(Article
originally appeared in High
Times Magazine, Feb 1981 reprinted
here with kind permission from Paul Krassner.)
Excerpts:
Groucho Marx
was going to be in an Otto Preminger film called Skidoo, and it was
pretty much advocating LSD, and he had never tried it but was not only
curious but also felt a responsibility to his audience not to steer
them wrong so could I get him some pure stuff and would I care to accompany
him on the trip?
I did not play hard to get.
We ingested those little white tabs one afternoon at the home of an
actress in Beverly Hills.
Groucho was interested in the social background of the drug. There were
two items that particularly tickled his fancy.
One was about the day acid was outlawed. Hippies were standing around
the streets waiting for the exact appointed minute to strike so they
could all publicly swallow their LSD the exact second it became illegal.
The other was how the tour bus would pass through Haight-Ashbury and
passengers would try to take snapshots of the local alien creatures,
who in turn would hold mirrors up to the bus windows so that the tourists
would see themselves focusing their cameras.
I told Groucho about the first thing I ever sold to the old Steve Allen
show. It was a sketch called "Unsung Heroes of Television. "
Among the heroes was the individual whose sole job it was to listen
intently the whole half hour for somebody to say the secret word on
"You Bet your
Life and then to drop that decoy duck when the word was said. He told
me about one of his favorite contestants "a gentleman with white
hair, on in years but a chipper fellow. I inquired as to what he did
to retain his sunny disposition. "Well, I'll tell you, Groucho,"
he says "every morning I get up and I make a choice to be happy
that day." We had long periods of silence and of listening to music.
I was accustomed to playing rock 'n' roll while tripping, but the record
collection here was all classical and Broadway show albums. After we
heard the Bach "Cantata No. 7 Groucho said, "I may be Jewish,
but I was seeing the most beautiful visions of Gothic cathedrals. Do
you think Bach knew he was doing that?
Later, we were listening to the score of a musical comedy Fanny. There
was one song called "Welcome Home," where the lyrics go something
like, "Welcome home, says the clock", and the chair says,
"Welcome home," and so do various other pieces of furniture.
Groucho started acting out each line; as if he were actually being greeted
by the duck, the chair and so forth. He was like a child, charmed by
his own ability to respond to the music that way.
There was a point when our conversation somehow got into a negative
space. Groucho was equally bitter about institutions such as marriage
("like quicksand") and individuals such as Lyndon Johnson
("that potato-head"). Eventually, I asked, "What gives
you hope?
Groucho thought for a moment. Then he said just one word out loud: "People."
After a while, he started chuckling to himself. I hesitated to interrupt
his revelry. Finally he spoke: "I'm really getting quite a kick
out of this notion of playing God like a dirty old man in Skidoo. You
wanna know why? Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the
same
thing?"
"Always?"
"If they're not, then it's a misuse of your power to make people
laugh." And right after he said that, his eyes began to tear.
When he came back from peeing, he said, "Everybody is waiting for
miracles to happen. The human body is a goddam miracle."
He mentioned, "I had a little crush on Marilyn Monroe when we were
making Love Happy. I remember I got a hard-on just talking to her on
the set."
During a little snack: "I never thought eating a fig would be the
biggest thrill of my life."
He held and smelled a cigar for a long time but never smoked it. "Everybody
has their own Laurel and Hardy," he mused. "A miniature Laurel
and Hardy, one on each shoulder. Your little Oliver Hardy bawls you
out-he says, 'Well, this is a fine mess you've gotten us into.' And
your little Stan Laurel gets all weepy -"Oh, Ollie, I couldn't
help it, I'm sorry, I did the best I could..."
-----
After our acid trip, I had only a couple of contacts with Groucho. The
first concerned a rumor that he had said "I think the only hope
this country has is Nixon's assassination.. I wanted to verify whether
he had actually said that.
"I deny everything", he joked, then admitting he had indeed
said it over a luncheon interview with a now defunct magazine, Flash.
"Uh, sorry, Mr. Marx, you're under arrest for threatening the life
of the president. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed A Night at the
Opera. Here, now, if you'll just slip into these plastic handcuffs...."
I wrote to the San Francisco office of the U.S. Department of Justice,
asking about the status of the case against Groucho, particularly in
view of the indictment of Black Panther David Hilliard for using similar
rhetoric. Here's the reply I received:
Dear Mr. Krassner:
Responding to your inquiry, the United States Supreme Court has held
that Title 18 U.S.C., Section 87) prohibits only "true" threats.
It is
one thing to say "I" (or we) will kill Richard Nixon when
you are the
leader of an organization which advocates killing people and
overthrowing the government; it is quite another to utter the words
which are attributed to Mr. Marx, an alleged comedian. It was the
opinion of both myself and the United States Attorney in Los Angeles
(where Marx's words were alleged to have been uttered) that the latter
utterance did not constitute a "true" threat.
Very truly yours,
James L. Browning Jr. United States Attorney
The second occasion was at the Los Angeles Book Fair in 1976, where
Groucho was scheduled to speak, along with Tim Leary and Jerry Rubin.
It had been announced that Groucho Marx would not speak from the stage
in the Ambassador Hotel ballroom, but rather on a one-to-one basis with
folks whose books he would be autographing. This turned into a mob
scene.
Groucho looked frail and unsmiling, but he was alert and irreverent
as the audience fired questions at him.
Was he working on a film now?
"No," I'm answering silly questions.
What was his favorite film?
"Duck Soup."
Nixon?
"He should be in jail."
Is
humor an important issue in the presidential campaign?
"Get your finger out of your mouth."
What do you dream about?
"Not about you."
What
inspired you to write?
"A fountain pen; a piece of paper."
I couldn't stand it any longer. I called out, "Groucho, what gives
you hope?"
This time he said, "The world."
There was hardly any standing room left in the auditorium, but one man
sat on the floor rather than take the seat occupied by a rubber Groucho
Marx doll.
Bio: Paul Krassner calls
himself an investigative satirist. Don Imus labeled him “one of
the comic geniuses of the 20th century.” And, According to the
Los Angeles Reader, “Krassner delivers 90 minutes of the funniest,
most intelligent social and political commentary in town.”
On the other hand, a couple of FBI agents went to one of his performances
and stated in their report, “He purported to be humorous about
government policies.” His FBI files indicate that after Life magazine
published a favorable profile of him, the FBI sent a poison-pen letter
to the editor, complaining: “To classify Krassner as a social rebel
is far too
cute. He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.”
More of Krassner's bio (click here)
