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Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx made 13 movies together from 1929 to 1946, the first five with brother Zeppo. This collection, “The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection,” contains the first five: “The Cocoanuts” (1929), “Animal Crackers” (1930), “Monkey Business” (1931), “Horse Feathers” (1932), and “Duck Soup” (1933). The set is both historical and hysterical.
“THE COCOANUTS”: Their film debut is lifted from their stage hit, with dialogue from George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. Talkies were only a few years along and both the sound and the staging have a making-it-up-as-we-go-along quality, while the dancing often looks more like clunky calisthenics than choreography. The songs are among the worst that Irving Berlin ever wrote (“When My Dreams Come True,” “Florida By the Sea,” and, to the tune of Bizet’s “Toreador Song,” “The Tale of a Shirt”). But the musical interludes are but time fillers anyway, though it’s always pleasant when Harpo’s at a harp and Chico at a keyboard, and each has his turn. One watches a Marx Brothers movie for the rapid-fire puns and sight gags and there are plenty to go around. In one famous scene, Chico and Groucho exchange a series of puns which leads to their “viaduct” routine (“Why a duck?”).
The scene is the Hotel de Cocoanut in Cocoanut Beach, Florida, and hotel proprietor Mr. Hammer (Groucho) is having a hard time paying his staff (“What makes wage slaves? Wages!”). He is hoping to auction off some land as a way of keeping afloat (“Cocoanut Manor: Glorifying the American sewer and the Florida sucker”), while simultaneously attempting to romance wealthy and stuck-up Mrs. Potter (Margaret Dumont): he says her eyes “shine like the pants of a blue serge suit.”
Chico and Harpo check in with empty suitcases, looking to fleece the place before leaving; they are dogged by a stolid police detective named Hennessey (Basil Ruysdael). Harpo’s pixie-faced antics include chasing girls and eating everything in sight, from flowers to a telephone, washed down with a bowl of ink. Toward the end, audiences get a look in Harpo’s seemingly bottomless coat pockets. Zeppo, on the other hand, has virtually nothing to do as a hotel clerk but stand around.
Also on hand for some larceny are Harvey Yates (Cyril Ring), and cohort Penelope (Kay Francis in her film debut). They are plotting to steal Mrs. Potter’s diamond necklace, worth a cool hundred grand, then blame it on Chico and Harpo. Yates is also looking to separate Potter’s daughter Polly (Mary Eaton) from hotel clerk and aspiring architect Bob Adams (Oscar Shaw) so he can secure some of Potter’s millions. The necklace is recovered, Hennessy finally arrests the right people, and Bob and Polly win her mother’s approval. (Eaton, incidentally, succumbed to alcoholism and liver failure in 1948 at the age of 47.)
“ANIMAL CRACKERS” has a much more professional look and feel to it than “The Cocoanuts” (success bringing a bigger budget), with more Kaufman/Ryskind dialogue, songs by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby (“Why Am I So Romantic?” and “Hooray for Captain Spaulding”), and Margaret Dumont as yet another rich society widow, Mrs. Rittenhouse. Zeppo, playing Groucho’s field secretary, has more to do in this film and even sings a little.
Dumont is kicking off Long Island’s social season with a lavish party where a fish peddler turned art collector named Roscoe Chandler (Louis Sorin) will be displaying a painting, “After the Hunt,” valued at a hundred thousand bucks. Complications arise when the painting gets switched with a copy, not once but twice. A rival society matron, Mrs. Whitehead (Margaret Irving) has it switched as a prank, while Dumont’s daughter Arabella (Lillian Roth) has it switched with her boyfriend’s copy in order to prove he’s a great painter.
Guest of honor at Dumont’s party is the “noted explorer” Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho), who tells the guests, “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know.” Hired as musicians for the festivities are Chico and Harpo who each get a turn at a piano and harp. Harpo again chases young women, and we again get a look at his boundless pockets as he produces everything from a fish, a flask, a flute, a poker flush, and a flashlight, plus a great deal of purloined silverware at the end.
There are a number of contemporary references that might be lost on modern audiences. Groucho performs a spoof of a typically heavy Eugene O’Neill drama, for instance. The supposed theft of the painting prompts a reference to Raffles: A. J. Raffles was a fictional gentleman burglar created by E. W. Hornung between 1898 and 1909. Ronald Colman played him in a 1930 film titled “Raffles.” David Niven would later star in a same-named film in 1939. There is also a passing reference to a 1927 Broadway play, “The Trial of Mary Dugan,” which became a Norma Shearer movie from MGM in 1929. Then there’s this exchange between Groucho and Chico: G: “Didn’t you ever see a habeas corpus?” C: “No, but I see Habeas Irish Rose.” A reference to a long-running play about religious differences in romance, “Abie’s Irish Rose.”
A note about ingénue Lillian Roth: She was married six times and descended for a time into alcoholism. She might have ended up as Mary Eaton did but had the pluck to endure and survive, even publishing an acclaimed autobiography in 1955 titled “I’ll Cry Tomorrow.” It was filmed the next year with Susan Hayward as Roth, earning Hayward an Oscar nomination. A follow-up book was titled “Beyond My Worth.”
The original 1928 stage play of “Animal Crackers” (Margaret Dumont was in that as well) was much more of a musical than the film version, producing such enduring hits as “Three Little Words” (also the title of a very inaccurate film bio of Kalmar and Ruby starring Fred Astaire and Red Skelton), “Nevertheless (I’m In Love With You),” and “I Wanna Be Loved By You.” Also left out of the film were “The Social Ladder,” “The Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me,” “Watching the Clouds Roll By,” and “The Long Island Low-Down.” A dropped song from the stage play, “Everyone Says I Love You,” will show up in another film in this set.
“MONKEY BUSINESS” begins with a search for stowaways aboard an ocean liner. Down in a cargo hold are four barrels labeled “Kippered Herring” which really contain the Mark Brothers (they can be heard harmonizing on “Sweet Adeline”). For the next 45 minutes or so they are chased all around the ship, in and out of staterooms and the captain’s quarters and bridge, together and separately (Harpo becomes part of a Punch and Judy show for kids). Which is most of the plot. The ship may not be the Titanic, but the sets are big and lavish. Among the passengers they encounter in this prolonged chase are a couple of gangsters, Alky Briggs (Harry Woods) and Joe Helton (Rockcliffe Fellowes). Helton is looking to go legit while Briggs wants to take over his gang. Briggs hires Groucho and Zeppo to back him up, while Helton hires Chico and Harpo as his bodyguards. What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile, Zeppo, playing the romantic lead this time, is wooing Helton’s daughter Mary (Ruth Hall), while Groucho gets flirty with Briggs’s wife Lucille (Thelma Todd, aka The Ice Cream Blonde). Lucille thinks Groucho is a lawyer, though he’s awfully shy for one, to which he says, “You bet I’m shy. I’m a shyster lawyer.” Which isn’t the film’s worst pun. Toward the end, Groucho sets out picnic supplies but says, “The picnic is off. We haven’t got any red ants,” to which Chico says, “I know an Indian who’s got a couple of Red aunts.” Then there’s Chico saying his grandfather’s beard will be coming to America via “hair-mail.”
To get off the ship in New York everyone must present a passport. Zeppo manages to pick the pocket of Maurice Chevalier (who does not appear in the film) and the brothers try to use the passport to get through Customs, each pretending to be Chevalier by singing a few lines from his hit song “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me” (Harpo lip-syncs to a phonograph strapped to his back). The song, composed by Irving Kahal, was sung by Chevalier in the 1930 Paramount film “The Big Pond,” so this whole sequence could be seen as product placement to sell a few more records. The only other musical interludes are, naturally, Chico at the piano and Harpo at the harp (when he isn’t busy chasing women).
Once off the ship, the rest of the plot is even simpler: Mary is kidnapped from her father’s lavish party to force his cooperation and has to be rescued by the Marxes: Zeppo has a knock-down, drag-out fight with Alky Briggs in an old barn.
(There is another film comedy titled “Monkey Business,” made in 1952 with Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, and, in a small part, Marilyn Monroe. Also worth having, but not as goofy.)
“HORSE FEATHERS” has Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho) being named the new president of Huxley College, which has had a new president every year since 1888, also the year the school last won a football game. To possible suggestions from the trustees on how to improve things, Groucho sings, “Whatever it is, I’m against it!” Groucho knows why the school is a failure: “We’re neglecting football for education.”
Zeppo plays Groucho’s college student son Frank. Groucho: “I married your mother because I wanted children. Imagine my disappointment when you arrived.” Frank is said to be enamored of “the college widow,” Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd), who is after the football team’s signals for her gambler boyfriend Jennings (David Landau). There’s a big game coming up against Darwin College and Jennings not only wants those signals but has placed two muscular ringers on the Darwin team to ensure victory.
(“College widow” is an obsolete term for a woman, usually older, who preys on male college seniors who are replaced as they graduate, thus making her an annual “widow.” “Horse Feathers” is a take-off of a play, and a 1927 Dolores Costello film, titled “The College Widow.” There’s a song from the period titled “Mimi the College Widow” which says such a vamp teaches anatomy to the boys.)
For viewers who slept through biology class, or who come from a state where evolution is frowned upon even to this day, the rival school names are a joke from screenwriters S. J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone. Darwin College is named for Charles Darwin, while Huxley College is named for Thomas Huxley, once known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his tenacious support of the Theory of Evolution. This was worth a chuckle or two for 1932 audiences, as the infamous “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee had occurred a mere seven years earlier and the subject was still very much in the news. (For an excellent look at that trial, see Stanley Kramer’s “Inherit the Wind” with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March.) A rather curious scene takes place in Groucho’s office where Harpo is seen fiendishly shoveling books into a roaring fireplace. Political commentary?
Zeppo sends Groucho to a speakeasy to recruit two football players, but Groucho mistakenly recruits iceman Baravelli (Chico) and a dog catcher named Pinky (Harpo). This sequence is probably the most famous from the film as Groucho has to guess at the password to get in, said password being “swordfish.” The use of “swordfish” as a password has since been parodied frequently over the years. Later, Harpo, Chico and Groucho make a shambles of a biology class with atrocious puns and an epic spitball fight. (Pop culture reference: Groucho introduces Chico and Harpo to a professor as a pair of dunces for his class: “Come in dunces. Here they are. Ten cents a dunce.” The reference is to a plaintive Rodgers and Hart song “Ten Cents a Dance,” from the musical “Simple Simon.” The song was a 1930 hit for Ruth Etting.)
Kalmar and Ruby’s dropped song from the original “Animal Crackers,” “Everyone Says I Love You,” gets resurrected in “Horse Feathers,” not once, not twice, but three times. Zeppo sings it to Todd while she lounges in bed; Groucho sings it to Todd in a canoe (before she falls overboard); and Chico sings it to her at a piano. At which point Groucho steps forward to tell the audience, “I’ve got to stay here but there’s no reason why you folks shouldn’t go out into the lobby till this thing blows over.” (The song reappeared in, and as the title of, a 1996 Woody Allen film as well.) Harpo gets his musical turn at a harp, serenading Todd in a garden.
Chico and Harpo are sent to kidnap the Darwin ringers but are no match for the bruisers (though they look positively puny compared to today’s beefed-up NFL linemen). Until now, Harpo has worn a hat with the words “Dog Catcher” on it, but during this sequence the title on the hat reads “Kidnapper.” They manage to escape and Harpo uses a horse-drawn trash collector’s cart as a chariot to get to the big game, ala Ben-Hur. (How Chico gets there ahead of him is a mystery.) The Marxes, of course, create havoc on the field and win the game for Huxley. The last scene has Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Todd in fancy wedding clothes as a minister performs the ceremony. We’re unclear who is marrying Todd until the minister asks if the groom takes the bride and all three Marxes say, “We do!” and wrestle Todd to the floor as the scene fades out. (Does that mean the censors were OK with polyandry?)
Thelma Todd, who made over a hundred films and shorts in her career, died three years later at the age of 29 from carbon monoxide poisoning in her 1932 Lincoln Phaeton. While it was eventually ruled a suicide, there were the inevitable conflicting theories, ranging from accident to homicide to studio cover-up. It will always be an enduring Hollywood mystery.
Last, but hardly least in this five-film set, is “DUCK SOUP.” When released, it was the Marxes least successful film. George S. Kaufman once said that satire “is what closes on Saturday night,” and “Duck Soup” is a political satire written by songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby (additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin). While the general public may not have been in the mood for such fare, it did get a reaction in Italy where Mussolini banned it (dictators traditionally have thin skin, no sense of humor, and are very suspicious of satire).
The setting is the cash-strapped country of Freedonia where the government wants to borrow twenty million dollars from rich widow Gloria Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), but she’ll only give the loan if she can select the country’s new leader, namely, Rufus J. Firefly (Groucho). At his reception, we meet Ambassador Trentino of Sylvania (Louis Calhern) and an exotic dancer named Vera Marcal (Raquel Torres) who are scheming to take over Freedonia. Trentino had considered starting a revolution but now thinks it will be easier to just marry Teasdale and take over from within. Marcal’s job will be to keep Firefly away from Teasdale and her money.
Zeppo plays Bob Roland, Firefly’s secretary, and has little to do beyond a bit of singing in the light opera reception scene. Dumont tells Groucho, “This is a gala day for you,” to which Groucho retorts, “Well, a gal a day is enough for me. I don’t think I could handle any more.” He then sings about the new laws he plans for Freedonia: “No one’s allowed to smoke or tell a dirty joke and whistling is forbidden....if any form of pleasure is exhibited, report to me and it will be prohibited.” He also makes it clear he’s open to graft so long as he gets a piece of it.
Trentino hires two spies to get dirt on Firefly, Chicolini (Chico) and Pinky (Harpo). What’s in Harpo’s pockets this time around? How about a blowtorch! He also sports some surprising tattoos and has a tendency to clip random things with scissors. Chico does not play a piano in this film, and Harpo barely plucks at a few piano strings like a harp. The two have a couple of funny encounters with a street lemonade vendor played by the master of the slow burn, Edgar Kennedy; Harpo even emerges later in Kennedy’s bathtub. (A veteran comedy actor from the silent era, Kennedy appeared in hundreds of shorts and films, most notably with Laurel and Hardy. He died in 1948 at the age of 57 from throat cancer.)
The most famous scene begins with Chico and Harpo disguising themselves as Groucho (in nightshirt and nightcap) to try and get his war plans from Dumont. Harpo runs into and breaks a very large wall mirror and then has to copy every move Groucho makes in order to make him believe he’s seeing himself in the mirror. (The mirror scene was re-created by Harpo and Lucille Ball in a memorable 1955 episode of “I Love Lucy.”)
Firefly deliberately insults Trentino and this leads to both countries mobilizing for war. The movie culminates in a chaotic battle with artillery shells flying through the scene and Trentino being pelted with fruit.
The script for “Duck Soup” seems unfocused at times and even feels incomplete in places (the Vera Marcal plot line goes nowhere, for example), as if cuts were made for length or budget; political satires ought to be sharper, but the Marxes’ brand of social anarchy often veers off in all directions. Worse, thirty-seven-and-a-half minutes into the movie Groucho rattles off some nonsense lines that culminate in a condescending racial term: “Well, maybe I am a little headstrong but I come by it honestly. My father was a little headstrong. My mother was a little armstrong. The headstrongs married the armstrongs and that’s why darkies were born.” The non-sequitur was likely a riff on a curious and inexplicably popular song of the day, “That’s Why Darkies Were Born” (the reason in the lyric being to slave and sing!). The odious tune was composed by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson for the 1931 Broadway revue “George White’s Scandals.” Today, the term grates offensively on the ears: In 2019 the unearthing of a Kate Smith recording of the song—there’s even a film clip of her singing it—led to her rendering of the national anthem being banned from Yankee Stadium, as if one unfortunate song choice has forever branded her a racist.)
Cultural insensitivity aside, “Duck Soup” has withstood the test of time. In 1998 the American Film Institute rated it #85 on its list of the 100 best American films of all time. It moved up to #60 on the Institute’s 2007 list. On its 2016 list of the 100 best comedies, “Duck Soup” was ranked #5, behind “Some Like It Hot,” “Tootsie,” “Dr. Strangelove,” and “Annie Hall.” It was directed by Leo McCarey, who would go on to direct “Going My Way,” “The Awful Truth,” and “An Affair to Remember.”
The DVD set includes some neat bonuses: a 1961 Today Show interview with Harpo plugging his autobiography, “Harpo Speaks,” though he doesn’t, and a 1963 interview with Groucho. There’s also a 1985 Gene Shalit interview with Harpo’s son William who brings along some home movies.
Groucho would be presented with an honorary Oscar statuette in 1973 for the brothers’ past film achievements and contributions to movie comedy. These five films attest to that honor being long overdue.
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From the manufacturer
The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection (The Cocoanuts / Animal Crackers / Monkey Business / Horse Feathers / Duck Soup)
Celebrate the 75th anniversary of the greatest comedy act in history with The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection. This set features the legendary four Marx Brothers in five of their most acclaimed and loved films - Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, Animal Crackers and The Cocoanuts - the five movies made with all four brothers together: Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo!
Reviews with images
Finally, Real Restored Edition, 10 STARS
THE NEW RESTORED BLU-RAYS ARE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PRODUCT, FEATURING NEW TRANSFERS, ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE AND MORE BONUS FEATURES. IT IS A MISTAKE THAT UNIVERSAL HOME VIDEO IS GIVING IT THE SAME NAME ("Silver Screen Collection") AND ARTWORK. The latest incarnation of Marx mayhem is Universal's Blu-ray set of their five Paramount releases: THE COCOANUTS (1929), ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930), MONKEY BUSINESS (1931), HORSE FEATHERS (1932) and DUCK SOUP (1933). Made during Hollywood's unbridled pre-Code era, this quintet of comedic masterworks is representative of the Marx Brothers at their most surreal and anarchistic. These essential ingredients made their brand of humor truly unique, and became 'properly' compromised under the stricter regulations of the Production Code in 1934. Even the Marx's first film for MGM, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935), which many consider to be their best, isn't nearly as free and insane as the Paramounts. A need was felt at the time for the comedy to be grounded by strong storylines, romantic subplots and glossy, musical production numbers. The void caused by the exit of Zeppo as straight man was filled by various capable leading men, but it just wasn't the same as it was when there were the four brothers running amok and wreaking hilarious havoc. This collection was sourced from the best available 35mm elements and remastered in 4K HD resolution for the highest quality presentation.
Top reviews from other countries
Solinas Sergio Giuseppe
Il box non è nuovo ma usato mancante del libretto.
Reviewed in Italy on June 26, 2023mark brisenden
The Marx Brothers Paramount blu-ray set .
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 14, 2018Ruperto
Interesante, pero no es oro todo lo que reluce
Reviewed in Spain on June 20, 2017Simon Altman
Region Free, plays on Australian Blu Ray Player.
Reviewed in Australia on July 15, 2020
Simon Altman
Reviewed in Australia on July 15, 2020
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