Wednesday--time for our weekly orgy.” The interviewers left in a hurry. Sheila and Marcia led me up the stairs to my loft bed, and we had a delicious threesome. It had never happened before, and it would never happen again.
At one point in our conversation, Groucho somehow got into a negative space. He was equally cynical about institutions, such as marriage--
“legal quicksand” --and individuals, such as Lyndon Johnson, referred to
as “that potato-head.”
Eventually, | asked, “What gives you hope?”
He thought for a moment. Then he just said one word: “People.”
| told him about the sketch | had written for Steve Allen, “Unsung Heroes of Television,” with the man whose job it was on You Bet Your Life to wait for the secret word to be said so that he could drop the duck down, and Groucho told me about one of his favorite contestants on the show. “He was an elderly gentleman with white hair, but quite a chipper fellow. | asked him what he did to retain his sunny disposition. ‘Well, I'll tell you, Groucho,’ he says, ‘every morning | get up and | make a choice to be happy that day.’”
Groucho was holding onto his cigar for a long time, but he never
smoked it, he only sniffed it occasionally. “Everybody has their own Laurel
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