My Hollywood is like a movie where the stars are comedy legends and the only currency is laughter. Recently, my wife, Robyn, surprised me for my birthday with a dream dinner—a table at E. Baldi, in Beverly Hills, with guests including Larry David, Bob Newhart, Martin Short, and Don Rickles. No one had a kind word to say about me for over three hours. I couldn’t have been happier.

When I first arrived in Hollywood I was in my early 20s. I was single. I bought a 1965 Morgan I couldn’t afford. What could be better?

To me, no one had ever been more entertaining than Groucho Marx. As a kid, I could pretty much lip-synch his movies. As an adult, I’d often go to Marx Brothers retrospectives. So, to finally meet “the one, the only” Groucho was like a Trekkie meeting Spock. And for him to ask me to write Minnie’s Boys, a musical about the Marx Brothers, was a dream come true. I was warned by Arthur Whitelaw, the producer, that Groucho could be tough. I was nervous about what he would ask me. He asked me only one question: “Got a pencil?” That’s all he asked me. I said “Yes,” and we made a deal. I was co-hosting a show called Music Scene with Lily Tomlin at the time, and my plan was to write Minnie’s Boys during the hiatus.

Second meeting: now it was time to get to work. I asked about Chico. Groucho said, “Chico brought venereal disease to the vaudeville circuit. Let’s go to lunch.” It became a ritual. Every Tuesday we’d go to the Hillcrest Country Club for lunch with his friends Jack Benny and George Burns. Not for a second did I take for granted that I was sitting with a Mount Rushmore of comedy. I always had my pencil with me, and when I wasn’t laughing I was furiously writing down everything they said. One of their favorite topics of conversation was comparing bad reviews—it turned them into young warriors. A critic’s name would come up and they would all pile on. George was still pissed, 40 years later, at a long-gone Philadelphia critic: “He gave Fink’s Mules a better notice than me and Gracie.”

One Tuesday, Groucho asked me if I knew Adolph Zukor. I was a stand-up comic in my 20s; Zukor was a founding father of Hollywood in his 90s. We didn’t exactly hang out in the same circle. Groucho said, “C’mon, I’ll introduce you.” As we got up to meet him I noticed that Jack Benny and George Burns were suppressing giggles and avoiding eye contact with me. We approached Mr. Zukor, who at this point in his life looked like a cap in a chair. Groucho lifted up Zukor’s cap, pointed at me, and said, “Adolph, you remember Chico, don’t you?”

Hiatus came and I finally sat down in earnest to structure my notes. They were less than meticulous: “Chico, venereal disease, vaudeville circuit … Fink’s Mules … Adolph, remember Chico?” and at least a hundred other lines that made me laugh, having nothing to do with Minnie’s Boys. I broke out in a sweat. It was impossible to start the musical from scratch and to finish it before the next season. I immediately called Groucho. He couldn’t have been more gracious. He even agreed to be a guest on Music Scene, which I was hosting. I asked him what he was going to do about Minnie’s Boys. He said, “Don’t worry about it—I think my son has a pencil.” Arthur Marx and his partner, Robert Fisher, wrote it, and they hit it out of the park. And without even using my notes.