1/16/2024 0 Comments Offscreen death eddie rocky horrorI still regret not having bought - years ago and short on funds - from a New York autograph dealer a single sheet of note paper from the Ritz Hotel in Boston. He is known to have personally financed, quietly and anonymously, the escape of many Jews from Hitler’s Leueen said that, seemingly aloof, he was soft-hearted and sentimental beneath the forbidding exterior. George Kaufman - used to unwittingly torture me by saying, “George would have enjoyed you so.” It gets to At about age 18, I did once see Kaufman plain - with the trademark, high-piled black hair - enter a Broadway theater on an opening night, with a beautiful lady on his arm.Ī dear friend, the actress Leueen MacGrath - then a former but still-devoted Mrs. The laugh seemed to go on long enough for me to go make a sandwich and come back before it had stopped. you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in (Where is he going?, I wondered, glued to the screen, back in Nebraska.)Īs improbable as it would doubtless be, if you could somehow contrive to place the Mt. This magnificent instrument can magnify the stars up to six times the magnification of the Mt. Palomar, sits a more recently perfected telescope. A powerful telescope that has made it possible to magnify the distant stars to approximately 12 times the magnification of any previous telescope. Fisher promised something good - but what? Though I’m working from memory, the thing is so indelible in my mind that I can just about guarantee you that what follows is no more than - hereĪnd there - a few words off. (My guess would be the wit Oscar Levant.) Kaufman’s dark countenance as he balefully gazed upon the juvenile It began with “The Gloomy Dean of American Comedy,” as Kaufman had been labeled by someone. Then he sang, probably, “O Mein Papa” and sat down to receive the panel’s remarks and advice. He said he was appearing at the Copacabana night club and because of his extreme youthĪnd boyish looks, none of the gorgeous showgirls would consent to go out with him. Eddie Fisher - in uniform, looking about 16 - laid out his problem. Each panelist would then comment on the person’s “problem.” (There is a tantalizing glimpse of the great man on this show, on YouTube.) Kaufman was one of three panelists on a live, black-and-white TV show called “This is Show Business.” A performer would come on, tell the panel a problem of his, perform and then return to sit before the It was no trouble pretending to hear it for the first time. I loved hearing this treasured story repeated. “George said to me once, ‘Groucho, you’re the only actor I’d ever allow to ad-lib in something I wrote.’ And that’s the greatest compliment I ever got.” (Each time, he I can hear Groucho’s familiar soft voice in my mind’s ear: “The greatest compliment I ever got was from George I said no the first time and, also, the four or five times thereafter over the years. It went: ‘Did I ever tell you the greatest compliment I ever got?” Kaufman had known and written for the Brothers Marx - the original Fab Four (then three) - and Groucho worshipped him. rather than the seventh or eighth - time. The one where you have to pretend to be hearing an oft-told joke or story for the first In the years I was lucky enough to know Groucho, there was one trait of the elderly that I, at least, never experienced in him. Groucho always referred to Kaufman as “my personal god.” I can’t find the book and I can’t forget the story. It was one of my favorite early-days of-television memories and I had written about it once in an introduction to a book called “By George,” a collection of the great playwright, director and Algonquin
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