SAN DIEGO –I completed a presentation to a client in Beverly Hills whose suite was on the top floor of a swanky high rise office building. I entered the elevator and pressed the first floor button. The elevator descended only one floor and the doors opened. In walked Groucho Marx, the world famous comedian, and his financial manager. They moved to the back of the elevator and talked in quiet calm even tones.
In Beverly Hills, celebrities are such a common sight that no fuss is normally made of them as they go about their business. I played it cool, did not stare, but made sure I could hear every word they spoke. Groucho, in his mid-seventies, dressed in a conservative business suit, and walked and talked slowly, like an aged man. His manager was telling him about a certain stock in Groucho’s portfolio he had just sold. “It didn’t do very well and only made a little money,” he said. Groucho’s reply was similar to the wisdom every Jewish boy has drilled into his head from birth: “It’s better to make a little than lose a little.”
I started to feel mildly depressed at seeing and hearing this raucous giant of film and television comedy so subdued in his sunset years. The elevator stopped at another floor and a couple of ‘suits’ came aboard. The doors closed and the elevator descended rapidly as did my feelings, and stopped at a lower floor. Then the most remarkable scene unfolded. The doors parted like a stage curtain, a move Groucho had known all his life.
Before our eyes stood two beautiful young girls waiting to come aboard. They hesitated a moment to size up the remaining room in the cab. A lively voice, familiar to all, called out from the back beckoning these Miss America candidates to join us for the rest of the downward journey, Then he reeled off several hysterical one-liners, which cracked everyone up. Of course the flattered maidens joined us.
It wasn’t too many years later, I read in the newspaper Groucho had become senile. He couldn’t remember names and places. However, I bet if a cute young thing passed in front of him, his eyes would gleam and his marvelous quips would dazzle the maiden. He would bring the color to her cheeks as he did to those lovelies in the elevator that day, before retreating back into the miasma of his worn-out brain.
*
Ira Spector is an author and freelance writer based in San Diego. This selection, with slight revisions, was republished from Spector’s 2011 work, Sammy Where Are You? An Unconventional Memoir … Sort of. It is available via Amazon.
That was so interesting. I loved Groucho Marx. I could watch his movies again and again, which I have, during quarantine!