How a UCLA Student in the 70s Saved the Marx Brothers

This is Lisa Beebe and this is now American stories we tell stories about everything you're on the show when our favorite stories are our listener stories that your stories story comes to us from Paul Minneapolis, Minnesota. Paul moved our listeners with the story of Wilbur and the empty Nestor and baby boomers battle with insanity and fitness. We asked him if he had any more. As with the story simply titled Moose prayer.

Have you ever seen a moose. I have their big strong powerful and athletic. Have you ever wanted to be a moose. I did live with a moose all through my childhood growing up and going to Minnesota child of the cluster of a devout Catholic kids have three older brothers one older sister two younger brothers and one younger sister. I grew up idolizing my older siblings were. I would have given to be as cool as them.

Such was the thought of this impressionable little brother. It was time the firstborn five years my senior that I most want to emulate his nickname, moose three sport star at Kennedy high school larger-than-life. My 10-year-old eyes to a fifth-grader 15 Ramos, Ms. Weldon, Paul Bunyan, he could do it all. What does this have to do with the most prayer start asking if you ever wondered whether God is listening to your prayers and I wonder the same high school sophomore.

I remember praying that acute energetic cheerleader would fall head over heels for me. I was a shy, bashful, awkward teenager. It didn't happen. God didn't answer my prayer duty turned out the children. I had very little in common. I also remember another selfless pair.

Petitioner made the former varsity hockey games is God's plan to score a goal treatment goal did not always happen and I didn't grant that prayer request either party perhaps escort moguls and I deserve or what about my prayer asking that God give me over my fear of public speaking. He certainly didn't answer that one. The way I had hoped. After 58 years. I still shiver at the thought starter attempting to speak in public settings was answered. Indeed, this leads me to the prayer that got answered for me without a doubt my most prayer must go back to the table. Fifth-grader is 15-year-old oldest brother one evening moose and I were in our basement in the middle of an All-Star listing that happened bam could not believe my eyes close performing a wrestling move thing to set in the ductwork above us was busy shaking off the cobwebs was standing there in Oakley hit his head and something that high. My brother moose was indeed large and Paul Bunyan.

He was a giant after all, confirmed my mind right then and there. Thus my most prayer was born.

Then I forward the temperatures with these Lord help me to grow up to be as big as moose after prayer night after night year after year. I was relentless I wanted more than anything to be his is my big brother. I kept up this prayer for a good five or six years, never letting up. But we don't have a lot of tall genes and her family.

Pushing 60, petite 5'5" monotonous brothers at 511 for most of them are still claiming to be 6 feet most top out at 62 inches big, strong, powerful and athletic. Indeed, best for me. Somehow I grew to be 66 inches that happen.

I don't know for sure was of the peanut butter.

My favorite food I doubt it.

Coincidence, maybe an answer to my most prayer, I think, quite possibly yes, for God tells us asking you will receive seek and you will find knock and it will be opened unto you. I certainly has to be tall with passion over and over again for me. I believe God chose to answer my prayer and then some. This way of telling me do not doubt that faith, I hear you answer your prayers. This knowledge he has given me this faith certainly well over the years and days when my faith is tested and doubt creeps into my mind as to whether God cares and is listening. I need to look no further than my 6'6" frame is a reminder that yes God does listen and he does care and he does want me to talk to him.

My personal change since I was a teenager instead of a laundry list of things to ask God for our spend more time talking with God listening to him quite time together one on one conversing.

As a father myself, I learned how precious time is with your sons and daughters father would not want to have a conversation with this child after my kids moved out of the house and I became an empty Nestor the days I get a phone call from them became my best days. It made no difference to me recently called sometimes to say hi and to tell me they love me sometimes, was to discuss an issue there having to ask for some fatherly advice. Sometimes that you can call in question. Something I was doing. I cherished each and every one of these conversations.

Precious time together is priceless fathers I've learned.

Of course want what is best for the children. We do want and ask and I can surely imagine the same goes with our heavenly father. I also learned much of this for my own father. He asked me once again.

One of our weekly Sunday night sessions to define prayer. I struggled with an answer. I thought I knew what it was but I couldn't articulate it.

He sent me to go look it up.

I don't remember where I found the answer he was looking for. When I came back and I said prayer is talking to God with love. He said that's correct, never forget it. But more than a definition.

I learned from a dad how to pray from the formal prayers and the rosary also learn to be unselfish and prayers praying for others rather than myself just as he did. Our family has been blessed over and over.

Thanks in large part ensure to his unending prayers. I'm pretty sure my dad's most prayer had nothing to do with himself want to do with talking to God with love about helping others. So this begs the question, who is your most who you want to emulate what is your most prayer talk to dad about it with love. I'm convinced he's looking forward very much to talking with you and he will listen to you, he will answer your prayers and a great job as always by Greg and a special thanks to Paul in Minneapolis, Minnesota dear on our American stories to view of the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, or asking you to become a part of the our American stories family.

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When my wife and I left New Hampshire 59,000 commuters now ride free on the Staten Island ferry and Sweeney a Staten Island historian defined areas of function boat waterborne transportation regularly crossing somebody of navigable water for the convenience of persons, vehicles, and animal first Staten Island ferry in which we know started in 1708 it ran between William St. in Manhattan in the water in place now, can still on the east shore of Staten Island oarsman power. The first fairies. Later, someone devised a horse driven treadmill to propel the boats in 1810 Cornelius Vanderbilt, the handsome: pain Staten Island Eric borrowed $100 from his mother to run the area. Stapleton another east shore in the foot of Whitehall Street seven years later, he launched the first steam ferry. The Nautilus charged an extortionate $0.25. Children price.

By contrast, the nickel fare was sacrosanct. Most of the 20th century rising to $0.25 and then $0.50 only under pressure of the city's fiscal crises.

Then on July 4, 1997, Mayor Giuliani decreed there would be no more fair, just in time for that year's mayoral elections for five years. Five mornings a week I walk to the ferry terminal in St. George Staten Island to catch up variable from its bowel Manhattan's towers gleamed on the horizon like city of El Dorado.

Like a vision of the city of God.

The boat rumbled from it slip past great bronze statue one bellows Island. My maternal grandfather saw the same statue from an immigrant ship in 1906. He was then an 18-year-old adventurer who escaped conscription into the armies of the Zohar by crossing the border into Austrian Poland beneath the loading the manure events made his way to Austria, Germany and Belgium, where he quickly picked up a sound idiomatic range which he could speak well into his ninth decade and then to England, whence he sailed from Southampton within a century of his arrival.

His experience of a long sea passage closing with the vision of a mighty woman her lamp. The imprisoned lightning has become uncommon if not unknown men and women no longer come here in steerage and land from airplanes something of which my grandfather probably had no knowledge in 1906 the practical technology. Even now barely a century old, so too we have changed how we carry freight across the seas. Now the great container ships glide past St. George to Elizabeth Port in the Bay of Newark with the containers stand stacked for transfer to train and truck of the hundreds of ships that once daily line Manhattan's tours with a forest of masts only a few cruise liners now swing at anchor at Whitehall in lower Manhattan with currents and contrary winds bumped my boat into it slip nearby piledriver alternated puffs of steam with hammer blows as it drives a wooden pile into the harbor floor. It was probably the last working steam powered machine in Manhattan, if not the city. Nothing more surely measures progress and obsolescence of skiing driving force of the Industrial Revolution, the city's last steam locomotives. The Brooklyn Eastern District terminals oil burning switchers serving the waterfront north of the Navy Yard drop their fires in 1962 the last steam ferry boat, the Verrazano stopped all engines in 1981.

New York is older than Philadelphia or Boston. It only a handful of real pretty revolutionary buildings have survived St. Paul's Chapel on lower Broadway is the only one in Manhattan walking uptown. I often unfairly contrasted the city with Dundee Rockefellers colonial Williamsburg Manhattan's past exist side-by-side with the present and the fragmented, often remains on the alive. Williamsburg was barely a ghost town. When Rockefeller began restoring what had been Virginia's colonial capital today the hamlet is beautifully restored and maintain. It presents a careful corporate and inoffensive invasion of colonial history downtowns tortuous irregular streets are those laid out by the Dutch and English except Broadway, which was an Indian Trail running north from the battery before the white man came some street names have changed usually for political reasons Street was renamed liberty but most remain the same.

The indispensable AIA guide to New York City notes that Pearl Street was once the edge of the island where mother-of-pearl oyster shells littered the beach. Wall Street, the most famous was the site of the northern boundary of new Amsterdam where a wall was erected against the English and the Indian of course there been no beavers on Beaver Street for three years. In 1771 the royal government erected a guilt bronze equestrian statue of King George III, and a black iron fence with ornamental crown after the first reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776.

Up at the Commons just south of today's City Hall mob of patriots came downtown toppled the statue and broke off the crown statue is broken up and carried away and melted for shocked the fountain has taken its place, the fence remains. Downtowns tangled streets contrast with the grid of right angles and straight lines imposed on most of Manhattan by a board of street commissioners in 1807.

Their plan was memorialized on the Randall map named after John Randall Junior the engineer and surveyor who created by hand nearly 25 years ago Harry Kleinman pulled me into the Manhattan borough president's topographical Harry worked there.

He was tough, profane and worldly and I liked him a lot. This romanticism escaped only in kindness to his friends love of history and fidelity to the memory of Tammany Hall Hall had gotten him his jobs he had been a pick and shovel man for the borough department works now part of the Department of Transportation a confidential secretary to a municipal court justice and then a clerk topographical Bureau.

We gossiped about politics then Harry asked whether I wanted to see the Randall he opened the cabinet with the reverence one might reserve the ark of the covenant, the map had been made in several parts and was mounted on rollers so racks would form along old-line Harry and little part of it. Randall had drawn and named the streets with India ink and watercolor. The landform there was the collect pond in men that have broken kips Bay in the rolling hills of Chelsea will soon vanish beneath the pavements and landfills of the city. The map was perfect and exquisite topographical Bureau and its predecessors maintained it as if it were the holy of holies because in a worldly way. It is, it's the root of all land-use and then had I lightly touched its image for a moment. It's made of the heavy parchment between viewer for the ages. The Randall map is one of the few objects I've touched that is so rare and unusual as to be literally priced and Harry rolled up again and closed the drawer and human listening to Bill Bright give a short history lesson of New York. His own personal history lesson of New York and it is a city with many bridges, many tunnels and a whole lot of interesting dimensions and we want your stories about your town and send them to our American stories.com Bill Bright, short history lesson of New York city here on our American story. This is our American stories and up next, we bring you the story of how one devoted Marx Brothers fan went on to uncover a long lost. Marx Brothers movie dear Steve, still here to tell us the story. I am currently a screenwriter and author and also do voiceover work, but I was not always in the business. Although I was always interested in show business.

When I was about a small child in St. Louis which is where I was born I would see I Love Lucy episodes where wherever Lucy and Desi would go. They seem to run into famous celebrity so I assumed that's what Los Angeles or Hollywood fly, our family moved to LA when I was pushing eight years old and on the airplane that we took Andy Griffith was sitting several rows in front of us and red Skelton was sitting in the road directly in front of us and so I thought how it really is like I Love Lucy, there's celebrities everywhere. We haven't even landed in Hollywood and there's two stars who I know who they are and I watch their shows.

This is cool and red Skelton was very cool. He kept entertaining my sisters and me the whole flight for me. He kept one of those little those pop guns where you push the back and a cork on a string comes out. He had that tucked into his suit jacket and every now and again he would just turn around and shoot me. With this popgun.

This was of course before there were any airline safety restrictions.

I don't know that you could bring a pop down onto a plane. But in 1962. There was no problem with so I had already met to famous people. By the time our our plane touched down as I say have always had a fascination with famous people, and specifically the Marx Brothers and then within that subset is Groucho my favorite of the Marx Brothers. I'm not sure exactly when I became aware of him/them, but I did have an uncle Joe in St. Louis who was Spalding wore glasses had a mustache smoked a cigar and wiggled his eyebrows so that when I did discover the real Groucho, I thought, he's just like uncle Joe is interesting and my parents used to quote lines from Marx Brothers movies like being vaccinated with the phonograph needle. So when I finally discovered their films and and became aware that I am watching the Marx brothers in this movie that was probably around early high school and I wondered where they'd been hiding all my life and I wanted to see all their movies and this is perhaps difficult to grasp for the Gen X and millennial generation, but we could not simply view what we wanted to view by punching it up on a device or even watching Turner classic movies or even having the DVD or videotape. I had to we would get the TV Guide each week and I would go through it with a pencil and I would circle the movies I wanted to see which invariably were old movies that they put on in the wee twilight hours the middle of the night early morning after Johnny Carson and after Tom Snyder's tomorrow show into that strange netherworld of local car commercials and and I would just sort of will myself to stay awake and I don't know how I did it to me. Now I will drift off on the couch it at 1030 but back then, if they were showing monkey business starting at 248. I just made myself stay up and watch it and then I could knock that off my list movies. I had seen so it was very difficult trying to see them and there was one, you know, and I read whatever scant books there were in articles that came out about the Marx brothers are Groucho and I quickly became aware of the fact that their second film animal crackers which had been a very successful stage play in the late 20s and then was their second film made it paramount. In 1930 I hadn't seen that and I wasn't able to see it because when Paramount sold their early films to MCA Universal in the late 50s. It included animal crackers. But because of basically technological error if they didn't renew the copyright on animal crackers so the rights had reverted back to the authors and composers of the stage play and for the longest time, Universal didn't think it was worth spending money on an old black-and-white Marx Brothers movie to clear the rights and reissue it. So it just became this phantom film. They they owned it. But they couldn't show it, and in the meantime they redistributed all of their early Paramount films and syndicated those in television, and now you may have seen it, they would have that big shield at the beginning that would say MCA TV relays and I used to want to go up to the TV with a Marx a lot and and and and after MCA TV because it just bothered me, but animal crackers was not included in that in those packages, so it was this great unseen Marx Brothers film and it was supposed to have been one of their best stemming Groucho played Capt. Spaulding so his theme song.

Hooray for Capt. Spaulding came from that lot of his quoted lines like I shot an elephant in my pajamas came from that and when I graduated high school, I began to attend UCLA, first as a history major because I really didn't think you could make any kind of living and entertainment and less you are just astonishingly talented and had endless perseverance and I didn't put myself in either of those categories. So while I continue to love watching old movies and study up on all these people. I figured I would be a history major and maybe teach history something like, and I saw that a primitive, animal crackers was going to be shown at a revival house theater in Orange County in December 1973 and I wasn't sure how they were able to show it but I didn't care in all of my friends piled into one car. This is also during a gasoline crisis and oil crisis when gas is being rationed, but we didn't mind blowing most of a tank of gas to be able to finally see this missing link in the Marx Brothers small cannon and you're listening to Steve Sawyer and he is telling the story of the lost Marx Brothers film by the way, it is a small cannon, but if you do get a chance. It is easy to see these movies now bye-bye there was a time when it was impossible just had to wait for them to appear on TV and you did have to read that TV Guide I remember circling all my favorite things to do and all Americans did and that was it. That was it. By the way duck soup animal crackers and horsefeathers the way to go watch with the kids.

It's the cleanest and yet most subversive comedy you'll ever see a lot like what they were doing with Wiley Coyote and Bugs Bunny and just delightful clever stuff and they were never pushing a line and yet they were when we come back more with Steve Steuer's story about a missing Marx Brothers movie theater that our American story background American stories and Steve stolen during we've learned that due to a final year. Animal crackers and become unavailable to the public only last left off. Stephen found a bootleg copy that was being shown that 40 minutes away from his home in Eunice friends from college while they hopped in the car in the middle of a gas shortage finally crossed this film off their bucket list. Let's return to Steve M&A only made 12 or 13 movies in in in all so it was a substantial coup to be able to finally see animal crackers. It was a terrible print. It was a bootleg duplicate to them and the images were murky and the sound with multiple couldn't hear very cleverly, but the point was oh my God were watching animal grant I did. I figured it couldn't find Groucho's name in the phone book and just call them up to tell them that it was playing but from looking through the Beverly Hills phone book.

I did know that Harry Ruby was in the Beverly Hills phone book Harry Ruby had cowritten the songs for animal crackers and had also worked as a writer on several of the early Marx Brothers films and was wanted Groucho's closest friends.

So I called him up and that he didn't answer, but a nurse answered and took my name and phone number and I think if he himself had answered none of what transpired, would've taken place because he wouldn't of had my name and number. It was just a matter of conveying to him to tell Groucho that it was playing at this animal crackers playing in orange county, but because she took my name and number.

I got a call from Harry Ruby which at the time was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me because this was one step removed from Groucho himself, and I had a nice chat with him about several things and he said well I'll tell Groucho about this and I thought oh my God, he's going to tell my hero about this and I called all my friends and told them, and then New Year's Day of 74 I got a phone call from a woman named Aaron Fleming and I'd kept up on articles about what Groucho was up to, and I knew she was very close to Groucho, she had sort of become his manager and she had arranged a series of one-man shows in 1972, where Groucho would transfixed the audience for 90 minutes or so and take home a bunch of money that I did attend the one in LA in December, 72 and was able to see Groucho at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. My friend and I were sitting towards the back. Our tickets were $9.50 which was a fortune and would not even pay for parking out the Dorothy Chandler but be that as it may, and he was quite old and frail, which was it really took the wind out of me to see him that way because the press had led me to believe that good old Groucho at 80 something a brother just as sharp as ever and instead this old man shuffled and said I want to take about 50 Francesco because without them I wouldn't be and he read off cue cards but it was still just electrifying.

Realizing that I was in the same room as Groucho and I collapse hard. My hands stung the next morning because I wanted this. I know this sounds weird but I wanted vibrations from my applause to reach his eardrums because I knew that was as close as I was ever going to get.

So anyway, getting back to January 1974 when I got this call from Aaron Fleming.

She had been on stage with Groucho at the evening with Groucho and she had gotten the message from Harry Ruby about animal crackers and what she wanted to know was how could they show it.

How was it legal for them to show it. What how did they get the rights to it.

How did the and of course I didn't know any of this. I was just this kid that was a Marx Brothers fan and she wanted to take me with with her to Universal Studios to go up to the office of Sidney J.

Scheinberg, the president of universal as sort of an exhibit a of the kid who would drive all the way to Orange County to see animal crackers and so she was hoping that that would make the difference and then universal would clear the rights and read release the movie I was skeptical, but I was flattered all the hell that she wanted to be in touch with me and she and Groucho had. They had to go because they were going to see Woody Allen sleeper. Also while I was on that call.

I said while I have you here. I wanted some had been on my mind for a while.

Some of the books I've seen say Groucho was born in 1895 and others say 1890, and I wondered which one was the real day and she said just a minute Groucho what year were you born and in the distance. I hear 1890. She said did you here and I said yes and I thought I'd go with her. I can I talk to friends and we thought it would be a better idea rather than just having this one kid try to argue the case to be release the movie I would form a committee at UCLA, a petition drive and we would get hundreds or thousands of signatures from like-minded young people that we would want to see this movie and would pay to see it if it came out so some friends and I form the committee for the release of animal crackers. We set up a table on Bruin walk which is where all of the causes had tables for either gay-rights ending the war in Vietnam and then you have this group of kids trying to get an old Marx Brothers movie off-the-shelf and people were so suspicious about signing the petition want you know this is right right during Watergate and someone said you know is a government going to get a copy of this to the FBI getting now. Now it's just you have to be a registered voter. Do I have to printed now. It's just to get this move that I was staying in touch with Aaron Fleming and she arranged for Groucho to come to UCLA and alerted the press about our cause, and sure enough in spring of 1974 Aaron and Groucho came to UCLA, I said Groucho I am very happy to be meeting you after all this time and he said well you should be, and Aaron said this is Steve still here. He's the one trying to get animal crackers re-released and Groucho said well did you get it and I said not not yet, but where working on it and he said you better.

I'll fire you and I said I didn't realize I was working for you. How much are you paying me any said a little less with nothing and it was just this most remarkable pinch me. Is this really happening.

We sat side-by-side answering reporters questions about the movie and I remember one. One reporter said that Mr. March. What is the purpose of your appearance here today and he said I expect to get lunch and she said, but but besides that, I may get dinner so there was still a lot of you know I was so disheartened after seeing how frail and old and shaky. He was at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and 72 but here he was still being Groucho with his silliness and twisting phrases and that was very heartening after having been disheartened so we talked to Chris and they ran their stories and sure enough universal relented and decided to reissue the film they would show it in LA and New York and then be done with it. Type here, here it is. Go look at it. Leave us alone. We have more important movies to worry about.

It had a re-premiere at the UA Westwood and I went to Tuxedo my family went in the other members of the committee.

It was like our night and Aaron and Groucho were there and we watched animal crackers a fresh print clear you could see what was going on and it ended up breaking the house record that it been set several years earlier by the French connection, and it was very gratifying for me to be at a coffee shop in Westwood and look across the street and see a line of kids in T-shirts and blue jeans and tennis shoes waiting to pay money to see this.

Marx brothers, what great storytelling thanks to Robbie for earning interest and a special thanks to Steve Stoler and by the way, to find out more order Steve's book raised eyebrows, my years inside Groucho's spouse, and there are a whole bunch more stories like this one. You can find it at Amazon are all the usual suspects.

The story of Steve Stoler's effort to get animal crackers rereleased this story here on our American story