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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.