HOW THE FBI AND HUAC TRIED TO GET THE GOODS ON HIM IN THE FIFTIES.
The Secret Word on Groucho
BY JON WIENER
______________________________________________________________
No, they didn't confuse him with Karl. In 1953 the FBI really did
want to know if Groucho Marx was a member of the Communist Party.
Apparently the bureau was not familiar with Groucho's famous motto,
"I don't care to belong to any club that accepts people like me as
members." In response to my Freedom of Information Act request, the
FBI released 186 pages of its file on Groucho, who died in 1977 at
82. It contains a lengthy report to J. Edgar Hoover dated December
1953 on "the affiliation, if any, of graucho [sic] marx with the
Communist Party."
Most of the Groucho file concerns a 1937 copyright infringement
case having nothing to do with politics. But the file also includes
a seventeen-page report on the FBI's 1953 "Internal Security"
investigation of Groucho's politics, as well as letters sent by
concerned citizens to the FBI in the late fifties and early sixties
denouncing Groucho for jokes he cracked on his TV show, You Bet
Your Life. Sixteen pages of information about Groucho have been
withheld virtually in their entirety on the ground that they need
to be "kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign
policy." As Groucho said, "Military intelligence is a contradiction
in terms."
The 1953 report's "Synopsis of Facts" begins with a "remark" made
by a "rank and file member of the Communist Party (CP), San Diego
County," who had "recently" told a confidential informant that
"graucho [sic] marx contributes heavily to CP." But "Los Angeles
informants familiar with CP activity in Hollywood...throughout
1940's state marx was never affiliated with CP and never a
contributor so far as informants are aware." Case closed?
No: The report then cites a 1934 article in the Daily Worker
quoting Groucho on the topic of the Scottsboro Boys defense: "The
battle of the Communists for the lives of these boys...is one that
will be taught in Soviet America as the most inspiring and
courageous battle ever fought." This sounds distinctly
un-Groucho-like, especially the year after Duck Soup, the anarchic,
anti-fascist farce widely regarded as the Marx Brothers' greatest
film, and the year before A Night at the Opera, their most
successful--Il Trovatore has still not recovered. The Daily Worker
quote about "Soviet America" might have provided the occasion when
Groucho first said, "Quote me as saying I was misquoted."
The same Daily Worker article hailed Groucho as a person "of
working class origin" who "has never forgotten his origin--and his
nonsense contains, as many have felt, considerable satire and
passionate thrusts at contemporary society." The piece quoted
Groucho describing the imprisonment of labor leader Tom Mooney as
"an outrage. There's absolutely no question in my mind that he's
innocent.... If it wasn't for political reasons he would have been
released years ago." Tom Mooney was indeed the target of the most
notorious frame-up of a labor leader in the twentieth century--a
socialist and prominent opponent of US entry into World War I, he
served twenty-three years in California prisons for the death of
ten people killed when a bomb exploded in 1916 during the
Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco. Eventually the trial
judge and jurors publicly stated they had erred, and in 1939 the
governor of California pardoned Mooney. But apparently the FBI in
1953 still considered support for Tom Mooney to be subversive.
Groucho's other offenses, according to the FBI, included attending
a benefit concert in 1942 for Russian War Relief; supporting a
group in 1945 that opposed UN recognition of the fascist government
in Spain; and joining the actors, writers and directors of the
Committee for the First Amendment, which condemned the House
Un-American Activities Committee's 1947 investigations in
Hollywood--a group that included Bogart and Bacall and Sinatra.
Although Groucho once said, "Whatever it is, I'm against it," he
apparently was for the First Amendment--and part of the forties
Hollywood left.
Why was the FBI conducting an "internal security" investigation of
Groucho in 1953? That year his television show was Number 3 in the
ratings. HUAC was holding hearings in Hollywood. One of the
witnesses the committee called was the bandleader on Groucho's TV
show, Jerry Fielding, who was named that same year as a Communist
sympathizer in Walter Winchell's syndicated column. Of the 240
groups on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations,
Fielding later said he belonged to at least sixty. That's
impressive--but Fielding was a small fry. Why were they after him?
"I think they wanted me to name Groucho," Fielding told Groucho's
biographer Hector Arce. Bringing down the man with the Number 3
show on TV would have been a stunning victory for HUAC and Hoover.
Instead, they had to settle for the show's bandleader. Fielding
took the Fifth, after which the corporate sponsor of You Bet Your
Life, DeSoto-Plymouth Dealers of America, demanded that he be
fired. Groucho did what he was told. "That I bowed to sponsors'
demands is one of the greatest regrets of my life," he wrote in
1976 in The Secret Word Is Groucho. Lots of people did worse--at
least Groucho never named anybody. And at least he apologized
publicly--even if it was twenty-three years after the fact.
A second set of documents in Groucho's FBI file consists of
communications by loyal Americans to J. Edgar Hoover in 195961
complaining about Groucho's TV show. One phone caller described the
appearance of "a 'stumble bum' who admitted being a former pugilist
and bootlegger." Groucho reportedly asked, "You mean you were a
bootlegger for the FBI?" The caller said that he "felt that Marx's
question was in poor taste" and "wanted to call it to the Bureau's
attention." In subsequent internal correspondence, one FBI official
declared, "it was in poor taste but I do not feel that any further
action is warranted."
One letter urged Hoover to watch a show on which a guest spoke
Russian to Groucho. Amazingly, the FBI acted on the suggestion. A
memo to Hoover's assistant Cartha DeLoach reported that "the show
was monitored and there was nothing on it concerning the Bureau."
It concluded, "It is not felt that anything can be accomplished by
acknowledging [the] letter, and if we do we will undoubtedly
promote further correspondence."
One letter to Hoover complained that Groucho had referred to the
United States as "the United Snakes," and suggested that the FBI
investigate him "as being a communist." "By the way, your own book
'Masters of Deceit' is a masterpiece." (This one spelled "Groucho"
correctly, but came up with a last name of "Marks.")
Hoover's secretary Helen Gandy replied with an acknowledgment and
added a note to the file that "Marx is the subject of Bufile
100-407258. His real name is Julius H. Marx." Six different FBI
officials initialed the memo, indicating the significance
attributed to it.
The same person wrote again a year later, in 1961, a longer letter
declaring, "I am outraged by this show which appeared to be full of
Communist propaganda.... The Red stench was unmistakable. The
program went out of the way to make the automobile industry in our
country appear to be silly and the American people weak,
incompetent and arrogant." Groucho, the correspondent wrote, "said,
in speaking of the American people, 'They drove around in their
arrogance.'"
The writer went on to declare that Groucho "was a member of the Red
Front called 'Committee for the First Amendment'" and that he
"signed a Cablegram of allegiance to Stalin.... Please write and
let me know if this is correct and what other information I am
entitled to as a United States citizen to know concerning his Red
affiliations, so I can speak with authority when discussing him."
This letter received a personal reply from Hoover: "While I would
like to be of assistance, the jurisdiction and responsibilities of
the FBI...do not extend to furnishing evaluations or comments
concerning the character or integrity of any individual." Hoover
enclosed a helpful pamphlet, "What You Can Do to Fight Communism
and Preserve America."
Most of the material in the FBI file on Groucho's politics was
previously unknown. His authorized biography, written by Hector
Arce and published in 1979, contains a few references to "Groucho's
deep convictions...about national and world conditions" in the
thirties, and remarks about the forties that "had he been more
generous in support of the liberal, leftist causes he believed in,
chances are that the postwar Communist witch hunt in Hollywood
would have blacklisted the Hollywood Eleven instead of the
Hollywood Ten"--a bit of hyperbole, especially since Arce provides
no details and no evidence. Arce also asked Groucho's stockbroker
whether "Groucho, because of his political beliefs, refused to
invest in the war machine." The broker replied that, "while Groucho
may have espoused causes that were not right from an economic point
of view, if...it jeopardized his economic position he would try to
protect it."
Groucho once said, "Those are my principles. If you don't like
them, I have others." Nevertheless, the FBI file suggests that
Groucho wasn't just a cynical, wisecracking comedian; he seems to
have been a man of the left and, later, of liberal principles--for
which posterity may thank him. But Groucho wouldn't have been
impressed; as he once said, "Why should I care about posterity?
What's posterity ever done for me?"
______________________________________________________________
Jon Wiener (JMWiener at UCI.edu), a Nation contributing editor,
teaches history at the University of California, Irvine.
Copyright (c) 1996, The Nation Company, L.P. All rights reserved.
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