The world wasn’t in especially great shape that autumn of 1937. And I ought to know, I was there.
Hitler was quite obviously already warming up for World War II, the Japanese were moving across China and there was civil war in Spain. America was suffering a recession and workers were staging sit-down strikes all across the country. The Prince of Wales had renounced his throne for the woman he loved, John D. Rockefeller had died, Amelia Earhart had gone missing in the Pacific.
In Hollywood Groucho Marx solved his first murder case.
Very few people were ever aware that Groucho carried on a successful sideline as an amateur detective. But from the late 1930s, trust me, Groucho was giving such West Coast sleuths as Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and Dan Turner some stiff competition. A well-read and perceptive fellow, Groucho turned out to have a real affinity for investigating and solving crimes. “My sleuthing turned Sherlock Holmes green with envy,” he once mentioned. “Or maybe that was only because we left him out in the rain too long.”
I served him as a sort of Dr. Watson for most of his career “I don’t need anybody to scribble down accounts of these capers,” he told me after we’d been at this for a while. “If you were a real doctor, though, you might be able to tell me why I feel so tearful and forlorn whenever the first of the month rolls around. You could also explain these strange greenish spots people report seeing on my backside.”
My name is Frank Denby and I wasn’t yet a screenwriter at that point. I’d been a police reporter for the Los Angeles Times until early in 1936 and then quit to turn out radio scripts.
Don’t worry, by the way, that this account is not going to star Groucho. I learned a long time ago that whether people loved him—which a lot of them did—or hated him—and there were, believe me, quite a few of them, too—they were always more interested in Groucho than they were in me. He’ll be making a typical Groucho entrance shortly, but first I want to get some of the details about me out of the way, so that you’ll understand how I came to be the Boswell of Julius Marx all those years ago.
His first real detective case got going on a bright, clear morning in October 1937. Groucho was approaching his late forties. A few months earlier MGM’s A Day at the Races, in which he starred with his brothers Harpo and Chico, had opened across America to mixed reviews but a very impressive box office take.
I was just shy of thirty and living alone since my divorce the year before, in a small ramshackle beach cottage in the Southern California town of Bayside. My wife quit me a few weeks after I’d quit the paper.
I met Jane Danner on that particular autumn morning. She became the love of my life, but neither one of us had any notion that we were going to spend the rest of our days together.
I was driving a secondhand Plymouth coupe in those days. The previous owner had painted it a bright lemon yellow and attached an imitation raccoon tail to the radio antenna. I had to be in Beverly Hills for a meeting at an ad agency at ten A.M. that morning and I left my place a little before nine.
Groucho was going to be at that meeting, too.
When I turned onto Oceanside Boulevard the car radio was playing “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon,” the Andrews Sisters hit that I’d already heard several dozen times so far that week.
“You know,” I said aloud—I tend to talk to myself quite a lot, so be prepared—“I still don’t have any idea what those lyrics mean.”
Traffic up ahead seemed unusually thick and tangled.
“I wonder if even the Andrews Sisters know.”
I heard a siren now.
About a block ahead was a large wedge of vehicles blocking most of my side of the wide boulevard. There were three Bayside Police Department cars parked in the street at assorted odd angles and another one up on the dry narrow lawn of a small stucco cottage.
A dusty white ambulance shared the patch of lawn with the police car and a second ambulance was just roaring to a stop on the sidewalk. Several other cars were parked on both street and sidewalk and more were pulling up. Three uniformed cops were trying to keep back a gaggle of what looked to be reporters and photographers. From this distance I couldn’t recognize any of my former colleagues. They seemed to be interested in the small garage attached to the cottage.
Suddenly a new police car shot in front of me from the left.
“Jesus!” I swung the Plymouth’s steering wheel hard to the right, hitting the gas pedal.
My car lurched, getting out of the way about five seconds short of getting sideswiped.
I started to sigh, then stopped.
From my right came an odd rattling noise, then a woman’s cry and then more rattling.
I hit the brakes. Pulling on the emergency, I shifted into neutral and hopped free of the car. On the radio the announcer was delivering a commercial for a bargain funeral home.
I hurried around the front of the yellow car.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
An auburn-haired young woman, very pretty, wearing a tweed skirt and a green cardigan, was sitting on the pavement with her bare legs spread wide. A bicycle, looking out of kilter and surreal, lay nearby.
“What was the question?” she asked.
“Are you hurt? Did I hit you?”
She looked up at me. “No, I hit you I believe.”
“Well, that was because I had to swerve to avoid getting smacked by the damn cop car.”
“That sounds plausible.”
“The more important inquiry has to do with what shape you’re in. Especially your bones and such.”
“Help me up.” She held out a hand. “And we’ll run a few tests.”
I took her hand and, somehow, felt a mild electric shock. That was when I started to fall in love with Jane Danner and I came to understand the Prince of Wales. If I’d had a throne, it would have been given up right then and there.
She wiggled her left foot, then her right. Wiggled each hand in turn. “I seem to be shipshape.” Leaning to the right, she looked around me and at her fallen bike. “But my bicycle’s all askew, isn’t it?”
“Afraid so. Can I deliver you someplace?”
“That would be nice.”
I opened the rumble seat of my Plymouth, gathered up the injured bike and managed to get it stowed away. “Where were you going?”
“To work—about a mile from here. On Palm Lane.”
“Sure, that’s right on my way,” I told her. “Well, even if it weren’t, I’d get you there. I’ll buy you a new bike, too.”
“To keep me from suing you for everything you possess?”
“That’s one good reason, yeah. But I happen to be a chivalrous fellow and anytime I knock a girl off a bike and damage it, I replace the damn thing.”
“Fine by me.” Hands on hips, she was surveying the traffic jam that was growing down the block. “Any idea what the heck is going on?”
“Something serious I’d guess. A death probably.”
“Actress,” said a middle-aged newsboy from the sidewalk. He was wearing a long tan overcoat and had a bundle of morning newspapers tucked up under his right arm. “Lived up there. Did the Dutch.”
“Suicide, huh?” I said.
“Yep, so they’re saying.”
Nodding, I opened the passenger door. “My name’s Frank Denby.”
“I’m Jane Danner.” She slid into my coupe. “Are you currently married?”
After coming around and getting in, I answered, “Divorced. You?”
“Haven’t been married so far. Engaged three times, though.”
I eased the car around the vehicles that blocked the way and turned onto a side street. “Is that a pattern?”
“So far, yes. I tend to leave them at the altar.”
I asked, “What sort of job am I taking you to?”
“It’s kind of odd.”
“Oh, so?”
Rising up on our right was a huge billboard advertising Lost Horizon with Ronald Colman.
“Ever heard of a comic strip called Hillbilly Willie?”
“Sure, everybody has. Rod Tommerlin draws it and it runs locally in the Examiner.”
“Well, I help draw it.”
“Do you draw the outhouses?”
“Right, and most of the pigs and mules.”
“I like those outhouses. Especially the little crescent moons cut in the doors.”
“I take it, Frank—judging from the slightly snide tone I’m sensing here—that you yourself do something far loftier than mountain boy humor.”
“Nope. I write radio shows actually,” I informed her as we turned back onto Oceanview.
“What? Soap operas like Ma Perkins? Or funny stuff like Jack Benny?”
“I’ve done both sorts of shows. Most recently I wrote a detective show called Crime Reporter. Chester Morris did that one for a season, but we didn’t get renewed,” I said. “I’m back with comedy now, working on a new show called Groucho Marx, Master Detective.”
“Oh, I love the Marx Brothers. I thought Duck Soup was the funniest—”
“This is just Groucho. Something he can do on his own until they decide whether they’re going to do another movie.”
“I hope they will. Harpo’s my favorite. He’s cute.”
“Cute, but difficult to fit into a radio format,” I observed. “Matter of fact, I’m on my way to a meeting with the ad agency we’re doing the show for. Going to be a network guy there, too. And Groucho will probably show up, if he remembers.”
“What’s he like?”
“Well, he doesn’t have a moustache in real life.”
“I’ve heard that, yes,” Jane said. “Oh, by the way, you passed Palm Lane two blocks back.”
“Oops.” I pulled to the curb, checked the rearview mirror and then executed a U-turn. “You busy tonight?”
“I’m free any time after six.”
“Okay, I’ll arrive shortly after six and we’ll go to dinner. Okay?”
“Fine. I live at 2303 Mar Vista Way.”
“Not too far from my place.”
“Walk over, then, and we can try a favorite bistro of mine on the beach.”
I drove in silence for a few seconds, then said, “This has been an unusual morning for me.”
Jane smiled. “Wait till you see what the evening’s going to be like.”