Zeppo, p.22
Zeppo, page 22
LeRoy had given the girl a small role in They Won’t Forget and changed her name to Lana Turner. When the film was released in July 1937, Turner had only recently turned sixteen. In compliance with the law that protected studios but not agents, her contract with LeRoy was approved by a judge. It isn’t clear what made them lie about her age and still have her be under the age of consent in the process. On March 12, 1937, the Los Angeles Times thought this noteworthy enough to report: “Approval was given by Judge Wilson to a contract between Mervyn LeRoy, producer, and Julia Jean Turner, 17 years of age, a recent discovery, who will be known in films as Lana Turner. The contract calls for from $50 to $600 per week over a seven-year period.”
When LeRoy moved his production unit to MGM at the end of 1937, he convinced Warner Bros. to let him take Lana Turner with him. With a new contract from another studio about to be offered, Lana Turner’s mother stepped in and decided that she no longer needed the services of Zeppo Marx. Having already been down this road with Olympe Bradna, Zeppo knew there was nothing he could do. He told Shirley Eder, “In those days you had no protection with a minor. You could sign a contract, but it didn’t mean a thing. And her mother, who was really a pusher, made a deal with Metro.” What Zeppo didn’t see coming was his junior agent Solly Baiano leaving him to take a job in the Warner Bros. casting department—using the discovery of Lana Turner to his own advantage. The discovery of Lana Turner ended up on at least one other résumé. Henry Willson—a man prone to exaggeration—later claimed to have been responsible for getting her to LeRoy and even coming up with her name.
In her book Turner acknowledged the more nefarious explanation for Zeppo insisting she lie about her age. It was common practice for the studios to give attractive young girls six-month options with no intention of casting them in any movies. She wrote, “Word had gotten around that I was Mervyn LeRoy’s protégé. Nobody ever made a pass at me. I was not just a six-month-option girl to be passed around the executive offices.”
Zeppo was more focused on the money he could potentially make if Turner could be made into a star. He was not in the business of procuring girls for studio executives—as Frank Orsatti had been. But by the time she wrote her memoirs, Lana Turner had learned all about the young women who were used by Hollywood executives and didn’t acknowledge Zeppo’s concern about underage clients not honoring agency contracts. She wrote, “It had to be spelled out for me that those six-month-option girls would never go on to a movie career—they were for the benefit of the management. That was what Zeppo Marx had meant when he told me to say I was eighteen. If I had got one of those six-month-option deals, I’d better lie about my age for their protection.” Zeppo was probably more worried about the possibility of a repeat of the Olympe Brada situation, but the other concern was certainly real.
Marwyck was becoming much more of a focus for Zeppo as the agency business kept getting uglier. Minor problems like clients refusing to pay commissions resulted in the occasional lawsuit. One such dispute was with one of his first clients, Norman Krasna. Zeppo also sued agent Jack Bachman over commissions for his former client, screenwriter Tess Slesinger. Even with the formation of a protective association there were still agents undercutting each other and raiding clients. By the spring of 1938 there were 273 licensed agencies in Hollywood. Ten years prior there were twenty-six. The top agencies that formed the Artists’ Managers Guild became known around town as “the Big 13.” A Variety story about the state of the agency business ran on March 2, 1938, under the headline “H’wood ‘Big 13’ to Purge Ranks.”
Stormy days are ahead for Hollywood’s over-manned army of talent agents. Finally awake to the fact that their own enterprises are being undermined by unhealthy conditions, more or less general throughout the percentage field, the 13 rich and powerful members of the Agents Guild are poised for a widespread putsch intended to rid the racket of . . . some of the affluent 10%ers who are alleged to have gotten that way through unethical practices.
Zeppo’s entrance into the agency business wasn’t specifically scrutinized in the Variety article, but there was a comment that could certainly apply to his rise to the top of it. “Stories of amazing bankrolls being piled up resulted in a rush for agency licenses from all walks of life, current list of permit holders including a former chauffeur and two ex-waiters.” Variety had the good taste to not add an unhappy straight man from a famous comedy team to the list. The rapid rise of the Zeppo Marx Agency was cryptically referenced in a Hollywood Reporter gossip item on April 9, 1937: “The fellow that offered Zeppo Marx $500,000 for his business, can’t be found by Zeppo.”
With several experienced agents in his employ and Gummo now working out of the Hollywood office, Zeppo scaled back his own activities as an agent—although he continued to personally handle a few prominent clients, most notably Barbara Stanwyck. Frustrated with his brothers, he’d handed them off to Gummo, but Zeppo handled negotiations for a radio deal for Groucho and Chico in December 1938. They would costar with Cary Grant and Carole Lombard on the NBC program The Circle.
Zeppo considered his brothers difficult, but he occasionally tolerated them—at least in part because of the high salaries they commanded. But his most important client continued to be Barbara Stanwyck. When she married Robert Taylor shortly after midnight on May 14, 1939, Zeppo and Marion drove with them to San Diego for the spontaneous, secret wedding. Marion was the matron of honor. The newlyweds rented a large house in Beverly Hills and began spending less time at Marwyck. Zeppo and Marion were going there less frequently as well.
Gummo’s son Bob recalled a conversation between Zeppo and Stanwyck in which she wanted to sell her half of the ranch to him because his dogs were keeping her up at night. In July 1941 Zeppo bought her out and became the sole owner of Marwyck.6 Harry Hart continued to run the stable and breeding operations at Marwyck until September 1943, when Zeppo sold the ranch to J. H. Ryan and his partners, who renamed it Northridge Farms.7 In the April 1942 issue of Motion Picture, Marion wrote of Stanwyck’s desire to leave Marwyck:
[H]er drive to and from work every day began to lose its luster. Especially when the rains came. After every rain, there would be flash floods, necessitating all kinds of unexpected detours between Northridge and Hollywood. Many a time I would hear Barbara drive out at 4 a.m., because it was raining. She was so conscientious, so thoughtful of others, she was panic-stricken at the thought that she might hold up production if she didn’t set out before daylight, allowing for detours. Even in fair weather, she had to leave at 6 a.m. and wouldn’t get home at night until after 8. That was pretty wearing. And after she and Bob married, and picture work kept them from having a honeymoon right away, they got thinking about how much more time they could spend together if they didn’t live so far from work.”
The end of the Marwyck partnership and the sale of the houses at the ranch resulted in Marion and Stanwyck beginning to see a lot less of each other. Inseparable friends for almost ten years, their relationship entered a slow fadeout period. Stanwyck had three big hits in 1941 with The Lady Eve, Meet John Doe, and Ball of Fire; and she became more focused on her suddenly exploding career. She also wanted to spend as much of her nonworking time as possible with her son.
Childless and approaching forty, Marion saw the joy Stanwyck got from being a mother. They still socialized on occasion but with Stanwyck a happily married mother, the nights on the town for the Taylors and the Marxes became infrequent. If Marion felt a sense of loss, she could at least be happy for her friend. Barbara Stanwyck had found what she was looking for in Robert Taylor, who was also an excellent father figure for Dion. Marion spoke privately to Susan Marx and wondered if Zeppo could take to fatherhood as Harpo had.
There was no silver lining when Marion lost another dear friend in one of the most profound tragedies in Hollywood history. Carole Lombard was returning home from a war bond rally in Indianapolis when she and her mother were killed in a plane crash near Las Vegas on January 16, 1942. Lombard was only thirty-three and had been happily married to Clark Gable for three years. Marion and Zeppo were longtime friends of both and had been amused and thrilled when they finally got together. They were among the small group of close friends who surrounded Gable with support in the days after the tragedy. Zeppo was one of Lombard’s pallbearers at the private service on January 21. It was a difficult period for Marion who was now without two of the closest friends she had in Hollywood.
Zeppo had simultaneously operated Marwyck and his agency for almost five years. With Stanwyck out of the business, Marwyck was no longer a fun retreat that might make a profit. It was now strictly a business. With World War II shutting down California racetracks in 1942, the breeding side of it took a major hit. Marwyck had started to move away from breeding a year earlier to focus on boarding and training, so the ranch became much less interesting to Zeppo without any chance of seeing one of his horses become a champion. He’d only gotten into the venture because it was something Marion and Stanwyck wanted. But now there was another new venture to consider. An executive of the Douglas Aircraft Company had been boarding his horses at Marwyck and had something in mind that was right up Zeppo’s alley.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Whose Clamp Is It Anyway?
AHELP WANTED ADVERTISEMENT IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES ON October 12, 1941, gave no indication that it had been placed by a celebrity.
DRILL PRESS & LATHE OPERATORS,
EXPERIENCED. CAPABLE.
ACTING AS LEAD MEN OR SET-UP MEN.
APPLY IN PERSON
TUES. 7 A.M. TO 6 P.M. MARMAN PRODUCTS CO,
940 W. REDONDO BLVD, INGLEWOOD.
As he had with each of his homes, Zeppo built a machine shop at his Marwyck house. He told Charlotte Chandler, “I was a mechanic. I love mechanical things, and every place I’ve had, I’ve always had a shop at the back of my house, because I love it.” Zeppo met like-minded Albert Dale Herman. He’d been asking people to recommend good engineers for a new venture he was planning; and Herman, who was the General Manager of the Vickers Manufacturing Company, came highly recommended. The company founder, Harry F. Vickers, is known in mechanical circles as the father of industrial hydraulics. Among Vickers’ inventions was the first automotive power steering system, which fascinated Zeppo.
A. Dale Herman, as he preferred to call himself, was invited to Zeppo’s home and they began tinkering in Zeppo’s shop in their spare time. They each had interesting ideas for inventions and worked well enough together that Zeppo invited him to be his partner in the new venture. But Herman wasn’t prepared to give up his job with Vickers and could not make the financial commitment that Zeppo could. Herman, ten years younger than Zeppo and supporting a wife and two daughters, explained that he needed to remain at Vickers until he qualified for his pension. Nonetheless, Zeppo agreed to call the company Marman Products, using the same sort of amalgamation of names that gave Marwyck its name. In a sense, Herman was to Marman what Zeppo had been to the Four Marx Brothers—part of the name, but not an owner of the company. Herman would devote whatever time he could to Marman while continuing to work at Vickers.
Herman wasn’t the only mechanically inclined friend Zeppo invited to tinker at his shop. “I had met a fella at RKO when I was going around to the different studios selling clients and getting jobs for my clients,” he told Chandler.
I always used to hang around the machine shop at RKO. Every studio had a machine shop. And I got very friendly and close with a fantastic machinist there. So, I said, “Charlie, I’ve got a little machine shop in the back of my house in the Valley. I’d love to play around with it with you. I have different ideas and inventions.” And he said, “That’s wonderful. I’d love to play around with it and work with you.”
What set A. Dale Herman apart and made Zeppo want to form a company with him was Herman’s ability to draft diagrams and patent applications.
Zeppo detailed for Chandler the sequence of events that turned a passion for all things mechanical into a company that would soon dwarf all his other business interests.
I was out at Santa Anita one day, and we had a box right next to the vice president of Douglas Aircraft, who had some of his horses on our ranch. He said to me, “You know, we’re very shy of machine shops and machinists.” . . . “I hear that you have a machine shop. Well, we need some machine work very badly. . . . ” I said, “All right. Send some stuff and the prints over, and we’ll machine it for you.”
Donald Douglas was one of the prescient manufacturers who knew the United States would be entering World War II sooner or later, and he ramped up operations at Douglas Aircraft well in advance of any urgent need for warplanes. He sent Zeppo several blueprints for parts from the DC-3 aircraft and Zeppo and his machinist buddies made them. Douglas was pleased and sent more plans and diagrams—and orders for quantities of these parts that could not be filled in a little home machine shop. Suddenly Zeppo found himself in his shop all night after handling agency business and Marwyck all day: “[W]e’d work until one or two o’clock in the morning machining these parts and getting them ready.”
At first Marman hired unemployed actors, big band musicians between jobs, and guys from the RKO machine shop to meet the orders from Douglas Aircraft. But this became impractical. A large factory with a lot of manufacturing equipment was needed. Zeppo rented a building in Inglewood, got bank loans to buy the equipment, and hired around a hundred workers through his newspaper advertisement.
Once Marman was open for business Zeppo barely spent any time at the agency or Marwyck. Marion’s brother, Alan Miller, had joined the agency in 1939 after having been its legal counsel for a few years. A graduate of Fordham University School of Law, Miller had first worked in Hollywood as an associate of Zeppo’s Colonial House neighbor, attorney and agent Ralph Blum, the husband of actress Carmel Myers. With Blum and his partner Sherman Grancell, Miller represented agents Leland Hayward, Frank Joyce, and Myron Selznick as well as Zeppo. His clients also included actress Ruth Collier and producer Jed Harris, so Miller came to the Zeppo Marx Agency well qualified.
Gummo also took on a larger role. Zeppo told Charlotte Chandler, “I couldn’t devote too much time to the agency business. I had this tremendous thing going.” As Zeppo’s business took off, Groucho told friends, “He’s now running a very successful war plant for making some part of an airplane. I don’t know just what part it is—but I think it’s the hostess.”
Like his agency and ranch before it, Zeppo’s factory was operational quickly. And soon Marman Products would hire even more workers to keep up with the demand from Douglas Aircraft. Less than two months after Zeppo’s initial help-wanted advertisement, the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into World War II. Marman quickly became a government contractor.
“So now I’m in the machinist business. I’ve got five hundred people working, and we’re working twenty-four hours a day, three shifts,” Zeppo told Chandler.
We’re working like mad turning out these parts for all the aircraft companies. Finally, one day I started to take stock of myself. I said, “Look, I’ve got a machine shop here, and I’m machining things. If the war gets over very quickly, I’ve got a million dollars’ worth of machinery here, and who’s gonna use it? And what am I gonna do with it? We’ve got to get a proprietary item—something we can split the government work with, something of our own.”
He needn’t have worried about the war ending quickly, but his concern about being stuck with all the additional equipment he purchased to meet the war time demand was legitimate.
This proprietary item that Zeppo sought to keep Marman viable after the war has become synonymous with Zeppo and his company. What came to be known as the Marman Clamp would make Marman Products very successful in a fairly short time. But who invented the Marman Clamp? Many assume that Zeppo did, but he had no hand in it apart from ultimately manufacturing it.1 The story of the clamp as Zeppo told it to Charlotte Chandler has a few holes in it and may not be entirely truthful.
[O]ne day a fella came into the shop and to the office, and the girl came in and said, “There’s a Mr. King out here who would like to talk to you.” I said, “I don’t know a Mr. King.” She said, “Well, he’s got an invention, and he wants to show it to you.” I said, “Bring him in.” Of course. I would see anybody. I brought him in, and he sat down. He had holes in the bottom of his shoes. Terrible looking man. He had a little clamp, a coupling device, and it appealed to me. He had his patents, and he said he’d been all over, but he couldn’t get in to see anybody because on account of the war, they were so busy, and they didn’t want to take on anything like that.
I said, “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll take it on, and I’ll give you the regular inventor’s royalties.” So, we made a contract, and I took this thing on. It was really a very good coupling or clamping device. As a matter of fact, right now, most everything that moves and some stuff that doesn’t move has this item on it. We had it all over airplanes, we had it on boats, we had it in oil fields, we had it every place. This man finally became a millionaire. He rode around in a Cadillac with a chauffeur and had a yacht and everything due to his royalties from this thing, because it turned out to be so big.
The “Mr. King” in Zeppo’s story was James Thomas King. He applied for the first two patents on his hose clamp in April and August 1941. These patents were granted in January and February 1942—around the time he brought them to Zeppo. King’s design was a great improvement over previous clamps in that it could be applied and removed with the turning of a single nut. It could be applied quickly and provided even force around the perimeter of a hose or pipe. The ease of repeated removal and reattachment of the clamp made it very desirable in the aircraft industry.
