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F.X. FEENEY: It's been said
that timing is everything
with the Marx Brothers.

They're so lucky
in the way they unfolded.

I think that you look
at any great talent,

there's always a sense
of great timing involved.

I think, you look
at Charlie Chaplin,

if you look at any of the people

who've succeeded in a great way,

they actually
happened to come along
at exactly the right moment.

Now, their talents
were there to rise
to the occasion.

LEONARD MALTIN:
I think it's fair to say

the Marx Brothers were unique.

Unique means one of a kind,
and they were.

The combination of
verbal and visual humor,

the integration of music.

The controlled chaos
of their act,

of their various
vaudeville routines,

which later were interpolated
into their Broadway shows

and ultimately
into their movies,

are unlike anything
anyone else ever did.

DAVID MANDEL:
For comedy,

it was one of the first times

the audience was
treated with respect.

That instead of the comedy
being somehow spoon-fed,

that they were willing
to just go at their pace.

They were willing
to just do their thing.

And, if you got the joke,
good for you.

But if you didn't,
we're not gonna
stop and explain it.

It's just simply,
"We're gonna do it."

I think smart people
were able to go,
"Oh, that's for me."

Now that you're
Secretary of War,

what kind of an army
do you think
we oughta have?

Well, I tell you what I think.

I think we should
have a standing army.

FIREFLY: Why should we
have a standing army?

Because then we save
money on chairs!

When we look at
Hollywood talkies,

one of the great
things that they preserve

is what's left of vaudeville.

'Cause after all,
you've got W.C. Fields,

you've got George
Burns and Gracie Allen.

You've got
terrific stars
of the vaudeville circuit

performing at their best.

Through them you see
what vaudeville was.

And, in the Marx Brothers,

they're a cut above
even those great comedians.

I think partly because
of their amazing familiarity

with one another, being family.

They're able to
create a sense
of not only performers

but guys who are
each other's audience.

BILL MARX: Most of
the characterization
of the Marx Brothers

came through intensive work
in vaudeville.

They developed those characters.

And a lot of the bits
that you see in the movies,

they did in vaudeville.

JEFFREY VANCE:
As a group, they were
extremely effective.

And this was all wrangled.

These incorrigible children
and eccentric young men

were all wrangled by
the mother, Minnie.

And she was really
the heart and soul

of getting them into the theater

and giving them
the impetus and the belief

they could do this.

ROBERT BADER: When you
think about the four
Marx Brothers as an act,

any success they had
was always credited
to Minnie.

And she really did
turn some of them
into performers.

Groucho was going
to be a performer
no matter what.

He had the desire
and the talent,
and the ability.

Chico was a musician.
He would've gone on to music.

I don't think Harpo
would've ever considered
show business as an option

had his mother not,
what he liked to say,

"Shanghai-ed" him into the act.

But these guys also grew up
in the streets of Manhattan

and nothing but trouble
available to them

if they didn't
go on the road
with their mother.

None of them really completed
much of a formal education.

There was just no alternative.

When Groucho began
to achieve some success
in his vaudeville career

when he's 15, 16 years old,

well, Minnie thinks,

"Hey, I've got several
of these guys
at home doing nothing!"

So, she starts
putting them in the act.

She had this theory where,

"If I have three
guys in the act,

"that we were getting
paid 65 bucks a week,

"why don't I put
a fourth guy in the act
and get 100 bucks a week?"

And, sure enough,
they got away with it.

And they got paid as a quartet.

So, she wasn't wrong.

There were five
Marx Brothers altogether,

but basically
three triumphed
as comedic archetypes.

One is Groucho.

Groucho, of course, is the...
Oh, how would you put it?

I mean, he's the curmudgeon.
He's impatient.
He's insulting.

He's shamelessly egomaniacal.

And he's also a dry wit
with a lightning timing.

Hmm. This needs
closer examination.

In fact, it needs a nightgown.

DICK CAVETT:
This man had

the greatest array
of gifts of any comedian.

He was witty.
He was funny when he did
other people's lines.

He moved hilariously
and brilliantly.

He could sing.
Really, he could sing.
He was on pitch, key...

The list goes on and on.

Other comics have two or three

of what Groucho had
eight or nine of.

MALTIN: What, sort of,
makes him interesting
as a character,

in the world of
the Marx Brothers,

is that he's the wise guy.

He's the guy who can
answer anybody back,

who can say
the kind of things
you'd love to have said

if you only
could've thought of them.

And yet he can
be duped by Chico.

Chico is the ultimate conman,

a kind of a slyly likable
con artist.

He's even conning us
with that awful
Italian accent of his.

We got something over there.

And believe me,
that's convenient.
That's very convenient.

Well, all you gotta do
is open the door,

step outside and there you are.

There you are?
Yeah.

"There you
are" where?
Outside.

In private life, you know,
Leonard Marx aka Chico
was a gambler,

and that gamble is actually
very much in the character.

You can feel that
he's always
trying to get an edge,

always trying to
play an angle to win.

He's overtly ethnic,

which is a very
important part of
the Marx Brothers' appeal.

SCOTT ALEXANDER:
Chico elevates it
to this level of surrealism

where he's so stupid
it could almost be a tactic.

Where Chico is possibly...

Now, I can't confirm it.

But he's possibly
pretending
to be an idiot

as a way of
manipulating the
people he's with.

MALTIN: Harpo, of course,
is the visual comedian.

Although,
his horn speaks for him
on many an occasion.

(HONKING HORN)

So he has a kind of
a universal appeal.

He also has in him
not just an impishness
but a kind of madness.

(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)

FEENEY: It's been observed,
perhaps by Groucho,

that he had
the kind of innocence

and devilishness
at the same time.

Very much like
Shakespeare's Puck.

He's a kind of
all-purpose angel, you know?

Able to light up
devilishness if he needs to,
but on the whole, sweet.

(LAUGHS)

My dad was a person
who trusted his impulses.

They were always honorable.
He didn't hurt anybody.

But he wasn't afraid
to do what he
felt like doing.

If he felt like
he wanted to take
all of his clothes off

in meeting
Mr. and Mrs.
George Bernard Shaw,

he would do it
and not think of
the consequence,

as long as it was intended
to be a communication.

And he loved communicating.

I mean, the greatest
communication he had

was what I shared with him,

and that was music, his harp.

But for the most part,

he had no trouble, in real life,

being who he wanted to be.

So, in those three,
you have the sourpuss,

you've got the guy who's
eager to be a winner,

and then you have the fellow

floating on his own cloud,

who doesn't need to win,

just needs to be and get
in the mix of things.

Anything further, Father?
"Anything further, Father?"

That can't be
right. Isn't it,

"Anything, Father,
further?"

The idea.

I married your mother
because I wanted children.

Imagine my disappointment
when you arrived.

Zeppo had really nowhere to go.

He was supposedly
the straight man,

but in the context of
this ridiculous act.

And he had comic talent
just like all
the other brothers.

The problem was,
you had Groucho
who was all verbal,

you had Harpo that was silent,

then you had Chico

who was sort of
the bridge between
the two brothers.

He could have these
sparrings with Groucho.

And their wordplay, with Chico,

everything became topsy-turvy.

And then Chico, of course,

could communicate
with the silent Harpo.

Where would you have
another brother in that mix?

The lameness of
the "Zeppo part"
comes not from Zeppo,

it comes from the fact
that he reluctantly
took the Gummo part,

the empty, straight man,
untalented one.

Gummo was not
a performer of any note.
(CHUCKLES)

Zeppo, apparently,
was really funny

and really sharp
and really smart.

And that's sort of
what he was left with.

There wasn't room
for one more funny guy.

VANCE:
So all they could
fix for him

was the young leading man

in a musical comedy-type plot.

But they didn't even
take that seriously
and neither did Zeppo.

So, when he could get out,
he did get out.

But he wanted out
as early as...
Well, as early as 1929.

He was telling people,
"I want out."

FEENEY: What was fresh
about the Marx Brothers

was a sense that anything goes.

Now, there's a long
tradition for that,

you know, in circus clowns...

Any kind of
performed humor
you can name.

That kind of anarchy
has a long tradition
that goes back centuries,

if not millennia, to Rome.

A frog in my throat.

You've got
a frog in your throat.

Yes.

You can't do that
to my customers!

They are chaos.

And what they do
is you take chaos

and you give
them some structure,

and they will
upend that structure

and create chaos once again.

That, to me,
is the Marx Brothers.

In all their films.

Find yourselves
a couple of seats.

BILL: Anarchy sounds
like a political term.
War-like.

I don't look at it that way.

I think their anarchy
was against
bad human behavior,

and that they were
able to say things
and do things to people

that other people
wished they could do.

Your Excellency,
haven't we seen each
other somewhere before?

I don't think so.
I'm not sure
I'm seeing you now.

Must be something I ate.

BILL: They would be able
to pull the rug out
from underneath pomposity.

They would mock people
that deserve being mocked.

FEENEY: I think
what happens is,

when you have
a really great artist
or a group of artists...

Take the Beatles
as an outside analog.

You have several musicians
who are just
right for each other,

and they develop
'cause they grew up
in the same town together.

So, as with the Beatles
so with the Marx Brothers.

They grew up together,

they just knew
each other's instincts
inside and out.

ANDY MARX:
There's something, kind of,
great about, I would imagine,

doing some kind of
creative endeavor
with your brothers.

Like the Gershwins,
for instance.

And in the Marxs, same thing.

I mean,
I remember having lunch
with Marcel Marceau

and saying, you know,
that he thought Harpo
was the greatest mime ever.

You have Groucho,
one of the greatest,
sort of, wits,

you have Harpo,
one of the greatest mimes,

then you have Chico
doing all the other stuff.

Of course you had
Zeppo as a straight man,

and he was a great straight man.

It's hard enough to get
one genius out of a family,
but four is...

Or three, three and a half
or whatever,
I mean, is incredible.

Where's the seal?

Where's the seal?
Where's the seal?

Where's the seal?
Where's the seal?

BOTH: Where's the seal?

(BARKING)

VANCE: They had that big
Broadway success

with I'll Say She Is.

And their comedy was electric.

You had the feeling
that what they were
saying on the stage

they were saying in the moment,

and it was fresh
just coming out
of their heads.

Which, of course, isn't true.

It was carefully scripted,
initially.

And, of course,
they would ad-lib and revise
as they went along,

so that no two shows
were exactly the same,

which made people come back
to see the Marx Brothers.

MALTIN:
They had worked in every
conceivable kind of theater,

from the shabbiest to
the finest in vaudeville.

But Broadway was Broadway.

Then, as now,
it's the pinnacle
of success onstage.

And they reached that.
And they got to
work with great people.

Like Irving Berlin,
like George S. Kaufman.

Major, major talents
of that era.

But they brought
their vaudeville
sensibilities with them,

because, if anybody knew
what was gonna work,
they did.

BADER: The Marx Brothers
were able to get
writers at a higher level

once they were Broadway stars.

So, George S. Kaufman
writing the first two shows,

with Morrie Ryskind, by the way,

who was uncredited
on The Cocoanuts.

These guys were
the cream of the crop,

and the Marx Brothers
were big enough to get them.

FEENEY: The Marxs on
stage with their act
were so mesmerizing

that other
creative spirits said,

"I've gotta write
something for you."

What you want is that
kind of inspiration.

You want to be
a source of inspiration
in others,

which they managed to be.

ANTHONY SLIDE:
All praise
to the scriptwriter,

to the playwright,
to George S. Kaufman,

who saw a way to adapt
the Marx Brothers' act

into a complete story.

You could have a story
going on around them

and they were sort
of part of the story,

but they were also
sort of separate from it.

So their rather zany,
ridiculous, surreal comedy
could play out

while something more serious,
a sort of romance,

was taking place
at the same time.

Ah, I see you're
admiring my picture.
Yes, yes.

Your picture?
Yes, my picture.

Well, it don't look like you.

DR. DREW CASPER:
America made
no sense anymore.

The American dream
didn't so much...

So many institutions and
so many beliefs that Americans
felt were sacrosanct,

were not sacrosanct anymore.

And the best way to meet this

was to be nonsensical, too.

If you counter
nonsense with nonsense,
you make sense.

So, the nonsense
school of writing,
the non sequitur.

The obvious statement.
The mind-boggling
understatement.

The movement from ridiculous
to the sublime or the reverse.

Wordplay, all types of wordplay.

Puns, homonyms,
equivocations,
double-entendres.

Wonderful,
wonderful school of writing

that the... So many
writers in The New Yorker
were writing this way.

And, of course,
George S. Kaufman,
Kalmar and Ruby,

Morrie Ryskind belonged
to the nonsense
school of writing,

which fitted
the Marx Brothers
just so perfectly.

FEENEY: It's interesting
to think back

at what audiences
might've responded to.

I felt that, you know,
because they are a family,
they're like a trapeze act.

Only, instead of flying
back and forth in the air,

they're landing punchlines.

Let me see your face.

Yours, too.

All right, all right,
I make my own face.

MANDEL:
With some of their stuff,

be it the wordplay
and the physical stuff,

I mean, it's so...
You don't want to
say "rehearsed,"

because it's not
like you're watching it
and it's rote.

It's definitely not rote.

But it has just that
effortless confidence

that only just comes,
I think, with, like,
you know,

probably some sort of
Malcolm Gladwell
10,000 hours.

You know,
when you do 10,000 hours
of Marx Brothers' routines,

you become quite good at it.

They devise these devices,

Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers.

And, very naturally,
they led to the movies.

BADER: While
the Marx Brothers were

on their road tour of Cocoanuts,

the entire
entertainment industry

exploded with sound movies.

And that was pretty much
the last nail in the coffin
of vaudeville.

And people who
stayed in vaudeville

were pretty much out of luck.

The Marx Brothers
never really looked
back at vaudeville.

They were gone
from there anyway,

but they were now
a hot property in the world
of sound movies.

Our motto is, "Cocoanut Beach:
no snow, no ice,
and no business."

Do you know that
Florida is the greatest
state in the Union?

Is it?
Take its climate.
No, we took that.

Take its fruits,
take the alligator pears.

Take all the alligator
pears and keep them.
See if I care.

Do you know how
alligator pears
are made?

I haven't the slightest idea.

There you are.
That's because you've
never been an alligator,

and don't let it happen again.

MANDEL: Dialogue just allowed,
I think, the level
of comedy...

The discourse, if you will,

was able to sort of be raised.

All of a sudden, with sound,
you were beyond
the physical gag.

Now, obviously,
some of the physical gags

with, like, you know,
Keaton and whatnot
had just gotten amazing.

But there was a lot of
just simple bumping
into and falling down,

the simple pratfall.

Now, all of a sudden,
with sound,

people are talking about stuff

and it just changes everything.

Remember, there's
nothing like liberty,

except Colliers
and the Saturday
Evening Post.

Be free, my friends.
One for all
and all for me,

and me for you,
and three for five,
and six for a quarter.

They made movies move.

They made talk move.

They made talk sound
like the way people talk
in the streets.

The people who are
going to the movies.

And that shiver of recognition

when they saw the Marx Brothers,

heard the Marx Brothers,

"This is just how I talk,
how I hear talk.

"And this is how I wanna act
because I'm so fed
up with the times."

Hey, hey, hey, hey!
Don't throw that.

That's only
for long-distance.
All right.

That's what they did,
they were liberating.

Mr. Hammer, what's
the matter with him?

I don't know where he's from.

He hasn't any license on him.

Maxine Marx loved to say
that the Marx Brothers
on stage

were 10 times funnier
than the Marx Brothers
in the movies.

And then she would say
they were 10 times funnier
than that at dinner.

Imagine the energy
of the Marx Brothers
on stage

when they were
in their 20s even.

They looked pretty physical
in their early films,

but they're middle-aged men.

FEENEY: Chico, the eldest
of the Marx Brothers,
was born in 1887.

Groucho was born in 1890.

Now that means,
when the brothers show up
in Hollywood in 1931,

Groucho was 41 years old.
Chico was 44.

Now that's extremely unusual

for 40-year-old men
to be making
their Hollywood debut.

You would think,
as it happens,
movies were so new

and talkies were newborn.

So, talkies needed talk.

So nobody was objecting
to the Marx Brothers' age.

And, also,
one must bear in mind,

that in their costumes
they came across as ageless.

Through it all,
the Marx Brothers had
to adapt and change.

And their act,
that they brought
to the motion picture,

finally, was
the best of vaudeville,
was the best of radio.

Think of Harpo.
It was the best
of silent movies.

FEENEY: They were able
to come to Hollywood

with 25 years of
very solid training.

They knew
who they were creatively.

That's a tremendous asset.

Nowadays, it would be very hard

to come by
this kind of experience,

if you can come by it at all.

MANDEL: So,
the Marx Brothers' timing

couldn't have been better.

Here they had
this proven hit show,
The Cocoanuts.

And Paramount signed them
to replicate it on screen,

which is essentially
what they did.

And then they did it again
with their next big hit,
Animal Crackers.

So, if you're wondering
what it might've been like

to sit in an audience
and watch them,

this is as close
an idea of that
as we're ever going to get.

VANCE: Paramount was
the perfect home
for the Marx Brothers.

Paramount was one of
the big motion picture
studios in Hollywood,

probably the biggest,
actually, at that time.

And, if you look at
the history of
Paramount Pictures,

it began as Adolph Zukor's
Famous Players.

And Famous Players,

the idea of it,
was to get famous players
in famous plays.

In other words,
transform good
theatrical material

with good top-flight stars,

and transform that,
and translate it,
into a motion picture.

DR. CASPER:
Paramount Studios,
the finest show in town,

controlled American
film comedy in the '20s.

Just think,

American film comedy
in the '20s
without Paramount.

Without Paramount,
there wouldn't be

the Fatty Arbuckle
and Buster Keaton shorts
that they made together.

There wouldn't be
the boulevardier comedians,

Raymond Griffith
and Adolphe Menjou.

What about the sex comedies

that DeMille was making
with Gloria
Swanson from '19 to 1925.

These were Paramount films.

The jazz-baby was Clara Bow.
She came from Paramount.

And, Harold Lloyd.
Harold Lloyd...

They were all
based at Paramount.

And Paramount was
not gonna relinquish this.

They were gonna continue
this reign of comedy
in the '30s.

And that's why
the Marx Brothers
was natural.

Sam Harris owned the property
for the stage
play The Cocoanuts.

And he made a deal
with Paramount to film it.

It was then up to Paramount
to make a deal with
the Marx Brothers.

And they were
offering around $50,000,
I think it was.

And they got it up
to $75,000 somehow.

And Zeppo went to
visit with Zukor.

And he schmoozed him,
in the classic sense.

He flattered him.

He said it's the greatest
honor of his life
to meet him.

And he's a historical figure
in motion pictures.

And this is the greatest
moment of his life.

And, "Here we are,
the Marx Brothers

"with all of our greatest bits

"that we've honed on
the stage for decades.

"And we're gonna
give it all to you

"and with all of the jokes
that we've worked
on so many years

"for a mere $100,000."

And the man who
brought them there,
Walter Wanger, was aghast.

He thought Zukor
was gonna go crazy.

Because when they asked for 75,

Zukor, apparently said,
"Bring him in here.
I'll spit in his eye."

And Zukor when
posed with $100,000,
turns to Walter and says,

"What's the problem
here, Walter?
Let's just do this."

And that's how the deal
supposedly went through.

If we had a nice
little bungalow,

and you were inside
and I was outside
trying to get in,

or inside trying to get out...

No, I was in.
You was up...

You were inside
out and I was up...

(STUTTERING)

I tell you,
if you don't hear
from me

by next Friday,
the whole thing's off.

One of the things I love about
looking at Cocoanuts is

that is precisely
the way they looked

when they were
on Broadway doing
Animal Crackers.

So, if you want to know
what the Marx Brothers
looked like on stage

in their Broadway period,
all you need to do
is look at Cocoanuts,

'cause they were
simultaneously filming it
while appearing on Broadway.

The difference between
seeing them
in a theater live

and seeing them on screen
is that the screen
could provide close-ups,

not a lot in
those two films,
but some.

They could give people

an intimacy with
the Marx Brothers

they might not have experienced

in a conventional theater.

BADER: So, they would be
at Astoria during the day
shooting Cocoanuts

and going right into
Manhattan to do Animal
Crackers at night.

And you could actually
see some minor evidence

of them slipping up

and doing bits
of Animal Crackers
in The Cocoanuts.

For example,
in the "why a duck" scene,

Groucho begins
to call Chico Ravelli,

but he stops himself
to save the take.

And I'm sure
people on stage
watching Animal Crackers

probably got little bits
of Cocoanuts
every now and then.

It must've been
really confusing for them.

I'm not playing
Ask Me Another.
I say that's a viaduct.

All right.
Why a duck? Why a duck?
Why no chicken?

I don't know why no chicken.

I'm a stranger here myself.

All I know is
that it's a viaduct.

You try to cross
over there
in a chicken

and you'll find out viaduct.

I no go someplace...

It's deep water,
that's why a duck.

Deep water.
That's why a duck.

Look, rube...

"Why a duck"
is one locked-off
shot for five minutes.

It's insane.

I can't even think
of a shot like this

in any other movie
I've ever seen
in my life.

It is Groucho
and Chico sitting
at a table.

There is no coverage.
There is one
medium shot.

And it's this
fondly-remembered
scene. We all love it.

I've seen it a million times.

And I had never
noticed it's just
that. (CHUCKLES)

You're just watching
a piece of burlesque.

You're watching two guys
who could just be standing
in front of a curtain.

It's shamelessly
a skit you're seeing.

And that's when
the brothers are great.

Look, all right.
I catch on to
why a horse,

why a chicken,
why this, why that.

I no catch on to why a duck.

I was only fooling.
I was only fooling.

They're gonna
build a tunnel there
in the morning.

Now is that clear to you?

Yes, everything
except why a duck.

The great thing for them
about shooting Cocoanuts

is that they had
done it on stage
so many times.

It was just another performance.

But I'm sure it was
disruptive to have to stop
and do another take,

wait for a set-change,
you know, step out
of the characters,

take a break, go back to it.

Here they were, every morning,

waking up very early
after doing a performance
on Broadway

and going to a studio in Queens

and doing bits and
pieces of the movie

a little bit here,
a little bit there.

There was actually,
at one point, some thought

about bringing
a bunch of cameras
into a theater

and filming a performance

straight through of Cocoanuts.

But the executives
at Paramount decided

they wouldn't be able
to get a good-enough
quality film doing that.

So, they did it
the conventional way

and I'm sure it was different.

They were so used
to going on stage,

doing straight-through
live performance,

and then they would
go out and be done.

SLIDE:
Initially, I don't think
the Marx Brothers

wanted to change to
accommodate movies.

They wanted to give exactly

the same performances
they had given on the stage.

But you can't do
that with movies,

'cause, first of all,
they're shot out
of sequence usually,

and they're also
going to have to
do re-takes or whatever.

I think the first
shot for Groucho,

at least according to Groucho,

is when a Paramount executive,
whose name he
couldn't remember,

told him he had to get rid
of the fake mustache.

We don't know who that was.

Was it Walter Wanger?
Was it Monta Bell?
Was it actually nobody?

Is it just some story
that Groucho
invented in later years?

'Cause, he seems to be very good

at inventing amusing
stories in later years.

Um, you know, the legend.

BILL: The brothers were
involved in a new medium

and they were unbridled.

It was a nightmare
to get them all together.

And then they
weren't necessarily
all focused.

(CHUCKLING) I do believe
that the director
put them in chains

in their dressing room,
because they
could never find them.

It was difficult
making a Marx Brothers movie.

And in those early days,
you had the technology
against you, too.

BILL: But the stage
allowed them to
be spontaneous.

And in Hollywood you
had to hit your mark.

You had to be there
for the cameraman.

So, it was a whole
new world for them.

A very interesting
conflict happens

between the Marx Brothers
and the camera in
their first films,

because you feel that
the camera's moving
too slow

to catch what they're up to.

That has a degree
of energizing influence.

It is frustrating
for their partners,

frustrating for their cameramen,

frustrating for the studio heads

who don't know what
they've got on their hands.

But I think for an audience,
it added to the anarchy,

the feeling that
these guys
will drop off stage

or they'll head out off-camera.

It gives you the feeling
of being in the room
with them

and not being able to keep up.

This hotel not only
has running water,
it has running guests.

SLIDE: Suddenly,
with The Cocoanuts and maybe
the next Paramount film,

they really didn't
accommodate themselves

or their performances
very much
to the motion picture.

But you could even
argue they never did

throughout the Paramount period.

It was really MGM
that forced them
to listen to what MGM said.

You do as the studio tells you.

You don't do
what you want to do.

DR. CASPER: When you look
at the Marx Brothers,

and you say MGM was the studio

that pasteurized them
a little bit.

But even in Cocoanuts,
Groucho's name, for example,

as the owner of this hotel

is called "Schlemmer."
I mean, the name Schlemmer.

But in the movie version,
he's simply called "Hammer."

And his schemes
in the Broadway show

is aided by Willie the Wop,
Silent Sam.

Here, it's aided by
Chico and Harpo.

Also, they padded
the girl and boy,

the romance here, in the film.

And they don't
share the center,
but they almost do.

And you're left
at the end of this picture,
not with the Marx Brothers,

but with the two of them,
these romantic leads.

Because, you know,
this is a Hollywood movie
and you need romance.

And they'd be fed up,

so already something
is going on here

that's not the uninhibited
Marx Brothers as we have
on the stage.

300?
$300.

$400.
$400.

$500.
$500.

$600, $700, $800,
what the heck I care?

What the heck
do you care?
But how about me?

Sold to What The Heck for $800.

I hope all your
teeth have cavities.

And don't forget:
Abscess makes
the heart grow fonder.

When he said "why a duck,"
I should have smelled a rat.

The Marx Brothers
were nervous about making
their first picture.

They just weren't sure.
It was something
they hadn't done.

And they were not
pleased with the result
when they first saw it.

Minnie saw it
and told them it was good.

They saw it and
they were mortified.

But it was making
so much money that

they ceased to be
mortified pretty quickly.

It was a big hit.

There weren't a lot
of pictures like that.

Silent films were
still being released.

Some of the big
stars of the silent era

were not letting go
of silent pictures.

And here, the Marx Brothers,
in an all-talking musical,

that had just been on Broadway.

It was a big draw
to people in other parts
of the country,

so it was a big hit.

My father,
who grew up in Nebraska,
and me, of course,

was alive and young
when Cocoanuts came to town.

And he said,
"The only time in
my life the saying,

"'people were falling
out of their seats
with laughter' happened."

Their legs would go out
and they'd slide down
and hold themselves.

He said it was like an
electric storm that you
were suddenly caught in,

only a pleasant one.

MALTIN: Nothing could
possibly duplicate

the experience of
seeing them live.

Where anything could happen
and where they
could riff on something

or do something spontaneous,

and cause a ripple
of audience laughter

that might build and build
to an explosive level.

Film can't do that.
Can't do it today,
couldn't do it then.

But thank goodness,
they did commit their
first two shows to film

because they give us
a historical record

of the material,
and of their delivery
of the material.

The Marx Brothers
weren't the star of the film.

The technology was
the star of the film,

trying to record it,
trying to translate

this musical comedy
into an early
talking motion picture.

And I think it
overwhelmed everybody,
including the director.

SLIDE: Obviously,
with early talkies,

the cameras are in
the sound-proof booths.

You can't have
any noise from
the motor of the camera.

And of course, basically,
you can hardly
move them at all.

So, they've got, actually,
multiple cameras
shooting each scene,

close-up, long-shot,
medium-shot, and whatever,

and actors have to
hit their marks
and stay on their marks.

But of course,
the Marx Brothers
aren't used to...

Marxs are not used to marks.

And so, they cannot keep
where they are
supposed to be onstage.

They want to move about.

It's part of
their routine, really.
It's how they perform.

At the same time,
I think it gives
a sort of immediacy

to the performance, actually.

You don't really
object to it, sometimes,

that you're maybe
losing part of a body,

maybe losing a head,
or legs, or whatever.

You accept it,
because it's part of
the Marx Brothers' zaniness.

BADER: The film
was very successful,

although according to
a Paramount executive
named Walter Wanger,

the Marx Brothers wanted
to buy it back 'cause they
thought it was awful.

But it started to
break box office records
around the country,

and it was doing really,
really well.

And Paramount wanted to make

another picture with them
as soon as they could.

They signed them
to another one-picture deal,

but they had not yet made a deal

with Sam Harris
for Animal Crackers.

So, they were gonna shoot
another original
Marx Brothers picture

until Sam Harris came along
and made a deal
for Animal Crackers.

With Animal Crackers,
you started to, sort of, see

that they watched
Cocoanuts and went,

"Oh, we can, kind of,
fill in some things,

"we can ever so slightly
smooth the story
out a little bit."

It was a little
more film-friendly.
It felt more like a film.

I think they
started to understand

what worked and what didn't work

to some extent.

What do you fellows get an hour?

Oh, for playing,
we get a $10 an hour.

I see. What do you
get for not playing?

$12 an hour.

Well, clip me off
a piece of that.

Now, for rehearsing,
we make special rate,
that's $15 an hour.

That's for rehearsing?
That's for rehearsing.

And what do you get
for not rehearsing?
You couldn't afford it.

Morrie Ryskind was tasked

with turning the
Animal Crackers play script
into a film script,

and he thought
they'd be able to keep
some of the music in,

and the director disagreed,
and they just cut it all out.

And he lobbied hard

to keep Hooray For
Captain Spaulding
in the picture, thankfully.

But as they
transitioned to film,

these musicals
were deconstructed

to make them more manageable
in terms of their length,

and to have more
story than song.

Many of the songs
from those Broadway shows
are just gone.

They never recorded them,
they never filmed them.

They're forgotten songs.
The ones that stayed
are the ones we know.

What do you say?
Are we all
going to get married?

All of us?
All of us!

But that's bigamy.

Yes, and it's big of me, too!

It's big of all of
us. Let's be big
for a change.

I'm sick of these
conventional
marriages.

One woman and one man
was good enough
for your grandmother,

but who wants to marry
your grandmother?

Nobody. Not even
your grandfather.

Even the most successful
theater performers

couldn't reach
as big an audience
as one movie could.

They had built a reputation,
they had traveled far
and wide in vaudeville.

They had appeared on Broadway,

but a movie put them
in a different category.

It made them
available, accessible,
to everybody.

Not just in the U.S.,
but all over the world.

This program is
coming to you from
the House of David.

Those movies
were very successful

because people in
other parts of the country

were getting to
see a film version
of a hit Broadway musical.

This is an era
where people didn't come
from Kansas

to to go to
a Broadway show and have
a week in New York.

You had to wait a few years
until they filmed it,

and then you could
see it for 35 cents.

You haven't got
chocolate, have you?

It's a big deal
when these movies
come to town.

And these movies
toured for a year or two.

Take the Professor's
hat and coat.

And send for the fumigators.

Oh, my goodness!

Bonjour!
(SPEAKING FRENCH)

MALTIN: The sign of
a really good
theater performer

is to be able to
repeat that performance
over and over and over again,

eight times a week on Broadway,

and then maybe
going out on the road.

The Marx Brothers
were well accustomed to that.

So by the time they
filmed all this material,

they had done these routines
innumerable times,

but it doesn't seem that way.

It seems absolutely fresh,
spontaneous,

as if they're saying it
for the very first time.

MANDEL: Look,
I know there's a script,

I know this is written,
I know it's rehearsed,

and I know it's a film,
and it's not like

you're watching live television.

But when you're in it,
when you're watching

and you're in that
moment of watching,

where, as the bits build,

as things are happening,
as they're wandering around,

in the best way possible,
it feels like
there's no script.

It feels like
they're ad-libbing it.

It feels like that guy
just walked in.

And there's such
an insane looseness,
and anything could happen.

It's perhaps not true anarchy,

but that's the feeling for me
when I watch the movies,
the best ones.

Mrs. Rittenhouse,
ever since I met you,

I've swept you off my feet.

Something has been
throbbing within me.

Oh, it's been
beating like the
incessant tom-tom

in the primitive jungle.

There's something
that I must ask you.

What is it, Captain?

Would you wash out
a pair of socks for me?

Margaret Dumont
was just a perfect choice
as a foil

for the Marx Brothers,
especially Groucho.

If she hadn't existed,
they would have had
to invent her somehow,

because Groucho's
comedy is based,
in such large part,

on deflating pomposity.

And she represents,
not just pomposity,
but the establishment.

And he is the
anti-establishment character.

So, it's a natural attraction.

Madam, with this
insurance policy,

you've provided
for your little ones
and for your old age...

Which will be here in
a couple of weeks now,

if I'm any judge of horseflesh.

Groucho Marx himself said

that she was practically
the fifth Marx brother.

And I believe he's right.

And I feel that the films
that don't have
her participation,

you miss her.

And audiences delighted
in having her punctured,
deflated.

They actually
wrestled Margaret Dumont
in Animal Crackers,

which is insane.
That stuff is insane.

And then there's
the... Wait...

Was it Harpo who's punching her?

(CHUCKLES)
And she's actually going...
(GRUNTS)

(LAUGHING)

You actually see
Margaret Dumont's
body flying up.

Yes.
I mean, she's a trooper.

She can't take it there.

(SHOUTS)
You better get Hives.

SLIDE: When you watch
Margaret Dumont,

you can tell she gets the joke.

You can see she's on
the verge of laughing,
on the verge of cracking up.

But she doesn't,
'cause she's a consummate
professional, straight woman.

And she knows
how to behave in
front of the camera.

I suspect directors
must have loved her
and hated Groucho.

They've had far much
more trouble directing
Groucho

than they ever had
directing Margaret Dumont.

I think she's one of
the great straight actors,

male or female,
um, in film history.

Oh, Your Excellency!

You're not so bad yourself.

SLIDE: She knows
how to react
to Groucho's lines,

she knows how long to wait,

she knows how long
the laughter is going to be

before she responds.

And you're very
much aware of that.

Married!

I can see you
right now
in the kitchen,

bending over a hot stove,

but I can't see the stove.

VANCE: Just as they had
finished the Broadway run
of Animal Crackers onstage,

they were about to embark
on a tour of Animal Crackers.

And then the two events

that shaped
the Marx Brothers as men
and as an act, happened.

First, their mother,
Minnie, died

in September 1929
at the age of 65.

So, the whole world
that they had evolved around,

the matriarch of the family,
the emotional core

that kept this
family together was gone.

FEENEY: It is no coincidence
that Minnie's death

precedes their
exodus to Hollywood.

I think that was
such a landmark moment
in all their lives,

that the renewal of moving West,

it really came
as a strong appeal.

Their father, Sam Marx,
also known as Frenchy.

Frenchy Marx moved
West with them as well.

It was a real
pulling up of stakes

that took place after her death.

VANCE: The following month,
their financial world
died a horrible death

with the stock
market crash of 1929,
Black Tuesday.

Groucho lost
his entire life's savings,
$250,000.

Harpo, I believe,
nearly as much.

Chico never had
any money to begin with
so he was always broke.

Their emotional and then
their financial structure,

their world,

had collapsed into chaos.

That was, of course,
a tremendous unmaking

of Groucho's
hard-earned fortune.

He, over the years,
had earned a quarter
of a million dollars,

and he lost it all
in the stock market crash.

And as he himself pointed out
in his autobiography,

as the stocks were plummeting,

he thought the best way
to go was to
double-down.

So he was using up
his savings to cover up
the margins of his loss.

Now, if you consider
that his mother has
died a month before,

I think that
that also completed
an extra crash inside him

so that when Hollywood
came singing,
he was ready to listen.

I think that
the film version
of Animal Crackers

is a valuable record
of the Marx Brothers
at their very best,

and what drove these
men and their lives

onstage and offstage.

This was a devastating
time for them.

The film became a success
and, in a sense,
bailed them out

of their financial problems
from the stock market crash

'cause they
quickly signed to make
another film

at very, very good salaries.

But the death
of their mother was truly
a turning point for them.

Minnie had nurtured the act
from the earliest days,

and had been
the most important figure
in all of their lives,

for their whole lives,
at that point.

Not just as their mother
but as their manager,

as the person who really
shoved a couple of them
into show business,

almost against their will.

They were devastated.
She was everything to them.

Following the success
of Animal Crackers as a film,

the Marx Brothers were
about to go play in England

for their second trip there.

And, on the boat,
before they sailed
on Christmas Eve of 1930,

they signed
a three-picture deal
with Paramount

to make pictures either
in New York or Hollywood,
at Paramount's discretion.

But I think
everyone knew at that point

they'd be going to Hollywood,

and their next film
was not going to
be based on a show.

So when they
returned from England,

they arrived in New
York and immediately

they all relocated
to the West Coast.

I think Groucho was not
quite sure that they were
going to be successful.

He made it a point
not to buy a home.

They were all renting.
They didn't think
this was going to last.

I think Hollywood
was a challenge
for all the brothers.

But it was time
for them to move on.

They adapted rather quickly
because they were together.

It wasn't like
one of them came out

and had to get
a group of friends
or something like that.

There was a bond there.
A forever-bond.

They were there for each other.

They knew they had come up
through survival.

And they stuck
up for each other.

My dad told me,

"I could never have
done this without
my brothers.

"I just couldn't have."

BADER: The first film

that they're gonna make
in Hollywood,

that's not going to
be based on a show,

is essentially
the same exact premise

as their first
hit vaudeville show,
Home Again.

The idea of being
on an ocean voyage,

coming home,
and having a big party.

This is the only
way to travel, boys.
The only way.

I was gonna bring
the wife and kiddies

but the grocer
couldn't spare
another barrel.

I was gonna
bring my grandfather,

but there's no
room for his beard.

Why not send
for the old swine,
let his beard come later?

I sent for his beard.
You did?

It's coming by "hair" mail.

In Monkey Business, I think
the parts are perhaps
greater than the whole.

There's some great,
great set pieces,

and some wonderful visual
gags, some wonderful
dialogue sequences.

You've got the beautiful
Thelma Todd there,
which is never a bad idea.

And, when you're done
watching it, you have
a smile on your face.

It's not a great film,

but even a good
Marx Brothers movie

is better than
most people's best efforts.

Do you want your
nails trimmed long?

About an hour and a half.
I got nothing to do.

It doesn't have a sense
of antiquity about it,

or, "We must make allowances,

"they didn't make
movies then the way
they do now..."

They're just fine.
(CHUCKLES)

GIBSON: Come on, men.
Someone's coming.

CAVETT: So they get
in these barrels,
they pull the lids down,

and the captain and the crew
are searching for them.

He yells,
"Check everywhere!"

And one barrel lid
comes up,
and Groucho says...

Never mind the barrels.

And he said,
"You know,
I ad-libbed that."

(CHUCKLING)
And you wanted to say,

"You managed to
ad-lib something funny?"

He wanted a little praise.

Now, Columbus sailed
from Spain to India
looking for a shortcut.

You mean strawberry shortcut.

I don't know.

When I woke up,
there was the nurse
taking care of me.

What's the matter?
Couldn't the nurse
take care of herself?

You bet she could,
but I found it
out too late.

Nobody except
the occasional
critic in vaudeville,

ever complained
about the lack of a story
in a Marx Brothers show.

I don't think
anybody cared about it
in the movies, either.

They had to have them,
'cause they had to have
a reason to make the movie.

But you went to see
the Marx Brothers.

That's what people
were interested in.

It didn't matter if it was
a good story or a bad story.

In fact, the stories
are so simple,

they're almost laughable
if you just read
them on a paper.

If you read
the plot outline of
a Marx Brothers picture,

thank God you have
the Marx Brothers,

'cause you couldn't
make the picture otherwise.

DR. CASPER:
Paramount, as leaders,

they had to not only
hire comic performers,

they had to hire comic writers.

And they had
a stable of comic writers,

all presided over

by Mr. Lunacy himself,
Herman Mankiewicz,

who supervised the first
three Paramount films
made in Hollywood.

They needed
a script by someone else.

And, although
they took interest
in their scenes,

they took
interest in their dialogue

and could often improve upon it,

what was given to them
in the script.

It's easy to improve
someone else's work,

but they needed that template.

And they could build on that.

SLIDE: You read that
George S. Kaufman would

sometimes come
to the theater,
and he'd say,

"I'm sitting here to see
if they are using any
of my lines tonight."

Well, it's a funny remark,
but I don't really
think it's strictly true,

because I think
Groucho relied a lot

upon an actual script.

Groucho would
drive his writers crazy

by adding, what they felt,
were repetitious words.

Paramount was
especially allergic
to repetition.

But Groucho taught them that,
"No, if you repeat it,
it makes it funnier.

"People hear the gag coming
if you've set it up."

Groucho was the master
at setting up a gag

without letting you know
that he was setting it up.

You can't stay in that closet.

Well, I can't, can I?

That's what they said
to Thomas Edison,
mighty inventor...

Thomas Lindbergh, mighty flyer,

and Thomas Shefsky,
mighty like a rose.

Just remember
that if there weren't

any closets,
there wouldn't
be any hooks,

and if there weren't
any hooks,
there'd be no fish,

and that would suit me fine.

There's nothing like the scene

where you can build a laugh,
upon a laugh upon a laugh,
upon a laugh.

And they just did it regularly.

They found those
moments regularly
where it just keeps going,

and you don't
think it can top,
and it just does.

This side's too long.
Give him a little
snoop this side.

Now this side is too short.

It's too short.
The other side is
too long. Snoop him up.

That's better, but the
side that was too short
now is too long

and the side that was
too long is too short.

I think you got to
give him one
more snoop.

ALEXANDER: I don't think
the Marxs are
particularly cinematic,

and that's a good thing.

When I think about
the brothers and
all the scenes I love,

and it's the scenes
everyone loves,
it's, sort of, like...

We all love the
tootsie-frootsie scene...
(CHUCKLES)

...we all love,
you know,
"why a duck,"

we all love, you know,
"take a letter."
Sure.

Any contract scene.

Any contract scene,
any negotiation.
(LAUGHS)

Just as I thought,
you're yellow,

grabbing at a woman's skirts.

I'm wise.
I'm wise.
You're wise?

What's the capital of Nebraska?

What's the capital
of the Chase National
Bank? Give up?

Now,
I'll try you on
an easy one.

How many
Frenchmen
can't be wrong?

I know...

You were warm and so was she.

Don't be discouraged.
With a little study
you'll go a long way.

And I'd wish you'd start now.

LARRY KARASZEWSKI:
It is funny, they had such
a reputation for ad-libbing,

but then they also
had this reputation
for working everything out

to an exact detail on
the road, the pauses...

They clearly enjoyed
playing with things,
and twisting things around.

And all of Groucho's
wordplay is just that.

It's just playing with
words and moving
things back and forth.

You're living in
a fool's paradise.

You intend to spend
$10 to buy this
woman a ring?

Look at this.

It's solid brass
and $1.50
takes it away.

I know it'll fit her.
I got it from
the nose of a savage.

Groucho had
an affinity
for the writers

and working with the writers,

where Harpo was more
of a specialty number.

Harpo would come up
with his own kind of thing.

So, there is some
weird contradiction.

I think history
has never quite decided

(CHUCKLING) which
version of the Marx
Brothers there is.

Ready, boys? Let's go.

MALTIN:
Part of the ingredients
were their instruments.

Chico and his
pistol-finger piano playing,
and Harpo and his harp.

They were part of
their show
business identities.

Them as musicians,

again, I think of
the three little Jewish kids

whose mother made
them take piano.

And that's what they were.
That's what good
little Jewish kids do.

And, obviously,
they were quite
accomplished in it,

and I do think that goes back
to that vaudeville circuit,
the 10,000 hours,

where it's just like,
"I'm gonna play a piano,
I'm gonna play spoons.

"I'll use anything
I can as an instrument
to keep you entertained."

The songs
in Horse Feathers
are my favorite.

Every single
number in Horse Feathers
is a great number.

Uh, you know, people
often make fun
of the musical numbers

in a Marx Brothers movie...

No, they're great songs!

Those songs are great.
ALEXANDER: The Kalmar and
Ruby songs are great.

KARASZEWSKI:
I'm Against It is a home run,
I Always Get My Man,

and then,
Everyone Says I Love You
is fantastic.

It may be the only
Marx Brothers movie

where you're waiting
and looking forward
for the musical numbers.

(PLAYING PIANO)

I love good music.

So do I. Let's get
out of here.
Sit down.

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.

Chico created
a unique style
of piano playing.

Nobody ever did it before,

and nobody has ever been able to

do it as well as he has,
including myself.

"I can shoot the keys."

That's what he would do.
He would shoot the keys.

But I don't have the length
or the stretch that he had,

or the flexibility that he had.

It was one of the most

uncomplex
musically-complex way
of playing the piano.

Horowitz couldn't have done it.

Chico's music gets
used for comedy
in the movies.

Harpo's does not.
Correct. Correct.

ALEXANDER: When you
go to Harpo,

as Bill Marx has said
many times,

you see the real man.

The clown comes off.
You see Arthur.

BILL: Being a musician,

being a comedian,
being an actor,

being an artist,

they all encompass
self-discovery.

I felt that Dad's desire
to discover things
for himself

had no bounds.

He could play
almost anything by ear.

And he would
practice over and over
and over again,

until he got it right.

He was fascinated.
He took it all in.

He was a person
with a thirst
that was unquenchable.

(APPLAUSE)

(FROG CROAKING)

What are you
doing here?
I'm the plumber.

I'm just hanging around
in case something goes
wrong with her pipes.

That's the first time
I've used that joke
in 20 years.

Sexual innuendo
in Marx Brothers movies
is a constant.

It's there in Horse Feathers
because of the college widow.

"In my day, son,
I went through
three college widows."

A college widow stood for
something in those days.

In fact, she stood for plenty.

FEENEY: These kinds of
inferences are so wonderful

because they trust
that the audience
is in on the gag,

that there are things
that we can't talk about,
things that we can suggest,

things that we
can grandly denounce
from a very high place.

But, Professor,
I don't understand.

You don't, eh?
Well, I wanna see you.
Come right over to my office.

You can't?
You're in bed?

Well, in that case,
I'll come over
to your office.

These ways that
the Marx Brothers
were able to allude to sex

without hitting sex on the nose.

That is tremendous catnip
for the contemporary
audiences of that day.

Oh, I love sitting on your lap.

I could sit here all day
if you didn't stand up.
(KNOCKING AT DOOR)

DR. CASPER: "Who cares?"
That's what
the Marx Brothers...

And they had,
unlike the silent films had,
a zest for life.

And they were natural men.

They aroused this feeling,
I think, in people,

that were so often
hid or glossed over,

or told to forget
about or put in a corner

because of civilization,
because of culture.

It's just not done.

They did what our id
always wants to do.

No, don't,
my husband
might be inside.

If he finds me
out here,
he'll wallop me.

Always thinking of your husband.

Couldn't I wallop
you just as well?

And there's no other
way around the fact

that Harpo would
probably be arrested today

(CHUCKLING) for the way
he chases women,

and the way Chico
and Harpo attack women

in the classroom
in Horse Feathers.

I guess, maybe,
we're not allowed to
laugh at that anymore,

but it's pretty jaw-dropping.

Professor, I no see you.

What are you doing here?

Nothing right now, but
I was doing all right
till you came in.

Oh! So you know
the professor.

Sure. He put me
in business. He got me
on the football team.

Now all I gotta do
is get him off the couch.

FEENEY: I think they were
able to play with the code

because humor was
so involved and
double entendre was involved.

There were lines, probably,
that they couldn't cross.

But they were able
to explore the limits

of what it was possible to say,

or possible to imply,
at any given time.

This must be the main highway.

In the Paramount movies,
is it possible
that what's funny

is that all the straight
people are simply oblivious?
Mmm-hmm.

And that, once you get
into the later movies,
there's a bit of a...

(GRUNTING)
(LAUGHS)

"How dare you..."

And the professors
in Horse Feathers,

they're just taking it.
KARASZEWSKI:
Right. Right.

ALEXANDER:
They're not really
stopping Groucho.

Or if you do the bridge game
in Animal Crackers,

Harpo and Chico
are just cheating.
They're just cheating!

Harpo is just dealing cards,
"No, I don't like that."

Tearing it up, he's
taking the ladies' cards,
"Yeah, I'll take that one."

And the two ladies
are simply not
paying attention.

And that's what makes it funny.

Yes, I agree with
that 100 percent,

because in the Paramount movies,

people who are
characters in the film
that aren't the Marx Brothers

are aware that they
are in a Marx Brothers movie.

They're in a Marx
Brothers universe.

They have to sort of just
keep the movie going on.
(ALEXANDER CHUCKLES)

You know, Harpo can,
at the end of
Horse Feathers,

you know,
just drive his garbage truck
onto the field.

And just start
throwing balls down,
and they won the game.

I mean,
there's a certain logic...
ALEXANDER: He's cheating.

KARASZEWSKI:
He's cheating, there's a logic
to the Marx Brothers,

and that's how the world works.

Whereas when you
get into the later
MGM movies,

you know, Thalberg's
told them that,
"You can't do that.

"You have to act in
a realistic sense."

So if they do something,

people do have to
react to it.
That's interesting.

They have to exist
in the world
that we live in.

They just can't magically,
you know, light a candle
from both ends

or, "How about
a cup of coffee?"

There has to be a certain logic.

But what the Marx
Brothers were best at
was defying logic.

So, you're saying in
the Paramount movies,

there's more magical thinking.

Yes, correct.
Magical realism.

They, I mean...
It's insane how
surreal Horse Feathers is.

It's out of its mind.

Do you take this woman
to be your lawful
wedded wife?

TOGETHER: We do.

BADER: When the Marx Brothers
signed their three-picture
deal with Paramount

in December 1930,

they got something that
most performers didn't get.

They got 50 percent
of the net profits,
which was unheard of.

The problem for
the Marx Brothers was

that Paramount was
in financial trouble

within a year or two
of signing this contract

and they were in receivership
and nearing bankruptcy.

And the royalties
never seemed to arrive.

Or, at least,
they didn't seem to arrive

in the quantity
that they were hoping.

Horse Feathers was
the highest grossing
Paramount film of 1932

and they kept wondering
where the money was.

For reasons known only
to the executives
of Paramount,

they set up
a shell corporation
called Paramount Productions

and they transferred
the Marx Brothers' contract

from Paramount
Publix Corporation
to Paramount Productions,

which was actually a violation

of the terms of the contract.

So, the Marx Brothers
walked out.

Said, "That voids
the contract.
We're done here."

So, while many
people think
the Marx Brothers

left Paramount after Duck Soup,

they actually left Paramount
before Duck Soup,
which was in pre-production.

There was a script,
there were sets.
They were ready to go.

The Marx Brothers had decided
they were gonna film
the Kaufman-Ryskind

Pulitzer Prize-winning
play Of Thee I Sing.

They spent
a lot of time in New York
working on a script.

They were looking
for distribution.

It was all gonna be
their own company.

And they started
Marx Brothers Incorporated

basically to
produce their own films.

And their financing
never really comes through.

Meanwhile, Paramount is saying,

"Please come back
and do Duck Soup."

So, they went back
and they signed
a one-picture deal

just to make Duck Soup,
and then they
were free agents.

Oh, Your Excellency,
we've been
expecting you.

As Chairwoman of the
Reception Committee,

I extend the good wishes
of every man, woman
and child of Freedonia.

Never mind that
stuff. Take a card.

Card? What'll I do
with a card?

You can keep it.
I've got 51 left.
Now what were you saying?

Now they've come
with an even
better director,

Leo McCarey, for Duck Soup,

which is considered
their masterwork
at this particular time.

And it's a brilliant,
brilliant movie.

Leo McCarey came of age
at the Hal Roach
comedy studio in the 1920s.

When it was
the best comedy studio
in the world.

He knew comedy.
He understood sight gags.

He understood
the timing of gags.

He understood
the context of those gags.

And if you look at Duck Soup,

and you wanna isolate,

well, what's the best
sequence in Duck Soup
or what's...

You can't pick one!
There are too many.

Look, he's a spy
and I'm a spy.
He work for me.

I want him to find
out something
but he no find out

what I wanna find out.

Now how am I gonna
find out what
I wanna find out

if he no find out
what I gotta find out?

Will you quit annoying me?

All right, I quit.
All you gotta do is
make him stop doing this.

An interesting foil
for the Marx Brothers...

And I can't almost
think of anybody else

who gets the treatment,
is Edgar Kennedy,

another comedian.

And Edgar Kennedy's
comedy came from
the slow burn,

being a guy who gets angry
at the chaos happening.

And in the case of Duck Soup,
the chaos is
the Marx Brothers.

So, strangely enough,
he's not the Marx
Brothers' straight man.

He's not the guy, you know,
that's feeding them lines.

He's there to go (CHUCKLING)
mano-a-mano with Harpo
and just keep losing.

So, in a weird sense,
he is able to do
his funny Edgar Kennedy stuff,

at the same time
Harpo's doing his funny
anarchy stuff.

So, strangely enough,
it's maybe
the only time where I feel

like the Marx
Brothers share screen time

with another comic
that is treated fairly.

Each is allowed
to do the comedy
that they're famous for.

And when Harpo
rolls up his pants
and puts his feet

(BOTH CHUCKLING)

into Edgar Kennedy's
lemonade, it's so rude!

For Edgar Kennedy,
he's just trying
to make a living.

Yeah.

ALEXANDER: It's not easy
selling lemonade.

What is also
going on in Duck Soup

that makes it far above
all of the other films

is what Kalmar and Ruby
did with the music.

They were burlesquing
at the same time.

Burlesquing production
numbers in musicals.

Musicals were very big
at this particular time.

Take, for example,
the declaration of war.

Well, here, Kalmar and Ruby
use every musical style

that was known at this time.

I mean, you start with
Gilbert and Sullivan,
you move into operetta.

You move into jazz.
You move into
Negro spirituals.

You move into
square dancing, bebop.

It is amazing.

The enemy is coming!

There'll be two lamps
in the steeple if
they're coming by land

and one if they're
coming by sea.

They've double-crossed me.

They're coming by land and sea.

Also, Duck Soup
restores Margaret Dumont.
She's back.

Thank God she's
back as the widow

that they wanna get money from.

Rufus, what are you thinking of?

Oh, I was just thinking
of all the years I've
wasted collecting stamps.

(LAUGHING)

It's been pointed
out that Leo McCarey

removed most of
the musical components

from Duck Soup.

But actually,
the music is still there.

I feel the music is
there in the cutting.

Especially when
we go to war, we cut
the dolphins and all...

That crazy editing,
that jamboree
that concludes Duck Soup

is actually in
the Marx Brothers' spirit.

I mean, it's concocted
by McCarey,

but he knew what
he was dealing with,

and he knew what kind
of aura needed to be
created around these guys.

You swine!

Come again?
You worm!

Once more.
You upstart!

That's it!

Touche!

Mrs. Teasdale,
I'm afraid this
regrettable occurrence

may plunge our
countries into war.

Oh, this is terrible!

I've said enough.
I'm a man
of few words.

I'm a man of
one word. Scram!

Hitler came to power
while they were
making Duck Soup.

And I think that
that harmed Duck Soup
in its own time.

Even for the brothers
themselves.

Harpo was completely upset
with what was
going on in Europe,

and more upset that
many fellow Americans,
including many fellow Jews,

were not getting
what was going on.

He had come back from Russia.

And there was a lot of war cry.

And they had to make fun of war.

It was very difficult
for Dad because on his
way over to Russia,

he noticed all the anti-Semitism

that was cropping up
in Europe at that time.

So, it was a tough
movie for him to make.

Then it's war!
Gather the forces!

Harness the horses!

Then it's war!

It is a grand anti-war farce,

mocking the lunacy
that led to World War I.

And so, when the brothers are

(SINGSONG)
"To war, to war,"

they're spoofing
that grandiosity
that sparked World War I.

The army's morale is crumbling.

The men are breaking ranks.

Where's the Secretary of War?

That's it! Where is
the Secretary of War?

The soldiers are
waiting for his orders.

His Excellency,
the Secretary of War.

Awfully decent of
you to drop in today.

You realize
our army is facing
disastrous defeat?

What do you intend
to do about it?
I've done it already.

You've done what?
I've changed to
the other side.

So you're on the other side, eh?

Well, what are you
doing over here?

Well, the food
is better over here.

MALTIN: Duck Soup is so funny
and so wonderful,
so memorable,

and so repeatedly watchable.

It's hard to
imagine that anybody

would have
disliked it as intensely

as a lot of people did in 1933.

I've read the vintage reviews,

I've read the response
from theater owners

who used to send
in their reports

to the trade
papers and magazines.

People just didn't go for it.

Gentlemen,
Chicolini here may
talk like an idiot

and look like an idiot.

But don't let that fool you.

He really is an idiot.

It was ironic
for Groucho to say,

"Well, it was our biggest flop.

"We got kicked
out of Paramount."

Nothing like that happened.

It was a very good moneymaker.

It was a big success
all through 1934.

People think
the Marx Brothers didn't
do anything in 1934.

Duck Soup made
a lot of money
for Paramount.

It was released
in November of '33

and it was
playing in first-run
all through 1934.

It was a very successful film.

They had already
left Paramount
before they made it.

They did it as a compromise
in their dispute
with Paramount.

No, no, you don't.
I'm not taking
any more chances.

You can only fool
a Firefly twice.

This time you
ride in the sidecar.

It was in no way,
shape or form a flop.

And the Marx
Brothers were already gone
before it was released.

They were already
setting up their
own company.

So, there was
never any plan for them

to do a Paramount
picture after Duck Soup,

unless they signed
a new deal with Paramount.

This is the only way to travel.

The Marx Brothers
moved to Hollywood in 1931,

and, of course,
they took their
father with them.

He was sort of a lost
soul after Minnie died.

And, ultimately,
he got sicker and
he died in 1933.

They loved him.
He was like
another Marx Brother.

He was never
a parental
authority figure.

He couldn't bring himself
to be disciplining them.

I think he just wanted
to be a Marx Brother,
not a Marx father.

And when he died,
that was truly
the end of an era.

And, I think, in some way,

Zeppo's escape from the act
was now possible.

Because it would've
broken Frenchy's heart

for the four Marx Brothers
to be the three Marx Brothers.

MALTIN: I think Zeppo
got tired of being

sort of a mannequin
in the group.

Every other
member of that quartet

had a distinct and
colorful personality
except him.

There really isn't
enough love for Zeppo.

Well, there's
a problem there.
(CHUCKLES)

There is a problem,
that's why
everyone picks on him.

But Zeppo is better
than the people
who replaced Zeppo.

They're no longer a part
of the Marx Brothers.

Whereas Zeppo is a straight man,

Zeppo is one of
the young lovers,

or whatever the
minimal part that Zeppo
was given to play.

But he still feels
like one of them.

There's a looseness
and relaxedness

that he has when
he's talking to Groucho.

When he's talking to Groucho,
he's really
talking to his brother.

There's a looseness
and a sure-hand
quality to Zeppo

that I feel like
you don't get
when you cast

the young, leading guy,

the second rate leading guy...

Wait, you don't
like Kenny Baker?

Kenny Baker... Exactly.
Kenny Baker
is not Zeppo Marx.

BADER: Morrie Ryskind
said about Zeppo

that he would've
been successful
at anything he did,

and he was,
except being
a Marx Brother.

And he's good
when given the
opportunity to be good.

In Monkey Business,
they gave him so much to do

that he's actually
very good in the picture.

But there's also
a story about a reporter

visiting him on
the set of Duck Soup.

And Zeppo making
fun of himself saying,

"Oh, my God,
I think I have
a line to say.

"When am I gonna
do my line?"

It's hard to compare
the four Marx Brothers
with the three Marx Brothers,

because that
fourth Marx Brother
did so little of value.

That sounds cruel,
but it's the truth.

Groucho's public
response to Zeppo leaving
was typical Groucho.

When they were
negotiating with MGM

and Thalberg said,
"Well, now you're only
three Marx Brothers,"

Groucho said,
"Well, we're worth
more money without Zeppo."

They also saw it,
in a large part,
as the end of an era.

And it really
represented for them
that their parents were gone.

It was now going
to be the three
Marx Brothers.

Zeppo has been
emancipated, basically.

And I think they knew
that they could be
a success without him.

I mean, it was just
a little different,

but they certainly
can't point to having any
failures right after he left.

A Night at the Opera,
A Day at the Races

were hugely successful pictures.

And Zeppo became
a very successful agent.

So, in a sense,
maybe Minnie Marx

would've been proudest of Zeppo,

'cause he turned out
to be quite successful
at what she did.

BILL: I believe that
they were vaccinated

at a very early
age with survival.

And they didn't want to
let their careers
get away from them.

And they had to keep working,
'cause they loved working.

At the same time,
they knew that you
just couldn't stop.

You had to keep going
in some particular fashion.

And as long as
the money was there,

and as long as
the demand for them
was there,

they had to take
advantage of it.

They really didn't know
where they were going to go

as motion picture comedians.

And it was really when

Chico was playing cards
with Irving Thalberg,

the great producer at MGM,

that they got a second chance
with the movies.

Because Irving Thalberg believed

that their career
wasn't finished.

They just weren't
being handled properly,
which was actually quite true.

Irving Thalberg
told the brothers

when he was
inviting them to MGM,

"We'll only need half the laughs

"you got on your
Paramount pictures,

"but we'll have
twice the grosses."

And he was right.
In a funny way,

audiences were
more tradition-bound

to story in those days.

But the Marx Brothers,
without realizing it,

were ahead of their time.

Their kind of
hyper-kinetic bebop

actually reads today much better

than it even read then.

When they went to MGM,
they had learned

the idea of
the net-profit split
not being a very good one.

They got 15 percent of the gross

on the first
couple of MGM pictures.

So, they made real money there.

I think they made about $600,000

on the initial release
of A Night at the Opera

at the worst point
in the Depression.

So, years later, Groucho said,
"Yeah, those were
our best pictures."

I don't think
he was talking
about the comedy so much

as he was talking
about the receipts.

VANCE:
But it was sort of the
beginning of the end

for the Marx Brothers.

If they had made
their best movie
with Duck Soup,

they certainly equaled
it in a different way
with A Night at the Opera.

But after that,
it was a downward slope.

They lost their patron
in Irving Thalberg,

because of his untimely death.

And MGM was not
a great studio for comedy.

MALTIN: And nobody there
really understood
how to make the best

or the most of
the Marx Brothers' talents.

The later MGM movies,
they start getting
sweaty and desperate.

And we get those
elaborate third acts
with stuntmen.

And you got all the...
A big store,

the doubles on roller
skates in long shots.

And it's like that's
not even funny anymore.

It's not even
the Marx Brothers
anymore.

It's trying to hew to
conventions of all
the other comedians.

I mean, to make the Marxs funny,

you just need
a locked off medium
shot, and you're gold.

STEVE STOLIAR:
By the late '60s,

the baby boomer generation
had discovered
the Marx Brothers

and really embraced them

because they were anarchic
and they were
anti-establishment.

And it really appealed
to that whole frame of mind.

ANDY: Think of it,
late '60s, revolutionaries.

I mean, we were all
talking about this.

We wanted anarchy.

And who better to serve that
than the Marx Brothers.

STOLIAR:
You could see most of the

Marx Brothers films
on television.

And there were
a few revival houses.

But Animal Crackers,
their second film,

had not been seen in theaters
since a re-issue in the '50s,

and had never officially been
part of the distribution
package for television.

I think it had been shown
in a couple of markets

but, for the most part,
it was unseen.

And it turned out that
it was because
there was a legal snag

with that particular film

when the Paramount films
were sold to MCA
in the late '50s.

And, at the time,
it didn't seem as though

it made sense to
spend the money to clear

the rights to bring
out Animal Crackers.

I was a student at UCLA.

And my friends and I
started the Committee

for the Re-release
of Animal Crackers.

"CRAC" before it had
any nefarious
narcotic connotation.

And it was just
to show Universal

that it wasn't just
a handful of Marx Brothers

fanatics that
wanted to see this,

but that there were hundreds
and thousands of people

who wanted to see
Animal Crackers again.

There was kind of this
great age of discovery

where the stuff was
not available anywhere.

So, if there'd be
one of these theaters
in Hollywood or something,

where they're
doing a Marx Brothers

double feature, you'd go there.

Again, that was
pretty much it.
Very rarely, though.

You can see
evidence of how popular

Groucho and the Marx
Brothers had become.

There's a 1969 Dick Cavett
Show where Groucho's
the only guest.

And he said,
"I'm going to sing a song now
that I sang on a Pullman car."

And the audience goes crazy,

'cause they know
he's going to sing
Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

And he waits for
the applause to die down,

and he says,
"Now why are you
applauding a Pullman car?

"They don't even
make those anymore."

So, they already knew.
They were already
hanging on his every word.

CAVETT: We had to inform
Groucho, educate Groucho

to the fact that he
was wildly popular

and so were all
the movies on campuses.

They would sell
out at film festivals
of the Marx Brothers movies.

STOLIAR: Groucho
came to UCLA,

which was just
a colossal thrill.

And then when we were
talking to the press,

they said, "So, Groucho,
what's your
favorite of them?"

"Oh, I think Animal Crackers.
And A Night at the Opera,
Day at the Races."

He kind of made room
for the Paramount
films when he saw

how tightly we embraced them

and I think he looked at them
and rediscovered
how great they were

'cause I think he
had to come at it from,

"Where was this
in my career?"

And Groucho really
expressed surprise,

he felt pretty much forgotten
around that time.

One night, I went to a party
and my grandfather
was there and I came in,

and I thought, "Oh, great.
I'm gonna do all
my routines for him

"and he's gonna think
that's really funny."

I started doing
the routines
and he basically

kind of started
scolding me, and he said,

"I don't wanna talk about...
That's the past,
I don't wanna talk about that.

"I don't wanna talk
about old stuff that I dd.""

And again, this was around 1970,

but it was sort of
funny how at first,

he just felt like,
"I'm just another old guy

"talking about
my past career."

And then he got his
Oscar and everything,

and then he really got into it.

Not long after that,
Universal said,

"Okay, we will clear the rights

"and we'll bring it
out in one theater in LA
and one in New York,"

but it ended up
breaking the house record

that had been set by
The French Connection
several years earlier.

I was in the crowd
outside the
United Artists theater

with all the people
with the boxes
of animal crackers

throwing them back
and forth and everyone
dressed up as Groucho.

And Groucho showed
up and he got mobbed.

This old man just
being smothered
by people in their 20s.

He was mobbed and
it was dangerous
and there were pictures

in the tabloids and
New York papers of him

looking quite frightened
with people all around him.

They almost
crushed him to death
out of love for him,

but still he would
have been just as dead
had they succeeded.

But that brought
it home to him, too.

Something sweet, I guess,
is the wrong word,

about his not
knowing that he was a hero

to thousands and
thousands of young folks.

STOLIAR: It did very well
and then they
struck prints

and it played all over
America and finally
was on television.

And it really helped
propel that Groucho

and the Marx
Brothers renaissance
well into the 1970s.

And then he passed away in '77.

The Marx Brothers
films at Paramount
were 68 minutes, 72 minutes,

they're short,
they're really quick.

But there's so
much packed in there.

They just get a lot of bang
for their buck
on those pictures.

They're nothing
but great comedy.

There's never
a scene where somebody

isn't doing something funny
in Monkey Business
or Duck Soup.

Maybe Zeppo was
the key to the whole thing.

They were never funnier
than when they were
the four Marx Brothers

at Paramount with Zeppo.

There's some legitimacy
to that argument.

They worked better as a quartet.

And there was just
a great sounding board

for Groucho to
work off of Zeppo,

which he never had again.

"Hungerdunger."

"Hunga..."
"Hunga... Hun."

"That's it.
"Hungerdunger."
"Hungerdunger."

"In care of Hungerdunger,
Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger
and McCormick."

Whenever it's on television,

I feel sorry for people
who've only seen them there

and haven't had
the audience around them
roaring and adoring and...

I can't think of
a third rhyme for that.

Certainly not "deploring."

Sometimes, if you watch
something following
a Marx Brothers movie,

it feels like it's
moving in slow motion.

You cannot believe how frenetic

a Marx Brothers movie is moving.

MANDEL: And, again, not
scared to just keep going,
as opposed to stopping to go,

"Do you see
what we're doing here,
audience?

"We're just going."
And you kind of
go with it or not.

And, again, I do
draw that line right
to things like Seinfeld.

As I say,
I was sitting
in front of the cabin

when I bagged six tigers.

Oh, Captain!
Six of them
biggest...

Captain, did you
catch six tigers?

I bagged them.
I... I bagged them
to go away,

but they hung around
all afternoon.

There's so many
ups and downs in the

Marx Brothers'
relatively sparse
film career.

Say, Ravelli,

you couldn't
put the maid
in your room, eh?

What makes you think I couldn't?

It's a shame.
It's almost a crime

that there aren't more
Marx Brothers
movies for us to enjoy.

But the good
thing about it is that

you can watch
those films that remain

over and over and over again.

As I do, as many people do,
and never tire of them.

And now, I want you to meet
the sweetest little thing

in the whole wide world.

VANCE: They were such
original creations
in their way.

I mean, sure,
they came out
of a theatrical

tradition that's as old as time.

But they seemed to
give it a fresh face.

It's not just the wit
and the wildness of it,

it's just a really
perverse combination
that is uniquely their own,

that has not been
captured by anyone else.

And, for that reason,
when you're unhappy
and you need a tonic

and you want to retreat
from the unpleasantness
of the present,

you have these
wonderful comedies
from the past.

And I think they will continue
to be wonderful films,

because I don't think
anyone is going
to surpass them.

MANDEL: They were comedians
who were just really

only concerned
with making you laugh.

So, all the comedy
out there that seems

to have, sometimes,
different agendas...

They're not concerned
with any other agenda.

They were simply
trying to be just funny.

And you cannot
not laugh at
a Marx Brothers movie.

And that's their legacy.

I'd like to think that
they're still popular

for the reason
that they are unique

in their approach and view
toward human behavior.

And that they were
able to express that
for 50, 60 years.

Pretty good.

I'll take that anytime.