Editor’s Note: Comedy films today still owe so much to the early classics by the Marx Brothers, who knew how to get their brand of humor into some superb films. Freeline Media critic Mike Fried looks back at their many movie classics. Read on!
By Mike Fried
The Films of the Marx Brothers
A wise old dead man by the name of Francois Truffaut once called the Marx Brothers the “greatest American comedians of the prewar decade”, ranking Animal Crackers alongside A Night at the Opera as their best work. While i don’t unequivocally agree with his assessments (Duck Soup) is the best movie and there were many other comedians in the pre-war era that were of equal stature (Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, that Chaplin guy)- unless of course he was talking about pre-World War I, in which case I thing I would nominate Kaiser Wilhelm I, just for that pointy metal hat.
But I digress.
Any examination of movie comedy would be irrelevant (A relaphant? Hey! That’s the answer … There’s a whole lotta relephants in the circus.) without a discussion of the Marx Brothers. From the early days of vaudeville, Minnie’s Boys, as they were called, they made an impact. Gummo (Milton Marx) was the first to appear on stage but had no interest in acting so they put him in the basement until he decided to leave and become a successful businessmen selling recently stolen shirts to men who had recently had their shirts stolen. But enough of this strange interlude….
The boys stated in vaudeville and were very successful until they had a dispute with vaudeville impresario E.F. Albee (the adoptive grandfather of Edward Albee and the guy who lent his initials to EF Hutton). They tried unsuccessfully to make an impression on the Sherbet, I mean Shubert, circuit. Hey, Shubert Sherbet – try saying that ten times fast!. Anyway, they transitioned to Broadway where they achieved success with a series of hit musical comedies, including I’ll Say She Is, The Cocoanuts, and Animal Crackers.
And the rest they shall say is history. The brothers’ iconic images and distinctive personae — Groucho’s greasepaint mustache and eyebrows, Chico’s Italian accent, and silent Harpo with his curly wig — have been cultural touchpoints since their act first became popular. Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, whose drawings of the brothers were used to promote A Night at the Opera, and currently hang in the Smithsonian, said of them that they “started to look like the drawing, rather than the other way around.”
Anyway, here is my ranking of the Brothers’ films.
1. Duck Soup
2. A Night at the Opera
3. Horse Feathers
4. Animal Crackers
5. Monkey Business
6. A Day at the Races
7. A Night in Casablanca (not reviewed here, but there’s something – “I was afraid of that” you might say)
8. The Big Store
9. The Cocoanuts
10. At the Circus
11. Go West
12. Love Happy (not reviewed)
13. Room Service (not reviewed)
Love Happy and Room service are not reviewed because i have not watched them in years- I think they are substandard efforts and I would be lying to you if I made up a review. Love Happy tries to emulate ethe earlier successes that the Brothers had the script by Frank Tashlin – who would have a lot of success later on – pales in comparison to the earlier George S. Kaufman scripts. And Room Service? don’t get me started. A Broadway play that had nothing to do with the Marx Brothers retrofitted to squeeze in the Marx Brothers? You’d have better luck on the S.S. Normandie.
Anyway, without further ado, here are my reviews – I listed them in rating order from highest to lowest so if you get to the end you only have yourself to blame!!! Did someone call me Schnorrer?
DUCK SOUP
5/5
Duck soup to me is quite frankly, the funniest movie ever made. And it is in my Top 4 favorite films
It’s one of those movies that gives me belly laughs every single time I’ve watched it and that has been plenty of times. Admittedly, while there are a couple of gags in the movie that are cringe even for me and would not pass muster in today’s environment, the rest of the movie is just a visual and auditory feast of silly jokes and gags that just never get old.
What other movie would have Groucho get into a sidecar on a motorcycle manned by his driver Harpo not once, not twice but three times to deliver a punchline with absolute hysterical laughter.
And let’s not forget the fact that we’re dealing with the Marx brothers, who, in a particular scene, when Chico and Harpo attempt to impersonate Rufus T. Firefly, played by Groucho, they actually look like identical brothers.
Two of the greatest achievements in this movie are the “to war” and dance number and the mirror gag, which has been replicated many times.
But that oversimplifies.
However; there are so many gags in this movie. I could write for hours about all of the jokes, both visual and spoken in the movie but I could not do them justice.
If you haven’t seen this movie, you need to see it because it truly is absolutely hysterical and it packs more laughs into its 68 minutes then most comedies do in their full two hours.
The Marx brothers are at the top of the game in this movie and they are firing on all eight cylinders.
The less I write about it, the better.
Just live it.
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
5/5
The three Marx Brothers infiltrate an opera much to the chagrin of everyone else. Yes, the rock group Queen named their 1975 album after this film.
It starts off with a bang as Mrs. Claypool, the object of Otis B. Driftwood’s affection, is sitting alone awaiting Mr. Driftwood who it turns out is sitting with his back to her eating dinner with another woman. Claypool is the wonderful Margaret Dumont and Driftwood is of course Groucho. Mrs. Claypool wants to be a patron of the opera and Driftwood introduces her to the unscrupulous Hermann Gottlieb, the director of the New York Opera Company and she agrees to donate $200,000 to the opera company so that they can hire Rodolfo Lasparri the great tenor. Meanwhile there are two young singers, Rosa Capaldi and Ricardo Barone, whom fate would keep apart but whom the brothers seek to bring together.
I honestly don’t know where to begin with this film. While Duck Soup remains the best Marx Brothers movie ever made, this movie is so close that sometimes they can be interchangeable. And that’s because while Duck Soup is a series of extraordinarily funny bits strung together by a threadbare plot, this film is a full story strung together by some very funny sequences. And while Duck soup was the only Marx Brothers film on the AFI Top 100 movies in 1998, when the 2007 list came out, Duck Soup moved up and this movie was added.
Watching Groucho and Chico negotiate a contract is one of the funniest things in movie history. I remember my law school contracts professor show this scene on the first day of class – it was all downhill from there. But that’s only the beginning.
Walter Woolf King, a noted baritone plays Lasparri as a total jerkoff whereas Alan Jones (whose son Jack Jones sang the Live Boat theme) plays Barone as just a standup guy (taking over the straight man role from Zeppo) and one that you can root for. Rosa is played by Kitty Carlisle this movie is so good it overcomes my intense dislike for her (stemming from an unpleasant in-person experience). Sig Ruman, who would strike gold with Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, had his breakout role as Gottlieb. His Teutonic stuffiness makes the perfect foil for the Brothers’ insanity.
And of course Gottlieb hates Driftwood so much he makes everything so difficult for him including placing him in a stateroom on the ship to NY the size of a bathroom. In one of the funniest scenes ever placed on film, not only does Driftwood have three stowaways but it seems that everyone that needs to work in the room shows up at the same time. And the punchline is every bit as terrific as the whole setup.
The stateroom scene is so famous that it has been copied in everything from The Bob Newhart Show to Seinfeld to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to have Fun” video.
Groucho is in top form. When the captain introduces the esteemed guests of the ship, the three greatest very bearded aviators in history Groucho says “Three greatest aviators, but you notice they’re traveling by boat.”
And Chico and Harpo as Fiorello and Tomasso shine when they pair up with Riccardo. The scene on the ocean liner with the steerage passengers all sharing spaghetti and meatballs and Alan Jones singing and Chico and Harpo playing piano and harp is one of the very best musical interludes in Marx Brothers films. Of course, being spotted by Lasparri gets the stowaways thrown in stowaway jail.
Improbably, the boys escape stowaway jail and take the place of the very bearded aviators which gives rise to one of the funniest bits of the movie. When Harpo’s beard falls off, the police realize the boys are stowaways and must elude “Henderson, plainclothes man” and the boys re-arrange the furniture to escape capture. It is a marvel of misdirection.
And it is all due to the efforts of Sam Wood who was perfect for the assignment. Never a “legendary” director, his brilliance shone in this film and A Day At The Races, two years later. He had great comic timing and The Brothers brought out the best in him.
In fact, the final 18 minutes of this film are absolutely breathless in their pursuit of comedy. The Boys knock out Gottlieb when they hear that he fired Rosa and take over the opera Il Trovatore to get not only Rosa reinstated but to get Ricardo hired. With a nod to baseball and fencing and a final chase scene that has to be seen to be believed, the ending is one of the Brothers’ best.
I’ve seen this movie over fifty times and I laughed so hard and loudly this time at that ending that my wife poked her head into the man-cave and said “are you okay?”
Fun Fact: Matthew Broderick’s fake passport in The Freshman bears the name of “Rodolfo Lasparri” from Palermo Sicily.
HORSE FEATHERS
5/5
Professor Wagstaff takes over as President of Huxley College and mayhem ensues. Ostensibly, the plot is threadbare. Wagstaff hires two knuckleheads, Baravelli and Pinky, whom he thinks are two ringers that can help Huxley College win the big football game against their rival Darwin University. When Wagstaff realizes his mistake, he gets Baravelli and Pinky to kidnap the football players which leads to a climactic football showdown that has been voted by
This 70 minute gem is off to the races from the very first frame and doesn’t let up. It is in the top tier of rat-a-tat jokes and puns and sight gags. When a down and out guy asks if Harpo could help him out because he’d like to get a cup of coffee, Harpo pulls a hot steaming cup of coffee from his trench coat. It’s a brilliant gag, one of Harpo’s best until two minutes later when one card player tells another to cut a deck of playing cards and Harpo obliges with a hatchet. And to a drowning woman yelling for a lifesaver, Groucho tosses a breath mint.
Zeppo plays Groucho’s son who is dating the college widow – a young woman who remains near a college year after year to associate with male students – Connie Bailey, and he gets to sing the song “Everyone Says I Love You” which inspired Woody Allen’s excellent 1996 comedy of the same name. And the song was legendary in that it was written specifically for the film. And it’s performed no less than four times – including a harp rendition!
Chico is Baravelli of course and Harpo is the part time iceman and dog catcher. But they play the same characters as they always do.
Norman Mcleod’s direction of the script by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S. J. Perelman, and Will B. Johnstone is nothing short of miraculous. The pace never lets up and it is easy to see why this film still holds a rare 97% Rotten Tomatoes score. It actually seems like some of the scenes are highly improvised, including the pea shooter fight between Wagstaff, Baravelli and Pinky.
The Brothers are on fire in this movie, almost as good as they were a year later in Duck Soup. The following dialogue was nominated for the funniest dialogue by the AFI:
“You sing a-high”
“Yes I have a falsetto voice”
“That’s-a funny; my last pupil she got-a false set-a teeth.”
But I am partial to:
“You got three guesses. I’ll give you a hint. It’s the name of a fish”
“Is it Mary?”
“Haha. That’s-a no fish”
“She isn’t. Well, she drinks like one”
And the movie has given me my life philosophy: “Whatever it is, I’m against it”
5/5
Fun Fact: and for all you fans of TV’s The Adventures of Superman the movie features – as a football announcer – Professor Pepperwinkle!!!!
ANIMAL CRACKERS
4.5/5
“Pardon me while I have a Strange Interlude.”
The first of the great Marx Brothers films that would continue an unbroken run of genius through A Day at the Races, seven years later.
The jokes are fast and furious with the straights playing fodder for the Bros. The plot, surrounding a famous painting and counterfeits made of said painting during a fete honoring the exalted Captain Spaulding who has returned from Africa is irrelevant (A relaphant? Hey! That’s the answer…There’s a whole lotta relephants in the circus)
Not every joke is a winner but as Groucho says – directly to the camera – “Well, all the jokes can’t be good. You’ve got to expect that once in awhile.”
But the Bros. liked the finished product much more than they did The Cocoanuts which is fun but not great. Director Victor Heerman really got the Bros to perform at top form for the camera and their shtick stuck (say that twelve times fast) for the next 16 years until their last funny film, A Night in Casablanca.
In fact, Paramount wanted to include all of the musical numbers from the Broadway show (starring the Brothers) but Victor Heerman was adamant that he had “ten reels of funny stuff” and he edited the film the way he wanted. To Paramount’s credit, they conceded that the film worked better Heerman’s way and it set the template for future movies with the boys.
The “take a letter” routine was never written down and changed from night to night in the stage and gave Zeppo a chance to practice some one-upsmanship on his older brother, who genuinely took a swing at Zeppo – lovingly of course – and you can see Margaret Dumont’s shocked expression as Mrs. Rittenrotten. Excuse me, Mrs. Ritrenhouse, a slight error.
Incidentally, this time Chico plays musician Signor Emmanuel Ravelli, the same character – or name at least – that he used in The Big Store eleven years later. Harpo plays The Professor. Professor of what? Mayhem of course. The two of them have a wonderful time with the “Abie the Fishman” gag and Harpo has plenty of opportunities to chase pretty young women around. And Groucho’s description of his trip to Africa is a stone-cold classic.
The film has a tortured history from 1956 to 1974 when, because of a rights issue, it was illegal to show the film in the United States. A fan convinced Groucho to appear at his event the “Committee for the Re-release of Animal Crackers” (CRAC) at UCLA which finally convinced Universal which owned the rights to clear up all the ancillary rights issues. And thank heavens for that!
“Hello I must be going” became Groucho’s signature song and “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” became the theme music for You Bet Your Life. “I shot an elephant in my pajamas” (you know the rest) – and it’s number 53 on the AFI 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes list (no faint praise)
It also gave us the “Fragilly” joke from A Christmas Story.
A terrifically funny film whether you want the flash, the flesh, the fish, the flisk, the flush, the flitz or the flutes.
If you watch it and don’t like it, You go Uruguay and I’ll go mine.
MONKEY BUSINESS
4.5/5
Four stowaways aboard an ocean liner create havoc while running across gangsters. But that’s not important right now.
It’s the third movie from the Brothers Marx and it is a marvel of puns, quips and sight gags. The film was developed based on a couple of sketches that the Brothers performed in their early days and is one of FIVE (count ‘em, five!) films made by the Brothers that wound up on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs list. Quite an impressive showing.
This movie has less of a plot than the first two Brothers films but it really doesn’t matter. Their foil is the Captain’s assistant Gibson played by Tom Kennedy who looks like – but was not related to – Edgar Kennedy who played their foil in DUCK SOUP. Kennedy does a great slow burn and is as good as the brothers because his frustrations are the perfect counterpoint to the boys’ shenanigans.
Director Norman McLeod who would helm the following year’s Horse Feathers which was also written by SJ Perelman and Will Johnstone, this film’s screenwriters team up to provide another top tier outing for the brothers. Their comedy instincts are absolute genius as they allow the boys to roam wild but with pointed direction. However Groucho said of the Perelman script “it stinks” and supposedly the final script was the result of five months of work by the brothers, gag writers, director Norman Z. MacLeod and producer Herman Mankiewicz, Uncle of Ben (not Uncle Ben). Nevertheless, they brought Perelman back on board for Horse Feathers, so figure that one out.
The word “anarchy” has been used to describe this film and I really can’t think of a better one. Whether it is Harpo’s and Chico co-opting two real passengers’ chess game or Harpo taking over a Punch and Judy show or the boys hiding out in barrels that say kippered herring. Or Groucho getting knocked over with a feather.
Groucho and Zeppo are hired by one gangster and Harpo and Chico are hired by the other gangster leading to hilarious results. Harpo and Chico walk around the ocean liner holding guns to protect their boss but wind up losing their boss and start following other men. And Zeppo is given more to do than in other outings, including the climactic fist fight!
Groucho is the wordsmith of this film and Chico and Harpo excel at physical humor. The fun is how the stowaways evade capture, by impersonating the captain, the barber and his assistant (leading to the oft-copied mustache trimming sketch), a kiddie entertainer and Maurice Chevalier (no foolin’!) – one of the film’s funniest sequences – in order to get off the boat without passports.
The miracle of this film is that there are no dead spots. The film zings from one setup to the next without any abatement. The plot is neatly if absurdly tied up at the end with the two gangsters pitted against each other with the Brothers in the middle of the hijinks in a straw-filled barn.
“Where are all those farmer’s daughters I’ve been hearing about?”
A DAY AT THE RACES
4/5
The Brothers take over a health sanitarium with Groucho playing his favorite role as Dr Hugo Z. Hackenbush who happens to be a veterinarian – funny thing, the name was supposed to be Quackenbush – which is what a lot of people Mandelaly think the name is – but the MGM legal department did some research and found that there were numerous real Dr. Quackenbushs around the country.
The threadbare plot is to keep Margaret Dumont’s Mrs. Upjohn happy in her medical treatment so Judy Standish can keep the Standish Sanitarium from the clutches of the bad guys, Morgan and Whitmore. Along the way, Tony and Stuffy (Chico and Harpo) try to get their horse to win the big race.
There are some very funny moments in this film, especially Chico’s “tutsi- fruitsi ice cream,” the call to the Florida Medical Board and Hackenbush’s medical examination of Mrs. Upjohn – that turns insane – while a fellow doubting doctor watches.
Allan Jones returns to the Brothers after his outing in A Night at the Opera and while not as good as in the first film he dies a good job as the Zeppo replacement and love interest of Judy, a young Maureen O’Sullivan (mother of Mia Farrow and wife of Tarzan). Margaret Dumont’s Mrs. Upjohn is absolutely hysterical.
But any film is only as good as it a villains and Douglas Dumbrille and Leonard Ceeley as Morgan and Whitmore, the two men in cahoots of trying to take over the sanitarium, are absolutely fantastic. Dumbrille has played villains both before and after his movie but it is Ceeley who really gets the shorter end of the stick with Groucho in the aforementioned “Florida Call” sequence. And thankfully Sig Ruman returns as the perfect foil to Dr. Hackenbush, a fellow doctor who disputes Hugo’s diagnoses of Mrs. Upjohn.
The scene where “Dr. Hackinapuss” is examining Stuffy with Tony in attendance is pure vaudeville and is one of the funniest scenes in the movie. In addition there’s a curious scene a little over halfway through in which Harpo must warn Chico about the dangers that Groucho faces at the hands of a femme fatale. He plays charades with Chico and uses whistling.
Irving Thalberg protested the use of this scene as it turned Harpo from a character who wouldn’t talk to a character who couldn’t talk. Thankfully he was overruled – because he died – because it’s a funny scene. Thalberg, the fucker who butchered Tod Browning’s classic Freaks deserved to be overruled.
But the wallpaper scene that follows is pure genius.
Unfortunately, the film uses a lot of songs and that detracts from the humor. Sure, A Night at the Opera did the same thing but Opera is about music so it didn’t seem as intrusive. This movie drops a Busby Berkeley song and dance number in the middle of the film which really hurts the pacing; however, Harpo’s piano playing destruction leading him to take the piano wire frame and play harp is just off the chart funny. And the “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm” (I didn’t write the title) musical number is absolutely terrific but ends on kind of a sour note for today’s audience.
And the entire film is funny but it’s overlong (the longest Marx Brothers movie!) and the filler prevents the film from being as magical as Horse Feathers, Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera.
But what would a movie called A Day At The Races be without a horse race and this one never fails to amuse as it is so funny, fast and frenetic with a horse that goes faster when he hears the bad guy’s voice. And of course the horse is a mudder.
Two years before Gone With The Wind, this was the first movie that ended with “Tomorrow is another day”
THE BIG STORE
4/5
The Marx Brothers are hired to protect the life of the heir to a department store fortune. Hilarity ensues. An uneven effort that starts strong gets a little flaccid in the middle but finishes strong with a hysterically frantic chase scene through the store that took nearly a month to piece together and shoot – that’s how intricate it was. But the final product is so good it harkens back to the earlier better reviewed installments.
The final film for the brothers before they retired (forget that they came out of retirement a couple of years later) is an absolute hoot, aided by wonderful sight gags, the latest in store gadgets – especially in the bed department.
Let’s see – there’s students of Chico who play the piano like Chico, there’s a great typewriter gag, Groucho’s moth-eaten coat, a fireplug and a hell of a lot of broken merchandise. Also Groucho has some great lines breaking the fourth wall including “This is a bright red dress, but Technicolor is sooo expensive.”
Tony Martin is terrific as Tommy Rogers the heir to the department store and Margaret Dumont is at her flappable best in her final film as the fifth Beatle, uh, Marx Brother. And Douglas Dumbrille, never one to shy away from bad guy roles, is at his hysterical best as he needs to react to the Brothers’ shenanigans. His suave villainy is made even better with the Brothers Marx as his foils, much as he scored in A Day At The Races.
Interestingly, this is the only film of The Marx Brothers where Harpo Marx is initially teamed with Groucho Marx instead of Chico Marx.
And at least a couple of the musical interludes include Groucho – the “sing while you sell” musical number is particularly grand and Groucho shows his dancing prowess. And Harpo plays the Harp twice. TWICE. And also plays piano with Chico. And Virginia O’Brien singing Rock a Bye Baby stone-faced will freak out any infant.
It’s better than it has any right to be – the tenement symphony drags it down – and we are the intended beneficiaries.
THE COCOANUTS
3.5/5
The setting is the Hotel de Cocoanut in Florida during the land boom of the 20s. Mr. Hammer runs the hotel with his assistant Jamison (Captain Spaulding’s assistant in Animal Crackers). Harpo and Chico arrive at the hotel with the intention of robbing the patrons. Hammer has his eyes on the wealthy Mrs. Potter as does Harvey Yates the man Mrs. Potter wants her daughter Polly to marry. Polly has her eyes on Bob Adams, a struggling architect who wants to develop Cocoanut Manor. Yates has his eyes on Mrs. Potter’s $100,000 diamond necklace.
I don’t know where to begin with this film. Obviously it introduced the Marx Brothers (and Margaret Dumont) to millions of people but to me this is a movie with the Marx Brothers rather than it being a Marx Brothers film. Nevertheless, this movie launched their career as superstars, garnering $1.8 million at the box office ($35 million in 2025 dollars)
For me, it is the third weakest Marx Brothers film behind Room Service and Love Happy, the former because the the Brothers were shoehorned into a farce not made for them and the latter because the screenplay, by Frank Tashlin, was just a tired rehash of the Brothers past successes.
This film lacks the vibrancy of the later Marx brothers films and this is obviously the reason the Marx brothers wanted to buy the negative and burn it – true story! Paramount hadn’t really figured out how to adapt Broadway plays for the screen and this movie quite often comes off as filmed version of a stage play.
The film drags during the musical numbers but soars when the brothers are in front of the camera, especially Chico and Harpo who steal the movie from Groucho, especially doing their Volga Boatmen bit and when Harpo drinks from the inkwell.
What’s funny is that several times during the film, Groucho begins to call Chico “Ravelli” but stops himself; the Brothers were performing Animal Crackers on Broadway at the same time they were filming this movie.
The love interests of Polly and Bob, played by Mary Eaton and Oscar Shaw are dreadfully dull. Kay Francis’ confidence woman, Polly – in cahoots with Yates – shines especially as she becomes the object of Harpo’s fetish.
In addition, what is interesting in this film as compared to later films, is that Margaret Dumont’s character is not amused with Groucho’s entreaties. She would normally smile and then get puzzled but in this film when Groucho says “Your eyes shine like the pants of a blue serge suit” she gets insulted. It’s a good thing that they changed their relationship in future films.
Chico and Groucho have some outstanding moments together, including Groucho explaining the map of Cocoanut Manor to Chico capped off by the amazing “why a duck, why a no chicken?” and the following:
Hammer: All along the river, those are all levees.
Chico: That’s the Jewish neighborhood?
Hammer: Well, we’ll pass over that.
And despite some of the greatest repartee, Groucho seems more restrained and not as loose as he was in later pictures. And that’s one of the failures of the film.
And that sums up the problem with this film – it is a pre-packaged product that tries to fit into its Broadway show mold with its pauses for laughs and doesn’t give any concern with the translation to the silver screen. And, as Groucho might have been wont to point out, it took not one, but two, directors (Robert Florey and Joseph Santley) to make this mess.
Still, can you dislike a movie when someone inquires of piano playing Chico, ”Señor Pastrami, what is the first number?” and he responds “Number one!”?
AT THE CIRCUS
3.5/5
Threadbare effort with decent comedic bits. Attorney Cheever J. Loophole, along with Tony and Punchy intercede to help a circus owner, Jeff Wilson, recover stolen monies without which will put him into bankruptcy. The money’s owned to the evil Mr. Carter, who gets his accomplices Goliath the Strongman and Little Professor Atom to steal the money from Wilson so he can take over the circus. The boys have an idea to involve Jeff’s aunt, Mrs. Dukesbury – “America’s Wealthiest Widow” – but she has disinherited Jeff because of his involvement in the circus.
It has a fair amount of merriment but this film is a pale cousin to its predecessors as the Brothers fell out of favor at MGM after fucker Irving Thalberg dropped dead. Louis B. Mayer had little patience for the boys.
But it still has some cherished moments, the keenest being Groucho’s rendition of “Lydia, The Tattooed Lady”. Additional lyrics were written by E.Y. Harburg exclusively for screenings of the film for Allied servicemen in European war zones. The special lyrics included the line “When she stands the world grows littler; When she sits, she sits on Hitler.” This version was obviously greeted with marked enthusiasm from Allied troops.
There are some fine bits of wordplay and gags. There is a swipe at the Hays Code that is pure anarchical Groucho. Chico pulling a rabbit from Groucho’s stolen magician’s jacket is perfectly done.
Buster Keaton was hired by Mayer to write gags that were not fitting with the Marx Brothers normal routine. When Groucho complained, Keaton just told him, stone-faced, that “this is what Mr Mayer asked me to do. You guys don’t need my help.”
Some of the jokes are recycled yet still funny. The “spare cigar” bit was recycled from the “auction scene” in The Cocoanuts. And yet, funny – new or old – is funny. As Chico keeps messing up Groucho’s scheme to get to the truth he tells Chico “I bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork.” It’s an incredibly funny line, among many funny lines.
Besides Margaret Dumont – who plays wealth society matron Mrs. Dukesbury – the film doesn’t have many memorable characters with the exception of Eve Arden as a trapeze artist who walks on the ceiling. She’s got the right attitude to go up against Groucho. And she performed her own acrobatics!
Harpo’s Blue Moon is exquisite, one of his best musical interludes.
Of course, the last 15 minutes tie up the mess. Loophole falls in love with Dukesbury and hijacks the orchestra and tells Jeff to bring the circus to Mrs. Dukesbury’s high society party.
The final shot featuring Wagner’s Lohengrin is one of the great scenes in cinema history and one of the most memorable finales in a Marx Brothers movie.
Whitcomb: Pardon me, Madame, but here are the seating arrangements for your final approval.
Mrs. Suzanna Dukesbury: Oh, no, Whitcomb. Judge Chinner will sit on my left hand and you, Loophole will sit on my right hand.
J. Cheever Loophole: How will you eat? Through a tube?
GO WEST
3.5/5
In 1851, Horace Greeley uttered a phrase that did much to change the history of these United States. He said: Go West, young man, go west. This is the story of three men who made Horace Greeley sorry he said it.
The Brothers answer Laurel and Hardy’s Way Out West and Buster Keaton’s Go West with a bit of Manifest Destiny of their own. A young man tries to get the railroad to go through a piece of land that his fiancées daughter owns so he can marry her. He’s doing it because his dad and his fiancée’s dad are rivals and he is hoping the money will end the feud. But there is trouble afoot in which some big business crooks want to co-opt the deed for their own evil reasons. And Big Red Baxter tricks the boys out of the deed. Hilarity ensues.
There’s a nod to the Three Stooges in Chico’s piano playing. Full of fun sight gags, the movie belongs to Harpo whose manic energy and fetish for hats makes this movie funny as hell. A daisy chain of people with guns saying “put your hands up” is particularly amusing.
It does drag at points because of the too numerous to mention musical numbers (although “riding the range” is particularly fun) and a weak cliche-ridden script that veers into maudlin territory that the Boys seem uncomfortable with.
Groucho plays S. Quentin Quale a name which went ice the heads of the Hays Office because “San Quentin Quail” meant jailbait.
But there are classic Marx Brothers moments (“You love your brother, right? No, but I’m used to him!”/ “how they handle all this and ride a horse at the same time, I’ll never know”/ “it’s 1870- Don Ameche hasn’t invented the telephone yet”) and one of Harpo’s very best Harp moments, playing “From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water” on a harp disguised as a loom.
Groucho continues to break the fourth wall and continues to get swindled by Chico – “this is the last hat of its kind” – “I’ll give you a dollar for it” – “well, I’ll take it but I’m only making a buck on it”. When they tie up and gag the train engineer Groucho looks at the camera and says “this is the best gag in the picture.”
And there’s a finale train scene that is laugh out loud funny and saves the entire movie. Think about the dumb MGM executives that wanted to cut the finale because of the cost. Idiots. Because it is really one of their best finishes. And if it is reminiscent of The General that might be because Keaton was an advisor on the film.
It’s a Marx Brothers movie so it’s definitely a WATCH!
FUN FACT: Horace Greeley said that he never said, “Go West Young Man”.
Now, as to A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA, when the Marx Brothers announced this 1946 film, Warner Bros. sent an ominous legal letter claiming exclusive rights to the name “Casablanca” from their 1942 classic. They didn’t. But Groucho Marx leaned into the fake news (actually a Marx Brothers publicity stunt!) and replied with a brilliant, satirical letter mocking the studio’s corporate overreach. Here it is:
Dear Warner Brothers:
Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.
It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.
I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if you plan on [re-]releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.
You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye, and even before there had been other brothers — the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (This was originally “Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?” but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one, and whittled it down to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”)
Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it’s not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks — Jack of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.
As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. I can think of two Harrys that preceded you. There was Lighthouse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn’t too well-known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner.
Now about the Burbank studio. I believe this is what you brothers call your place. Old man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him. He was a great man in a garden. His wife often said Luther had ten green thumbs. What a witty woman she must have been! Burbank was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had the poor plants in such confused and jittery condition that they could never decide whether to enter the dining room on the meat platter or the dessert dish.
This is pure conjecture, of course, but who knows — perhaps Burbank’s survivors aren’t too happy with the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures on a quota settled in their town, appropriated Burbank’s name and uses it as a front for their films. It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that your studio emerged “Casablanca” or even “Gold Diggers of 1931.”
This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade, but I assure you it’s not meant to. I love Warners. Some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing you an injustice and that you, yourselves, know nothing about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that the heads of your legal department are unaware of this absurd dispute, for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans Saroyan.
I have a hunch that his attempt to prevent us from using the title is the brainchild of some ferret-faced shyster, serving a brief apprenticeship in your legal department. I know the type well — hot out of law school, hungry for success, and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion. This bar sinister probably needled your attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etc., into attempting to enjoin us. Well, he won’t get away with it! We’ll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin, and we’ll remain friends till the last reel of “A Night in Casablanca” goes tumbling over the spool.
Sincerely,
Groucho Marx
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice. Contact Mike at moviemike3@gmail.com
