The Marx Brothers in color

This is nothing new under the sun (it’s been posted on YouTube for years, literally), but if you’re not familiar with it, it’s worth seeing and sharing. It’s some brief, color footage of the Marx Brothers rehearsing Harpo’s entrance for the 1930 movie of their stage show Animal Crackers. Besides the early use of color, it’s noteworthy to see Harpo out of costume. Where this footage came from, the movie gods only know.

Make me laugh!

This week, one of my favorite bloggers, TV scripter and novelist Ken Levine, asked: “Can comedy stand the test of time?” As an example, Levine cited Steve Martin’s once-famous catchphrase, “Ex-cuse ME!”, and posited that a current teenager wouldn’t have any idea why someone from the 1970’s would laugh at such a thing. Levine also mentioned how the Marx Brothers enjoyed a 1960’s and ’70s revival that seems to have dimmed down considerably since then.

Well, can comedy stand the test of time? My answer is:

If it’s comedy that you’re still talking about, then yes.

I grew up in that hallowed era of the 1970’s. All around me, on TV and in revival movie theaters, were testaments to the eternal comedic appeal of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel & Hardy. Then I got to witness the budding of comic masters such as Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, and Monty Python.

These days, my college-age son and daughter do the usual scoffing at their old man’s pop-culture tastes, yet they’ve managed to pick and choose things they like from that era. My daughter has enjoyed Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and the musical version of The Producers with me. I’m not the Cheech & Chong fan that I was as a teenager, but my son definitely enjoys their streetwise humor. And while neither of my kids is a die-hard Monty Python fan like me, my son is head over heels over Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and my daughter has let down her guard enough to let the “Fish Slapping Dance” and “Argument Clinic” sketches make her laugh like crazy.

Conversely, the kids enjoy comedy that doesn’t terribly interest me, such as Amy Schumer (daughter) and Louis C.K. (son). I’ve watched some of their work and don’t particularly “get” them, but I can appreciate why the next generation does.

The thing is, there’s nothing more subjective than comedy. If someone enjoys the same comedy that you do, you have had some measure of bonding with that person. And if someone doesn’t pick up on a comedian who makes you tear up with laughter, expect the very definition of “stony bitch face” from that other person.

Anyway, I’m in my mid-fifties, and I’ve long given up on trying to apologize for or rationalize my tastes in pop culture. Like any comedy fan, I like what I like, and if you don’t agree…

Well, ex-CUUUUUUUSE ME!!!!!!!!

The Marx Brothers in THE BIG STORE (1941) – Way off the rack

The Big Store is a summing-up of all the perversities that a post-Irving Thalberg M-G-M inflicted upon the Marx Brothers. There are moments (albeit, most of them musical rather than comedic) that are as good as anything the Marxes ever did. Then there are moments where the movie takes the bad elements of At the Circus and Go West and expands upon them.

The story is that Tommy Rodgers (Tony Martin), an up-and-coming singer (of course), wants to sell his half of an inherited department store and use the money to beef up his music school. Unfortunately, Mr. Grover (Douglas Dumbrille), the owner of the store’s other half, plans to marry Martha Phelps (Margaret Dumont), Tommy’s rich aunt, and then have Tommy and Auntie slaughtered because they’ll find out he cooked the books. He couldn’t just buy them out, right?

Anyway, Tommy is knocked unconscious at one point (not for the whole movie, sadly), and Martha brings in Wolf J. Flywheel (Groucho) and his wacky assistant (Harpo) named, er, Wacky, to investigate the goings-on. The best comedy scene in the movie involves Groucho and Harpo trying to impress Mrs. Phelps that their fly-by-night operation is a top-notch detective agency. It seems strange that the same minds who decided to get Groucho and Harpo together (in a rare outing as partners) couldn’t conjure up some decent gags for the rest of the movie.

The remainder is a musical in search of a comedy. Chico and Harpo are well-served musically, especially in another Marx rarity, their piano duet. And Harpo’s harp solo is both lovely and a technical miracle, showing him playing along with mirror versions of himself. On the other hand, Groucho’s number is this…thing called “Sing While You Sell,” apparently the songwriters’ attempt at a department-store version of “Whistle While You Work.” Is it just me, or would anyone else think it strange to find counter clerks singing to you?

Then there’s Tony Martin who, let’s face it, is just too darned smug to care about. His every number invites us to swoon over his handsomeness and inner warmth. Sorry, he put me off as soon as he got equal billing with the Marx Brothers.

Oh, and you’ll love M-G-M’s condescensions to minorities and the poor. When the store decides to hold an impromptu press conference, Tommy responds with an elaborate musical number called “The Tenement Symphony,” in which he sings about how the Irish and Italian families living in flats inspire him to sing. Yeah, right, how about a donation, pal? (According to a Mel Brooks biographer, Brooks found this scene so bombastic, he initially intended to put a scene in Blazing Saddles where the black, Chinese, and Irish railroad laborers join hands and listen to Tony Martin sing the song to them.)

And the stereotypical blacks of A Day at the Races and At the Circus, as well as the stereotypical Indians of Go West, are here joined by stereotypical Italians and Chinese, who have nothing better to do than get lost in the bed department. (You gotta love Groucho’s nonchalance at parents’ losing most of their offspring. He’ll knock himself out to get a detective job, but lost kids? You’re on your own!)

Lastly, there’s the frenetic climax, an obvious attempt to repeat the rousing ending of Go West. The trouble is that it’s so obvious in its use of fake doubles, trick photography, and a frantic score, it makes you think of a lesser driver’s-ed movie.

The few good things in The Big Store make you wonder why the movie’s makers went to such elaborate trouble to create the bad things. Everyone in the movie uses every last ounce of energy to convince us that this monstrosity is worth watching. Didn’t they read the script?

Here’s the movie’s trailer (mostly funnier than the actual movie). The Big Store was originally intended as the Marx Brothers’ final Hollywood film, hence such references in the trailer. The opening announcer is Henry O’Neill, later seen in Laurel & Hardy’s M-G-M feature Nothing But Trouble.

The 4 Marx Brothers in HORSE FEATHERS (1932) – Everyone sings I love you

The following is my second contribution to “The Pre-Code Blogathon,” running through Apr. 3 at the blog Shadows and Satin. Click on the above banner, and read terrific critiques of racy Hollywood films released from 1930 to 1933, prior to the enforcement of the censorious Production Code!

(WARNING: Spoilers abound!)

The majority of Horse Feathers involves Groucho Marx as the head of a college, but in the end, the college has about as much relevance to the story as the painting had to the Marxes’ Animal Crackers. The college itself figures only in a couple of scenes: the introduction of Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho) as Huxley College’s president, where he belittles and yanks the beards of the faculty, only to have them follow him unquestioningly with a lot of heigh-de-ho; and Groucho’s wayward biology lecture, which ostensibly takes place in a college classroom but, for all of its idiocy and puns, might as well be a vaudeville stage where the Marxes used to perform “Fun in Hi Skule.”

The crux of the movie involves (a) football and (b) the college widow. Let’s cover the more crucial topic first. Wagstaff’s primary reason for becoming the college’s president is to keep an eye on his collegiate son Frank (Zeppo), who is busy making time with Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd), the college widow.

(As casting goes, Zeppo playing the son of Groucho [in real life only eleven years older than him] is unmatched in outrageousness until Hitchcock’s North by Northwest [1959], where Jesse Royce Landis plays the mother of Cary Grant, who was two years older than her in real life.)

I don’t know much about 1930’s slang, but was “college widow” a euphemism for “master’s degree in slut”? And did every college have one of these widows? Groucho, Chico, and Harpo certainly don’t need any introduction to the term. Groucho’s only real resentment of Zeppo’s dating Connie is that he didn’t get to her first, and whatever slackness Groucho exercises in this task is more than taken up by Chico and Harpo.

(As if it wasn’t already clear enough what being a college widow entails, Groucho’s every entrance into Connie’s room shows him closing a very phallic umbrella he brought with him [even though it’s not raining] and removing his rubbers. No further comment.)

Then there’s the topic of football. Seems that Huxley hasn’t had a winning football team in 44 years, and Wagstaff shows his priorities when he asks Frank where he can find some decent football players. Frank tells him to go to a local speakeasy where two great football players hang out.

Strangely enough, Groucho’s “speech” to the college students in the previous scene had segued into the medley “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It / I Always Get My Man.” Then he goes to the speakeasy and, after about ten seconds of interviewing Chico, he determines that Chico and Harpo are the two great football players. So he doesn’t get his man, and what he’s against appears to be ever having a hope of winning a football game.

(And check out that duo who really are the great football players. They’ve been in college for so long, even their football is growing whiskers.)

Some of the Marxes’ most memorable scenes and one-liners occur in Horse Feathers (as well as a somewhat disconcerting sight gag showing Harpo shoveling books into a fire, one year before Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and started doing the same thing in earnest).

But even by the loose standards of Marxian farce, that football-game climax is one “Oh, brother”-inspiring scene after another. Wagstaff turns up in the football game himself — evidently, college presidents’ perks include playing on the team whenever you want — and frequently goes off to the sidelines to continue making time with Connie, even while her thug-boyfriend is sitting right beside her. Oh well, it figures that a bunch of guys who never went to college would do a college movie about a bunch of guys who can’t play football right.

“Why, that’s bigamy!” – “Yes, and it’s big-o’-ME, too!”

(P.S. Two trivial notes, both shown in the clip below: First, Horse Feathers has my favorite Chico piano solo. I first heard the tune on a Marx Brothers compilation LP when I was a kid, and it has stuck with me ever since. Only decades later did I notice that Thelma Todd is a little surreptitiously free with her hands during Chico’s number.)

(Second, this is the movie with Groucho’s famous comment to the movie audience prior to Chico’s piano solo. It’s a pity they couldn’t have inserted this line as a public service announcement into the Marxes’ later M-G-M movies.)

The Marx Brothers in GO WEST (1940) – Cut to the chase

Go West is a great pair of comedy bookends with a lot of useless filler in the middle. The movie begins promisingly, with one of the best fleecings that Chico and Harpo ever gave to Groucho. Unfortunately, after that, there’s a plot.

Terry (John Carroll), the good guy, wants to sell his land to a railroad company to end a family feud. But the bad guys (including Walter Woolf King, formerly Lassparri from A Night at the Opera) confiscate the deed to the land, thanks to Groucho’s ineptitude.

Groucho’s ineptitude?? Isn’t this the same guy who used to hold off gangsters with double talk? Here he comes off like the wise-guy grade-schooler who shuts his yap as soon as the bully puts him in his place. After a while, Groucho’s one-liners seem only to amuse himself, and you really wish he’d shut up for a while. (Strangely, exactly this kind of material worked perfectly for Bob Hope 12 years later in his Western take-off, Son of Paleface. For Groucho, it works only as character assassination.)

Chico’s no help, either, whining, “We no wanna no trouble.” This from a guy who earned $70 for his train ticket by using and re-using a ten-dollar bill. Did these guys leave their cheekiness and con artistry at the train station?

Of the brothers, Harpo comes off best here. While Groucho and Chico are getting liquored up by the bad guys’ floozies, Harpo is smashing safes, getting deeds back to rightful owners, and turning whisk brooms into loaded revolvers. Maybe Harpo should ditch these losers and go look for some diamonds to finance a Broadway show.

Turns out that the Marx Brothers aren’t comic anarchists at all. They’re the idiots whom the good guy puts up with because he’s so darned sweet. It’s almost as if MGM was punishing them for having been too funny in the past.

And since there aren’t any black people around (other than some monosyllabic porters in the first scene), the movie stereotypes Indians for a while, getting as much juice as it can out of “How!”-type characterizations. It’s doubly painful to watch the Marxes make fun of them, considering how moronic they themselves have come off in this movie.

Then the movie does a strange thing at the end — it turns hilarious. The elaborate climax involves the Marxes taking over the bad guys’ train in order to beat them to New York (Terry having reclaimed the deed from them). It’s a miracle of comic timing and editing, and it’s so wowing, you can hardly believe it’s done by the same people who put together the previous 70 minutes.

Here’s how to watch Go West: Savor the opening and closing scenes, and then, when the Marxes start to get embarrassing, look away from them, like the people at a party who back off from the drunken guest to show that they aren’t in any way related to him.

The Marx Brothers in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935) – And two hard-boiled eggs

Al

(WARNING: Major spoilers abound!)

I have what I call “The Pretty Woman Theorem.” Logic tells me I shouldn’t believe that with good luck, a hooker will be picked up by a rich man who will give her the life and love she deserves. But when it’s Richard Gere and Julia Roberts at their most charming, I’m willing to accept it…at least this once.

Similarly, for decades, movie-comedy lovers have debated whether or not MGM producer Irving Thalberg diluted the Marx Brothers’ zany style by making them cater to sappy lovers and elaborate musical numbers. But when you watch A Night at the Opera, somehow it all works…at least this once.

Indeed, Thalberg seems to have been the Marxes’ savior in more ways that one. Groucho was never shy about expressing his admiration for Thalberg and how he added a female audience to the Marxes’ movies without ruining their comedy. And Thalberg seems to have been the middleman between the Marxes and the Hollywood suits. Once Thalberg died, MGM plugged the Marxes into movies that seemed to follow the Thalberg formula but, as Roger Ebert might put it, knew the words but not the music.

The story — grandly constructed by former Marx scribes and revered playwrights George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind — concerns impresario Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho) and rich widow Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont). Claypool wants to get into high society; Driftwood wants to get into money. So he introduces her to Herman Gottlieb (Siegfried Rumann, one of the most effective Marx villains ever), head of the New York Opera Company.

Gottlieb and Claypool get along famously–too famously for Driftwood, who still wants to keep his hand in Claypool’s bucks, his every appearance to the contrary. (Driftwood’s first scene shows him having eaten dinner with another woman while Claypool unknowingly sat behind him.)

Meanwhile, the opera troupe’s egotistical star, Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), has designs on the troupe female star Rosa (Kitty Carlisle). But Rosa is in love with Ricardo (Allan Jones, kind of a less wooden Zeppo), who has a great voice that is ignored because of his lack of celebrity.

Surprisingly, the Ricardo-Rosa romance isn’t laid on as thick as is Lassparri’s vanity. As if we hadn’t already gotten the idea that Lassparri is not a nice guy, he literally turns his lackey Tomasso (Harpo Marx) into a whipping post. Geez, did Harpo soak his feet in Lassparri’s lemonade or something?

Somehow, though, all of the elements mesh instead of clashing. In the scene where Driftwood delivers a love note to Rosa, Groucho is surprisingly effective without being maudlin. Chico and Harpo’s musical numbers feature endless shots of onlooking children laughing and cheering. That’s usually a bad sign in a movie; actors laughing at the comics is usually a desperate attempt to get the audience laughing as well. But Chico and Harpo really seem to enjoy entertaining the kids, and the joy really spreads to the movie audience.

Indeed, the trio are unusually chipper here; they seem buoyed enough by the fresh surroundings, as well they should be. The level of this movie’s comedic value is such that you only have to mention some of its scenes by name. The party of the first part. The stateroom scene. The bed-switching scene. And of course, the all-stops-out climax (one of the few Marx endings that doesn’t dribble away), where the Marxes make mincemeat of the opera and Lassparri.

When people try to name the Marx Brothers’ best movie, it’s either Duck Soup or A Night at the Opera. Why quibble? Be glad they’re both available to enjoy. After this point in the Marxes’ career, the gems were few and far between.

Here’s how the movie starts — with a bang:

MONKEY BUSINESS (1931) – The Marx Brothers bust loose

(WARNING: Major spoilers abound!)

Monkey Business is where the Marx Brothers legend really begins. It’s as if the Marxes in Animal Crackers were wind-up dolls that Hollywood grabbed and ratcheted up their pace a few notches. Viewing the two movies in chronological order is like being Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, going from a nice, homey starting point to a Technicolor land of comedy.

The Marxes are stowaways on an ocean liner, passing the time singing “Sweet Adeline” while hiding in herring barrels, after which they take off the barrel lids and are even polite enough to bow for a non-existent audience. (They love applause in this movie. At one point, the four of them interrupt their own chase to noodle around on some instruments for thirty seconds, which gets them more audience response. And don’t even get me started on Harpo’s attempts to get undue attention.)

The ship’s captain is oddly wishy-washy about finding these stowaways. After spending the first few minutes of the movie declaring his vengeance on these guys, Groucho and Chico come into his quarters and blithely eat his lunch, at which point the captain declares his suspicion (twice) that Groucho might be one of the stowaways. The captain’s relationship to the stowaways turns out to be like Tom’s relation to Jerry; he acts like he wants to catch them, but he really doesn’t, because then the fun would be over and he’d have to go back to running the ship.

As always, the ostensible plot is in the movie mainly for the purposes of getting tossed aside. Seems that two rival gangsters are on board, and each needs a bodyguard. How do we first get a hint of this? It’s when Groucho, trying to escape the captain, ducks into the room of one of the gangsters, who is so macho that he doesn’t even let this intrusion break the pace of his ongoing argument with his wife (Thelma Todd). Groucho eventually makes whoopee with Todd in one of the finest courting scenes that doesn’t star Margaret Dumont. Then Groucho’s supposed to be all scared when the gangster returns and points a gun at his kisser. Hey, big fella, you didn’t notice this guy slipping into your closet earlier?

Later, the Marxes trump the captain’s apathetic attitude by being cavalier about the possibility of getting caught. When the ship is ready to unload the passengers, Zeppo discovers that Maurice Chevalier is on the ship and takes his passport. Groucho, Harpo, and Chico take this news blithely, as though Zeppo had just announced that the morning paper had arrived. How often do celebrities go around waving their passports to get them stolen, anyway?

As if that affront to reality isn’t wacko enough, the four of them decide that the only way they can possibly make it off the ship is to present Chevalier’s passport to the clerk and then present themselves as Chevalier by singing one of his songs. It’s not enough for one person to impersonate a celebrity. All four of them decide to play the same celebrity, and to do so by singing a song to some disinterested passport clerks. Offhand, I’d say that the Marxes don’t really want to get off that ship anymore than that captain really wants to catch them.

Monkey Business is like a great freeing of inhibitions, not the least of which are the Marx Brothers’ own hang-ups. You’d never guess these were the same guys who politely walked through Animal Crackers. If there’s any single scene that symbolizes the movie’s spirit, it’s that of Harpo dreamily exiting a Punch-and-Judy show on a kid’s cart — a beautiful long shot observing his wheeling away, as though the cameraman can’t believe it anymore than we can.

(Trivia: Arthur Sheekman, a good friend of Groucho’s who is credited in the movie with “additional dialogue,” was married to 1930’s actress Gloria Stuart, who made a memorable impression six-and-a-half decades later as the woman with a past, in James Cameron’s Titanic. Good thing the Marx Brothers weren’t stowing away on that ocean liner.)

The Marx Brothers in ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930) – Never leave out a Hungadunger

(WARNING: Major spoilers ahead!)

Animal Crackers, besides being about a ton funnier than its predecessor The Cocoanuts, is quite elucidating on the matter of what constituted a hit Broadway show in the 1920’s. From singing butlers to unmemorable tunes warbled by equally unmemorable love interests, it feels like this movie version of the stage show did not leave a darned…thing…out.

History tells us that the Marx Brothers were such a sensation, in their previous shows as well as this one, that the “straight” leads, and loads of exposition, were needed to offset their dynamic effect. Film-buff viewing, on the other hand, tells us that the Marxes ought to arrive on-screen a whole lot sooner than they do here.

The movie’s “straight” story is that Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont), a rich Long Island dame, is hosting a big shindig to both honor an African explorer named Geoffrey Spaulding (Groucho–and it’s spelled “Geoffrey” right in the opening scene, not “Jeffrey”) and to unveil a famous and valuable painting she has acquired. Unfortunately for Mrs. R., the painting gets stolen before the opening, and nearly everyone in the movie gets involved in trying to find it.

Of course, hindsight has its benefits. Still, I don’t know of anyone who watches Animal Crackers nowadays and says afterwards, “Wow, how about that mystery about the painting? I was on the edge of my seat waiting for them to get it back!” I’m not so sure anybody really cared about it 85 years ago, either. For one thing, when you’ve got a Marx Brother (Harpo) who can steal a man’s birthmark right off his arm, who cares about the theft of such an Earthly thing as a painting?

(Harpo also gives us a glimpse into his unique love life. When a woman asks if there’s anything he really loves, Harpo produces a photo of a horse. It must have been a pretty steady and serious relationship; he kisses the horse two years later in Horse Feathers and sleeps with her in Duck Soup a year after that. No word on whether they broke up after she saw Harpo riding another horse in A Day at the Races.)

Funny thing about that painting, too. Even though it’s said to be immensely valuable, the thieves and others carry it around with all the finesse of someone shoving a Post-It note in his pocket. Curators at the Louvre must have been flipping out when they saw how this “priceless” work of art was being manhandled.

So much for the plot–let’s get to the good stuff. Groucho’s a hoot. He carries on and on to anyone who will listen to tales about his fearless adventures, even though he faints in front of everyone when he discovers that a caterpillar has crawled onto his sleeve. And Margaret Dumont is the most straight-faced straightman (sorry, straight-person) you’ll ever see. Whenever she’s confronted with one of Groucho’s ever-increasing anti-social behaviors, she just clucks it off and shakes her head, as though Groucho was just some poor guy with Tourette’s Syndrome who couldn’t help himself.

Chico and Harpo are a delight, too. After seeing their first burglary attempt turn out completely laughless in The Cocoanuts, it’s a relief to find that their attempt in this movie to steal the painting is so hysterical that they repeated the motif in later movies. When they’re trying to steal the painting in the dark, and Chico keeps asking Harpo for “the flash” (flashlight), Harpo reaches into that ethereal jacket of his and pulls out everything but the flash. (Speaking of flash, Harpo has an opening scene that’s one for the books.)

And Zeppo, for all of his maligned place in the annals of Marx history, has a great scene with Groucho dictating a letter to him. He’s probably the only guy on the planet who could destroy Groucho’s letter, paragraph by paragraph, and not come out of it skinned alive.

Animal Crackers is the kind of movie for which the term “photographed stage play” was invented. Still, it’s a heartily funny photographed stage play.

R.I.P., Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

I have always resented the way that Elvis Presley stole Groucho Marx’s thunder by dying three days ahead of Groucho just for the publicity.

Now, I really do know that Elvis didn’t do it on purpose. And I’m sure Elvis, if he’d had a choice, might have wanted to grace this Earth a little longer. (As for Groucho in his 1977 state, I’m not so sure.)

But it is a fact that after all possible superlatives were used to describe Elvis on the day of his death (Aug. 16, 1977), by the time Groucho kicked off, the press seemed to be fresh out of tributes. TIME magazine — who had allowed The Marx Brothers to grace their cover 45 years previously — gave Groucho’s obit a measly paragraph of text. Woody Allen responded by writing a letter to TIME’s editor asking, “Is it my imagination, or were you guys a little skimpy with the Groucho Marx obituary?”

But in the end, it all evened out. While Elvis has had hundreds or thousands of people making a living by imitating him, only one person has done justice to Groucho — Frank Ferrante (above), whose flawless impersonation of Groucho graces hundreds of live performances across the nation each year.

And happily, we still have all of the work that Groucho left behind for us to savor. Humorous books for which he took great pride in claiming authorship. His huge body of radio and TV work, much of it revolving around his immortal (in reruns, anyway) quiz show “You Bet Your Life.” And the dry humor and trenchant sarcasm of his movie appearances, with and without his famous brothers (though the best movies include his siblings).

If Groucho’d had a say in it, he probably would have indeed claimed that Elvis was just trying to upstage him in death. And then, most likely, he would have sung this:

The Marx Bros.’ THE COCOANUTS (1929) – Satire of Florida land boom goes bust

(WARNING: Spoilers abound!)

If you go back to the first movies of comedians you’ve loved, the debuts might not be as great as the later movies, but you can still see how they became stars. In their first real movie as a team, Duck Soup (not the Marx Bros. one), Laurel and Hardy look rough around the edges, but they’re still the familiar Stan and Ollie. Kid Auto Races at Venice looks like a home movie, but Charlie Chaplin, in his first appearance in the Tramp outfit, wins you over by sheer force of personality. On the other hand, when you watch The Cocoanuts, you’ll either pinch yourself to keep from falling asleep or stare wide-eyed at the Marxes’ housebroken versions of their later, more wacko personas.

The Cocoanuts is reported to have been a satire of the 1925 Florida land boom, but only one scene actually relates to that scenario, and the satire in this scene is as curdled as old milk. Most of the action occurs around the Florida hotel where Mr. Hammer (Groucho) is manager, but his behavior is strangely self-defeating. He bemoans the lack of hotel guests, but whenever one of the current guests phones him at the lobby to request something for their room, Hammer puts them off with some stupid wisecrack that seems guaranteed to soon make them pack up and leave.

About the only people he manages to subdue are the bellhops who, in Groucho’s opening scene, haven’t been paid for two weeks and demand their salaries from him. Groucho makes a weak speech that boils down to, If you ever flirted with socialism, you might as well go whole-hog on it now because I have no intention of paying you. And the bellboys shut right up. Somebody at Paramount got it wrong–these are the Marxes that do comedy, not Communist speeches.

Those bellboys are a tad ambivalent, by the way. Although there’s no mistaking them for males, Groucho constantly refers to them as “boys” in his intro speech, but then when all of them are accosted by Harpo later, he chases them just as he usually chases girls. This can’t be a subtext that anyone truly intended for the movie.

But then, ambivalence seems the order of the day here. As male love interest Bob Adams, Oscar Shaw has lips as bee-stung, and carriage as fey, as any ’20s flapper. As Bob’s girlfriend Polly, Mary Eaton has a painfully prolonged dance number (titled, I kid you not, “The Monkey-Doodle-Doo”) that features many ant’s-eye-view camera shots of her dress swirling long enough to get a pretty clear assessment of her panties.

Most unforgivable of all is Margaret Dumont as Mrs. Potter, Polly’s mother. Mrs. P. disapproves of Bob because he’s not in the same social class as Polly, and her insistent demand that Polly marry a nearby rich guy (and not caring in the least whether or not Polly even likes it) is just this side of pimping.

If this sexual deconstruction of the movie seems a bit protracted, that’s only because nothing else of interest is going on in the movie. The Marx Brothers do some things that could have turned out pretty funny if only the pacing had been goosed up a bit, but since it’s an early talkie, it’s all the cameramen could do to keep the Marxes in the shot. Legend has it that the reason the Marxes’ Broadway shows had romantic relief to start with was because the Marxes were so anarchic, they needed more “normal” characters to offset their insanity. Here, their insanity is so offset that they hardly get to even do any comedy.

Legend also tells us that Irving Berlin, who wrote the show’s songs, despaired about not having a hit number for Cocoanuts. But it sure wasn’t for lack of trying. His song “The Skies Will All Be Blue When My Dream Comes True” gets repeated a few thousand times in the movie, even gumming up Harpo’s first movie-harp scene.

The Cocoanuts only proves that the Marx Brothers’ insanity is pointless without something to get insane about. You’d think sparks would fly when Groucho tries to woo Margaret Dumont in their first movie together. But the movie fails to either (a) connect Hammer’s wooing to the fact that he needs Mrs. Potter’s money to keep his hotel afloat, or (b) doesn’t even try to get Groucho to score points off of Mrs. Potter’s trying to pimp her daughter. (Indeed, it’s Hammer who caters Polly’s engagement party, which comedically bites the dust right after the Marxes make their entrance in funny costumes.)

It’s reported that when the Marx Brothers saw this movie version of their hit Broadway show, they were so appalled that they tried to buy the movie’s negative so that they could burn it. Happily, it still exists, if only for the pleasure of having future generations of film critics express their wish that the Marx Brothers should have burned the negative.