An Evening with Groucho
By: Tom Zimberoff
Tags: Photography, Comedy, Movies, Portraits, Memoir

Let me tell you about the first time I saw Groucho Marx, who happens to be the subject of my very first portrait. But my story begins before I became a photographer.

Protect your bagels; put lox on them. It sounds like something Groucho might say. But it was just a clever recommendation amongst locals to visit Nate ’n’ Al’s Delicatessen in Beverly Hills. I was there eating brunch with several buddies before heading over to the Fairfax Theater in West Hollywood for a Marx Brothers double feature. Their zany humor from the Depression era was enjoying a revival on the silver screen that took my generation by storm. I was 17 years old, just out of high school, and, in 1969, grateful for my 2-S college deferment that kept the Vietnam draft from blowing my way.

Nate ’n’ Al’s was — is — an antediluvian eatery favored by discerning fressers. Notwithstanding Jacopo’s Pizza Parlor and Dolores’s Drive-in (with carhop service, no less), it was also a hangout for Beverly Hills High School kids. It was my go-to place for corned beef with swiss on rye, washed down with a can of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray celery soda. They still serve sandwiches piled sky high with thinly sliced meats; and, if you’ve got room, latkes, blintzes, and knishes. The dill pickles are endless. The whitefish, once cured as much by Romeo y Julietta and Chesterfields as by woodsmoke, still makes my mouth water. The Formica tabletops, brown as coffee stains, are flanked by tuck-and-roll benches. At the cash register, grooves worn through the laminate surface reveal bare wood where customers have, for eons, scraped off loose change.

We were a motley bunch, long-haired but on the conservative side of hippie couture. One of us stood out, though; the youngest member of our quartet, Jeff Dunas. Picture Jeff as a cross between Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, and Keith Richards on a bender. His coiffure was parted straight down the middle and hung in thick black curls across his shoulders, crowned with a stovepipe opera hat — kind of like what Groucho’s brother Harpo wore. His flounced shirt was unbuttoned down to his navel, allowing the placket to frame an overabundance of beads and gold chains. To cap that off, so to speak, was the vestige of a bicycle accident that left Jeff with two silver incisors in the center of his high-wattage smile.

Just when our waitress brought the check, who should walk in but Groucho Marx himself accompanied by fellow comedian Milton Berle. (Oy, are there stories about “Uncle Miltie!”) Both men were smoking like chimneys, their cigars creating a cumulonimbus halo diffused by neon lighting overhead. Showbiz types, particularly old-school vaudevillians and Jewish comedians, frequented the place, so entrances like theirs were taken in stride — but for Jeff. He spotted them first. His exuberance was volcanic.

“Look!,” he said, “Can you believe it? I mean — it’s GROUCHO. What a coincidence!”

We tried to shush him up.

“I’ve got to tell him we’re on our way to go see ‘Duck Soup’ and ‘Animal Crackers.’ He’ll love that.”

We implored Jeff to leave the man alone. He was not only entitled to privacy, we said, but given Jeff’s fashion statement, he probably wouldn’t make out well with the master of comedic calumny. Groucho was famous for off-the-cuff remarks that cuffed the unwary right in their self-esteem. But Jeff would have none of our advice. He got up and stood in the aisle, intercepting Marx and Berle before they were seated.

“Groucho,” he said, “Wow! We’re on our way to go see ‘Duck Soup’ and ‘Animal Crackers’ right now. Can you dig it?”

Jeff just dug his own grave.

“Kid,” Groucho replied, tipping an ash on the floor with his characteristic twiddle, If I were you, I’d go see my dentist first. Wait! Let me comb my hair while you’ve got that smile on your face. Oh! I don’t have any hair. Enjoy the movie, kid.”

Jeff slouched back to our booth, and the rest of us got up to pay our check. We waved meekly at the two comics as we retreated past their table on our way out. They waved back with their cigars, expecting us to know, I think, that life, for alter cockers like them, imitated art — their shtick, that is. No hard feelings.