In the Paramount films, Harpo was genuinely differently abled. You could never be sure if he didn’t talk because he couldn’t, or because he simply found it a superfluous means of communication that he’d evolved beyond. Perhaps the worst moment in Marx Brothers history was when Irving Thalberg reduced Harpo to doing charades to get a message through to Chico in A Day at the Races. At that moment, Harpo became disabled: he clearly wanted to talk, he couldn’t, and his lack of speech, from then on, was a handicap.
Groucho: Matter enough! Do you know who sneaked into my stateroom at 3:00 this morning?
Captain: Who did that?
Groucho: Nobody - and that’s my complaint. I’m young, I want gaiety, laughter, hotcha-cha! I want to dance until the cows come home!
Captain: Just what do you mean by this?
Groucho: Another thing, I don’t care for the way you’re running this boat. Why don’t you get in back seat for awhile and let your wife drive?
Captain: I want you to know I’ve been captain of this ship for 22 years!
Groucho: 22 years, huh? If you were a man, you’d go into business for yourself. I know a fella started last year with just a canoe; now he’s got more women than he can shake a stick at, if that’s you’re idea of a good time!
“you’ll bring in the opera and they’ll let you into high society… then you’ll marry me, and they’ll kick you out of high society… and all you’ll be out is 12 thousand dollars.”
“i’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening… and this wasn’t it”
“i’m Maurice Chevalier… if the nightengales could sing like you…”
“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”
And the following are from I’ll Say She Is, the Broadway show that got the film career rolling. The full script can be found here.
Groucho: You are going to be convicted of murder.
Beauty: What makes you so confident?
Groucho: I’m going to be your lawyer.
“How do you do your honor. I am here to convict a beautiful woman of murder in the first degree, homicide in the second degree, and suicide in the third degree. Let me know when I get to seventy degrees. Are you with me? Here’s a dollar on account. I would explain this case but what’s the use. He wouldn’t understand it, you wouldn’t understand it, and I wouldn’t understand it. I am certainly glad to before a Judge whose hand has never been tainted by the lure of gold. A man who is not only unbiased and unemotional but is practically unconscious.”
“Oh, you’re a dancer! Do you know this one?” (kicks his legs over his head in a strange jig)
(head trapped in a pot) “This hasn’t happened since the last time I crawled under a bed!” (I had to explain to my girlfriend what a chamber pot was – I dumped her shortly after)
“A telegram?”
Harpo grabs it, looks at it, and throws it to the floor angrily.
“He gets upset because he can’t read.”
“Hey, you big bully! What’s the idea of picking on this little bully?”
