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The Marx Brothers
In fact, the closest anyone came to reaching the high degree of global adulation that Groucho did was Moe Howard, who lived long enough to see his old Three Stooges shorts reach a whole new audience on TV. That, in turn, led to Moe doing numerous talk shows and appearing in a series of slapstick movies with Larry Fine and Curly Joe DeRita such as The Three Stooges In Outer Space and It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World. The Three Stooges also made numerous public appearances across North America, reviving their routines for a new generation of appreciative fans. I was lucky enough to see them perform live in the fall of 1963 when they played the Canadian National Exhibition, and was especially fortunate afterwards to shake Moe’s hand in thanks for all his great work. But it was Groucho who reigned supreme as the king of anti-authority, anti-establishment, anarchistic comedy. The only problem was, unless you happened to catch one of them during a revival screening on a campus, you were hard pressed to actually see any of the movies he made with his brothers. Back then their only media outlet was television—and even when one of them did show up on late night TV, more often then not, the print quality was terrible. Which brings me to how fortunate we are today to have this new box set from Universal that contains what, unarguably, are the five Paramount motion pictures which best exemplify the four Marx Brothers’ purest form of unfettered genius: The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), and Duck Soup (1933). Of course there will always be those who will disagree and point instead to their later MGM films, so perhaps a small clarifying comparison is in order. For many, the highly polished and viewer-friendly A Night At The Opera from 1935—with its two major musical set pieces and lengthy piano and harp solos by Chico and Harpo, respectively—is considered by many to be the best Marx Brothers movie. However, this decision is aesthetically akin to people selecting Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as the best Beatles album. If A Night At The Opera is the Marx Brothers’ Sgt. Pepper, then it’s no exaggeration to follow this premise to its logical conclusion and similarly state that the preceding Duck Soup is their Revolver. And once you realize that the straightforward Revolver is to the elaborate Sgt. Pepper what Duck Soup is to A Night At The Opera, you’ll have a better understanding as to why Universal’s collection of these edgier Paramount films has the distinct advantage over the tamer films the brothers made during their tenure at MGM and RKO. Technically, the digital transfer of all five films is superlative, with there being only a few minor quibbles worth mentioning. As is the case with many an unrestored film from this time period, the print of The Cocoanuts, which was filmed just at the dawn of the sound era, is a bit rough and tumble. That said, the print that Universal has mastered for this box set is realistically about as clean as can be expected, and a quantum improvement from the virtually unwatchable scratched and spliced versions which used to periodically show up on television decades ago. And to be fair, short of finding an original negative or first generation release print, nothing less than a full blown digital restoration will ever return a film like The Cocoanuts back to its original luster. Unfortunately, the print which was used to master 1930’s Animal Crackers is still missing a line of dialogue which was cut out by a censor in 1936 prior to the film’s re-release—footage which presumably is now lost forever. The excised segment comes during the “Hooray For Captain Spaulding” musical number. Back in 1930, theatergoers heard the following lyrical exchange: MARGARET DUMONT: You are the only white man to cover every acre. GROUCHO: I think I’ll try and make her… CHORUS: Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! To this day, Groucho’s line remains missing. And although the cut is still visually jarring, at least the original overlapping sound edit was done creatively enough to almost mask the omission. However, just to satisfy myself that there wasn’t a more compete version available somewhere, I compared the new DVD transfer of “Hooray For Captain Spaulding” with the celluloid version that appears on the Gary Owens narrated soundtrack album The Marx Brothers: The Original Voice Tracks From Their Greatest Movies, which Decca released in 1968 to cash in on the nostalgia boom. Alas, the exact same cut is there, too. Only available separately and sporadically over the years, never before have these five seminal films been collected together into one definitive box set until now. Whether they’re running Huxley College into the ground in Horse Feathers (“Whatever it is, I’m against it”) or leading Freedonia into war in Duck Soup (“All God’s chillun got guns”) the four brothers are at the height of their impertinent prowess in these films—not to mention their youthful impish countenance. So be you novice or native, you owe it to yourself to go out and buy Universal’s new Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection and spend some quality time with the greatest rock ‘n’ roll comedy team in the history of the cinema. And if you already own a copy, you’ll no doubt recall the classic scene in Animal Crackers where Groucho announces: “The door swung open and a Fig Newton entered.” At which point Harpo saunters up to Margaret Dumont and pulls the old hand switch gag on her. Well, believe it or not, if you go here you can actually download that historical color rehearsal footage I was telling you about earlier, free of charge. And while you’re waiting for the download to complete, why not take a minute and ponder what the odds are of this footage (a) surviving for the past 75 years; (b) finally being found; and (c) actually containing all four brothers in the same frame, plus Margaret Dumont, doing a complete routine in one continuous take. Then, if you look very carefully, right after Groucho slips on his glasses and turns around, you can actually see him saying the above-noted introduction. But the most poignant moment of all, however, comes right at the very last frame of the color footage when—as if guided by the hand of fate—Groucho, Chico, and Harpo all turn in unison and look directly at us for a split second that lasts for all eternity.
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—Jeffrey Morgan February 2005 |
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Photo of Groucho with Alice Cooper by Neal Preston
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