Books > Hello, I Must Be Going >

Excerpts

Introduction by Bill Cosby

Charlotte has asked me to say something for this new edition of Hello, I Must Be Going, and if I were Groucho Marx, I could say, "Something," and let it go at that. But I'm not Groucho, so I have to be less explicit. Therefore, let me tell you several "somethings" about Groucho which are not already included in this fat, erudite book.

The first television encounter Groucho and I had was when he hosted The Tonight Show. I was a hot new comedian, and he asked for me on the show when he was substituting for Johnny. The night I did the show, before going on, he called me into Johnny's office. This was in New York. He was changing clothes, and he just had his shorts on. I stood there thinking, "I'm looking at the great Groucho Marx in his underwear."

We went on. It wasn't a great meeting of the minds, because at that time I was really interested in telling my stories, and I didn't want to trade quips with him. But after the show, I regrouped. I told myself, "If I work with him again, I will not serve as the funny person. I will serve as the catalyst for his punch lines." And it worked, each and every time after that, because he was the boss.

In 1974, when I had my own show, I asked for Groucho, who was then well into his eighties. Of course, the thought of the producers was, "Isn't he too old and will he be able to read or remember his lines?" There was a very negative feeling about bringing someone on who had, in fact, slipped that far chronologically -- and maybe mentally. All of the questions of whether he could do it or not came out, and I kept saying, "But this is television, and we have plenty of tape, and you guys have the scissors. I'm sure that with a man like this, if we do nothing more than sit and talk, Groucho cannot help but throw a line here and there, and I feel that I can feed him enough. If anything goes badly, I can always get back to pretty girls, which will wake him up and light him up."

Groucho went out, according to his rest schedule, and we did the show.

Now, there are certain priorities that people have. Let's say if a big, big star wanted to do my show, people would get excited, but here's what he or she wants: They want food flown in from Mexico, and they have to be out by ten-thirty. Everyone would say, "Yeah, fine. We'll get food from Mexico, and we'll get them out by ten-thirty." Then they're coming back at one-thirty, and can give you ten minutes, so you'll have everything ready for the ten minutes. The star's manager comes ahead and the next thing is, Can you get a private dressing room for him, too? You give the manager a TV set along with the star's TV set, and all these things you go out of your way to do.

Now here's Groucho, and all that's asked is that when he gets tired, let him rest. People are going, "You know, it's a lot of time, and we don't know, and..."

"Let's do it, please."

And we did it -- and had a ball! He wanted to go and go and go. What that show did for him -- you could see the juices, you could see it exciting him. Now, when you're in that condition, physically, to get excited burns as much energy as to be totally depressed. So, he would perform for a while, and then he would get physically tired, and he'd have to go off and rest. Well, that was all right for me, because that's exactly what he was supposed to do. That's what you're supposed to do at that age. Whatever your body dictates, that's what you have to do. I spent an awful lot of time with my grandfather, and for some reason, I have a feeling for and a respect for elderly people.

For the television show, we played it until he got tired. We did some of the lines over. We had a lot of fun, which for some reason is not part of the performance, because they cut it out. It's strange how people want to make comedy so slick. That's the part that ruins everything. Because, you see, his moment of waiting and realizing what's happening is just as much skill within comic timing as if he had said it quickly. The impatience of the people around me was just not welcomed by me at all.

Television has a great fear of silence. Silence means there's no money being made. Just because you're not speaking doesn't mean you're not thinking. Maybe you should bring along some kerosene and a match.

"What's that for?"

"It's just in case I become dreadfully boring, I can always set myself on fire."

So, we came off of it with a lovely, lovely show. His lines were funny. Sometimes I'd say something, and you'd see him think, and you'd see him still thinking, still thinking. Then, boom! the line would come, and the people would laugh, and love it. No, it wasn't as fast as Buddy Hackett or Don Rickles. But you could see in his eyes that they were working, the IBM cards were being flipped around, and they may not have been in the condition that they once were in. Maybe a little dog-eared, and some of them may even have been in the wrong alphabetical order. But you could see him flipping through those cards, and then that line would come.

If you gave him time to think about it and get it rolling, those lines would come out. You had to have patience, but it wasn't overbearing. There's nothing that put you in the ranks of Job. It was a matter of knowing that you were going to get it and taking your time.

Groucho and I ad-libbed a lot. I feel ad-libbing is relying on everything that you can think of in order to come up with humor, on your feet, not knowing when or where. That to me is ad-libbing. That's working without a net. You know, the role of the catcher is not an easy one, because you have to look and see what you can catch. But to stand there and think it up, and then put it out, is the most difficult part.

Groucho thought funny, and ad-libbing is thinking funny. It doesn't make any difference whether you've had this particular line and you've used it before. When and if the line comes, you don't know when it's coming, and then you use it, you are ad-libbing. You have to be on top of it. You have to play the moment. And that's what Groucho was absolutely brilliant with when we did the show together. I purposely switched things around for him so that he would have to think in a fresh way.

I always felt that it was my role, whenever we were together, in a way to be the most effective straight man ever. If I could feed something ridiculous or give him something he could think five or six punch lines on, I was perfectly happy to do it. Because it's absolutely true that's what happens when you do that. He continued to think, and it was mental exercise.

When he appeared on my show, I was just very, very proud of what he had done, although Charlotte tells me Groucho wasn't happy with his performance. But, you see, what happens is, with a show like that, producers have their own idea of what they want to do. I think that what might have set him back was not necessarily his performance, but the other things around him that made it look like window dressing.

I think that what Grouch may not have been tickled about was the way he sounded. That's something that anybody who's human feels -- the older we get, the more we don't particularly like the way we sound. Especially when the voice begins to sound weak. We really don't like that. Time does have a way of taking a peak period away from you, a peak look, and you really know time has done its job. There is a bit of sadness there, about what time does. It does take away, and it happens with everyone. But if it were the other way around, and things just got better and better, I don't know if that would be good, either. Because, then, some people might just become a pain in the ass.

As far as I'm concerned, when you have someone like Groucho Marx come out and perform, that's really all you need. The greatest show would have been just Groucho and me. But a producer can't really see that far, and they're afraid of something like that. There are so many sketches that could have been done with just the two of us sitting, and run the tape forever -- and then splice it together. Many times a great line comes out of a few minutes of very serious talk.

It was during that period when Groucho could still come out, and he would come out for friends of his, or he'd come out for an event -- any of the two that'd get his juices going. Once he came to the house I was renting from Martin Landau. My mother was there; my wife, Camille, was there; Eubie Blake was there with a Mr. Browning; and Erin Fleming, of course. Browning was at the time eighty-three, Eubie was something like ninety-two, and Groucho was eighty-four.

We all had dinner, and the table chit-chat was fair. There was no trading of lines, no trading of stories, or anything. I carried the table as far as the conversation was concerned, and Grouch threw in a few lines here and there, and Eubie might have told one or two stories, and Browning would say something. But I don't think anybody was really paying attention to anybody in particular. And it wasn't because the food was that good. I think it might have been just that there were three strangers there.

We moved into the living room. There was a piano there. Eubie sat at the piano, and Groucho took a seat on the sofa, with Erin. Browning, who was a tenor, got up and sang some of Eubie's Broadway songs. Well, after a while, they got into these "hot" numbers, you know, like "I'm Just Wild About Harry." Everybody's smiling and enjoying, and I can't describe the sound Groucho was giving off, but to him, it was singing.

Everybody started to look around at Groucho. So he got up, unsteady, of course, and once he got up, he was up. He went over to Browning and Eubie, and he started to sing, of course in this terrible, almost dog-like sound. You know -- wolfing -- and what he was doing, he was trying to harmonize with Browning. But the range Browning was singing in was so far above Groucho's, all Groucho could do was try and harmonize in that key, and what came out was this dog-like wail. We all started to laugh, and Groucho started to smile, and Mr. Browning broke up laughing.

Eubie, he was just playing, because he was concentrating on the song. I don't know if Eubie even heard what was going on. Well, they got near the end of the song, and Groucho decided that he wants to high-kick. And he starts to cross one leg in front of the other, kicking. He starts to dance, and Erin stands up, and her face is flushed, and she's excited about the whole thing. But he's really dancing!

They continued on. I don't know whether there were three or four more songs, but I do know that the evening was important enough fun for Groucho that he missed You Bet Your Life that night. That was the biggest compliment Groucho could give to a party. He never missed reruns of You Bet Your Life. Erin said, "Groucho, do you want to go and see your show?" and he said, "No, I want to sing."

"But you look tired."

"No! I want to sing."

For him, it was absolutely the biggest thing. My mother still talks about it. And laughs! She laughs so hard whenever we talk about it, because it was a great tribute. He was there, high-kicking, and just doing this dog's wail, trying to harmonize. Then, he'd do "Lydia," and Eubie didn't know it, but he faked it. They all sang that together, faking it, and they tried to find his key. But he had a ball. He left that evening before Eubie, and afterwards, Eubie, who was the oldest of that group, said, "You know, he's in pretty good shape."

I said, "Yeah, and tonight he's in better shape than he's ever been in." You know, there's no medicine for that. A pharmacist can't just put that in a bottle.

Erin called back the next day and said, "When he woke up, his spirits were just great, just lovely." Because of that evening.

I was fortunate enough to be able to meet three of the four comedians I most admire. Besides Groucho, there were Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. I never met W. C. Fields, of course. But Groucho was the only one I ever really knew. I talked with Buster, but at that time it wasn't good at all, because Buster was ready to go. I met Chaplin once. The funniest thing about it was his granddaughter told him who I was. She was really excited about it.

It was my pleasure to meet Groucho and to get to know him. I think, other than that, it probably would have been even better to have known him when he was at his prime. If we could have worked together, both at our prime, that would have been extraordinary. To me, Groucho will always, always be appreciated and respected as a human being who thought funny.

Now, more than his movies, I appreciated You Bet Your Life. I broke my neck to get in there and watch that, and that's where I really knew Groucho from. Woody Allen speaks highly of the films, but to me, Groucho Marx is You Bet Your Life and coming up with the lines off of which the people said what they said. That I appreciated more than anything. As a matter of fact, I appreciated him so much in it, that I wanted to do a show like that, the kind of thing that really made for good viewing. The people on You Bet Your Life became human beings instead of the blithering idiots you usually see on these television quiz shows. As you'll notice in Hello, I Must Be Going, Groucho considered the audience the straight man. That's important. And you weren't really giving anything away. No big bucks.

I always wanted to do You Bet Your Life. We even went into meetings with the old producers of the show. I felt very confident I could deal with the people on the show the way Groucho did. Not slick, natural. I've been waiting a long time to do it.

The audience I'd most like to have for the show is Groucho. I hope he's watching. I'd like for him to smile that funny little smile of his that meant more than other people's out-loud laughs. I'm tickled that I'm getting the chance to do You Bet Your Life while I'm still crisp.