David Steinberg: Meeting Groucho Marx Was Like “A Trekkie Meeting Spock”
march 2015 issue david steinberg
David Steinberg Rebecca Ford Anthony Breznican Joy Press Savannah Walsh Tom Kludt Chris Nashawaty Mark Rozzo Douglas Brinkley Tomris Laffly
In a personal essay, Steinberg remembers his relationship with the comedy legend.
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Vanity Fair
My Hollywood is like a movie where the stars are comedy legends and the only currency is laughter. Recently, my wife, Robyn, surprised me for my birthday with a dream dinner—a table at E. Baldi, in Beverly Hills, with guests including Larry David, Bob Newhart, Martin Short, and Don Rickles. No one had a kind word to say about me for over three hours. I couldn’t have been happier.

When I first arrived in Hollywood I was in my early 20s. I was single. I bought a 1965 Morgan I couldn’t afford. What could be better?

To me, no one had ever been more entertaining than Groucho Marx. As a kid, I could pretty much lip-synch his movies. As an adult, I’d often go to Marx Brothers retrospectives. So, to finally meet “the one, the only” Groucho was like a Trekkie meeting Spock. And for him to ask me to write Minnie’s Boys, a musical about the Marx Brothers, was a dream come true. I was warned by Arthur Whitelaw, the producer, that Groucho could be tough. I was nervous about what he would ask me. He asked me only one question: “Got a pencil?” That’s all he asked me. I said “Yes,” and we made a deal. I was co-hosting a show called Music Scene with Lily Tomlin at the time, and my plan was to write Minnie’s Boys during the hiatus.

Second meeting: now it was time to get to work. I asked about Chico. Groucho said, “Chico brought venereal disease to the vaudeville circuit. Let’s go to lunch.” It became a ritual. Every Tuesday we’d go to the Hillcrest Country Club for lunch with his friends Jack Benny and George Burns. Not for a second did I take for granted that I was sitting with a Mount Rushmore of comedy. I always had my pencil with me, and when I wasn’t laughing I was furiously writing down everything they said. One of their favorite topics of conversation was comparing bad reviews—it turned them into young warriors. A critic’s name would come up and they would all pile on. George was still pissed, 40 years later, at a long-gone Philadelphia critic: “He gave Fink’s Mules a better notice than me and Gracie.”

One Tuesday, Groucho asked me if I knew Adolph Zukor. I was a stand-up comic in my 20s; Zukor was a founding father of Hollywood in his 90s. We didn’t exactly hang out in the same circle. Groucho said, “C’mon, I’ll introduce you.” As we got up to meet him I noticed that Jack Benny and George Burns were suppressing giggles and avoiding eye contact with me. We approached Mr. Zukor, who at this point in his life looked like a cap in a chair. Groucho lifted up Zukor’s cap, pointed at me, and said, “Adolph, you remember Chico, don’t you?”

Hiatus came and I finally sat down in earnest to structure my notes. They were less than meticulous: “Chico, venereal disease, vaudeville circuit … Fink’s Mules … Adolph, remember Chico?” and at least a hundred other lines that made me laugh, having nothing to do with Minnie’s Boys. I broke out in a sweat. It was impossible to start the musical from scratch and to finish it before the next season. I immediately called Groucho. He couldn’t have been more gracious. He even agreed to be a guest on Music Scene, which I was hosting. I asked him what he was going to do about Minnie’s Boys. He said, “Don’t worry about it—I think my son has a pencil.” Arthur Marx and his partner, Robert Fisher, wrote it, and they hit it out of the park. And without even using my notes.

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