Make that 3 hard-boiled eggs!
Hate to admit it, but this thread brings up a bit of a difficult subject for me.
Growing up, I was a huge Marx Brothers fan. Way before I experienced Monty Python as a teen, regaled everyone I met with a gale of Marxian humor. I would have steadfastly maintained that their movies were about as good as comedy ever got.
That is - until I recently started sharing them with my kids.
First was A Day at the Races. Some clever bits, and the great lines I remembered, but a whole lot of slow parts in between. Well, maybe I misremembered its place in the pantheon, and the kids were perhaps still a bit young.
Next up, Night at the Opera. Here comes this great bit - you know how I always say “There ain’t no sanity clause?” Silence. This stateroom scene is a classic. Crickets. And what’s with this lame-o opera singing? Damn. I’m dying here.
More recently, Night in Casablanca. A few brief moments of mild amusement interrupted by great swaths of tedium. Who recommended renting this?
After 3 swings and 3 misses, I’m hesitant to bring Duck Soup to the plate. Both for my kids’ experience and my own memories…
I tell you - in a way it is better to rent a newly released comedy and say “It wasn’t that bad,” than to rent what you remember as a classic, only to wonder what you had been thinking.
I love 'em all, but for me it’s probably Horse Feathers or A Day at the Races.
Doctor Hackinapuss!
A night at the opera is my all time favorite (possibly because it’s the forst one i ever saw and it holds a special place in my heart for introducing me to them).
See, you’re starting out with the slower, neutered MGM stuff, which has moments of brilliance surrounded by great glutinous marshes of Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle, and the Marxes being all heartwarming and avuncular.
The Paramounts, that’s the way to go.
Eve, you’ve never steered me wrong, so I’ll boldly march back into the fray.
But I tell you, it was a shocking and troubling experience.
Sounds like a healthy serving of Duck Soup all around this weekend!
Eve is so right. I made the mistake of starting out with A Night at the Opera with my kids, and they pretty well wandered out of the room.
“Wait! Wait! They’re about to start hiding from the detective! It gets better, I swear! See, ‘Which question do you want me to answer first, Henderson,’ that’s a GREAT LINE!”
Gave them an 8-month haitus and dropped Duck Soup on them, quickly following up with Horse Feathers and Monkey Business. Now they’re right.
I personally like Animal Crackers best…it’s all stagey and New Yorky.
Damn! Double teamed by Eve and Ike!
Now there’s a mandate if I ever encountered one!
The whole family is gonna watch some Paramount Marx Brothers and LIKE IT, damn it!
The Paramount films are the best, with Horsefeathers, Monkey Business, and Duck Soup in the lead. The filmed plays don’t make the transition well, even beyond the primitive talkie camera that grinds every scene to a halt.
But A Night at the Opera has scenes that are as good or better than in any of the Paramount movies.
To achieve them, though, we have to endure the way Thalberg deliberately and thoroughly destroyed the Brothers’ comedy, just as he had earlier destroyed Keaton and others.
Groucho the college president, the president of an entire country is now and forever a cheap hustler and swindler. Harpo is no longer a pixie that doesn’t need words to be understood but an idiot mute. Chico mumbles fractured Italian puns from the sidelines instead of instigating the action. And Zeppo disappears to be replaced with pretty boy faces who can’t imagine being on the same screen with the Marxes, let alone abetting their mischief.
No film afterward is worth watching in its entirety, and you couldn’t splice together a full-length film of the good bits.
Thalberg is always given credit for saving their career, and it’s true that Night and Day made big money while Duck Soup was a relative bomb. But you have to think that almost any other career path they might have taken would have been better for them in the long term.
I almost chimed in earlier in this thread with my 2 cents but I noticed you hadn’t gotten here yet Exapno so I thought I would wait. As always you put it better than I ever could.
And now I give you a fifteen minute standing ovation. 
Pixie, hell, he was a satyr!
And don’t get me started on how MGM bought Jeanette MacDonald from Paramount and sewed her vagina shut.
Is that how Edith Head started her career? 
In the following order:
-
**Duck Soup ** (“And remember, we’re fighting for this woman’s honor, which is more than she’s ever done.”)
-
Horse Feathers
-
Monkey Business
-
A Night at the Opera
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Animal Crackers
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A Day at the Races
To be fair to Thalberg, though, he was making movies for his time, and the Marx Brothers themselves loved what he did with them, and greatly mourned him when he died. Although I (and most people here, apparently) enjoy the Paramounts more than the MGMs, you can’t judge Thalberg on the grounds of how well his movies fit into a post-Monty Python world (for want of a better term).
I know that you’re no newbie to the Marxes, so I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t know, but there was an incredible amount of work put into making Opera the best movie it could be by everyone (to the extent of timing laughter after each joke during the stage version and inserting the appropriate pause in the movie), and although on any given night I’d probably rather see Duck Soup or Monkey Business, Opera was a great movie for its time.
Groucho’s character doesn’t change from the Paramounts to the early MGMs - it does later on, but that’s long after Thalberg’s gone. He’s always a hustler who just happens to be put into ridiculous social situations. The running joke with Margaret Dumont is the best demonstration of this - she’s always the woman who should know better, but for whatever reason, trusts Groucho way more than she should, putting him in a position where he can do the maximum damage. Opera certainly carries on this tradition.
This definitely happens, but no way can you say that about his work in Opera - he’s every bit the satyr (great word, Eve!)
Here’s one I’ll agree with you - his buddy buddy scene with Allan Jones is a shocker. He’s still got the party of the first part, though.
You can’t blame Zeppo’s disappearance on anyone other than the Marxes themselves.
Opera and Races, if you fast forward some of the songs, are still very watchable. It gets worse from there, but I’m still not getting rid of my Marx Brothers MGM DVD collection.
Except that if they had another bomb after Duck Soup, there’s a good chance there would never have been another Marx Brothers movie at all. It’s not like there was a booming independent cinema market at the time. We can wish the later movies were better, but (not wanting to damn with faint praise) they’re certainly FAR better than nothing, which probably would have been the alternative.
Hah. Get this, I recently bought the MGM DVD collection as my introduction to the Marx brothers. I watched a few movies (A night at the opera, A day at the races, A night in Casablanca) and enjoyed them muchly. It was after I looked up their biography on the net that I discovered that their Paramount material is what I should have gotten in the first place.
However! I ordered the Paramount collection (including Cocoanuts) and it should arrive in the mail today. I will now look forward to watching their prime material, I feel like a kid at christmas.
A night at the Opera is the one with the contract, right? That one, then.
It’s been too long since I watched any Marx, I’ll have to do something about it.
genius delivery.
Not to mention “How we happen to come to America is a great story, but I no tell that.”
DUCK SOUP! Hand’s down. Even funnier if you think of Groucho singing the Administration song about the current US administartion. (I know he isn’t but still)
“If any form of pleasure is exibited Report to me and it will be prohibited I’ll put my foot down, so shall it be This is the land of the free”
Night at the Opera. Then Day at the Races. Then maybe Duck Soup.