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 17-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 '50s and early '60s 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 grounds that they need to be "kept secret in the interest of national defence or foreign policy". As Groucho said, "Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms".
Communist
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 1940s 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 defence: "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. The Daily Worker quote 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 labour 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."
Mooney was indeed the target of the most notorious frame-up of a labour leader in the 20th century — a socialist and prominent opponent of US entry into World War I, he served 23 years in Californian prisons for the death of 10 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 Mooney to be subversive.
Un-American activity
Groucho's other offences, 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 (HUAC) 1947 investigations in Hollywood — a group that included Bogart, 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 '40s Hollywood left.
Why was the FBI conducting an "internal security" investigation of Groucho in 1953? That year, his television show was number three in the ratings. HUAC was holding hearings in Hollywood. One of the witnesses the committee called was the band leader on Groucho's TV show, Jerry Fielding, who was named that year as a Communist sympathiser in Walter Winchell's syndicated column.
Of the 240 groups on the attorney general's list of subversive organisations, Fielding later said he belonged to at least 60. 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 three show on TV would have been a stunning victory for HUAC and Hoover. Instead, they had to settle for the show's band leader.
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 apologised publicly — even if it was 23 years after the fact.
Hate mail
A second set of documents in Groucho's FBI file consists of communications by loyal US citizens to Hoover in 1959-61 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.
Another letter to Hoover complained that Groucho had referred to the US as "the United Snakes", and suggested that the FBI investigate him "as being a communist".
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 initialled the memo, indicating the significance attributed to it.
The same person wrote again, 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 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.
Groucho's authorised 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 1930s. It also remarks about the 1940s 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 black-listed 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, "while Groucho may have espoused causes that were not right from an economic point of view, if ... it jeopardised 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 teaches history at the University of California. Abridged from the US Nation.]