When putting together my research for this post, I initially tried to sneak it into my "Great Directors" series, as "My Favorite Sam Wood Movie" - Sam Wood being the director of "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races." I was also eyeing "Duck Soup" for director Leo McCarey. Finally, I decided that the directors were clearly not the main creative force behind any of these projects. In fact, no director ever made more than two Marx Brothers movies. So, if I was going to write about a Marx Brothers movie, it was going to have to be as a Marx Brothers movie, and nothing else.
Alas, this decision created a dilemma. How the heck was I going to pick a favorite Marx Brothers movie?! The best gags are in "Duck Soup." The best wordplay is in "A Night at the Opera." The best set piece is the football game in "Horse Feathers." The best song is "Lydia the Tattooed Lady," sung by Groucho in "At the Circus." To be honest, I often don't remember which scene or gag or performance is in which movie. Like Chaplin and Keaton, I tend to remember the bits more than I remember the full feature presentations. I wish I could cobble together the best pieces from everything into one movie, but I guess we'll just have to make do. The Marx Brothers feature I've watched the most often is "At the Circus," which was a childhood favorite, so that wins by default.
"At the Circus" is one of the Marx Brothers' MGM pictures, which all had roughly the same story. There would be sketches and zaniness, but also folks in trouble who needed some help, a romance, musical interludes, and a happy ending. Zeppo had quit acting after "Duck Soup" to become an agent, so our stars are Groucho, Chico, and Harpo - or J. Cheever Loophole, Antonio Pirelli, and Punchy in this movie. Whatever they're called, we know them already - the fast-talking lawyer, the streetwise con-artist, and the nonverbal goof. Their mission is to save a failing circus by putting on a show for a bunch of high society snoots, led by the Brothers' most dependable straight man, Margaret Dumont as Mrs. Dukesbury.
Of course, we're not here for the plot. Behind the scenes, Buster Keaton reportedly worked as a gag man on the circus sequences, resulting in some of the Marx Brothers' most elaborate, large scale comedy setpieces. Margaret Dumont gets shot out of a cannon, Groucho walks on the ceiling, Harpo gets to hang out with a seal and ride an ostrich (borrowing an idea from a recent Mickey Mouse cartoon), and a whole orchestra floats out to sea. There's a gorilla, a trapeze act, a dwarf, and a villainous strongman. Then there are the musical numbers - Harpo on the harp, Chico on the piano, the lovers with their duet, and Groucho singing about the immortal Lydia in the train car - with a little help from the songwriting team from "The Wizard of Oz." It just doesn't feel like a Marx Brothers movie if they don't stop every once in a while for a song or a harp solo.
The trouble with "At the Circus" if you're a Marx Brothers fan is that it doesn't have the best versions of what the Marx Brothers were best known for - Groucho piling on pun after pun in a stream of fast-talk, Chico outwitting everyone in sight with his faux-Italian flim-flammery, Harpo's silent clown kleptomania, and all three of them teaming up or targeting each other to escalate the comedy chaos. "At the Circus" was their ninth film, released in 1939, and a lot of the anarchic energy had ebbed, while all of their personas were getting overly familiar and Flanderized. The circus performers and animals help distract a bit, but the Marx brothers are supposed to be the ones doing the distracting.
I suspect that either "A Night at the Opera" or "Duck Soup" is really the best Marx Brothers movie, and "Animal Crackers" is where any curious comedy fans should start with their work, since it established so much of their formula. However, after watching all their features again, all of them are worth seeing. Yes, even the weird, off-brand ones like "Room Service" with Lucille Ball. Seeing these guys onscreen in any capacity is always a marvel, and I don't think you can really understand American comedy without getting to know them.
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