Newbies in a crazy world Marx Brothers should know that their earliest films for Paramount were, first and foremost, demonstrations of the actions that the brothers had perfected in vaudeville. Camera, design and even directing fade into the background. Groucho, ChicoAnd Harpo (And Zeppo, formally) speak, sing and dance. Movies deliver laughter, but with unremarkable and sometimes faulty technical support. Over time, the Marxes developed material for the screen, and the filmmakers around them made greater use of the language and possibilities of the mass media, leading to spectacle. cine comedy episodes duck soup. But the careful and deliberate selection of behind-the-scenes talent that you would expect from big stars like the Marx Brothers wasn’t shown to them until after they signed with MGM and Irving Thalberg.
During their lifetime, the Marx Brothers’ move to Tiffany’s Hollywood studio was seen as a coup. Night at the Opera And A day at the races were their two most successful films at the box office and were considered by many to be their best for a time. Groucho claimed that this was the case for the rest of his life. But as the young countercultural audience rediscovered the Marx Brothers in the 1960s and 1970s, the standard party line regarding Marxist filmography began to change. duck soup was now their best achievement. Night at the Opera earned some of its accolades, but the MGM Marx films were increasingly seen as a wrong turn. The studio and Thalberg took no-holds-barred gonzo comedians and turned them into eccentric do-gooders in low-quality musical “comedies” that pandered to MGM’s “respectable” audience. And who would prefer that to their cruder shenanigans at Paramount?
Since then, this has remained the accepted view of the Marx Brothers among many classic film fans, and there are enough comments on this score to color the perception of their films by audiences unaware for the first time of the reasons for the Marxes’ break with Paramount and the change in style. So what was behind this move, and did it lead to the greatest triumph of the brothers or to the beginning of their decline?
The Marx Brothers left Paramount at a critical time in their film career
The Marx Brothers arrived in Hollywood relatively late. The eldest, Chico, was in his 40s when they coconuts in 1929; Zeppo, the youngest, was about 30. The brothers spent their youth on stage. In the often unforgiving world of vaudeville, they made a name for themselves and created the characters that drove their comedy: the mustachioed and caustic wit Groucho, the ethnic con man Chico, the mischievous and silent clown Harpo and Zeppo… well, he brought them to four hyped brothers. And when they first started making films for Paramount, they kept their established theatrical skills firmly in mind. coconutsand 1930s Animal Crackers, were adaptations of Marx’s Broadway shows. These two films were filmed in New York by the Marks. coconuts at the same time they performed a stage version Animal Crackersand not a single film was given much money or thought other than to shoot a number on celluloid.
The films were so successful that Paramount invited the Marks to Hollywood, where they were given new screenwriters and a bit more talent invested in filmmaking. Their scripts were now being written for the screen, and some material was borrowed or adapted from stage or radio programs. The comedy was still in the same vein as Marx’s earlier work: loose plot (sometimes Very loose) threw the brothers against everyone and everything, including against each other. Their individual stunts and various combinations of the act showed no mercy in seeking laughter. Groucho, Chico and Harpo terrorized the other passengers of the ocean liner in Pointless work (Zeppo has an affair with a girl); they burned Huxley College to the ground (literally, in a lost scene) in a college parody horse feathers; and in military photo dispatch duck soupevery aspect of war and government, good and bad, has been forged.
All of these films have jumps, breaks in continuity, holes in the narrative, and dead ends (which is worse for horse feathers censored for many years). They also have some of the best programs the Marx Brothers have ever made. This was the period when they acted out the famous mirror scene, later recreated in i love lucy. It was then that Groucho uttered such gems as “Remember that you are fighting for the honor of this woman, who is probably more than she ever was!” horse feathers has two of the band’s best musical numbers, “I’m Against It” and “Everybody Says I Love You”, the latter fits into the plot so that all four brothers get a move with it.
Contrary to some reports, neither was a box office flop either. But they were diminishing returns, and duck soup provoked a particularly hostile public reaction, which premiered at the height of the Great Depression. If the comedy wasn’t considered offensive in the current economic and political climate, it was considered a repeat of previous films. Its production was taking place while the brothers and Paramount were negotiating a new contract. The Marx brothers showed slightly more respect for authority in life than in character, and the Depression did nothing to make Paramount’s bosses more generous and friendly. After duck soup was released, a new studio executive came in who didn’t like the Marx Brothers. The feeling was mutual, and for the rest of 1933 the Marx Brothers had no studio (and no junior member; as soon as their contract expired, Zeppo left).
Irving Thalberg Introduced the Marx Brothers to Structure
So, now the three Marx brothers, middle-aged, survived the depression without a contract with the studio. Critical and financial indicators duck soup left Groucho wondering if it would be better for him to become a solo comic actor. Harpo was sent on a goodwill tour of Russia. And Chico gambled, and while gambling he came across Irving Thalberg.
Thalberg, a Hollywood prodigy, was a studio manager at Universal in his 20s, and in his 30s ran MGM as a production manager. He catered to public tastes while indulging his own, had a firm hand on MGM stars and directors, and never gave himself credit, even when personally producing a film. He wasn’t looking for the Marxes for his studio when he and Chico played cards together, but when Chico said he didn’t think he and his brothers were as fucked up as critics said, Thalberg agreed. “You were mistreated,” he said.
Through Chico, Thalberg summoned the brothers and explained his ideas about film and comedy. As funny as Marx’s Paramount films were, he said they had too many jokes. They arrived so quickly that the audience missed one and laughed at the other. And if the joke did not come across, then in the dilapidated plot or the brothers’ still indecipherable clowning there was nothing for which the public could cling. The deal he offered to the Marxes? “You make me laugh and I tell you a story.”
The story that Thalberg had in mind he compared to a football match. He wanted the opposing teams’ houses and teams to be visible to spectators, and he wanted the end zone to be uncluttered. And the most exciting games to watch were those in which the home team seemed doomed to lose, only to turn the tables with a spectacular performance late in the fourth quarter. Familiar characters Groucho, Chico and Harpo might have remained as they were, but now they would be a group of unfortunate characters who befriend a young couple in trouble, find themselves similarly stalked by the hard ones, and then unite into their very own. a dark moment to set things right - with the help of comedy, of course.
Did the Thalberg structure help or hurt the Marx brothers?
Thalberg was never a healthy person, he only lived to see two films by the Marx Brothers. Night at the Opera And A day at the races (he died while the latter was in production). As with later Paramount films, they feature some of the brothers’ most beloved footage. Night at the Opera there’s a sanity clause, a cabin scene, and a raucous ending. A day at the races the trio exposes their long-suffering widow Margaret Dumont to a ridiculous medical examination. As noted above, they made MGM a lot of money. But the studio’s three films about Marx made after Thalberg’s death, each reworking the play he had developed to some extent, represented another set of diminishing returns, and this time it wasn’t just because the films hadn’t kept pace with once; they weren’t good.
Is this proof that Thalberg’s instincts for the Marx brothers were wrong, that they all just got lucky the first two times? By this logic Steven Spielberg guilty of every terrible shark movie made since Jaws. But there’s not much point in blaming a talented director when second-rate imitators don’t translate their ideas well. The demise of the Marx Brothers on screen had more to do with a lack of enthusiasm for anyone. But Thalberg was for them at MGM. The Marxes, who got on well with their producer, felt their enthusiasm for films waned after his death. Even without a champion, by the 30s, the age of the brothers affected their films.
As to whether Thalberg’s treatment of the Marx brothers creatively wrong - well, it’s a matter of taste, isn’t it? I liken the gap between the Paramount and Thalberg-MGM pictures in Marx’s filmography to the difference between Bob Clampett Funny melodies cartoons and those Chuck Jones. They both made funny animated shorts, both worked with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny (who was partly modeled after Groucho Marx), but their approaches to comedy were very different.
Clampett, like the Paramount Marx films, admired anarchy. His caricatures are wild, thinly plotted, quick-firing in their jokes and indecipherable in their aims. Jones was more like Thalberg. He relied on structure and template, he was more inclined to score his films (even if it was stupid), and he always made sure Bugs was at least the offended party, using his comic gift as bait. weapons against hooligans and braggarts.
You can find a lot of disagreement about whether Clampett and Jones’ cartoons are better (fueled by their own rivalry), but few would argue that either one’s work can’t be fun. They are one of the most popular and influential Funny melodies short films that shape their reputation and perception among viewers to this day. Personally, I lean more towards Jones (and Night at the Opera above any of the Paramount Marx films), but that doesn’t make Clampett’s cartoons “wrong” or unfunny.
Similarly, it’s better to treat the studio’s split with the Marx Brothers. If the pendulum has swung in the direction of Paramount films, this should not color the perception of Thalberg’s work with the brothers as a mistake or an aberration.
Source: Collider
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