"Ron Goulart - Groucho 3 - Elementary, My Dear Groucho" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

very cramped duffel bag. What with me, my salt and pepper shaker collection, and all those stray duffels in there, it w
from roomy. It was, in point of fact, nearly seventy-seven hot, weary miles from roomy and up hill all the way."
A pair of workmen in coveralls were on a scaffold putting up a new billboard on the high white stucco wa
sur-rounded the fifteen acres that Mammoth covered. The headline of the big poster read: Miles Ravenshaw IS She
Holmes in Mammoth Pictures' Production of THE VALLEY OF FEAR! The top third of Ravenshaw had already
slapped up and you could see his deerstalker cap, his meerschaum pipe, and a profile that suggested that he be
whoever it was who'd once told him that he looked a lot like John Barrymore.
"Miles Ravenshaw," muttered Groucho as I guided the car up to the gilded wrought-iron studio gates. "I'd call him a
except that would be an insult to all the self-sacrificing pigs who donated their backsides so that the world could have ha
rye."
"They say that Ravenshaw was a Scotland Yard inspector before he became an actor."
Groucho expressed his disbelief with a rude noise. "Of course, for religious reasons I can't have anything to do w
ham of any sort," he said. "I'm even forbidden to drop in on the Three Little Pigs, nor can I so much as huff and pu
blow any of their houses down." He waggled his unlit cigar. "I'm sorely tempted to mention an attractive miss I
en-countered in a Baja California bordello who could not only huff and buff but... but, no, some things are best left unsa
I stopped a few feet from the closed gates. "That'd make a good motto for you," I suggested.
"It would indeed, Rollo, and I may well use it in my forth-coming B movie, Think Fast, Mr. Motto."
Just outside the gates was a tile-roofed guard shack with a single palm tree rising up beside it. A plump uniformed
in a dark gray uniform came shuffling out and walked over to the car, his hand resting casually on the holster at his righ
"How can I help you, gents?" he inquired, looking in at Groucho.
"I'm deeply hurt, Oscar," said Groucho. "After we served three years in the Foreign Legion together, I hoped you'd
forget me."
The heavyset Oscar chuckled, shaking his head. "Sorry, I didn't recognize you right off, Mr. Marx," he told him.
know, because you don't have your mustache."
"I don't?" He touched his fingertips to his upper lip, then turned to scowl at me. "As soon as we send for a matron,
you'll be thoroughly searched. Mustache snatching is a serious thing and, if my vast knowledge of the law doesn't pla
false, I am almost certain it's a capital crime. It may well also be the capital of North Dakota, but we won't be certain o
until the returns come in from the outlying provinces. Lord knows how long that'll take, since they've been out lying w
but, enough. You get my point, I'm sure."
Oscar took off his visored cap to scratch at his thinning blond hair. "I hear your last movie was a flop, Mr. Marx."
"You hear? Didn't you have the nerve to go see Room Service?"
"Well, I'd like to see all your Marx Brothers pictures," he assured Groucho, "but my wife just can't stand you.
opinion you never play anything but a sex-crazed lecher in any of your movies."
"That's because I am a sex-crazed lecher," he responded. "But I'm struggling to make a living despite such a han
Isn't that the American way? Yes, a man may work to over-come his handicaps and make a name for himself. The n
wanted to make for myself was Edgar Rice Burroughs, but they told me it was already taken. I then selected Tarzan
turned out some nudist over at MGM had dibs on that. Grou-cho Marx was just about all that was left, except for the
of Zorro and I thought that sounded too foreign for an actor who specializes in playing ice-skating ingenue parts."
"We've got an appointment with Lew Marker," I told the chuckling guard.
"Lew Number Two, huh?" The guard shrugged and shook his head. "Somebody of your stature, Mr. Marx, ought
seeing Lew Number One."
Lew Goldstein, the head of the whole Mammoth operation, everybody called Lew Number One. Marker ha
nickname Lew Number Two.
"I'm working my way up the ladder," Groucho assured Oscar. "Why only last year I wasn't able to see anybody
than Lew Number Four-oh-six."
Chuckling once more, he said, "Park in Visitors' Lot A, folks," and went trotting back to his hut.
A moment later the gates shivered and then rattled open inward.
Giving the guard a lazy salute, I drove onto the studio grounds.
"I don't think all that much of Lew Marker myself," ad-mitted Groucho. "Yet my esteemed brother, Zeppo, assur
that the fellow is greatly interested in talking to us about Cin-derella on Wheels."