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

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Tackle these situations in stride and and you of course be annoyed when an unplanned expense comes up but not let it be something that slows me down right as i did with repairing my credit you know hiring somebody to do credit repair for me that was a gift that i gave myself that allowed me to then you know get my first apartment like a good neighbor state farm is there state farm proud sponsor of michael tura podcast network this is our american stories and up next we bring you a story of how one devoted marx brothers fan went on to uncover a long lost marx brothers movie here's steve stolier to tell us his story i'm currently a screenwriter and author and also do voice over work but i was not always in the business although i was always interested in show business when i was but 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 seemed to run into famous celebrities so i assumed that's what los angeles or hollywood was like 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 wow 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 his pop gun this was of course before there were any airline safety restrictions i don't know that you could bring a pop gun onto a plane now but in 1962 there was no problem with it so i had already met two famous people by the time our our plane touched down as i say i've 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 slash them but i did have an uncle joe and saint louis who was balding 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 he's just like uncle joe that's interesting and my parents used to quote lines from marx brothers movies like being vaccinated with a 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 generations 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 of the middle of the night early morning after johnny carson and after tom snyder's tomorrow show into that strange nether world of local car commercials and and i would just sort of will myself to stay awake um i don't know how i did it i mean now i i'll drift off on the couch at 10 30 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 of movies i had to see so it was very difficult trying to see them and there was one you know i read whatever scant books there were and articles that came out about the marx brothers or 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 at paramount in 1930 i hadn't 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 uh a technological error 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 you may have seen they would have that big shield at the beginning that would say uh mca tv release and i i used to want to go up to the tv with a marx a lot and add an n after uh 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 uh and it was supposed to have been one of their best i mean groucho played captain spalding so his theme song hooray for captain spalding came from that a 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 in entertainment unless you were just astonishingly talented and had endless perseverance and i didn't put myself in either of those categories so while i continue while i continue to love watching old movies and study up on all these people uh i figured i would be a history major and maybe teach history something like that and i saw that a print of animal crackers was going to be shown at a revival house theater in orange county in december of 73 and i wasn't sure how they were able to show it but i didn't care and all of my friends piled into one car this was also during a gasoline crisis an oil crisis when gas was being rationed but we didn't mind blowing most of a tank of gas to be able to be able to finally see this missing link in the marx brothers small cannon and you're listening to steve solier and he is telling the story of the lost marx brothers film and by the way it is a small cannon but if you do get a chance it is easy to see these movies now by the way there was a time when it was impossible you just had to wait for them to appear on tv and you did have to read that tv guide and i remember circling all my favorite things too and all of americans did and that was it that was it and by the way duck soup animal crackers and horse feathers with a way to go and watch it 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 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has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own make your dorm the place to be with roku tv or bring a roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like i heart radio stream your favorite playlist with the roku vibe setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you make your dorm the place to be with roku tv streaming players and smart lights head to roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm is getting gas at shell burning a hole in your wallet get the drop app with drop you can earn free gift cards just by filling up your tank download drop now use code drop88 to instantly receive five dollars in points hi loves it's me paris hilton i'm already excited for you to listen to my new album infinite icon and i'm even more excited for you to listen to it on vinyl every vinyl collection needs a crown jewel and no jewel sparkles brighter than an autographed baby pink edition of infinite icon order the lp signed by yours truly at shop.parishilton.com that's hot sponsored by 11 11 media and we're back with our american stories and steve stole his story and we've learned that due to a filing error animal crackers had become unavailable to the public when we last left off steve had found a bootleg copy that was being shown about 40 minutes away from his home and he and his friends from college well they hopped in a car in the middle of a gas shortage to finally cross this film off their bucket list let's return to steve i mean they 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 dupe of a dupe and and the images were murky and the sound was old we couldn't hear it very clearly but the point was oh my god we're watching animal crackers i didn't i figured that you couldn't find grouch's name in the phone book and just call them up to tell him 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 co-written the songs for animal crackers and had also worked as a writer on several of the early march brothers films and was one of grouch's closest friends so i called him up and uh 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 have taken place because he wouldn't have 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 was 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 grouch 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 transfix the audience for 90 minutes or so and take home a bunch of money 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 nine dollars and fifty cents which was a fortune and would not even pay for parking now at 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 or other just as sharp as ever and instead this old man shuffled out and said i want to take a bow for harpo and for checo because without them i wouldn't be here tonight and he read off cue cards but it was still just electrifying realizing that i was in the same room as groucho and i clapped so 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 to him so anyway getting back to january of 74 when i got this call from erin 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 they and of course i didn't know any of this i was just this kid that was a marks brothers fan and she wanted to take me with her to universal studios to go up to the office of sydney j sheinberg the president of universal as sort of an exhibit a of a 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 re-release the movie i was skeptical but i was flattered all to hell that she wanted to be in touch with me and she and groucho had to they had to go because they were going to see woody allen's sleeper also while i was on that call i said while i have you here i wanted something has 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 date and she said just a minute groucho what year were you born and in the distance i hear 1890 and she said did you hear and i said yes and i thought oh my god he's in the room with her i can't handle this i talked to friends and we thought it would be a better idea rather than just having this one kid try to argue the case to re-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 formed the committee for the re-release of animal crackers we set up a table on brew and walk which is where all of the causes had tables for either gay rights ending the war in vietnam and then you had this group of kids trying to get an old marx brothers movie off the shelf and people were so suspicious about signing the petition what you know this was right right during watergate and someone said you know is the government going to get a copy of this does the fbi get a go no no it's just that you have to do you have to be a registered voter do i have to print and put no it's just to get this move then 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 stolyar 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 we're working on it and he said you're better or i'll fire you and i said i didn't realize i was working for you how much are you paying me and he said a little less than 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 mr marx 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 in 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 the press 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 it's like here here it is go look at it leave us alone we have more important movies to worry about it had a re-premier at the ua westwood and i went in a tuxedo and my family went and 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 had 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 movie what great storytelling and thanks to robbie for bringing it to us and a special thanks to steve stolier and by the way to find out more order steve's book raised eyebrows my years inside groucho's house and there are a whole bunch more stories like this one you can find it at amazon or all the usual suspects the story of steve stolier his effort to get animal crackers re-released his story here on our american story roku has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own make your dorm the place to be with roku tv or bring a roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like i heart radio stream your favorite playlist with the roku vibe setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you make your dorm the place to be with roku tv streaming players and smart lights head to roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm hi loves it's me paris hilton i'm already excited for you to listen to my new album infinite icon and 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