Fleming claimed that Groucho had trouble sleeping due to his many strokes and that he needed sedatives to have a peaceful night of sleep. Believing t
Fleming claimed that Groucho had trouble sleeping due to his many strokes and that he needed sedatives to have a peaceful night of sleep. Believing that his father was being poisoned, Arthur began a conservatorship battle over Groucho’s custody. Arthur tried to prove that he was the one who Groucho wanted to take care of him. But it was complicated. As ABC News reported, “Groucho wrote years earlier in a legal document that if he ever needed a conservator, Miss Fleming would be it. But Arthur Marx [contested] that document.”
During the conservatorship trial in 1977, most of the family excoriated Fleming, and Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” reported on the proceedings, using her as the punchline. Marx’s brother Zeppo, however, came to Fleming’s defense and said his brother loved her.
After a lengthy battle, the judge ruled that Marx was to be taken out of Fleming’s custody. “I don’t mean to gloat,” Arthur exclaimed to a line of television cameras. “But I won.”
It ended up being a short-lived victory. In early August of 1977, Marx suffered another stroke. He passed away on the 19th of that month, largely alone, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA. Fleming, who had been taking anxiety medication throughout the hearing, was traumatized. She believed that the conservatorship case had killed him and singled out as her bete noir Marx-family-lawyer J. Brin Schulman, who had accused her in her deposition of being mentally ill.
Fleming’s battle with the Marx family didn’t end with the legendary comedian’s death. According to Fleming’s lawyer, the family seemed to believe the estate was worth more than what was left to them due to gifts and money that were given to Fleming, on top of which, they believed she had drugged their father to control him.
Trials and Tribulations
In 1983, Erin Fleming was back in the headlines and the top story on national nightly news broadcasts. Bank of America was suing her for over $400,000. “When Groucho died, he left her some money in his will as well as her house. The will stipulated that if anyone contested it, then they would only receive a single dollar,” says Fleming’s nephew, David Fleming.
Marx and Fleming’s friend Warren Berlinger, who was a witness to the will being drawn up, adds that in the event the children did contest it, the balance of the estate would go to the Boy Scouts of America. “But they didn’t know anything about the will,” Berlinger says. “They went their merry way and made life miserable for Erin.”
Well, not directly. Marx’s children recruited Bank of America to essentially sue for them, which led to a trial in 1983. “Bank of America was the executor of the estate,” says Fleming’s lawyer, David Sabih. “And if they’re convinced that there might be fraud in the estate, then they have the duty to sue.” Sabih adds that, in court, whenever he noted that the bank was acting on behalf of the children, the opposing lawyer, J. Brin Schulman, would passionately disagree: “Objection, your honor. Groucho’s children are not suing anyone.”
Marx’s will left Fleming a home on Cynthia Drive in West Hollywood, an additional piece of real estate, a Mercedes-Benz, and half of Groucho Marx Productions, the company she cofounded in the 1970s. Marx’s children were to receive the remainder of the estate, which amounted to more than $2.5 million. (That would be roughly $13 million today.) The children, via Bank of America, claimed the estate would have been worth more if not for Fleming’s machinations. Yet, Groucho Marx Productions was a lucrative business in Marx’s final years.
In the intervening five years since Groucho’s death, Fleming had already gone back to court with the California labor board. The labor commissioner determined that she had represented Marx as an unlicensed talent manager and ordered her to pay back $80,000 in earnings. The 1983 trial took three months, during which time Fleming was accused of all manner of things: exerting undue influence over Marx by encouraging him to redecorate his house, as well as drugging and abusing him to get what she wanted. As it happened, Schulman, the Marx family attorney from the conservatorship case, represented Bank of America in the trial. Fleming, who had not forgotten that Schulman claimed she was mentally ill while questioning her in the 1977 deposition, believed that the stress of that trial was what killed Marx. When she took the stand in the later trial, she got her revenge with TV cameras rolling, though she may have unintentionally underscored his point about her mental health when she said, “Mr. Brin Schulman is an assassin and he murdered Groucho Marx.”
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