Lillian, oh Lillian, say have you met Lillian?

Lillian Roth, the fair Arabella in Animal Crackers, is my favourite Marx Brothers leading lady, pipping even Thelma Todd and Kitty Carlisle.
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It's partly because Arabella is such a fun, sparky character anyway, even to the extent of being given genuine comedy dialogue - which is more than Zeppo got - but also because Roth herself is exactly the kind of quintessential jazz baby one wishes the early Marx films were full of.
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Ordinarily, careers like Roth's run frustratingly parallel to that of the Marxes, but rarely jump tracks and combine. It is heartbreaking to reflect on the amount of talent Paramount had on its books at the time that would have made for a fascinating team-up. (Do you ever wish the Marxes had made some shorts, by the way? Yes, me too.) Just look at Paramount on Parade (1930; and incidentally, I've asked it before and I'll ask it again - why in God's name are the Marxes not in this film?)
There's Helen Kane, for example, who actually did work with the Brothers on stage; what a film combo they would have made! Or Nancy Carroll, Louise Brooks, even Clara Bow.
Still, Roth we do have. By some great good fortune, Roth we have.
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Actually, as you probably know, it was supposedly Roth's bad fortune to have been cast in the role. As she has it in her autobiography I'll Cry Tomorrow, the casting was punishment for her alleged on-set temperament and difficulty (and this at a time, she claimed, when of all the Paramount stars, only Clara was getting more fan-mail).
"We're sending you back to New York to be kicked in the rear by the Marx Brothers until you learn how to behave," is how she recalled the news being broken to her.
Most writers interpret this to mean that specifically being cast in a Marx film was the punishment; it's more likely that being banished from Hollywood to New York was what they had in mind. (Though how that was a punishment either is beyond me.)
Anyway, once there, she had a thoroughly good time, and was even given a song to sing (the only non-Marx number in the picture) after all the other show numbers had been pruned by director Victor Heerman.
From I'll Cry Tomorrow:
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It was one step removed from a circus. First, Zeppo, the youngest, sauntered into the studio, about 9.30 am. At ten, somebody remembered to telephone Chico and wake him. Harpo, meanwhile, popped in, saw that most of the cast was missing, and strolled off. Later they found him asleep in his dressing room. Chico arrived about this time. Groucho, who had been golfing, arrived somewhat later, his clubs slung over his shoulder. He came in with his knees-bent walk, pulled a cigar out of his mouth, and with a mad, sidewise glance, announced: "Anybody for lunch?"
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Groucho and I had a scene that had to be shot over at least ten times. In this instance I was the culprit. We were supposed to be hunting a thief who had stolen a valuable painting from Margaret Dumont, who played the society dowager Groucho chased. My line, when we stumbled on a fake painting, was, "Oh, if we could only find the real painting!" Groucho's line was, "I know who the thief is. here's his signature." "Who is it?" I asked. "Rembrandt," he said. "Don't be silly, he's dead," I retorted. Groucho snarled, "Then it's murder." I burst into giggles every time he said that, ruining the take. The line itself wasn't so hilarious, but I knew Groucho was going to say it with the big cigar jutting from his clenched teeth, his eyebrows palpitating, and that he would be off afterwards in that runaway crouch of his; and the thought of what was coming was far too much for me.
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You may generally disapprove, as I usually do, of the modern tendency to include 'blooper reels' on DVDs, celebrating the self-indulgence of the cast. But on this one occasion... What wouldn't you give, eh? What wouldn't you give?
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If you want to see more of Lillian, and I can't think of any cogent reason why you wouldn't, you can choose from any of the following, in all of which she is equally - that is to say sensationally - sweet, charming, sexy, funny and talented:
The Love Parade (avec Chevalier), Meet the Boyfriend (an adorable short), Sea Legs, Take a Chance (in which she does a striptease number), Paramount on Parade, Ladies They Talk About... you can't go far wrong with anything she made in the thirties, actually.

After some epic bottle-bashing and much personal trauma she re-emerged in the fifties as a brassy torch singer, and very good with it, but it is the thirties Roth that really captivates. (Avoid like the plague the film I'll Cry Tomorrow in which neither Susan Hayward's lead performance nor the period trappings even attempt verisimilitude, indeed they seem to go out of their way to avoid it. Hayward is way too old; she sings, supposedly in the thirties, in post-war nightclub style, and generally looks, sounds and acts less like Roth than you'd think possible for someone of the same gender to do.)

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Her best performance of all is as gold-digging hoofer Trixie in De Mille's Madam Satan (1930), the film that followed Animal Crackers at Loew's theater (see here). She wears some incredible outfits, sings a great number in shorts and a top hat, leaps out of a zeppelin in a parachute and lands in a turkish bath, and also handles cross-talk comedy and some extremely physical farce with something more than mere applomb. (Some nice stories about this in her book, too: "'Me, jump from up there?' I gasped. 'Into that net? In these high heels and feathers? Oh, Mr DeMille, I couldn't possibly!'")
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It's possible that in remote and as yet undiscovered parts of the world, there are women more attractive than these, who also travel in pairs. But while we're waiting: Lillian and Kay Johnson in Madam Satan.

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Lillian and Jean Arthur giving thanks, while we give thanks for Lillian and Jean Arthur.
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Lillian and Frances Dee as mermaids. Seriously, I'm going to have to go and lie down in a darkened room in a minute.
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Madam Satan is perhaps the most gorgeous, sumptuous-looking product of the entire pre-Code era, with incredible decor and costumes, and delightful examples of what was then the last word in wit, sophistication and daringly modern subject matter. Yet inexplicably it was not a box-office hit; in fact it was one of De Mille's very few box-office disasters. Perhaps it was too much of its time - whatever, it seems amazing now, and Lillian Roth is no small contributor to its unique appeal.

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