I have already noted that the number of obscure references to contemporaneous culture and current affairs in the Marx screenplays seems to be decreasing from film to film, and despite the return of Kaufman and Ryskind, surely the finest and most densely allusive wordsmiths who ever wrote for the Marxes, A Night at the Opera confirms this trend.
Nonetheless, there are still a goodly number of interesting points to be raised as we make our way through the movie, so let's begin.
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0.00 - The MGM logo
All change - the Paramount mountain, with its promise of wit and sophistication, has given way to the MGM lion's imperious roar of self-approval.Possibly some audiences will be surprised to see Leo, half-remembering that MGM specially re-shot this sequence to feature the Marxes themselves roaring (or in Harpo's case honking his horn while he mimes the roar) and with the slogan 'Ars Gratia Artis' replaced by 'Marx Gratia Marxes'.
So they did, and some sources claim with the original intention of starting the film with it, which would have been very impressive. But in the end propriety won out (oh, well) and this splendid sequence was used only in the trailer.
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1:24 - "... gentleman has not arrived yet?"
Not many movies begin partway through a sentence. And A Night at the Opera is no exception - or wasn't, at least.
But the version of the film available to us today derives from a later re-issue dating from the war years, and has been somewhat over-zealously shorn of all reference to the fact that it is set in Italy. (I suppose we should be lucky that Chico's still in it.)
Among the many pointless cuts was an opening establishing sequence shot like the beginning of a Lubitsch musical, with various passers-by singing part of a song before 'passing it on' to the next person, the last of whom is the waiter, who begins the first half of his sentence as the song ends. All of this was lost, apparently for no better reason than that it makes clear that the scene is set in Milan.
It may be, however, that the bulk of the missing material has at last been found. A fuller alternative version recently discovered in a Hungarian archive, with several of the lost Italian references present and correct. Sadly, however, even this version is still lacking the introductory sequence, and begins just as ours does: with a nasty clicking noise, followed by a waiter saying "... gentleman has not arrived yet."
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2:32 - "Have you got any milk-fed chicken?"
Then squeeze the milk out of one and bring me a glass.
Not the greatest Groucho quip, perhaps, but a fortunate substitution for the one in an extant original draft script:
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Groucho: Steward, do you have any French pastry?
Steward: But this is an Italian boat.
Groucho: Well then, what's the rate of exchange?
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Perhaps the new version was improvised by Groucho during the pre-filming live tour (where, according to legend, the 'make that three hard-boiled eggs' was devised) and found to get a bigger laugh. Whatever, we're lucky it was changed, otherwise it would now be missing entirely, thanks to its reference to an Italian boat.
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4:25 - "Mrs Claypool, Mr Gottlieb, Mr Gottlieb, Mrs Claypool..."
Note Groucho's original dining companion over Dumont's left shoulder. Obviously recovered from her anger at Groucho landing her with the bill, she is now spontaneously and charmingly amused by his foolish behaviour.
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4:36 - "I just wanted to see if your rings were still there."
Almost certainly implying that Gottlieb might have cleverly stolen them. As a child, however, I interpreted it to mean that the very toxicity of his kiss had somehow corroded and disintegrated them. I think I still prefer my version.
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5:14 - "He's the greatest tenor since Caruso."
.Enrico Caruso (1873 – 1921) was the most famous Italian tenor of the early twentieth century, hugely popular in America thanks to his pioneering commercial recordings (nearly 300) and performances at the New York Metropolitan Opera (nearly 900).
He also appeared in a few early Hollywood movies, including the Paramount release My Cousin (1918), which features him on stage performing "Vesti la giubba" from Pagliacci. This is the opera in which we see Lasparri performing at the beginning of the film, and the aria which Groucho sings part of later on.
Here's Caruso's recording, matched to the film sequence:
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In 1906, as well as surviving the San Francisco earthquake, Caruso was charged with pinching the bottom of a married woman in the monkey house of New York's Central Park Zoo. Despite his ingenious defence - that one of the monkeys had delivered the offending goose - Caruso was found guilty and fined ten dollars.
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5:15 - The all-new Harpo takes a beating
Thalberg reinvention at its most disastrous. The aim: make the team more sympathetic to women. The method: make Harpo a figure of pathos, and kill stone dead what was hitherto a delightfully funny sequence (in which he is seen to be wearing several costumes at the same time) by showing him getting the crap kicked out of him by nasty Lasparri. (Boo! Hiss!)
This is even lousy in the context of the scene itself, since it ends with Harpo returning to the room to take another going-over, the sound of which always elicits nervous and confused laughter from audiences.
8:30 - "Fiorello!" "Tony!"Remember those writers who insist that Chico's character only pretends to be Italian? Yeah, me too.
12:03 - "You can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for seventy-five cents!"
Minnie the Moocher is a classic jazz song (first recorded in 1931) by the great Cab Calloway and His Orchestra. Like many jazz numbers of the time, it features several unabashed references to drug use: 'he showed her how to kick the gong around', 'he was cokey', etc.
The song, and live action footage of Cab performing it (apparently the earliest known film of him), was featured in a fantastic Fleischer Studios 'Talkartoon', also called Minnie the Moocher (1932), and starring Betty Boop, the most sexually desirable woman in cinema history. Like so much Fleischer animation, it has a weird, otherworldly quality, and a visual and comedic imagination entirely distinct from that of other animation studios.
14:28 - The contract scene
The last classic Chico-Groucho duologue - oh, welcome back Kaufman and Ryskind!
This is the moment when you realise that the film really is going to be taking you right back, to the beautiful, theatrical structure of The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers.
There's only one thing about this scene that fails to delight me, and that's the mass hysteria that the line "you can't fool me, there ain't no Sanity Claus" seems to provoke whenever the film plays in rep. It's a nice enough little joke and I have no real problem with it, but I've never understood why this odd consensus has sprung up that it's the funniest line in the piece, and must be greeted with this unanimous fake roar. It's not like you don't know it's coming, and there are so many other great lines to fixate upon:
"We had an argument and he pulled a knife on me so I shot him."
"Of course he won't be able to eat but he can live like a prince."
"You haven't got a baboon in your pocket have you?"
"I was blind for three days."
"Why can't the first part of the second party be the second part of the first party? Then you've got something."
"Well, that takes out two more clauses."
"That's all right, there's no ink in the pen anyway."
Logically, the best-known lines should get the smallest laughs, because they're the best-known lines. Shouldn't they?
The newly-found Hungarian version of the film (see 1:24, above) confirms that the jump-cuts in this sequence do, as predicted, correspond with excised references to Italy:
Chico: I'm a stranger here myself.
Groucho: Aren't you an Italian?
Chico: No, only my mama and papa is Italian.
Groucho: What's his [the tenor he wants to sign] name?
Chico: It's an Italian name. What do you care? I can't pronounce it.
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It is indeed an Italian name. No amount of snipping could change the names Rudolfo Lasparri or Ricardo Baroni, and Chico of course speaks with an Italian accent throughout, making all this laborious mutilation not only destructive but utterly futile.
16:38 - "Don't you know what duplicates are?"
"Sure, those five kids up in Canada."
By 'duplicates' Chico means the Dionne quintuplets, born in Ontario in 1934, and the first quintuplets known to survive their infancy. At the time, everybody would have got the joke: the quintuplets achieved a degree of celebrity that was virtually unprecedented in the pre-Internet age. Their likenesses were featured on "framed photographs, spoons, cups, plates, plaques, candy bars, books, postcards, dolls, and much more" all available at a souvenir shop run by their mother, which also offered "stones from the Dionne farm for $0.50 that were supposed to have some magical power of fertility" (Wikipedia). They were also used to advertise Quaker Oats and other products nationally. 6000 people a day, including many top Hollywood stars, came to see them, via a special observation room at their nursery; the midwives who delivered them cashed in with a souvenir and dining stall of their own, and it was claimed in 1934 that they had brought $51000000 of tourist revenue to Ontario. As well as appearing in four Hollywood films, they are referred to in two Stooges shorts, My Man Godfrey (also written by Ryskind), Miracle of Morgan's Creek, The Women, Dumbo and an Agatha Christie novel. In the Warners cartoon The Coo-Coo Nut Grove (1936), they appear in animated form, alongside the Marxes.
All of the quints were girls, and two remain alive, now aged 76.
21:08 - "Are you sure you have everything, Otis?"
"I've never had any complaints yet!"
According to a popular Groucho anecdote, recited on at least three occasions on the Dick Cavett show alone, this line proved too saucy for most state censorship boards, who cut it from the prints. Interesting if true: I didn't realise American censorship operated on a state by state basis like that. Odd that it wasn't taken out of the reissue version we have, but fortunate, needless to add.
22:40 - Alone
Surely the best non-comic song in any Marx movie, heart-rendingly performed by the luminous Kitty Carlisle.
How I look forward to this moment whenever I watch the movie at home. How I dread it (and the bit where Allan Jones joins in at 24:06 still more) whenever I watch it at the cinema.
28:03 - Groucho goes soppy
Perhaps the most audacious bit of Thalberg revisionism: Groucho becomes a real character with real interests and a soft side we'd never suspected hitherto. But I'll be damned - is this not a nice little scene?
It may not be right to have Groucho doing this, but doesn't he do it charmingly? It should be a disaster, but as anyone haunted by the bits where he sucks up to the male leads in At The Circus and The Big Store will know, you can do this sort of thing well or you can do it badly. It's a sweet little moment and somehow I don't think it spoils the mood or stunts the momentum here at all.
36.00 - The engineer's assistant is not Billy Gilbert
Many official sources, including the NFT, claim that blustery comic support actor Gilbert plays two roles in the film, including the engineer's assistant, here. This is contradicted by the evidence of the face of the actual actor, which resembles Gilbert's to the extent that it is humanoid but no further. Hard to know how these rumours get started, but you'd be surprised how many otherwise reliable sources still doggedly insist that the engineer's assistant and Gilbert are one and the same.
Gilbert does appear, of course, in the steerage banquet scene; he talks at 41:05.
37:40 - The three greatest aviators in the world
It's odd the way these characters are never referred to by name by any character in the film; even when they are announced at the official function it is simply as "the three greatest aviators in the world". But if you freeze the newspaper that reports subsequently on the Marxian debacle that ensues, you'll see that they are called the Santopoulos Brothers.
Since Lindy's big landing, aviators had figured highly among America's greatest celebrity heroes, and it is a distinctively Kaufman and Ryskind touch to let the Marx Brothers deflate some. Such a pity, though, that Zeppo wasn't around to put one of those beards on - while Ricardo is not exactly a comedy part, he gets a far bigger share of the fun than Zeppo ever did. Of course, Zeppo could just about warble a song, but he couldn't have done the opera stuff.
44:20 - Chico plays piano to an audience of cute kids
This is the first time there hasn't been something vaguely challenging or inappropriate in Chico's piano sequence. Normally his piano playing, though sure to win his audience over with sheer virtuosity, has a bloody-minded, obtuse quality. Here it's just a musical interlude, and he's mooning over a bunch of adorable moppets and they're mooning right back.
It's not exactly harmful as the film's innovations go, but it's not an improvement either, and the switch is telling. It certainly lays the groundwork for the infantilisation and emasculation of Chico's character, which will proceed at high speed from here. The other thing you notice about this solo is that it's very short, to make room for Harpo being given a comedy piano spot as well as his harp solo. Considering that it was largely through Chico's industry that the Brothers got the MGM gig in the first place, there's something rather disgraceful about the way in which he is slowly allowed to become the new Zeppo as the films progress. It starts here.
51:25 - The Harpo bondage scene
The bit with Harpo on the ropes, swinging on the outside of the ship and ending up in the bedroom of the aviators, is supposedly one of those that Sam Wood most relentlessly re-shot, to the extent that Harpo was left with rope burns and cuts. Two things to look out for though (or three if you count Harpo looking weird in a wet wig): the cartoon butterfly that emerges from one of the aviators' beards (often remarked upon with praise, but a strange and untypical joke that I've never been much keen on), and the delightful moment when Groucho, looking out of his porthole, sees Harpo and warmly greets him. There's a real feeling of fraternal affection here.
54:33 - Chico's aviator speech
Lap it up, Chico fans! Kaufman and Ryskind here provide yer man with this gloriously absurd, brilliantly funny monologue - his first since the last time they wrote for him, and pretty much the last great solo comic moment, of any kind, in his entire career. Never again, through a further seven movies and beyond, would he be funny on his own. Never again would anybody bother to write great absurdist material of this sort for him. From hereon it's a bit of expository dialogue here and there, some silly behaviour, a lot of duncey humour and some piano playing. But this is as good as Captain Spaulding's lecture:
Friends, how we happen to come to America is a great story. But I don't tell that... The first time we started, we get-a halfway across when we run out-a gasoline and we gotta go back. Then I take-a twice as much gasoline. This time we-a just about to land. Maybe three feet. When whaddya think? We run out-a gasoline again. And a-back we go again to get-a more gas. This time I take-a plenty gas. Well, we get-a halfway over when what-a you think-a happened? We forgot-a the aeroplane. So we gotta sit down and we talk it over. Then I get a great idea. We no take-a gasoline. We no take-a the aeroplane. We take a steamship! And that, friends, is how we fly across the ocean!
57:16 - Groucho and the aviators converse in their own language
This must have sounded wonderfully weird at the time; today our techno-sophisticate ears will instantly identify the sound of tape running backwards.
Here's what they're really saying:
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58:40 - Harpo enters for breakfast
Note his somewhat pallid complexion here. My guess is that this is another of Sam Wood's retakes, and the powdered sugar make-up he applies at 59:26 has been on at least once already that morning.
60:15 - The adjoining rooms
Excellent extended farce, and for Kaufman and Ryskind a blatant revision of the jewel theft scene in Cocoanuts, right down to the split screen between two rooms. Again, such a shame Zeppo's not in on all this fun, though he wasn't first time round either come to think of it.
67:59 - Groucho falls down the stairs
Or rather, Driftwood does. Slow this sequence down to get a good look at the double's face. This is also the first indicator that the new Marxes would not be above basic slapstick for its own sake. From here to Mrs Dukesbury stuck in a cannon is but a skip.
69:21 - "I can't feel cheerful about being such a hoodoo to you."
"You goddamn hoodoo!" is a line from The Front Page which would certainly have been familiar to messrs K and R, but I haven't heard the insult much used elsewhere. It's a variant of voodoo, and so in this context presumably means a hex: Ricardo means that he brings Rosa bad luck.
70:02 - The Brothers camp out in Gottlieb's office
Can this scene be the inspiration for all those surely apocryphal anecdotes about the boys invading Thalberg's office, roasting potatoes in the nude and creating artificial fires and the like? Or do we think any of that really happened?
71:14 - Take Me Out To The Ball Game
The sheet music Harpo inserts into Il Trovatore, and that yields such comic dividends shortly after, is this popular 1908 number, considered "the unofficial anthem of baseball" (Wikipedia).
It was also used as the title of a 1949 MGM musical starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly and described as "MGM's gay Technicolor musical".
71:30: "Hey, Shorty - will you toss up that kelly?"
Just as you'd expect. 'Kelly' is a slang term for 'a man's stiff hat', usually a derby/bowler. The origin is, I think, unknown.
74:05 - "It's just the Tarzan in me!"
It's a funny thing, the popular culture reference lottery. Fact is that nobody reading this, probably nobody in the western world, needs me to explain who Tarzan is, why Groucho likens himself to him at this point in the film, or why he then makes that guttural cry.
But at
th
e time, Tarzan was pretty
new to most people: a character in a forgotten
British novel, brought recently to the screen (by MGM, naturally) i
n a series of films fe
aturing future Standish sexpot Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane (the ape man's foxy English squeeze). So what we have here is Groucho deliberately being given a joke that helps out the home team, like all the Maurice Chevalier stuff in Monkey Buisness. No reason to have thought that audiences seventy five years on would know instantly what he means, any more than most would know why Patsy Kelly solemnly intones "Chandu!" when she hears a gong sound in one of her short films with Thelma Todd. That's the way it goes: Chandu was lost to history; Tarzan endures.
76:50 - Is this the longest delayed gookie (sorry, I mean 'Harpo face') in Marx Brothers history?
The film's nearly over! It's a good one, though.
79:50 - Harpo's acrobatics
Now, this is interesting, because it's the Brothers' first true stunt-slapstick climax. It's tempting to imagine it was something decided upon by head office with which Kaufman and Ryskind were not at liberty to tamper, other than to make the individual jokes as brilliantly funny as they so surely are. But look at it in context. It's not a mindless slapstick climax, like the finales of At The Circus or The Big Store: it's a wonderful example of Harpo's magical powers, validated by the narrative, and totally in-keeping with the Paramount Harpo, just with the freedom of MGM resources. It was the later MGM movies, taking Opera slavishly as their models, that misread the scene and just assumed that if Harpo could magically run up and down theatrical backdrops then Groucho and Chico can unicycle about in a department store. This scene, like this film, is in so many ways a glorious last hurrah, as well as the portent of an altogether less interesting new beginning.
80:20 - 'We Never Sleep taxi service'
... as glimpsed on one of the painted backdrops in the opera..
To modern British eyes at least, an odd sort of a name for a taxi service, but one that any Marx fan will instantly identify as also the name of the collection agency that wants Davis's typewriter back in Room Service.
It originates as the logo of Pinkerton's detective agency. During his Lonesome Luke years, Harold Lloyd made a film of that title in which Luke tries his hand as a detective.
32 comments:
I wish the translation scene was left as seen in the clip...it's much funnier that they would just be speaking plain English and nobody notices.
Excellent analysis (including the earlier "overture"). I don't have much to add, except a few notes about my personal taste.
My favorite line from the contract scene may be before it starts. It's when Groucho says "Can you sleep on your stomach with such big buttons on your pajamas?" and then pulls one off, adding injury to insult (though Harpo will do far worse in a second). I love those moments in their movies when a few words, or a gesture, turns everything around.
As for censorship, there's a long history of how it affected Hollywood films through the years. Inside America, I don't believe movies themselves were even considered protected by the freedom of speech guarantee in the First Amendment until the early 50s, and, of course, the Production Code (itself created to stave off censorship) didn't completely end--replaced by a ratings system--until 1968. There were less and less local censorship boards, but even after the ratings system started, I've heard there were still a few local areas that kept them. Supreme Court cases in the 70s, though, protected more explicit films from censorship based on local commnunity standards (in particular, there was a case dealing with the film Carnal Knowledge).
"Alone" the best non-comic song in any Marx Movie? Perhaps that depends on what you mean by comic. My favorite non-Marx song by far comes from a woman whose birthday I will celebrate next week: "Why Am I So Romantic?," sung by Lillian Roth.
Speaking of watching Chico play piano, I think no one did it better than Thelma Todd. I try to think of her when I watch those kids.
You're right, it would be nice if Zeppo were in the scene where they fool the detective. And that's the difference between Zeppo and Allan Jones. Sam Wood (or Thalberg) takes great care to show how Jones isn't taking part in the fun, but I bet they wouldn't have shoved Zeppo aside so easily.
Hoodoo, as far as I understand it, is a type of harmful magic. The word, as a noun, can refer to the magic itself or someone who performs the magic.
Yes, I am a believer in the story about the Marx Brothers roasting potatoes in Thalberg's office. Perhaps it was just publicity, but it seems to be attested by reasonably reliable sources and certainly follows the pattern of what they were known to do.
The Marx Brothers lucked out with "Take Me Out To The Ball Game." There aren't too many songs familiar to audiences in 1935 that are just as well-known (in America, anyway) in 2010. The song was composed over 100 years ago, but if you attend a Major League Baseball game today, you'll get to hear a rousing chorus during the seventh-inning stretch. Let me add that whenever I see A Night At The Opera with an audience, Groucho hawking peanuts is always one of the biggest laughs.
Gazzoo -
Yes, you're absolutely right. I would have said that if I'd thought of it myself. I may yet.
LAGuy -
On Why Am I So Romantic? I couldn't agree more. It's the other of my two favourite non-Marx songs, but I think of it as basically comic. Compared to Alone, anyway. Read my earlier post on Miss Roth to discover how hopelessly besotted I am with this effortless charmer. I'm assuming you've seen Madam Satan? Wowzer!
Thanks! Another excuse to think about Thelma Todd!
Groucho and the peanuts always strikes me as one of the most perfect moments of comedy construction in film history. It's the definitive example of the 'topper'. We see Harpo put the sheet music in the folder, and we know what's coming, so the moment carries a weight of comic expectation. Will it be as funny as it promises to be? And of course it is, we laugh from the moment the music changes, and then we have the bits with Harpo and Chico playing ball with the instruments, and the laugh becomes a roar... All this time we have no idea what Groucho's up to, but we have no reason to think he was in on this part of the jeopardising operation. Then suddenly, while we're already laughing uproariously, he appears with the peanuts. It's masterly stuff.
"As a child, however, I interpreted it to mean that the very toxicity of his kiss had somehow corroded and disintegrated them." Haha, that one I will remember when I watch the movie next time!
Oh, I love "Alone". For some reason it gives me goosebumps. Beautiful. And yes, I like the compassionate Groucho when he delivers the lovers note. I think it suits him, I always liked that scene. Women like men's rare glimpses of sentimentality!
Damn, I haven't visited your blog for a while. Too much cinema studies. I have to catch up! Love your annotated guides! As well you know.
Here's my biggest question regarding "A Night At The Opera". Why the change in billing? At Paramount it was "Groucho Harpo Chico", but at MGM it's "Groucho Chico Harpo". Chico moves up, Harpo moves down. Was it MGM's idea? Was it Chico's? I have a hard time imagining that Harpo gave a damn either way. But still...I wonder how it came about.
...good question by Zeppo1935
and while were at it, isn't it true that prior to this film they were always referred to as "The Four Marx Brothers" and never as "The Marx Brothers"? The "Four" seemed to be as intrinsic as the "Three" in "Three Stooges"...
Very good question. Good name, too.
For some reason I'd never thought about it. When I was a kid I just assumed it was random, but of course it isn't. Is it possible Chico actually got it worked into the deal? Fascinating thought. Maybe he wanted to be first, and Thalberg said no way, but you can go before Harpo if you want...
Actually he SHOULD be first, because the only fair order is alphabetical.
The weirdest order I've ever seen is this one:
http://marxcouncil.blogspot.com/2009/05/crackers-at-loews.html
The Three Stooges are listed as The Stooges in Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion. It looks dead weird. I much prefer the sound of the Four Marx Brothers to just the Marx Brothers.
I'm reminded of the Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg song which Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland sing at the patriotic finale of MGM's Babes In Arms:
Judy: We've got Nelson Eddy, lots of others/
Mickey: We've got three of the Four Marx Brothers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38_HPvGXwRc
So let me see if I got this straight Matthew. According to your theory, in the Aviator scene, Chico's character is pretending to be an Italian who is pretending to be whatever the Santopoulos Brothers are (Greek?).
By that logic, Harpo should be impersonating someone who talks...
Harpo? Is he the one that plays the piano?
Not to toot my own horn, but over at my blog, Pajama Guy, I just put up a short appreciation of Lillian Roth on her 100th birthday. You can find it under "Waxing Roth."
Toot away, old fellow. I'm off to take a gander right now.
I just got back from A Night At The Opera at the Bay Theatre in Seal Beach, which I learned about at this website.
Seal Beach is a charming little village on the Pacific about 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. The Bay Theatre is an old cinema that seats, I'd guess, around 400. The showing I attended was less than a quarter-filled, which I suppose isn't bad on a cold, drizzly Sunday night the day after Christmas. (In fact, in these days of DVDs and Netflix, I'm sometimes surprised anyone goes out to see old movies.) I have seen packed showings of Marx Brothers' movies at the Aero in nearby Santa Monica, a very similarly-size theatre.
Even if it wasn't that crowded, the audience was appreciative. It was my impression, by the way, that while they laughed at Groucho, they adored Harpo
One of the great things about seeing old movies on the big screen is you catch new stuff. A few things I noticed:
In the opening dialogue, Margaret Dumont says "no" regarding Groucho's question if she knows why he sat with the other woman. I'm not sure if she's ad libbing (afraid she's expected to answer), if she's just a bit late with her line so Groucho cuts her off, or if he thought she wasn't going to say anything and just kept going.
It's Otis P. Driftwood, isn't it? Then why does his trunk say "OBD"?
There are a lot of cute women in the film. I've always had a thing for the one looking for her Aunt Minnie.
For peasants in steerage, those passengers are dressed beautifully. I bet it wouldn't be so nice if this was produced at Warner Brothers.
The brig where Chico, Harpo and Allan Jones are locked up actually does tilt--it's not the camera--as you can see when there's water on the floor. (It's also fairly watertight.) Seems like a lot of work when there are no gags built around it.
When Harpo's outside the ship, he holds onto the rope for dear life. When we cut to the interior of the aviators' cabin, the rope is gone.
When Harpo is set to give his big speech, he drinks (most of the time) out of a trick glass that has much less volume than you'd think.
There are a lot of sequences built around food. Groucho having the best meal of his life (while Gottlieb hides behind spaghetti). Chico and Harpo giving each other a salami, which Harpo eats with gusto. The famous stateroom scene. The stowaways going out to eat and being royally served. (Actually, the food is so good maybe it's not steerage--but then, we do get to see all the rich people at a fancier banquet, and they later saunter out to watch the peasants dance. I guess since it's the final night of the voyage, they figure they might as well serve all the food left.) Harpo's bits (which seem to geuninely amuse brother Groucho) at the table set for four. And when that's all done, they enjoy some nice liquor and cigars at Gottlieb's expense.
When Gottlieb is locked in a room, he breaks down the door himself, goes to a phone and calls for headquarters. When Rufus T. Firefly is locked in a room, he breaks down the door himself, then rushes to see if Margaret Dumont is okay--only after that does he phone headquarters.
Anyway, thanks for the heads up. Some of my friends wonder why I pay to see films I can watch at home, but there's nothing like seeing them on the big screen with a crowd.
The brig where Chico, Harpo and Allan Jones are locked up actually does tilt...
- I've always been intrigued by this sequence. It's so short, and virtually nothing happens in it, but there's this special, elaborate set designed. But it's familiar too... There's a bit in the film Funny Bones, where we supposedly see some old black and white footage of the central characters - stage comedians - at work, and among the well-known old material we see them doing is a bit on a matching set, where one opens the porthole and loads of water gushes in... I think this may have been a corny old stage comedy set-up, with the cabin on stage on a tilting platform - in a live capacity very funny and effective. Is it possible it formed a more substantial part of the NATO stage tour, and was cut down to the essentials in the film because it was so second-hand, and less effective on film?
Actually, the food is so good maybe it's not steerage...
- From my store of waiting-for-the-right-moment trivia: steerage food on early-twentieth century liners was plentiful and good. It was just no-frills, lacking only the expensive delicacies of first class, which were probably far less healthy anyway.
It's Otis P. Driftwood, isn't it? Then why does his trunk say "OBD"?
- It's Otis B. throughout, surely?
There are a lot of cute women in the film. I've always had a thing for the one looking for her Aunt Minnie.
- Yes, she's a peach. Quite the Shelley Duvall.
When Harpo's outside the ship, he holds onto the rope for dear life. When we cut to the interior of the aviators' cabin, the rope is gone.
When Harpo is set to give his big speech, he drinks (most of the time) out of a trick glass that has much less volume than you'd think.
- Well spotted! I've seen NATO more often at the cinema than any other Marx movie and I've never clocked either of those. Noticing the trick glass is particularly good work. When I have a minute I'll put it into the main body of the guide, along with the brig scene.
Some of my friends wonder why I pay to see films I can watch at home...
In my case it's because the seats are more comfortable. Then there's the magic of seeing fragments of temps perdu springing back to life before one's eyes, shining in all their pristine, silver glory on the big screen they were made for...
But mainly it's the seats.
Believe it or not, yesterday I saw A Night At The Opera at a movie house again--second time in one week. Before last week, I don't think I'd seen it in a cinema in over a deacde.
It was at the Aero Theatre, run by the American Cinematheque, in Santa Monica. They have a tradition of starting the New Year with a Marx Brothers double bill. This time it was A Day At The Races and A Night At The Opera--shown in that order. Maybe they figured everyone would leave if they showed them chronologically.
Even though Turner Classic Movies had aired a marathon of Marx Bothers films the day before, the theatre was packed. This being the LA area, they got someone to introduce the films--Andy Marx, Groucho's (and Gus Kahn's) grandson. He also brought his daughter. Andy talked about the making of the films (including the disastrous preview of Night At The Opera in a Long Beach theatre--I saw it in a Long Beach theatre last week...hmmm). He also told stories about hanging out with Grandpa Groucho in the 70s.
The films started and the audience was highly appreciative. They laughed uproariously, but were also respectful during musical numbers without the Marx Brothers, even if they found them sappy or borderline offensive. They certainly loved the piano and harp specialties. It made me believe that people were disappointed when Duck Soup came out in 1933 without them. The audience at the Aero also broke into applause after classic routines. The biggest hand for either movie came after the disappearing beds bit in Night At The Opera.
Anyway, I have a few minor observations on A Night At The Opera to add to what I said last week:
Chico, talking to Allan Jones in the wings early on, has a great profile.
This crowd was well-behaved, but I've heard them laugh at "Alone" before. It occurs to me, if they didn't want laughs, they should have avoided have Kitty Carlisle start the song out of nowhere with high operatic-style trilling. And later, they shouldn't have musicians continue to play as they walk down the gangplank.
I don't know why I ever thought it was Otis P. Driftwood. Clearly his middle initial is B, as it says on his bill.
Groucho travels past stateroom 59 then 61 and finally gets to his own, stateroom 58. Are the evens and odds on different sides of the ship?
I like how, after getting tough with Groucho about getting the stowaways food, Chico winks at Allan Jones.
It's impressive how quickly they clean up the plates on the dance floor once "Cosi Cosa" starts. (Though not as impressive as Harpo clearing away shards of broken mirror.)
I'm surprised that such a clear shot of a lady's underpants during the dance got by the Hays Office.
I can't believe I've seen this film so many times and never noticed, in the park bench scene, that Chico is still wearing the tie that Harpo cut earlier.
Three times in the movie Groucho loses his hat from an opera box.
Laws on illegal immigration were fairly slack in the 30s. All you needed was a guy in a respectable position (even if he has a heavy foreign accent) to vouch for you.
Just watch NATO again last night and the reread your guide (that makes three times in all since this post). Just wanted to say that what makes this blog special is not only your slavish attention to detail but all the commentators as well, looking forward to more.
LA Guy -
Sorry for the delayed reply, in which time you've probably seen Opera seven or eight more times at different cinemas throughout the country.
Nice spotting about Chico's tie: another to add to the revisions of the main piece when they invent a couple extra hours in the day. (Sometime this week, I promise.)
As for the spanking clean plates - yes, very MGM!
That high operatic trilling went over big in 1935, though, and there's surely nothing intrinsically funny about it? I smell a nasty species of inverse snobbery in the general reaction, always dubious at the best of times but most wrong-headed when applied to popular culture.
Chico has a great profile all right - he is, I suspect, a very handsome man when he takes that hat (and wig, do we think?) off. Easily the dish of the team.
They're big, utilitarian pants though, aren't they? With something of the look of athletic shorts about them. I think that's how they scraped through the Breen net.
Damian - Thanks as ever for your generous praise. As for more, I am trying to keep it going, I swear!
Hi, I just found your this site, I watched 'Horse Feathers' last night and I love your annotated guide for that film.
I've been a Marx Brothers fan for 30+ years. I was given tickets to see Frank Ferrante's Groucho performance and it prompted me to revisit their films. I'll certainly be visiting this blog in the near future!
Thanks for the nice comments, J.A. And yes, do please keep looking in!
I meant to post this link in my last comment,found it searching Google News:
http://tinyurl.com/4qz2qvd
It's a link to a 1926 caricature of Groucho from a Windsor,Ontario newspaper. I thought it was interesting that his image was already recognizable 3 years before 'The Coconuts' film was released.
I work in a library, I'm no Paul Wesolowski, but I'm always looking for old newspaper articles & photos about the Marxes that don't show up in every book. I'll pass on more links to you as I find them if you're interested.
And I'll add that I agree with you about Roth, she's my favorite romantic lead too.
Can I just say what a wonderful and brilliant site! I've been a fan of the Marx Brothers since I was able to laugh, so it's brilliant to find a site all about them. And can I just say I love this anaylsis of A Night at the Opera. Absolutely brilliant. Sorry, I'm saying brilliant an awful lot, aren't I? And I'm glad somebody else has mentioned Chico becoming more of a straight man in the MGM films. It's always something my Dad's commented on, but I've never read any reference books as to why this is, but I always thought it was a shame. Anyhow, please carry on with this site, and is there any chance you could do an analysis of Room Service? I've always had a soft spot for that one, for some bizarre reason...
Thank you! You can say brilliant as often as you like!
I'll certainly be covering the delightful and underrated Room Service as soon as I've done Day at the Races.
As for Chico, I think it's just that his is the most difficult of the Brothers' characters to write for properly, and nobody at MGM could be bothered, and he didn't care much, so long as he was paid and - the story goes, at least - as he got the same number of lines each time regardless of whether they were funny or not.
But at Paramount, at his best, he can crack me up more than Groucho.
Stick around, do - we'll get to the bottom of that honey mystery, too!
Forgot to say to JA: Yes, all rare or unusual visual material more than gratefully received. Thanks!
I agree that " You canna fool'a me, there is'a no Santa Claus" isn't the funniest line in the contract scene.
I much prefer, "Eh, what's a wrong, stranger?" "Oh, he got mad and we had an argument and pulled a knife on me, so I stabbed him."
Why don't you do a "Flywheel, shyster and Flywheel" radio show annotation guide or an annotation guide for Room Service?
I don't really know FS&F all that well, not well enough to do a guide yet, but there will be an interview with someone who does - as soon as I finish it - coming soon. Room Service guide will be fun to do, after Day at the Races, up next. Watch this space, and let me know if anything happens.
I do have to say you're wrong about Tarzan being an "obscure British novel." It was American (as was Burroughs) and popular enough that Burroughs had written seventeen books in the series by 1935, when Night At the Opera came out. Even without the second Tarzan film series (which began three years before Night at the Opera), viewers in America would've gotten the reference.
I hold up my hands with regards to Burroughs's nationalla - I suppose it was the fact that Tarz himself is a Britisher that misled me.
But I stand by the point I was making, which is that Tarzan was a fairly well-known pop culture character, and Chandu the Magician was a fairly well-known pop culture character, and that each would have been as recognisable as the other at the time... but it's just accident of fate that we still today don't need a Tarzan reference explained to us, whereas a Chandu reference is more obscure (in Britain, at least).
By relatively obscure I meant not the pop cultural icon he is today.
The specific reference to the film series was incidental, to note that this was MGM referencing MGM, like the talk of Gary Cooper and Cehvalier when they are at Paramount, and Ginger Rogervich when they are at RKO.
How come I only found this blog two days ago? Probably because I've never been an alligator, and I won't let it happen again.
About NatO and the Sanity Clause line: it's like that line in Animal Crackers where Groucho says he shot an elephant in his pajamas. It's not the funniest line in the lecture by any means, but people think it's hilarious.
Also the most risque/borderline offensive line in the lecture: "We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed. But we're going back again in a couple of weeks!"... it still amazes me they let that in. In the later films at MGM, they probably wouldn't have.
Never seen any Marx Bros. film on the big screen, sad to say. But I'll be watching NatO again right now on DVD!
And please continue doing annotated guides for the Brothers' later films as well, it seems it's been rather quiet around here lately. (I've already read all the annotated guides here.)
Good to see you and thanks for your comments!
I tend to rotate my blogs - I have too many - and some fall silent for a while, but this one is due its turn again now, so keep looking in over the next few weeks for several new bits, including the long-delayed Day at the Races annotated guide.
Cheers!
Matthew
I'm very much looking forward to your annotation of A Day At The Races. My theory as to why it's taking so long is you realize this is the first step in a chilling descent, so it's a daunting task. There are still some laughs coming up, but the best is behind us.
By the way (not that it's my business to tell you how to run a blog that you offer gratis), perhaps you could look at the comments (and maybe even the films again) and update the annotations you've already done. Items like what Groucho is singing when he interrupts himself as Captain Spaulding (which I've always assumed is an unintelligible in-joke). Or even, if I do say myself, some of the points I've raised about A Night At The Opera in the comments above.
One more thing: it may interest you to know in a recent interview on Turner Classic Movies, Peter O'Toole stated the first feature film to enrapture him was A Day At The Races. Of course, as he noted, his father was a racetrack bookie, so it only makes sense.
Absolutely - it was always my intention to update in the light of new information... only laziness gets in the way.
But I'm making this site my primary focus for the next few weeks, so I'll try my darndest...
It's not so much that the films aren't so good from here on as that there's less to unravel in them... the early thirties were a great time for densely packed obscure allusions and wordplay - the forties were a bit more straightforward.
But it's coming, I promise! Thanks so much for the continued interest...
Just found this site. Cool.
Been watching the Marx Bros for the last several nights. Tonite's movie was NatO. What a coincidence that I discovered that it was released this day (Nov 15) in 1935.
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