest Tucker. Oh yes, Forrest Tucker. But that was just a giant dick. A guest who listens to the show. Oh yes.

We don't get too many of those. But Harpo, fucking Amelia Earhart, that's a classic one. I don't think there's any photographic documentation, so we're gonna have to just go on faith. Now, Milton Berle... fucked... what was it? Amy Semple McPherson, I think. Wow! Probably a religious experience for someone. Yes! That's impressive!

Where did you get this information? Yes! And why aren't you writing a coffee table book? Yeah! Because Danny Thomas would be lying underneath it distracting me. This book that you have written, and I didn't get my hands on the Groucho book yet, which I will, the book about Groucho's writing, but this one about the history of the Marx Brothers on stage is exhaustively, shall we say, researched. The deep, the level of detail and I was showing Gilbert when we got here and set up shop tonight.

It's scary. This is what happens when somebody leaves me alone at the library. Was this eight years of your life? Were you joking? Eight years of writing it. I've been researching it since I was a little kid, but I didn't really have a plan. I just wanted to know everything I could find about the Marx brothers. And as time went by, I said, you know, when people ask me why are you collecting all this stuff, I would just have the stock answer,

I'm working on a book. Not really knowing that I was for a number of years. Along the way in doing this, I collected enough of Groucho's sort of lost writings from various periodicals that no one knew about. And I got that published as a book, and it did really well. I did a revised edition of it in 2011. I added some stuff to it.

And by that point, I knew I wanted to do this, and I set out to do this around 2008. I stopped doing some other work, and I wanted to really devote myself to this, and I thought I could do it in a couple of years. But having an actual career and really doing other stuff made it take eight years. I thought it was going to take two two or three, took about eight. Now there's a story that I think is apocryphal and for me to say that. The apocryphal ones are often the best ones. We built a show around those. Yeah, it's not about Nat Pendleton shitting on Harpo or anything.

Or Nat Perrin. Yes. And that's that you hear the story like, well, the funniest Marx brother was Zepo. This is what the Marx brothers themselves apparently thought. The thing about Zepo that's amazing to people to learn, and I get a little bit of this through in the book, he was a pretty talented guy and he had a lot of ability as a performer but they never really exploited it because he came into the act as a replacement for Gummo who was by his own admission not very talented not very good didn't want to be on the stage had a very bad stammer as a kid and worked hard to overcome it so his role became a guy who sang and danced a little and fed Groucho straight lines and he was sort of the minimalist Marx brother. He was the guy who was the least

important in the act. And yet one of the first ones on stage. Indeed yeah and when Zepo has to take his place it's there he's there to fill that role regardless of that he could do much more. So I think he always resented that and he always said he wanted to get out of the act and they occasionally throw him a bone and do a little more and a thing that's lost on get out of the act. And they occasionally throw him a bone and let him do a little more. And a thing that's lost on a lot of people is when they turn those Broadway shows into movies, in the 20s, a Broadway musical would run two hours and 45 minutes,

and a film would be turned into something that's around 90 minutes. The first thing they do is they knocked out all the musical numbers, except for one or two. And on Broadway, Zepo's got three or four featured musical numbers. He's got a lot of other stuff to do, and when they truncate these shows, Zepo's part pretty much goes out the window. He was a pretty talented guy. Yeah, because Zepo was kind of looked upon as like, why was Zepo in the movie? They needed a guy to wear a nice suit, apparently. That's all he does in some of these movies. Well, all of us purists, we prefer the four Marx brothers to the three Marx brothers.

Well, I certainly do. I mean, I the four Marx brothers to the three Marx brothers. Well, I certainly do. I mean, I certainly do. And you've been on record as saying that, you know, there's some dynamic that's lost without him. The Paramount films are their best films. Now, Groucho later in his life would say the best films we made are with Irving Thalberg at MGM.

I mean, by that point in his life, he's saying that because those are the ones where they got paid really well. Yes. I do mention this in the book. They had a bad deal with Paramount where they were being paid 50% of the net profits on the three films they made in Hollywood. That went so badly that they broke the contract and walked out and sued them and didn't get the money they were supposed to get until a settlement was made in 1962.

They learned what net profits in Hollywood meant. When they signed with MGM, they took 15% of the gross and they actually made a very quick 600 grand on a night of the opera and Their families still get money on those pictures. So by the 60s when Grouch said Oh the Thalberg films are our best films. Those are the ones where he got a check. Yeah Yeah, well also he's probably remembering to the Thalberg had a genuine admiration for them and appreciation of them So they were being treated better. I think Thalberg had a genuine admiration for them, an appreciation of them, so they were being treated better. I think Thalberg's early death made everybody sort of worship him. He was an incredibly talented guy and a brilliant producer, but Groucho's sort of canonization

of Thalberg within the Marx Brothers story makes no sense if you watch the Paramount films. Yeah, it's like he respected them and he was a brilliant man and he knew business-wise what would sell like the night of the opera sold and I think the early marks the great marks brothers didn't do incredible at box office they did actually of horse feathers was the number one Paramount film of 1932 yeah they made a lot of money and the reason they were so upset with the way the contract was going is they know their films are hits and the number one star Paramount was Maurice Chevalier the Marx Brothers are pretty much number two at the time and

Their films were doing very well, but they weren't seeing the return and if you can do this But I'll save you the trouble if you go to the motion picture academy and you look at the ledgers and the financing of these pictures They're writing checks to people against the Marx Brothers' budgets, to people who didn't work on the films. Paramount's using their films to pay off debts because the Marx Brothers have net profits, so they figure write off a lot of stuff so we don't have to pay them. Because you hear so many stories about why it ended at Paramount. You hear in the Marx Brothers, I think it's in the Marx Brothers in a nutshell, you hear that because Duck Soup was such a flop that they weren't welcomed back.

It's actually a fallacy. Duck Soup was not a flop. It was not as successful as the picture before it, which was very successful. The truth is people think the Marx Brothers left Paramount after Duck Soup. Actually the Marx Brothers left Paramount before Duck Soup. They terminated the contract based on Paramount doing something the contract didn't allow Paramount was going through a receivership in a near bankruptcy at the time and They were transferring the contracts of a lot of their stars to a newly formed shell corporation

So the Marx brothers were under contract to Paramount Publix to the studio and they set up Paramount Productions and they said transferring stars contracts and the Marx brothers said wait a minute. You're not allowed to do that It's a transferring stars contracts and the marks for this and wait a minute. You're not allowed to do that It's a non transferable contract. They walked off the lot as duck soup was about to go into production They spent a few months setting up an independent company. They got the rights to film of the I sing Right, they were gonna make that picture. They never did at the Kaufman thing Yeah, it was a Pulitzer Prize-winning George S. Kaufman, which 80 something years later still has never been turned into a movie It must be a cursed property interesting but they were ready to leave and go anyway and what happened was the financing for their independent venture

was not going well the guy Sam Katz whose name you might know from Balaban and Katz the theater chain that Paramount bought he couldn't come up with the money the Marx Brothers tried a lot of places and they finally signed a one-picture deal with Paramount to make duck soup, but instead they got all their money up front and didn't do it on that profit split. They hadn't settled the money on monkey business and horse feathers yet. That kind of hung out in the wind for years. And there is a document from 1962.

It went on for so long. The Chico was dead when they finished the deal and his two wives had a sign for his piece Unreal because he was all these years anything I ever read or heard about the Mocks Brothers What that their Paramount movies were all bombing and then it wasn't until Spielberg came along with night I'll be up. Oh Thalberg Thalberg Spielberg Thalberg came along with night at the Opera. Thalberg. Thalberg. Thalberg came along with Night at the Opera that they actually were popular. But I guess it was like, you're saying the success really was that they were making money.

Yeah, well, the truth is the Paramount films were all very popular. Coconuts was a huge smash as they were making it. The Marx brothers became nervous about doing this film and when they first saw it they wanted to buy it back. But by the time that happened it was such a hit that they couldn't. It was going so well. They were a big deal at Paramount. And Coconuts and Animal Crackers were done on single picture deals where they had to

purchase the rights to the play from Sam Harris, the Broadway producer. So when they signed the three picture deal to go to Hollywood and make those next three pictures, they got a phenomenal amount of money and all the perks you can get, including 50% of net profit, which was unheard of at the time. Nobody else had that. And yet they were still being robbed. Well, yeah, I'll give you 90% of net, you know, I'll just tell you how much I spent on the picture.

I had also heard that, that Duck Soup was such a bomb, that Paramount dropped it. I think it's Mark's Brothers in a nutshell, and they're talking about how wonderful it is, even obviously today. It's interesting too, that in this chaotic environment, and with all this resentment, they turn out their best movie. Yeah, the thing about Duck Soup is that Groucho contributes to the legend by going on talk shows, including the Cavett show,

and saying that it was a bomb and we got kicked out of Paramount and Thalberg resurrected us and saved us. The truth is after they finished Duck Soup, it was making so much money and doing so well that Paramount with their the new head of the studio at the time, Emanuel Cohen, negotiated to bring the Marx brothers back to Paramount. So he was trying to bring them back. That's not getting fired. No. Interesting. Okay, just when the show was starting to get good, we're gonna throw a monkey wrench into the works with this commercial word get groceries delivered across the dta from real canadian superstore with pc express

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sportsbook. Worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA that MGM dot com for terms and conditions must be 19 years of age or older to wager Ontario Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling

or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Live from Nutmeg Post. Wham, wham, wham,meg Post, we now return to Gilbert and Frank's amazing colossal podcast. Did the whole relationship with Thalberg happen because Chico had a relationship with him? It helped.

It certainly helped. They were trying to find a new home because they were pretty much done with Paramount even before Duck Soup was made and At the time when they were looking for a new studio They were also going through the loss of Zepo, which you can make a lot of jokes Groucho did He said when someone offered him less money as a trio He said don't be silly were worth more without Zepo The truth is there was a lot of reticence about not having it be called the four Marx Brothers

Mm-hmm. So at one point and this is a crazy thing that is in the book, and Gummo's son was stunned to read this, his son Bob has read the book, they said if we can't get Zepo, how about bringing Gummo back into the act? Gummo wanted no part of this, of course, but they were so afraid to sign them as the Three Marx Brothers that they were desperately trying to get Zepo back, even resorting to maybe gumbo. Three of them were an unproven commodity. Right and Emanuel Cohen at Paramount wanted them back but he wanted them back as the four Marx brothers which must have made Groucho crazy because he spent all this time telling people that Zepo didn't matter.

And the two movies that like I mean people will look upon Night at the Opera as a classic comedy but to me it always struck me as the beginning of the end. Oh I agree with you. I agree too. To me the thing in the Night at the Opera that shows me it's the beginning of the end is the character that Harpo is in every movie. I mean basically the way I describe Harpo is in monkey business once the marksman has come out of the barrels, Harpo's in another movie. Harpo's doing what Harpo does. He's chasing frogs, all that crazy stuff he does.

In A Night at the Opera, he does something insolent to Laspire and the guy beats the hell out of him. Well, we said it before, he goes from being an anarchist to a victim. Yeah, he's basically being abused. And then Groucho, who's always getting away with being a complete fake in the Paramount films, is kicked down a flight of stairs when he loses his job in A Night at the Opera. I mean, these are not Paramount's Marx Brothers anymore. Yeah. And then... A lot was lost. When I would watch those two, Night at the

Opera and Day at the Races, I would go like after a funny bit or after a groucho line I'd go oh I guess here's where they could put in a laugh track. There'd be a pause after each joke. That was the concept of taking the material on the road which was a great idea because they were able to time it. But if you take the Herman Mankiewicz theory, the producer at Paramount, they thought they made a lot of money on people laughing through the jokes and coming back to see the film to catch what they missed. And there's something to be said for that too. Because the way I look at a night at the opera is there's a very different experience watching it at home on your

Blu-ray player or your DVD player than there is watching in a crowded theater. Because when you're watching it by yourself, which many people experience movies that way now because of things like TCM and DVDs, you're waiting. You've got dead moments of silence in these pictures. You watch Monkey Business, it's like the most breakneck 77-minute movie there is. That movie feels like it's just getting rolling when it's ending and it's like I mean duck soup Which I felt was their ultimate and and it's just so everything about it's so real You know that costumes keep changing He's got his head in a picture with us with his face drawn on it. Oh, yes

It's totally the dog comes out of the tattoo on Harpo's chest. This is what the element that is gone. And this is why you could say they made their best pictures with Zeppo or they were never the same without Zeppo. It just happens to be that everything else changed at that time too. But there's something about when there are four of them, I think it brings them back and it's very...

It's evocative of what they did on stage and there's stuff about those early films that's very stagey because the first two were made almost like a Broadway show with a camera in front of it because they couldn't move the camera so well in 1929 and 30. But the notion of there being four of them and they're often in two pairs and when they come together it's usually pretty chaotic. That element is lost in the MGM films. It's usually Chico as some sort of fulcrum. He's the translator between Groucho and Harpo. But something is absolutely lost because also Groucho needs a straight man for his scenes

like Hunga Dunga and Hunga Dunga or even the scenes, the college scenes in Horsefeathers. There's a nice chemistry between the two of them that's lost. You're not going to fill with Alan Jones. Yeah, they changed the way the stuff was written when they didn't have Zeppo. Something like the contract scene tonight at the opera, you've got two comedians working there. If that was written for Groucho to talk to Zeppo, it's a completely different vibe. But the Hunga Dunga thing is a great example.

That's that kind of a scene written for a comedian and a straight man. And a very good straight man. Zeppo does a hell of a good job with that stuff Yeah, there's nobody to set Groucho up After that, he's just got now. He's just got villains like Trentino Yeah, and he's got and he's he's and then he's forced to be this kind of the straight man in his scenes with Chico Yeah, I kind of miss you know know, when I watch the night at the opera there, there is is I miss what Zepo brings to the table. I don't mean that facetiously. I really mean that as their movies started going along,

the Marx brothers actually care about the love interests in the movie. I can't understand why. It makes no sense to know they're like insipid love plots in Coconuts and Animal Crackers. And you kind of tolerate them because you know they're Broadway musicals brought to the screen. But why are we inventing them for these new pictures? I don't get it.

Well, they're the skirt chasers in the Paramount movies. And then in the MGM films, they're facilitating romance. They're helping the hero and the heroine get together, which is not what you want to see the Marx brothers doing. Oh, no. hero and the heroine get together, which is not what you want to see the Marx brothers doing. Oh no, and what happened with them and a lot of Abbot and Costello and a lot of people were like this, a lot of comics, that the Marx brothers became supporting characters in their own movies. Yeah, that's a very interesting way to look at it. That's really true of the very last ones, like the MGMs that were made in, you know, the 40s.

I don't see as that much of a thing in the night at the opera, day at the races, but, you know, if you look at the circus go west in the big store, I mean, I almost wish they didn't make those pictures. I know, so did they. Yeah, then they're a little too much in service to the love story. If Thalberg not died, were things going so well at MGM that they would have stayed and cranked out a couple of more? Oh, I believe so because they may not have been the pictures we look at today as the

great Marx Brothers pictures, but they were making a hell of a lot of money. And the thing that's very little known is the Marx Brothers weren't actually under contract to MGM. Louis B. Mayer didn't want the Marx brothers. He wasn't interested in them. Yep. Thalberg signed them to a personal services contract for his MGM unit that he operated. So the Marx brothers were able to leave MGM after a day at the races because there was

a termination clause in the contract that if Thalberg remained unavailable for a certain period of time, the Marx brothers were able to opt out. He was dead. He was permanently unavailable for a certain period of time, the Marx brothers were able to opt out. He was dead. He was permanently unavailable. And as soon as they finished the day at the races, the Marx brothers opted out of the contract, made a huge deal to bring room service to the screen. And that was actually a very highly anticipated film. They got paid more money for that film than any other film they'd made at that point.

RKO paid a record amount of money for the rights to it. And then it flopped. That was their first real surprisingly disappointing box office film. For sure. And now the real reason you guys listen to this show, of course, the commercials. Hey Gil, let me ask you a question. Are you hiring? The last time you said that I hired you as a co-host, so

no I will not be hiring for quite some time. Well, in the event that you change your mind, posting your job in one place isn't enough to find quality candidates, you should know that. And if you want to find the perfect hire, like me or say Paul Rayburn who's sitting here with us. Oh is that what he's... Oh he can sit successfully. I thought this was a job interview. He's sitting very erectly. No, no. You need to post your job on all the top job sites and now you can.

You want to know how? Yeah I might as well. Well, Zip Recruiter has 9 million resumes you can search through in their database, Gil. Yes. And with Zip Recruiter... Don't call you can search through in their database, Gil. And with ZipRecruiter... Don't call me Gil, call me Mr. Godfrey. Alright.

Because I don't want any of you. I already have the job. With ZipRecruiter.com you can post your job to 100, I said 100 plus job sites including social media networks like Facebook and the Twitter, which I know you love. Don't tell anyone to Dara tweets for you. Yeah, exactly. All with a single click. networks like Facebook and Twitter. ZipRecruiter's handy website shows trending career fields, cities and searches and you can find candidates in any city or industry nationwide. What do you think of that Paul Rayburn?

I think that's terrific and I hope you gentlemen will hire me. I actually do very very good research. I don't know whether anybody's aware of that. There's a slim chance of this happening. Yes, yes. No juggling emails or calls to your office. That's how easy this interface is. The website is to use.

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That's ziprecruiter.com slash Gilbert. One more time to try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Gilbert. I'm not sure I got that. Gilbert and Frank, what's your game now? Can anybody play? And now back to more hilarity and trenchant insight, Gilbert Gottfried. I just recently was watching some of these clips of early TV with like Chick on Harpo and stuff that they did in early TV and it is so I was watching it with my son who's seven and he said is this

supposed to be funny it was horrible truly horrible stuff some of that stuff it's a real mixed bag actually, so a lot of that stuff, I don't know which stuff you're talking about, but some of it's in the Mark Spirited TV collection DVD set that I put out, and some of it is great because they're doing some of their vaudeville stuff in the 50s. There's a wonderful clip of Harpo and Chico on the Colgate Comedy, are doing the double piano solo. That's just a musically great number. There's a market for interesting footage of classic comedians. Everybody knows the Marx Brothers weren't as good on television as they were at Paramount,

but there's still a lot of people that want to see this stuff, and it's a real mixed bag. Some of it's terrific. So you'll have to tell me what you ended up seeing. Now I also heard that at one point Nat Heiken wanted to write a Marx Brothers movie. I think everybody wanted to write a Marx Brothers movie at some point. You see a lot of unproduced treatments written for the Marx Brothers floating around, and some people consider these to be rare artifacts of the career of the Marx Brothers.

They're not. They're just hopeful writers who were working in these bungalows at MGM churning them out. So there was no lost screenplay. I mean, and the ones in the book that you talk about, Cracked Ice and all those things, those were just other names for Duck Soup before it was named Duck Soup. Yeah, there were variations of it. Duck Soup had about six different titles as it was being produced. But other than of the icing, there was no actual, hey, this is a Marx Brothers movie that's ready to go, but it didn't happen there's no there's there's none of that there's green play there are

some treatments for things that never got made into screenplays but again you'll see something maybe comes up on eBay some like lost marks brother story a writer wrote it under contract for MGM and somebody looked at it and said this is crap we're not doing it and maybe saying this is for the marks brothers but the marks brothers never had any knowledge of it I didn't know Zepo itppo was trying his hand at a screenwriting career until I read your book. I thought I knew everything about these guys. I learned a lot. That's one of the more interesting things that I learned.

Did you know that, Gil? No. Zeppo was trying to write screenplays. At first with a partner, if I have this right, and then solo. A fellow named Gouverneur Morris, who was having a nice little successful beginning of a writing career for a few years and then he hooked up with Zepo and stopped selling treatments immediately and he did a couple of things with Zepo then Zepo did one on his own and then Zepo tried one with S.J. Perlman. Wow. Nothing he did got picked up but they're interesting. I kind of

wrote about them in the book because I found it to be such an interesting adjunct to what was going on at the time Because he desperately wanted to get out of the act and there was this family loyalty thing while the mother was alive while Mini Marx was alive. Nobody could leave the Marx brothers Her biggest disappointment up until a certain point was that she couldn't get all five of her sons to be in the act and call It the five Marx brothers. She pulled that off for one month in 1915 when Zepo was out of school. But he was 13 and she passed him off at 16. Boy, not only did Frank read the book,

he memorized the book. I read a lot about the Marx Brothers, but your book filled in a lot of gaps. Well, thanks, but the thing with Zepo is he was trying things. He was getting into the real estate business. He was trying to write screenplays. He became a restaurant owner. He was just desperate to not be the real estate business. He was trying to write screenplays. He became a restaurant owner.

He was just desperate to not be the Fourth Marks brother. Now, I heard a story that when Bugsy Siegel was shot, they found a check from Chico. Not true. Different mobster. However, the mobster, the real mobster who had the check from Chico in his pocket when he got killed was a guy named Lester Frank Bruneman, I think is his name. And I actually didn't put this in the book.

I have a photograph of the check. So I'll make sure I get that to you. That's good trivia. So I think that story that I heard, which I kind of doubted because Scroccio told it. I think he knew Bugsy. Yeah. He may have known him. He traveled and...

Well, Harpo and Chico played Vegas when it was brand new and were definitely acquainted. But the incident where the mobster was gunned down in some LA bar, I think happened before Bugsy Siegel was a major player. It was a little earlier. I think it changed so many times they wanted a more famous name. That happens a lot. You know, when Groucho tells a story, I'm sure you probably listened to An Evening with Groucho a couple of million times. Oh, yes. I was there. Wow. In the audience. So, you know, that record is what a lot of kids my age really memorized when we heard our Groucho stories. And he talks about being

on a bill with Fanny Bryce at the palace and Swain's Rats and Cats are on the bill. Swain's Rats and Cats. Oh, yes. It's a pretty apocryphal story for a couple of reasons. They were never on a bill with Fanny Bryce at the palace and Swain's Rats and Cats are on the bill. Swain's Rats and Cats. Oh, yeah. It's a pretty apocryphal story for a couple of reasons. They were never on a bill with Fanny Bryce. Animal acts like Swain's Rats and Cats were not playing the palace. He just put a famous name in there to make the story better. I'm sure the story happened. That happens a lot.

The story that he tells on that album about looking into W.C. Field's attic and seeing seeing all the liquor and saying we have a prohibition in years, that's a great story. It happened to Harpo. Interesting. You know, Bill Marks, Harpo's son, said that was dad's story and Groucho adopted it. So ask Bill if it's true about Amelia Earhart and get back to us. Yeah, he actually was stunned to read it in the book, so he didn't know about that in the book. I met and about three times spoke to Maxine Marx. She was a good friend of mine. I really had a great relationship with her. I'm sorry we lost Maxine.

She would have been an ideal guest for this show. Well she would have cursed more than you. Oh my god yes. Is that possible? Maxine was proud to have the vocabulary of a longshoreman. Well, I'm sorry we missed out on her. Maxine, for a while she had a mini acting career. She actually was a student of the legendary Maria Uspenskaya. She did some radio acting in the 30s.

She traded on the fact that her dad was at MGM, so they put her in bit rolls in a couple of pictures. She's an extra here and there as a kid. You know, she wasn't really cut out for that. She was a pretty successful casting agent in commercials for many years. And I heard, too, that... And this is something I wish there was at least a photo of,

that one time while she was was Maria Spinskaya was her teacher Maria Spinskaya at Chicko Marx invited Maria Spinskaya out to dinner as seen in the puppet video of Gilbert and Frank. Gilbert swings with the youth and and I thought God I would just like to see the two of them sitting together was he trying to make the moves on Maria? That would have been great. It would have been a slow day in the life of Chico Marx to go for that, but anything possible.

I think it was pathological with him. Speaking of Marx Brothers mysteries, why did Chico disappear for those couple of days? Was he shot? Was he getting patched together? The disappearance you're talking about is when they were doing Alsatius Yeah, during all as she is that seems to be gambling debt related The guys who he owed money to vanish from the act Out of the theater during the second act of Alsatius went into a back alley

apparently went into a luggage store and Bought a valise and disappeared in the middle of the show and they had to ad-lib through the rest of the show without him and play for a few days as a trio. Incredible. Picking up his lines and figure out where the hell he was. Incredible. Then you know he turns up but to give away more would make you not buy the book. And I heard Maxine told a story that you know she like any child of legendary people they don't look at them

as legend, they're their parents, and they're bored being there at their job. And so one time the Mocks Brothers were playing at some theater and she went outside to play, because she was bored watching the Mocks Brothers live. And then afterwards, Chico said to her, well, how did you like that? Did you catch it? And she goes, oh, yeah, I caught it because she didn't want to say she wasn't there. And she said, and that night she found out

that Chico played Harpo's part and Harpo played Chico's part. Yeah, the truth about that is pretty amazing because they all learned to understudy for each other That Chico played Harpo's part and Harpo played Chico's part Yeah the truth about that is pretty amazing because they all learn to understudy for each other during the vaudeville days Because in those days if you missed a performance they would dock you and pay you as a trio there was a lot of strict rules involved in that and For example, you know, I found some things where Zepo went on for Harpo one night in Kentucky, because Harpo was so sick

he couldn't go on. So somebody in the chorus would just fill in for Zepo. They would work around these things. And Harpo and Chico looked so much alike out of makeup that they could easily do each other in terms of picking up the part. And Harpo played the piano. So that was no problem.

And Chico could probably do something rudimentary on the harp, you know, just to get through. So they were constantly doing that. And Zepo famously played Groucho's part when Groucho had his appendix out in Chicago. Right. So there's a lot of told a lot a lot of that stuff has been documented. So what Maxine would talk about and I saw her tell this story a couple of times, they were on tour doing scenes from Go West prior to shooting it and they would do about four or five shows

a day and the early show was usually you know drunks and prostitutes looking for some air conditioning and there was never a good house for that and she figured she had a chance to go get her hair done so she went out and got her hair done and came back for the second show and that's when they said did you notice so she was crushed because they never did it for her again but yeah they were doing that they did it every once in a while. And the fact that they could pass for each other, Chico and Harpo, they used that to their advantage

in other ways, did they not? Yeah, there was a great story that they always told where Chico was quite an amazing and talented piano player very early. He apparently took piano lessons for about two or three months and then just was a natural. And he would teach his lessons secondhand to the other kids and they would kind of peek in at his piano lessons.

And Harpo was sort of a rudimentary pianist who could play a couple of tunes. So Chica would go audition to get a job at a Nickelodeon or a whorehouse or someplace and he would get the audition and then Harpo would show up to play his two songs at several different speeds until they realized he couldn't play and they'd fire. I was referring more to, then there's a brief illusion to it in the book. Oh

you're talking about the story from Groucho's Third Wife where she talks about the famous black silk nightshirt story. Well I'm talking about where one of them was perceived to be a Superman. Yes that would be that story. This is the only show where I will be able to tell this story. Well hit it buddy. So the story is from an unpublished memoir by Groucho's third wife. And she and Harpo's wife took a writing class together in the early 80s, shortly before Eden died.

And they wrote some manuscripts of memoirs. And Eden's memoir has this passage where the March Brothers would get together for dinners and reminisce and tell old vaudeville stories. And this story involved Harpo having this very unique black silk night shirt. And you're in a boarding house and he's got a girl in his bedroom and he does the deed with the girl and excuses himself to go down the hall to the bathroom and sees Gummo and says, hey, you want to

get laid? And Gummo said, sure. He goes, here, put on my silk nightshirt and go back in my room. So Gummo goes in there and then he comes out and they give the nightshirt to Chico. So basically... Oh my God, is that great. Thus, the woman thinking that she was dealing with a Superman. Yeah. And this will probably be the only interview I ever do to promote this book where that story will get aired. Well, we'll just hope that one's true, right, Gil? Oh, yes. And I'll be retelling that.

The source? Like I was there. Frank, you will take that copy of the book and flag that page for Gilbert. He will enjoy that. And the Marx Brothers' later films, after A Day at the Races, it was so deep into the Grand Canyon they fell. I like A Night in Casablanca. I think that's something of a comeback. I think that film was a bunch of older guys trying to recapture what they were best at, and it kind of works. And they did take that on the road and do a little bit of touring to hone the scenes and stuff. And that's the last time they ever played live on stage

as the Three March Brothers when they toured for a night in Casablanca. 45. I think that one sticks out as the best of the later films. Just for me, I can't even get through at the circus. It pains me to watch it at the circus. Except for Lydia. Yeah.

Yeah, and even that's kind of, you know, just Groucho's wig in that film kind of makes me want to see something else. Oh my god, yes. Yes. But I remember then, and I would still have vague memories back then of You Bet Your Life. I've seen them a million times in reruns. But I remember having both a weird fascination, both frightened, depressed, but also absolutely fascinated when Groucho, was now talking like that. And it's like, I remember working in a theater, and theaters back then were a place where you'd stand on a stage and the audience would observe what the person on stage was saying and doing.

Because in my day, people would observe what a performer was doing and occasionally they would change seats. Pretty uncanny huh Robert? He even gets the regional New York accent. As a kid having discovered them through the early films the first time I saw him on TV as that old guy with the beret, I was stunned that this was that guy. And the beret would have like golf balls on it with little faces. They get sillier and sillier. But I just remembered the first reaction and I must have been no more than 10 years old

when this happened, when I probably saw him on Cavet or Merv or one of those shows. And actually I think it might have been the Bill Cosby show that he did. Oh I remember that one. Sure. And I'm just stunned that that's him. But then you sort of listen to him and he's still funny. He still had it together. He's still singing.

He's not dancing but he's singing. And yeah. In the early 60s too. That's Groucho. That's Groucho. He's still Groucho yeah doing Peezy Weezy with Dinah Shore oh yeah that's that's wonderful that's still in his prime early 60s he's still moving around later on there came a point where he probably should have stopped yeah and of course not made Skadoo oh Skadoo was apparently two days of very highly paid work for him. Ah, okay.

Bless his heart then. He probably never saw it. The wig that he wore in that film, apparently they let him keep it because he wears it on one of Kavit's morning shows. Oh, jeez. This is good trivia. So something good came out of Skadoo. Well, something really bad.

It's probably the worst toupee in the history of show business. Our friend Cliff Nesteroff was here a couple of times telling us horror stories about vaudeville, you know. Corroborated in your book, by the way. We were talking about it before we turned the mics on. The terrible treatment, the rats, the bugs, the shady unions, the no guarantee that you were going to get paid for your work. I mean, reading this book and reading Groucho's especially before the rest of them got on board, but Groucho's Adventures in Vaudeville, it's just fascinating and depressing.

It was a very tough life to choose, but what you also need to take a look at when you look at the Marx Brothers early days is that what options did they have? No, not a lot. Their mother worked in a sweatshop. They were the children of immigrants. There weren't a lot of opportunities. They weren't especially good in school. They might have been bright, smart kids, but they didn't get much of an education.

Chico had that ability with numbers. He had that mind for math. Yeah, Chico was apparently brilliant mathematical mind, but he used it for gambling. Now, I always say this. If he was that good with numbers, why was he always losing? I mean, I think that's a bit of a trumped-up thing there where he maybe wasn't so good But the mythology is that he was brilliant. He might have been smart with a contract

But I also take the position that he was the one who had the most to gain by taking a ridiculous chance position that he was the one who had the most to gain by taking a ridiculous chance. So every time the Marx Brothers made that next step and it seemed like the stupidest thing to do, because why risk what we have, what they had was Chico was broke and they were making a living and they were content. He could never be content. So when they were the highest paid act in Vaudeville and there was a chance to go into the legitimate theater, Chico was all on board for that because even as the highest paid act in vaudeville the guy was broke well as fascinating as I've said a million times on this show

which has become which was a just one of those classic showbiz lines whenever they would ask Groucho well why did you the Marx brothers do that? Because Chico needed the money. But you know, they say, the popular belief was that he needed the money for the later films, but apparently he needed the money all along. Yes. Oh yes. Chico was- From day one.

Chico was broke in 1911. It's just unbelievable when you consider how much money they made. You know, there's a wonderful story that Maxine told, and she told it in her book, but she also told it to me in more detail. When Chico was out on the road with his early partners before he joined the Marx Brothers, he had a guy named Aaron Gordon as his first vaudeville partner, and they were Marx and Gordon, they were just a piano and singer act. And Chico would take all the money, and he would give the guy 25 cents a week to get a haircut and pay for his room and board, and he never gave him any any salary the guy just broke even going on the road as a singer with Chico. Oh jeez

You know 25 cents a week for the haircut was not even a guarantee because if he lost all the money they were done Yeah, they had scams where Chico would blow all their salary And they wouldn't have the train fare to get to the next city So he would have to go pull some kind of a gambling scam which I have documented in the book. Fascinating. He'd go into a saloon or someplace and he would take bets on that day's baseball game and he'd have Gordon pretend to be an innocent bystander who was gonna hold the money. They'd scam people in bars to get the money to get to the next station. Then they would take that money and buy their train ticket

out of town. Yeah. Oh, holy shit. So, you know, there were probably always people on his trail. Or on his tail, I mean. Oh, god, yeah. You know, the story that I was most amazed to uncover was the story of Chico most likely being shot for leaving one city and going to the next with a young girl from the town. And needless to say, her family did notice that she was missing.

And they basically followed him shotguns in hand from one city to the next. They caught him in a hotel with the girl, and they dragged her back. You get that sense reading the book, that this guy is dodging bullets left and right. I don't mean literal bullets, but in some cases, yes, I mean literal bullets. So basically, it's amazing that Chico was never killed.

Yeah, there was one point where I believe they thought he was going to die because in spring of 1913, they had to go on with the act without him for a few months. And one of the guys in the act pretended to be Chico because at that time the contract said that if you deliver fewer performers than your advertising, you get docked some pay. And they wanted to keep it to four Marx brothers. So a fellow named George Lee, who was his partner before they joined the act, masqueraded as Chico for a few months until he came back. And they kept it very quiet in the vaudeville papers that he was gone. But when he came back, back they said Leonard Marx has returned to the act after missing a few months with an operation the operation was to probably remove a bullet interesting and he

traveled or he spent time with some really unsavory characters I mean as it Maxine in the book who says that what what may have saved his life is the fact that he he wasn't courageous enough to carry a weapon Zepo carried a gun when he was a kid and Chico was afraid of guns He didn't want to have one probably because somebody would have used it on him But Zepo was apparently more of a kind of a gangster character than even Chico because when they moved to Chicago He was 10 years old and they really weren't paying much attention to him So he was roaming the streets as a juvenile delinquent by the time he's 14 or 15. He's carrying a gun and stealing cars

now somebody said to me once and juvenile delinquent by the time he's 14 or 15 he's carrying a gun and stealing cars. Now somebody said to me once and and it's one of those things where I like to pretend I know more about it than I ever actually did that the Mocks brothers were uh you know however you pronounce it Comedy Del Arte. I pronounce it Comedie del Arte, but that's good. Yeah, yeah. You may be right and I may be wrong. No, I have no idea. I think it's Comedie del Arte. Yeah.

Do I have it right? Pick one. Comedie. Is it Comedie? I think so. Chlamydia. She's good too. Which they also had. I think it was Gunnery.

They had that too. Read the book. Again, the only interview I'll ever do a book where that's gonna come up well and and so the actual young men comedy What was that actually I would be willing to Guarantee that the Marx brothers never gave it a thought, had no idea about the great tradition of it, people always ask me about it, and I would just answer saying, they were just trying to make a living. They were just trying to be funny,

trying to get an act together. It was never any kind of great plan to emulate some comic tradition. They made it up. They actually, in their early days, stole other acts to continue to survive. There was a lot of that going on in Vogue, period. And did you, but you know anything about the actual comedian?

Not much. I mean, I've read, I mean, in college, they made you read things about it, and I said, associating this with comedy doesn't seem right, because it just seemed to make, it's draining the humor out of comedy by analyzing it They also stole from themselves, and it's interesting to see how many of the things from the stage shows Like the ocean liner stuff shirts from is it from home again that turns up in monkey business the high school Skin turns up in horse feathers There's little bits from shows all over the place the knife knife dropping bit in Animal Crackers came out of home again.

Right. The double piano thing. You know the bit where all the silverware is falling out of Harpo's coat and he says I can't imagine what's keeping that, what is it? Coffee pot. The coffee pot. And I remember Maxine saying that when she was watching them, the thing that would get the tremendous explosion of laughs was the stuff

falling out of Harpo's coat. Yep. And they started doing that. When he first decided to not talk, these are the kind of gags that he was creating for himself. You know, this is all stuff that came out of Harpo's mind. They didn't write this stuff for him. And what I was going to say is the double piano solo that you see in the big store,

they start doing that in 1912 in Mr. Green's reception. So they would occasionally yank something out of a show and put it in a movie. Why not? Because it was their material and nobody else was using it and it was good. And since you bring up Harpo going silent and one of the things that you attempt to do in this book is put false rumors to rest and solve mysteries, which we appreciate. And there have been conflicting stories over the years about why Harpo stopped speaking in the act. Was it because Al Sheen stopped writing for him?

I do believe that is 100% true. And I found as much documentation as can be found. There's different stories in other books. Yeah, but don stories in other books. Yeah, but don't read those books. Okay. We'll stick with you for now. Yeah, I'm the latest book, so there you go. You know Al Sheen, their uncle, was writing.

Gallagher and Sheen. And when Gallagher and Sheen, do I have this right? When Gallagher and Sheen split up, he began writing for the act? No, no, no, actually there's a strange chronology there because Gallagher and Sheen hated each other. Okay, that. Okay. And they worked together. I got my chronology wrong. No, no, it's an easy mistake to make because there's a lot of stuff in the book and this is a very small afterthought. They first teamed up around 1910 and didn't get along and didn't work

again for a long time. In 1922, they reunited, had a huge success in the Ziegfeld Follies, but in between, Sheen worked on his own. He had a partner named Charles Warren, Sheen and Warren. And there's a lot of the Gallagher and Sheen relationship in the Sunshine Boys. Yes. Right. It's loosely based on Smith and Dale and a little bit of Gallagher and Sheen, so they couldn't stand each other.

But the point where Al Sheen writes for the Marx Brothers, he was working on his own, and he was a big deal in Vaudeville. There were rumors at the time that there was gonna be a new show featuring Al Sheen and the Marx brothers. But Al Sheen had gotten into some contract problems where he wasn't getting a good enough billing, he wouldn't be paid less than anybody else. My theory on that is Al Sheen might have liked to work

with his nephews, but he was gonna get top billing and get paid more than the four of them, or he wasn't going to do it. I see. So he wrote, he wrote Home Again for them. Which was a, which was a big deal. It was a very big deal, because that's the show that put him over the top. And when he wrote it, he was really thinking of Groucho mostly because Groucho emulated Al Sheen. He was a German dialect comedian and he sang and danced very much like Al Sheen.

Groucho completely based his stage persona on his uncle and it developed to the point where it was better than Al Sheen, but Al Sheen wouldn't have been the guy to tell you that at the time. He wrote the play Home Again for them and Harpo ended up with like a few throwaway lines and he complained about it and the story goes that Al Sheen says, well, you didn't even deliver those few lines very well. Did he have a lisp too? Harpo? It's alluded to. You know he had a there's a joke about that I don't know if he really did. I don't think he did. I've heard Harpo's voice. I don't think there's a lisp. But that was true and there was also this sort of apocryphal thing that Harpo

relates in Harpo Speaks saying that he read a review that said he was great as a silent comedian and the effect was destroyed when he spoke. Now I looked for that review in the cities where it could have occurred and it didn't exist. So I think that was something Harpo fabricated. Now did Alchean have that whole walk and talk that Groucho had? Not the walk. Groucho developed that, but the style of speech that Groucho used? Not the walk. Groucho developed that but the style of speech that Groucho used before they ever made movies was very much like Al Sheen. A lot

of German dialect with puns based on a German's mispronunciation of an American word. It dropped when the war broke out. Yeah, when the United States entered World War I there was no more German dialect. Right. As a matter of fact there were certain people who wouldn't work theaters that had German stagehands. That's how pervasive the anti-German sentiment became. Now, the story Groucho tells is that when the Lusitania was sunk,

he had to stop doing the German dialect. Well, that's because Canada was in the war from day one in 1914 1914 and when they crossed the border to play Canada he had to not do the German bit but they continued doing it in the United States until the US entered the war in 1917. So and I heard a story that Gallagher and Sheen you know very in demand Acton Vaudeville. And then they got offered something else like the Ziegfeld Follies. And they went to court because I because I think Ziegfeld said, I can't do this or whoever had them before said,

I can't do this show without Gallagher and Sheen. They're invaluable to my show. And that Gallagher and Sheen, they're invaluable to my show, and that Gallagher and Sheen actually went to court and brought in witnesses to testify that they were a terrible team. There's actually a very true story there. That's wonderful. But it's not quite that they were terrible. The story is that there was this thing called Schubert vaudeville in 21 and 22 that the Marx brothers even got involved in when things dried up for them in conventional Vaudeville.

They were blacklisted and a lot of acts were going to take the money from Schubert-Vaudeville to compete with the big Vaudeville change, the Keith circuit and the Orpheum circuit and Gallagher and Sheen were among the many acts that were getting screwed on their pay from the Schubert's. There wasn't enough money financing. The whole thing went belly up in a couple of years. But they broke the contract and went to work for Ziegfeld and Schubert sued. And Schubert was saying that they're unique and we can't do the show. Just exactly what you said.

They brought in people like Will Rogers to court to say that they're not unique. Another comedy team could come in and do this. Yeah I heard. But they didn't say they were terrible they said they were not unique that was the case. They had people testifying, no they steal their bits. And there's a million acts much more talented. Yeah I think the gist of it was there's no reason you can't do that show with two other schlubs. Gallagher and Sheeter, not unique.

You can get someone else. Let's talk for a second, too, about the driving force, about Minnie. Oh, God. We just touched upon her. Yeah. When you read the book, I read Stephen Canfer's book, too, about my saying his name right about the Marx, about Groucho. Was she what you alluded to before?

She was trying to keep them away from juvenile delinquency, she was trying to make them, have them make something of themselves. But how much of it was her just being a good mom and how much of it was the fact that she longed to be a performer, her brother was a star, how much of it was living vicariously through her sons and how much of it was just being a good mom? It's certainly elements of both, but I think it would be hard to say that Minnie was a good mom in the conventional sense. She wasn't.

Because the truth is, Groucho's early ambitions were to be a doctor. And they discouraged him from that, because Al Sheen was making $200 a week. Incredible. And you kind of get the sense, too too that Groucho resented not having an education. He was embarrassed by it and he overcompensated. Cavett's the guy that always says that he had read all the books that everybody else talked about pretending to have read. And I think that's a really interesting observation.

It's one of the sad things that you come away from, that he's got a great mind and he's teaching himself to read and he's hell-bent on an education, but he's being dragged into show business. Well, I think at the point where he was dragged into show business, he was enthusiastic because he worshipped his uncle. And when Groucho was looking for a job, and this is something I really did a lot of research on to the point where you can research something that happened over a hundred years ago. He was looking for a job at the end of the school year because kids were expected to go to work at the end of the school year and you look in the classified ads you see all these jobs for delivery boys and you know all kinds of manual labor and sweatshop work. He finds a job as a singer wanted for a vaudeville trio and that's the job he gets.

Oh the Leroy trio. The Leroy trio. So he's dying to go on the stage because his uncle is on the stage. He's imitating his uncle around the house. He's willing to sing and dance at any chance he gets. This kid wants to be in show business. I misspoke a little bit. It's kind of Zepo and Gummo that get dragged in. And a little bit of Harpo too. Yeah. The rest of them pretty much got shanghaied into show business by their mother because what she picked up on pretty quickly was once Groucho started making a buck and doing well and getting good reviews, she said, wow, if they're paying 50 bucks a week for one, I got a whole house full of

these kids. You know, that's really where it came from. And they didn't have any other prospects. I mean, these guys are going to make $2 a week doing deliveries. Well, I think she was too. She was worried. You get the sense that she was worried about the crowds they were hanging around in. That she was worried that they were going to end up in jail. Yeah. If not just just nobodies. There was a certain criminal element to their childhood.

These guys were hustlers and they were running around town probably stealing things, getting into little bits of trouble. And Groucho likes to tell the story about getting busted for shoplifting at Bloomingdale's when he was a kid. It's a good story. You know, there's no real indication that she thought these kids were gonna do anything Academic and maybe she was just an ultimate realist knowing that their only prospects were going to be things they could do without an education I remember an experience I had with Maxine which just it just for me. It just gave me like the biggest thrill like I felt like I

Touched a spark in old show business for we'll remind our listeners Chico's daughter Yeah, she goes daughter who and she looked like she sure did. Yeah, there was absolutely a face or resemblance there and and We were talking we were sitting at a dinner table talking and she mentioned Gallagher and Sheen and I immediately went, absolutely Mr. Gallagher and she grabs my hand, shakes it and goes, positively Mr. Sheen. Ah, that's nice. That must have been a nice moment for you. I thought, oh my God, it's like I took a time machine and told Hollywood. What a great answer.

We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, but first a word from our sponsor. Now Frank was telling me that he saw something in your book. About the Selective Service? Yes. Well, it's chilling that she, about her going to Gummo. Was telling me that he saw something in your book about the Selective Service. Yeah about well It's chilling that she about her going to gumbo Yeah, basically telling him you're here. You're asking you asked me to go back Minnie was a good mother. She asked one of her sons to enlist in World War one incredible

Yeah I mean, it's maybe it maybe we can assume that that she knew he he wouldn't, being a celebrity or being part of a celebrity family, he wouldn't see action. Well as it turns out, he spent very little time in uniform and he spent it all in Chicago, not exactly the front lines, and his biggest job in the service was driving generals around Chicago, introducing them to chorus girls, many of whom he of course knew. But it was like, it was like kind of saving the other brothers who were more valuable to her.

Minnie was pretty savvy and by this point she had figured out that if one of them was in service she could get away with the others. And you know they did give Grouch a legitimate eyesight deferment. He was very, very nearsighted and that was good for the first camp. So many basically thought, if one of my sons gets killed, he's still a makeover. Basically the one who wasn't very good in the act and who stammered was expendable. According to your book and the accounts I've read about it, he didn't seem to mind that much. He said he has that great line.

Yeah, he thought World War I would be much safer than being the fourth Marx brother. Yeah, he says I went to war to get a little peace, which is just great. But how can a mother ask you? That's something you'd carry around for a while. That's the opposite of Sophie's choice. Here's another psychological question I'm going to ask you to play Armchair Shrink about the Marx brothers. it's clear that Chico was her favorite was minis favorite. Yeah, he got away with anything you had to get firstborn. Yes indeed Okay, so the picture that gets painted is that Groucho being the middle

the middle son that that He was she did not encourage him. She did not she did not encourage him, she did not, stop me if I'm wrong here, that she did not think he was terribly attractive. He grows up with some issues with women. Yeah, the thing, and this is also from Maxine, and her recollections are pretty good.

She knew Minnie, she was a route, she was born in 1918, so Maxine knew Minnie pretty well as a little kid. And she said that... And I don't speak German, and I don't remember how to say this in German, but Minnie had a nickname for Groucher. She had two nicknames for him. And it was, however you say this in German, the jealous one and the dark one.

Because he had a slightly darker complexion than the other boys. And she called them those things, the jealous one and the dark one. And I think that's got to have an effect on a kid. Yeah, you get the sense that she was a little bit unkind to him and maybe, you know, I'm not trying to be Dr. Phil here. They all worshiped her. What they did was they gave her so much credit that she probably didn't deserve some of. They created this legend of their mother where in truth, and you get some of

this out of the book, in the early days of her managing them, she was completely inept. Minnie Palmer. She just didn't know what she was doing in the beginning. She once ran an ad saying that they were booked on an extended tour and they were unavailable to make another go round on a certain circuit, but they weren't. It wasn't true. She made it up. So then she's basically advertising that this available act was unavailable.

I also love that she takes her sister and joins the act. Yeah, tell me how this worked out. The three nightingales. They want, Minnie had this great mathematical theory of vaudeville, which turns out to be quite true. If you keep adding people to the act, you get paid more, whether they're talented or not. So if you're working as a trio and you're getting 75 bucks a week, you get 100 as a quartet.

Well, Harpo can't sing, but let's put him in the act to get 100 a week. So let's do this right. There were the three Nightingales. Yes. Which was Groucho. Originally it was Groucho Gummo. They didn't have those names then. But Julius Milton and there was a girl. Mabel O'Donnell. Mabel O'Donnell was a girl singer who sang off key. Allegedly.

Okay. Then she drags Harpo in to be the fourth Nightingale. Well not quite. They can Mabel O'Donnell and they bring in Lou Levy and Harpo at the same time to be the four Nightingales. Okay, so they get rid of the girl, they bring in a boy singer, then she drags Harpo into the scenario, now there's four Nightingales, then she decides that she and her sister are gonna join the act and they become the six mass That right you've got that exactly right and the crazy

Women in their mid 40s. Oh, it's great playing schoolgirls Described to this a terrible act At one point it did okay for a short time, but what it did was it led them to the act that made them into the three Marx brothers in Fun in High School. It's fun reading in the book too as you're going through it. It's fun waiting to see how the pieces are going to come together. You know, because Chico's off doing his thing. Chico's playing the piano in whorehouses and honky tonks.

Then he teams up with Lee and it's more was it Marks and Lee? Yeah, it's three partners in one sheen. He teamed up with his cousin. He was Marks and sheen. Do I have this right? It was Marks and Gordon, Sheen and Marks and Marks and Lee. And he played the piano blindfolded. That was part of the schtick. That was one of the big parts of his act. He would take requests from the audience with a sheet over the piano and he's blindfolded. And you know, I guess having the sheet over the piano and being blindfolded is sort of overkill. That's wonderful.

But that was one of his big things in his act. And when did... I'm having the same trouble with my phone. We both got our vibrators on. The mic won't pick it up. Don't worry about it. I'm enjoying the vibration. I told you to wear the front mic. same trouble with my phone. We both got our vibrators on. The mic won't pick it up. Don't worry about it. I'm enjoying the vibration.

I told you to wear the front mic. If that didn't happen a couple of times a day, I'd have no fun at all. Now when did Chico invent that like gun move on the piano with the shooting the piano keys? The best you'll be able to figure out is if you read reviews of his early piano performances, he's getting incredible reviews for his style and his schtick at the piano in 1911 when he's first out in vaudeville. So I want to say that that's probably something he always had on the stage. He's getting reviews as part of Sheen and Marks for like piano acrobatics and things like that. So you have to believe that shooting the keys came around at that point.

He was playing ragtime piano and that was the style that was really popular and there was a legendary ragtime pianist named Mike Bernard who nobody remembers, nobody's ever heard of. He'd get reviews saying like he plays ragtime like a second Mike Bernard and he's got all this histrionic stuff in his style. So I think a lot of that stuff was very very early for him. So Chico was a very talented musician. Yeah, and a pissed off Groucho that the guy didn't have to practice. He just put his hands in a basin of water and said, I'm ready to play. Yeah, with a handful of piano lessons. Yeah, he took piano lessons for a very, very short time. Chico's wife said that she thinks he took piano lessons for less than six months

and was just a virtuoso right out of the box. That's incredible. They were so musical. I mean, we talk a lot on this show, Gil, about the importance of music and comedy and comedians being musical, but they had it. I heard Mel Brooks would audition actors for his movies by asking them to sing because he saw the importance. So the Marx

brothers all musically talented. Yeah and you know people ask me about the appeal of the Marx brothers all the time and one of the things that got me as a kid was that they did so many different things and if you just look at monkey business when they're running around on the deck of the boat and they stopped by the bandstand and Chico sits down, starts playing the piano, they grab saxophones, they're really playing. Yeah. Harp are playing the clarinet and Chico sits down, starts playing the piano, and they grab saxophones. They're really playing. Harpo playing the clarinet and coconuts. Groucho playing the guitar and horse feathers. The music is so important to those films.

And Harpo, excuse me, Groucho could really sing. Oh yeah, and he could play the guitar. They all played a little piano. There were these reports in the press when they were on Broadway that Zepa was studying the cello. I don't know if that was just something for the press. To my knowledge he never played it on stage but there was something very musical about all of them. I remember because he's not here to see it but I remember Dick Cavett telling his story that Groucho when he was old and sick and weak He once had to travel somewhere by plane and the plane was delayed and he was just he said like you know he grabbed that Groucho and said

if I had a knife with me I would have stabbed myself. And then some woman walks over excited and she goes your Groucho. And he kind of nods his head disgustingly. And she goes, well, you weren't very funny on the plane. And he goes, hey lady, why don't you go fuck yourself? Did this happen? Yes. I love that story. Wonderful.

I love Dick's line in the Marx visit. In the Marx visit, in a nutshell, where he says the shame of it is that Groucho was the only person that didn't get to have a Groucho Marx. Isn't that fun to think about? Wow. What a sweet thing to say. And Chico, I saw him some day, I think it was an English interviewer and Chico was like he was old and he was wearing the hat and jacket that didn't fit quite right anymore.

And I remember thinking, I don't know if he wants to speak naturally, but he's slipping into Chico or if he's trying to do Chico, but he's just Getting lazy with it, but you could see him turning into just like an old New York Jew at times Exactly right and that the piece you're talking about in that Marx Brothers TV collection it's Chico on the BBC in 1959 and What what I think is an interesting observation is if you look at their careers in the 1950s when the Marx brothers were no longer, Groucho created another life for himself. You bet your life that he refused to put on

the grease-paint mustache and the frock coat. He became a gracefully aging Groucho Marx. Harpo and Chico never shed the characters from literally that started home again in 1914. They're wearing the costumes. They're doing the same schtick. Now Harpo occasionally floored with the idea of breaking out of Harpo. I mean, there are points where he did a stage play. He appeared in the man who came to dinner in summer stock in 1941 in a speaking part. Interesting.

He did some very interesting things playing with symphony orchestras. He agreed at one point to narrate a documentary film about Israel called Israel Makes Harpo Speak. It never got made, but he was at that point willing to shed the character. Chico never performed as anything but the guy in the hat and the coat from the Marx Brothers pictures. He just didn't do it. When he did the Chick-O-Marx Orchestra, he came on stage in that costume and did that bit.

Yeah, they both kind of look sad, Chick or Harper and the Ladybeards. It's because those characters weren't really designed to be seen as old men. No. Yeah, it's hard to watch Love Happy. Harpo looked like a homeless man. Yeah, and Groucho was probably smart enough to realize that the character that he created

in those early movies wasn't going to work as an old man. And I think the other brothers probably felt that they had less opportunity to branch out than Groucho did. And in that interview in the BBC, what's so strange, there are you know when he's talking like this you know the whole Chico thing but then it's like he becomes like you know well when we worked with the Marx brothers you know well when we were like in the middle of the sentence he forgets he's doing the Italian forgets he's doing the Italian. Yeah, yeah. And he becomes like an old Jew, which is what he was.

And he's going, yeah, we started in Vaudville, and then we started working on different productions. Yeah. He did a couple of very rare things out of the Chicko costume. He did a play called The Fifth Season in 1956 as a touring show. And he almost backed out of it. He couldn't remember his lines.

He was just not good at it. And they had to bring in an actor at the last minute to replace him at the opening. He just wasn't equipped to do it. And he even did one other thing out of costume. He did a Playhouse 90. I was just going to say that. I saw that at Maxine's house.

I read your mind. Yeah. There's also the read your mind. Yeah. There's also the story of mankind. Yeah, well he's in a costume piece there. That's probably the, you know, it's Chico in color though, which is kind of rare. Yeah, but at least he's not doing Chico. The story of mankind gives Skadoo a run for his money. I love the story of mankind because of how weird it is.

Oh, it's a train wreck though. And it's so bad that it's great. Yeah, it's fascinating. It's a derailed locomotive. It's worth the price of admission for Dennis Hopper as Napoleon. Two other quick questions before we, as we wind down. Jack Benny. Did Minnie ask Jack Benny to play? According to Jack Benny, yes. That story comes from Jack Benny's memoirs. Do you know this, Gil? Yeah, that they wanted him to play in the opening act, I think. No, they wanted to bring him on the road as part of the act.

As part of the act. His ability to sight read the music. He was very impressive as a violinist when he was a kid. When they played Walkie-Gig in Illinois, they met him as part of the orchestra and they liked the shtick he did with the violin and he could pick up the music so quickly. she wanted to add him to the act. What happened? His mother wouldn't let him go because he was a young kid and she was

afraid of his life what it would be on the road with these pariahs, the Marx brothers. You know we touched on this early we didn't really get to it but the lifestyle in vaudeville was such that when vaudevillians came to town the parents of children didn't want their kids anywhere near the vaudevillians. The Marks brothers had quite a reputation. I'm sure. And Jack Benny's mother wouldn't let the kid go out with them. Yeah, like actors and vaudevillians were like, lock up your daughters.

Exactly. And, you know, there's... Well, there were boarding houses that said, no actors. Right. There's a wonderful book you probably know by Fred Allen called Much Ado About Me, which is his memoir of being in vaudeville. And it's the most true and accurate depiction of some of this stuff that you can ever read, and I use it as a source in the book. It tells about how the actor was perceived and treated, and it also tells a lot about, for lack of a better explanation, the sex lives of vaudevillians. And Fred Allen is so honest about about this and it applies to the Marx Brothers, you know, the girls in local towns Wouldn't mess around with any of the local boys because they'd be talked

But these actors coming through for three days or a week were fair game And the actors would tell other actors who you can go sleep with in Dubuque or something like that And I'm sure that a lot of quickie marriages to the local sweethearts occurred as a result of some of these dalliances. And I was talking about this with Bill Marks and we had a little laugh saying, you know, we should do DNA testing around the country to see if Chico has any grandchildren that we don't know about. Now, I heard, because I mean I heard about like Jack Benny's mother being worried about him going on the road with them, but also that Jack Benny said he was afraid of the Marx brothers. I don't know how true that is,

but only he would know. But I'll say that his mother did let him go on the road with a middle-aged woman named Cora Salisbury, who I think was a widow, and legend is that 17-year-old Jack was consorting with some 40-something 40 something year old Cora Salisbury in their first act. Doesn't Benny turn up on a bill with the Marx's later? He did a full tour with them in 1922. Okay. And he became quite close with Zepo. In fact, I believe Zepo introduced Jack to Mary Livingstone. That's good trivia. And then I heard a story that, well of course Jack Benny was famous as being cheap as his character,

but they said when they'd be at Hillcrest Comedy Club, Country Club, yeah. Yeah, no, Comedy Club. I've been working too long in comedy. Everything's... Yeah, yeah, Hillcrest Country Club. That, you know, Groucho is the one who would leave like a ten cent tip or something. And Benny would sometimes feel bad for the waiter and he'd slip him a few dollars. Yeah, I know that the Benny thing was more of a character than his real persona. Groucho was tight with a buck, no doubt. That's the sense you get from all the Marx documentaries.

Did he carry an orange around with him in his pocket because he was afraid of the Depression coming back? That's a story that I've heard. Or is it Marx Brothers in a Nunchel? That he was afraid that he... No, actually, the story is he went on a camping trip to Yellowstone with some friends, and Irv Brecker, the writer, was a good friend of his and there's some

home movie footage of them and Groucho was afraid they'd be without water. So he heard the tomatoes had a lot of moisture. He's walking around with a bag of tomatoes and in the home movies he walks by the poolside of some hotel and he's got the brown bag with the tomatoes. I heard he was terrified there was going to be another crash. Yeah you know the stock market crash is an important part of their history. It's a big part of the book. I spent a lot of time with the book on that. The truth is he didn't really lose two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. His portfolio at the inflated prices was valued at that but everybody buying on margin to get a two hundred fifty000 portfolio, he probably invested about $100,000. Which is why the crash happened.

And then I heard, I guess, Cavett said or in some book, that George S. Kaufman said the only person he would allow to ad lib during one of his productions was Groucho. Yeah, I don't think he had much of a choice, so that was something he probably said as a face-saving gesture, but there's a great story about Kaufman and the Marx Brothers where Groucho was trying to get in some of his own lines and Kaufman was shooting them all down and Groucho says, well, they laughed at Fulton and the steamboat and Kaufman said, yeah, but not at matinees.

That's funny. That's funny. You know, they turned out to be great collaborators. They turned out to be perfect for each other. I think the best writers the Marksman's ever had were Kaufman and Perelman. Those are their best pictures. And then... And then Dona Demory-Riskin too. Oh yeah. As far as songwriters, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby wrote all the classic... Yeah and Harry Ruby was a great friend of Groucho's forever. I mean, they went back to the Vaudeville days. I think they met around 1917.

He was part of an act called Ruby and Tierney, and they crossed paths in Vaudeville. Now, was it Harry Ruby that Groucho was visi... I think he was dying of cancer. Listen. Well, I don't think he died of cancer, but he died in 1974, I think, and he was in pretty rough shape.

I think he was in a facility in Groucho's visit and was pretty depressing for him. And I remember just one story popped into my head that one time some reporter was talking to Groucho's wife about something, and she said something in the interview and press that bad about Perry Como. And then you know Perry Como started saying oh she just doesn't like Italians. And so the reporter asked Groucho about this and Groucho said, that's not true. She liked my brother Chico and he's Italian. Hahahaha. Hahahaha.

Hahahaha. Hahahaha. Fantastic. You know, Groucho loved Harry Ruby so much that he used to talk about him on talk shows that he would say, my friend Harry Ruby, who's a congenital idiot. Hahahaha.

Hahahaha. Wonderful, wonderful. You know, one of the sad that we should wrap, but one of the sad things in the book too that I didn't know was that Minnie died in 29 and she really only got to see, and barely, coconuts. She died in September. I guess coconuts came out in March. So she didn't see, she saw them be the toast of Broadway. She saw her dream come true. It just didn't, she didn't make it to the toast of Broadway. She saw her dream come true.

It just didn't, she didn't make it to the end of it. But yeah, she got to live to see her dream come true, which is a pretty special thing. What a force of nature. She was pushing them all this time, a poverty stricken group, and that they would become a legendary, not just successful, but they symbolize comedy. Yeah, and she has a lot to do with that because part of the whole mythology of the Marx Brothers is where they came from. Of course.

And you know, even if you look, and I don't want to ever be accused of overanalyzing comedy because I think it dies as soon as you do that, but the notion of Groucho's character being something of a shyster and being something of a fake in a lot of the pictures where, is he really an African explorer? Is he really the professor or president of the college? He's the head of the country. And he's the president.

These things are part of the whole character. And you look at where they came from, these basically near-to-well kids from New York City who had nothing. This is in keeping with the whole idea that many told them they could be whatever they wanted to be. If you want to be the president of Huxley College, if you want to be the president of Fredonia, if you want to be an African explorer, just go ahead and do it. It's fascinating how things lead to other things. I mean, if her brother hadn't been a Vaudeville star, you know, if this hadn't happened, if that hadn't happened, so many dominoes have to fall to make them what they are.

But the story that emerges, what emerges is that she just is indomitable. She is a powerful, powerful woman. And she, you know, Harpo says it in his book, their parents had a very weird marriage. Well, Frenchie's another wonderful character. I mean, Minnie's the father figure, and Frenchie's the housewife. He's altogether hilarious.

Don't you see him in Night at the Opera? No, no. He turns up in Monkey Sisters. He's in Monkey Business. When they come down the gangplank. That's it. He's there waving with his white hat and smiling and he's actually dead when they made that opera.

Oh jeez. Yeah, but I'll tell you, then that's the characters. Just reading the book, I mean it's like a movie in itself because Frenchie's such a character. Yeah. And all these people and Minnie's sister and the grandparents and all of them. You know, I didn't realize that when I was writing it, but everybody's told me that it really turns out to be

Minnie's story for a good half of the book. Yeah, I haven't seen Minnie's boys, but now I'm curious. It wasn't good. No? That's too bad. It's hard to capture a character like that and make it. Shelly Winters player? Yeah, Groucho was not happy with that choice.

Okay. Oh, geez. That's too bad. Let's plug the book because the book is fascinating and to our listeners who love us talking about the Marx brothers, you don't know the Marx brothers if you haven't read this book.

I learned so much. Four of the three Musketeers, the Marx brothers on stage. And I can't believe how much information is in this book and how much of your life you poured into it. It's sad and depressing and frightening. How much information you have in that book. It's like you look at how big a book that is and you go, I'm scared of this guy. Honestly, we talked about Cliff's book too

the recreation of vaudeville I mean it you really it's you really managed to put the reader you know the mosquitoes and the rats in the backyard and there and you put the there's there's such it's something I wanted to know more about from the moment I saw the word vaudeville for the first time in my life, which was in Groucho and me. I just wanted to know everything I could find out about it. I'm not exactly sure why that was so fascinating to me, but it just was. You bring the world to life. You really do. It's so funny because in interviews I get the question and every performer gets it like, oh tell us about your nightmare gigs.

every performer gets it like, oh, tell us about your nightmare gigs. And the worst nightmare gigs that you could have in the past couple of years is a vacation in Hawaii compared to what the vaudevillians went. That was hell. Just getting to and from was sometimes a nightmare. I know we're kind of out of time, I'll just tell you this one more thing. For the Marx Brothers, when they got blacklisted in the early days in their

career, they weren't booked on a circuit that arranged things for them. They had to figure it out for themselves. So sometimes they had to change trains twice in the middle of the night to get to their next gig. They were really building their circuit themselves until they got off the blacklist with home again. And the lifestyle was terrible. And they were also in the South, Jews not allowed in certain boarding houses. There was a network of Jewish families in the South that rented out rooms in their homes to Jewish vaudevillians because the boarding houses wouldn't take them. And you hear stories, the Marx Brothers, Stooges, everybody who they would sleep at the train

station and they'd be like basically on the platform and freezing weather. Yeah, that's sometimes, you know, taking a train in the middle of the night. A lot of times they do their last show in the city, get paid and have to go right to the train station to get to the next gig. And sometimes they're playing the next day. In Vaudeville, Sunday was traditionally a travel day, but sometimes they could play in a place that had a show opening on Sunday, and they'd travel all night on the train to get to this matinee on a Sunday somewhere.

It was a really tough lifestyle. Hard Scrabble life. Just say nothing of the unsavory characters. They're stealing their money, and Groucho has to learn to block the door because somebody's coming in and taking his money in the night. And as they became more successful, they became sort of unsavory. Right. Okay, say the name of the book again. It's a wonderful read. I'm going to make you say it this time.

Oh, okay. You're the celebrity. Why do I have to do work around here? You're the celebrity. Why do I have to do work around here? This is the book. Rabbit S. Bader presents four of the three musketeers, the Mocks Brothers on stage. What do you say you take us out, Julius?

OK. Well, this has been the Gilbert Gottfried podcast. It's called because back in my day, we would make a podcast and it would be, they'd have the patient's name in it because back then people had names So this is Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal podcast and He's got his his co-hosts. Oh, I always said he never should have Face because he's He's just something he's just

He just brings the show to a judge hole Call me Baravelli Start wearing the hat Frank's and so pod The only guy who does groucho in the middle of one of his strokes. Yes! He's cornered the market on that, president. And it was once again recorded at Nutmeg with our engineer Frank Ferdorosa. Thank you, Frankie.

And our guest today is Robert S. Spader. Because sometimes a person would have a middle name, and instead of saying the middle name, they would put just the initial. That's the way it was in my day. They would use a full name. Thank you, Robert. This has been one of my favorite episodes. Thanks.

Robert S. Spader. And back in my day, if someone was named Robert, you could also call them Bob, which was back then. And Bob was the name of affection. Fade out. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha we still rolling no thanks man your proposition may be good but let's have one thing understood whatever it is i'm against it and even when you've changed it or condensed it, I'm against it.

I'm opposed to it. On general principles, I'm opposed to it. He's opposed to it. In fact, he's a he's opposed to it. For months before my son was born, I used to yell from night to morn, Whatever it is, I'm against it! And I've kept yelling since I first commenced it, I'm against it!