Oct

29

A Day at the Races

Filed Under Sunrise on KGMB9 

If the mere name Hugo Z. Hackenbush makes you smile, chances are, you’re a fan of the Marx Brothers.

I revisited their hit movie “A Day at the Races” last night and refreshed my view that these are some of the best comedies ever made.

Groucho plays a veterinarian masquerading as a doctor to help the heroine save her sanitarium (the term used in those days for a health spa) with the “assistance” of Chico, who drives the sanitarium van when he’s not conning people at the race track, and Harpo, a jockey who has been beaten by the bad guy for not throwing a race.

“Marry me and I’ll never look at another horse!” Groucho says to professional dowager Margaret Dumont, whom he earlier diagnoses as having “double blood pressure” — high blood pressure on one side and low blood pressure on another. At another point Groucho tries to take Harpo’s pulse and says, “Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.”

The fourth Marx Brother, Zeppo, who played the romantic lead in the first five movies (”The Cocoanuts,” sic, “Horse Feathers,” “Animal Crackers,” “Monkey Business” and “Duck Soup,” though I may have the order wrong), agreed with the general view that he wasn’t as talented as his brothers and quit to become an agent. Allen Jones, who sang “The Donkey Serenade” and fathered “Love Boat” theme singer Jack Jones, replaced him for “A Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races,” and was far better than Zeppo, but ironically all of the leading men who succeeded him were so bad that even Zeppo would have been an improvement.

The first movies were based on the Marx Brothers’ hit shows on Broadway, and were dense with gags because the brothers adlibbed to keep from getting bored, then kept any new stage business that worked. George S. Kauffman, the playwright, famously stood at the back of the house and murmured to his musical collaborator one night, “I could have sworn I just heard one of the original lines.” But “A Day at the Races” and “A Night at the Opera” were written especially for the movies. They were still very funny but had better story lines, music and choreography. Subsequent movies by the brothers, such as “Go West,” “The Big Store,” and “At the Circus,” failed to live up to the high standard, though they were still funnier than most other people’s best work.

Comments

Leave a Reply