The Gentle Spirit of Harpo Marx Lives On

I have a fat file of ideas that are--at least in my view--worthy of note. What follows are a handful of those items, a grab bag of thoughts and comments:

One of the more satisfying perks of writing a column is occasionally enabling people to connect with one another through something I’ve written. That happened recently as the result of a column I did about the son of Harpo Marx, who entertained at a wedding reception I attended in Orange County.

Patti Hall of Seal Beach sent me a letter that she asked me to forward to Bill Marx. There was also a copy for me to read. It told a charming story of an incident at a Chicago music studio where the letter writer was studying the harp as a child. As she waited one day for her lesson, she listened to a “very advanced” harpist who was playing in an adjoining room.

When the child was asked if she wanted to observe, she found “a smallish man, rather balding who offered a shy smile and a handshake. . . . No huge ego here.”

It was, of course, Harpo Marx, and he signed an autograph for the little girl and talked with her afterward. But, as Hall wrote Harpo’s son: “It isn’t his signature that is the prime treasure. It is that, young as I was, I recognized your father for who he really was. . . . Over these long years we have watched his wonderful comedy films, now and then, in some close-up, we see his eyes. And for all the costume trappings of the ‘mute idiot,’ I see behind those eyes the same quality I saw as a child: the gentle spirit of the man.”

I’d like someone to write me a letter like that about my father.

The press agent for the recent Orange County International Auto Show wrote to tell me he was disappointed that I showed more interest in the women hyping the cars than I did in the cars themselves. He said he hoped I might change my priorities before the 1991 show, but just to show there were no hard feelings, he sent me posters of the Rams cheerleaders and the Raiderettes. Each member who had been on hand for the show signed her picture and sent me a message--which tended to harden rather than shake my priorities. I frankly doubt if they will change by 1991, but I’m willing to keep my options open. Meanwhile, Lola, I’ll get back to you. . . .

I can’t say that I blame Ron Kovic for bailing out of his proposed congressional race against Robert Dornan. Kovic must have been appalled at the scalding overkill his interest in running turned loose. Dornan pulled the trigger with a vitriolic personal attack on Kovic, then all the sycophants got in line, led by Pat Buchanan, who blew up to monstrous proportions some historical inaccuracies in Kovic’s biographical movie “Born on the Fourth of July,” a refrain that has been echoed and re-echoed by the Righteous Right for the past two weeks. I wonder where these fastidious historians of the Right were when John Wayne made “The Green Berets” or when “The Deerhunter” built a plot around the Viet Cong playing Russian Roulette with its American prisoners? As historians, they seem to be in a permanent state of “Tilt.”

The main reason I refuse to subscribe to the lay newsletters now coming out of several famous campus medical centers is that I find them terribly confusing. As soon as I adopt one regimen and settle into it, I’m told that the latest research says that approach is really no good and will probably kill me in no time at all. So I’m better off if I don’t read them.

That’s where I learned, for example, that decaffeinated coffee raises your cholesterol level. Well, I never really liked decaf but drank it because I was told it was good for my blood pressure. So I went gratefully back to regular coffee. Now someone has just handed me the “Wellness Letter” published by the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, and right on the front page I’m told that the decaf research is full of holes and to pay no attention to it.

We’ve had another “official” investigation of a shooting death by an Orange County police officer with the same predictable results.

A Santa Ana officer who has not been identified shot and killed Ernest Nunez when he jumped from a car in which he was riding with his wife and fled from officers who ordered him to halt. Nunez was shot in the back of the head. He was unarmed. He was a petty thief whose alleged crime was stealing some clothing from a store managed by his wife.

If the Orange County district attorney’s office can clear a police officer of wrongdoing under these circumstances, it’s difficult to conceive of any behavior that will not be permitted the police. When are we going to demand a civilian review board to short-circuit this buddy system and turn around the growing number of police shootings in Orange County?

Several weeks ago, a Newport Beach bank inadvertently threw out $42,500 in cash with the trash. Now in Newport Beach, one would suspect that might be dismissed as casually as dropping a nickel on the floor in less affluent cities. But the bank intercepted the truck, went through the garbage, and found the money.

The most significant comment on this episode came from one of the workers on the trash truck who said: “I wouldn’t want to be a trash man anywhere else.”

I like that. Somehow it catches the spirit of Orange County, and I intend to quote it the next time I’m asked why I put up with all the smog and traffic.