Chariot or Cheerio? - The Room Service Elegy Enigma

I first saw Room Service on television when I must have been ... oh I don't know ... maybe twelve or thirteen years of age.
I saw it a few more times on TV after that, and then bought the video tape when it came out on the Channel 5 label.

One of the things I enjoyed in the film was the charming song the Brothers sing as a phony requiem for the supposedly dead playwright, and reprise at the very end, which goes:

One last sweet cheerio,

To my friend they're calling back home...

At this point you either know exactly where this post is going, or else you're just reading along without any particular feeling of dislocation and don't know why I've stopped you to make this observation, or else you're going: "Woaaah, hold on a minute there, what are you talking about, boy? Cheerio? Friends being called back home? Rein yourself in, you crazy!" (Or words to that effect.)

And all three of you would be right.
Because many years later, I decided to purchase the film on DVD and, being a born cheapskate, ordered one of those E-Bay knock-off editions from China (you know, the sort that come flat packed in a plastic bag. You do know, don't you? So what the hell gives you the right to go around calling me a cheapskate? Honestly! Some people.) 

To my amazement, I found that this time they weren't singing an original song called 'One Last Sweet Cheerio' at all. They were singing the well-known song 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'.
I briefly entertained the delusion that I had stumbled upon an ultra-rare alternate edit of the movie.
That bubble burst when I bought the official Universal box set, and there, again, bold as brass, is 'Swing Low'. (The two editions also differ in that only the 'Swing Low' print has an end cast list, set to music not used anywhere else in the film.)

So I decided to ask around among other Marx enthusiasts.
What I found was that very few were aware of there being two versions at all, and that the majority were familiar not with the 'Sweet Cheerio' version I took to be standard, but with 'Swing Low'. It was 'Sweet Cheerio', the song I had known all my short and blameless life, that was the anomaly.

Unfortunately, neither version of this sequence is on YouTube, so I can't put them up for you to compare and contrast. (The 'Sweet Cheerio' version, however, is the one featured on this soundtrack CD.)

The first interesting thing you'd note if you were able to compare is that they are not two different sequences but merely two different soundtracks. The 'Sweet Cheerio' version uses the same footage of the Brothers singing 'Sweet Chariot', with the new song overdubbed. 

That's why it's written the way it is. It's funny, because I've always been familiar with the song 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot', but in all my years of unquestioned acquaintance with 'One Last Sweet Cheerio' it never occurred to me what an obvious and deliberate pastiche it is of the other number. It has to be this way because it has to match the original sequence and, as much as possible, the lip movements.

So full marks, then, to whoever wrote it, for managing to come up with a lyric that sensibly (indeed entirely effectively) conveys the genuine purpose and meaning of such a song, while making it as different from 'Sweet Chariot' as possible, yet at the same time retaining many of the original song's vowel formations. Looked at with a clinical eye, it is obvious that 'One Last Sweet Cheerio' is an overdub, but by no means necessarily that it is dubbing an entirely different song.

Here are the two lyrics side by side, with a little guesswork from me for one of the more garbled 'Sweet Cheerio' lines (if you have this version and can make a better guess, please let me know):

Swing low, sweet chariot, / One last sweet cheerio, 
Comin' for to carry me home. / To my friend they're calling back home

If you get there before I do, / Now and then (?), be fond (?), adieu (?)
Comin' for to carry me home. / To my friend they're calling back home.
Tell all my friends I'm comin' too / To all my vows I'm keeping true
Comin' for to carry me home. / To my friend they're calling back home.

The song features twice in the film, and in both cases is meticulously re-recorded, unquestionably utilising the Marxes' own services, and a full orchestra for the finale.

So the question becomes: why was the second version so carefully written, recorded and felt to be needed?

I've put this question to all the Marx fans and scholars I know, and between us we've come up with three possible explanations, none of which strikes me as entirely likely, but one of which, in the absence of anything better, seems the most likely, and for which I will therefore plump.

First, there is the explanation I automatically assumed to be the only and obvious one when I first saw the 'Swing Low' print, and assumed that 'Sweet Cheerio' was the official version and that the Chinese DVD pirate industry had somehow got their hands on an unreleased pre-dub. Namely that RKO was obliged to change it in post-production after discovering they were unable to use 'Swing Low', presumably because of a copyright issue.
There is one strong piece of evidence in support of this notion, and it remains unexplained if we accept any other explanation. That is that in addition to changing the lyrics, the redubbed version also very subtly changes the melody, so that while it still fits exactly into the running time of the sequence and the length and scansion of each line, the actual melodic structure of the song is different.
This would be as essential as changing the words if there was a copyright violation to be circumnavigated, but a completely unnecessary job of considerable work if the change was instituted for any other reason.

But the stubborn fact remains that while this is ostensibly the most satisfying explanation, it is also the one we can most certainly discount, for two insurmountable reasons.
First, because I soon discovered that I was wrong about the two dubs: the 'Swing Low' version was not rare and unreleased, but the most widely available version, and the one with which the majority of the people I polled, especially in America, were most (and in most cases solely) familiar.
And second, because there just couldn't have been a copyright problem with 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot': it's a traditional number, dating from sometime before 1862.

Another possibility suggested to me was that it may have been altered to appease racialist sentiments in the American South, given that the song is inextricably associated with its use as a 'negro spiritual'.
It is certainly true that films were sometimes altered on these grounds for certain US markets, but it seems a stretch indeed that this song would have caused problems, and in any case I have not yet received any indication from any of the people I have polled in America of any familiarity with the 'Sweet Cheerio' version at all.
On the contrary, many have in fact pointed out that the very word 'Cheerio' is virtually unknown in American speech other than as the name of a breakfast cereal, and in so far as it is known at all is thought of as cutely and quintessentially British. (In any event, even the cereal post-dates the film: it first appeared as 'Cheeri-Oats' in 1941 and was changed to its more familiar name in 1945 after a punch-up with the Quakers.)

The obvious next step, therefore, is option three: that the 'Sweet Cheerio' version was prepared for the British release.
This has the strongest arguments for being accepted as the correct explanation: the fact that none of the Americans I polled knew the 'Sweet Cheerio' version, coupled with the use of a word, 'cheerio', that would be baffling anywhere in the US. (It is also supportive that in all the books I have read on the films, the only one that mentions the 'Cheerio' version is Allen Eyles's: "When the mock suicide of the author is staged, the executive regrets his attempts to halt the play as he looks at the body and Groucho and Chico sing 'One last sweet cheerio' while Harpo brings in a wreath to lay on the corpse.")

The only thing that niggles with me slightly about this is that I just don't understand why they'd have bothered. I'm even mildly surprised by the notion that British audiences would have been unfamiliar with 'Sweet Chariot' in the first place, but even if they were, so what? There must have been a hundred things a week in American talking films that baffled the British. (I have a 1931 British film almanac that has a lovely glossary of American phrases helpfully translated.) Would they necessarily know why Chico says "E pluribus unum" directly before the song? It's certainly not going to affect their enjoyment of the film much, either way.
So would it really be deemed problem enough to justify rehiring The Marx Brothers, presumably at the same record salary rates Zeppo wangled on their behalf, and an orchestra, and paying a lyricist/composer to come up with a satisfactory pastiche?
And why alter the melody as well as the words?

These are elements that remain mysterious, but still, unless anyone has any other ideas, it looks as though, in spite of all my reservations, 'One Last Sweet Cheerio' was written and recorded and overlaid on the soundtrack purely to keep the British happy.

The final irony is that I prefer the 'Sweet Cheerio' version still. I like the words, the ones I can make out at least, and the altered melody is more haunting to me.
So thanks for being so considerate, RKO-UK!

(Thanks to everyone who took part in the poll and especially to W. Gary Wetstein, Ed Watz, Joe Adamson and Mikael Uhlin.)