Such thinking isn\u2019t going anywhere anytime soon, but it\u2019s especially baffling when it comes to the Marx Brothers, who have proven one of the more venerable acts of the classic Hollywood era. Beloved but by no means dominant in their heyday (they had their hits, but never generated the kind of blockbuster box office that, say, their Paramount colleague Mae West did), the Marxes \u2013 especially Groucho \u2013 experienced a second wave of popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s; alongside such similarly anti-establishment figures as Humphrey Bogart and W.C. Fields, they were reappropriated as counter-culture figures, with their 1933 political satire Duck Soup<\/em> proving a particularly popular selection among the campus anti-war crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That second wave of popularity led to the splashy 1974 re-release of Animal Cracker<\/a>s<\/em>, their 1930 sophomore feature, and the oldest film in the Criterion Marx collection. The exclusion of their debut, The Cocoanuts<\/em> (1929), is a bit baffling, though the picture itself is a mixed bag \u2013 full of funny bits and well-executed routines, but suffering from that self-conscious airlessness of many early talking pictures. It amounts to a filmed performance, cameras pointed at the Marxes as they perform this script, as they had for nearly three years on Broadway and on tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They had similarly perfected Animal Crackers <\/em>on the New York stage, but talking picture technology had come a long way in the year between the films\u2019 productions, and director Victor Heerman mounts their second movie much more comfortably \u2013 the camera occasionally moves<\/em>, the coverage and cutting are appropriate, and there\u2019s a spark in the brothers\u2019 performances that is somewhat absent in Cocoanuts<\/em>. (Animal Crackers<\/em> also had a much shorter run on Broadway, so they presumably weren\u2019t as tired of the material.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of which is to say that its roots aren\u2019t still readily apparent. Animal Crackers<\/em> is full of the trappings of the stage musical, from the frequent musical numbers to the not-at-all-convincing single location of the Rittenhouse estate, where the widow Rittenhouse (the team\u2019s great foil, Margaret Dumont) is hosting a fancy society weekend to welcome back the famous African explorer, Captain Jeffrey Spaulding (Groucho). He gets a big entrance song, for the first time \u2013 a trend that would continue in \u201cHorse Feathers,\u201d \u201cDuck Soup,\u201d and (though it was cut from the final film) \u201cA Day at the Races\u201d \u2013 and it\u2019s a pip, the deservedly famous \u201cHurray for Captain Spaulding,\u201d with an interlude of the equally deservedly famous \u201cHello, I Must Be Going.\u201d (The snappy songs are by the great team of Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zeppo, the crew\u2019s straight man, is Spaulding\u2019s personal secretary, Horatio Jamison; Chico is Signor Emanuel Raveli, hired to provide music for the weekend, and Harpo is his \u201cpartner,\u201d known only as \u201cThe Professor.\u201d The opening sequence efficiently encapsulates what each of the brothers did well: Groucho does puns and patter, Chico shows up and joins him for a clever verbal bit, and then mute Harpo arrives for some physical comedy. (Zeppo, uh, introduces Groucho.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this, really, was the genius of the Marx Brothers: comically speaking, they offered something for everyone. Groucho did fast-talking intellectual humor; Chico, speaking in malapropisms and broken English, did broad, dumb-guy comedy; Harpo was a throwback to the great silent clowns. It was an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that went back to their early days in vaudeville, where they not only developed those characters, but Chico\u2019s piano solos and Harpo\u2019s harp numbers, the variety-show specialties that stayed a part of the act throughout their film careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of their films are also burdened by a \u201cstraight\u201d romantic subplot that\u2019s usually a real snooze, though Animal Crackers <\/em>is lifted somewhat by leading lady Lillian Roth; she\u2019s clearly having a good time mouthing inane dialogue like \u201cSomebody swiped my scheme<\/em>, eh,\u201d and it\u2019s infectious. And the feeling of watching the Marxes do a play isn\u2019t entirely absent; in one sequence, what was apparently a spontaneous fumble of character names has been worked into the permanent script, seemingly to preserve Groucho\u2019s ad-lib to the audience (\u201cCould I look at a program for a minute?\u201d), and other fourth-wall breaks are present as well (the most direct follows a particularly strained gag: \u201cWell all the jokes can\u2019t be good, you\u2019ve got to expect that once in a while!\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n A tangle of rights questions led Animal Crackers<\/em> to briefly disappear from circulation in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving it out of the rotation of TV airings and screenings that led to the Marx revival of the period, so a group of young fans (led by Steve Stollar, who later became Groucho\u2019s personal archivist and wrote a wonderful book<\/a> about the experience) gathered signatures and pressed Universal to restore and re-release the film. And it was rediscovered again<\/em> a few years back, when a BFI print was discovered of the original 1930 release version; all existing prints and releases were of a 1936 recut, with a handful of jokes (a minute or so in total) excised to comply with the Hays Code. (Unfortunately, Criterion is streaming the post-Code version. You can\u2019t win \u2018em all.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what is it about this team that keeps them not only funny, but relevant? One scene in Animal Crackers<\/em> may hold the key, in which Groucho finds himself trapped in a conversation with Roscoe W. Chandler (Louis Sorin), a fancy-pants art dealer with a comically overblown sense of his own importance. And our guy absolutely filets<\/em> this stuffed-shirt, peppering him with leading questions and deflating his answers, then sharing his bemusement with his audience: \u201cThis fellow takes things seriously. It isn\u2019t safe to ask him a simple question!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That Chico and Harpo have already unmasked Chandler as a fraud, a former fish peddler putting on airs and masquerading as a member of high society, gives an extra level of satisfaction to the exchange. But that simple statement, that shared, winking acknowledgment from Groucho to viewer, is in many ways the Marx ethos encapsulated: anyone misguided enough to take anything<\/em> seriously should not only be mocked, but mercilessly. \u201cAnimal Crackers\u201d is now streaming on The Criterion Channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/animal-crackers2-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/animal-crackers3-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n