Worst Marx Brothers Movie??

[MondoFW]

Hey guys,

Browsing Xfinity home, I noticed that Room Service (1938) was free for a limited time. I've heard many agree this is one of their worst pictures. This made me think, what do Loungers think is the worst? It seems like after the early 30's, their stuff really declined. I think of the most discussions I've had with people about this, the most unpopular movie has been Love Happy (1949), their last picture, starring, amazingly, Marilyn Monroe.

 

[Zombie_61]

Part of the reason "their stuff really declined" was that their contract with Paramount (the company that produced their first five movies) had expired, and was not renewed. Not long after that Irving Thalberg convinced them (except for Zeppo who, with his brother Milton "Gummo" Marx, had started their own talent agency) to sign with MGM. The problem was that Thalberg insisted on scripts with "strong story structure" that included romantic plots and non-comedic musical numbers that didn't really allow the brothers to exhibit the "free for all" antics seen in the Paramount movies, and the end result was movies that weren't quite as funny but still popular. They left MGM in 1937 after Thalberg died in 1936, made one movie for RKO (Room Service), then returned to MGM for the next three movies, after which they announced they were retiring. Four years later Chico persuaded Groucho and Harpo to make two more movies so he could earn enough money to pay off his gambling debts, so A Night in Casablanca (1946) and Love Happy (1949) were produced by United Artists.

So which is the worst? I'd have to agree with Love Happy for the simple reason that it's the least "Marx Brothers like" movie; in fact, the three brothers never appear on screen together. Groucho hated the movie, and in his autobiography "Groucho and Me" he refers to A Night in Casablanca as his final movie with his brothers.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Reminds me to go have another look at these films. I saw most of their movies in the early 1980's but I barely remember them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing with "Room Service" is that it really isn't a Marx Brothers movie -- it's a movie that the Marx Brothers are in, but it was based on a hit Broadway show that they had nothing to do with and never appeared in on stage. The script was rewritten to add in "Marxish" bits here in there, but there was nothing inherently Marxian about the characters or the plot, and it could just as easily have featured the Ritz Brothers. The Marxes got involved in it as a way of making some fast cash, and that was about it.

I'm not fond of any of the films they made after leaving Paramount. "Night At The Opera," despite containing some classic individual bits, makes me furious for the way the picture completely misunderstands the essence of Harpo by trying to turn him into a "sympathetic" character. Harpo needs pathos like I need a velocipede. "Day At The Races" also has its moments but it's also full of tiresome subplots and arbitrary musical numbers that distract from the comedy. And they just go downhill from there -- in contrast to the Paramounts, where the more senseless the plots were the funnier the pictures became. You can sum them up on the back of an envelope -- "Stowaways run wild on a ship." "Groucho is president of a college." "Groucho becomes a dictator." The MGM's on the other hand are so plotty and so full of extraneous characters and unneccessary subplots that the comedy seems like something shoved in after the fact. MGM never understood the essence of their act -- they had made their names on Broadway starring in *parodies* of musical-comedy conventions, but Metro insisted in putting them in films that took those conventions stone-faced-seriously. No, no, no.

My choice for the worst of the worst in the Marx canon would be either "At The Circus" or "The Big Store." I don't think either of these pictures have much to recommend them, and I guess the final verdict for worseness would be how much you can't stand Kenny Baker's performance versus Tony Martin's performance as the substitute for Zeppo in each film.

"Night in Casablanca" is no worse to my eyes than the last two MGM pictures, and "Love Happy" actually has some moments I like despite, or because of, it being a cheesy Grade Z picture. The bit with Harpo escaping from hoods by riding away on a neon Mobilgas Flying Red Horse is inspired, even though it's only there because the producer had to sell ad space in the last reel of the picture because he'd run out of money.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Gotta agree: it's all downhill really fast after the Paramount films. A Night at the Opera is the only one of their M-G-M films I can stand to watch these days... and sadly, since as Lizzie said, it misguidedly set the template that sank them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Of course, a lot of that has to do with the fact that MGM was by far the worst studio for comedian-centered comedy of any of them. This is the studio that systematically destroyed Buster Keaton by resolutely refusing to understand what his whole point was, and finally deciding that it was a good idea to try and turn him and Jimmy Durante into a comedy team. Durante was the kind of comic who needed a partner to appear to his best advantage -- as proven by his 1940s radio partnership with Garry Moore -- but Keaton was precisely the wrong type of performer to be that partner. How do you take a guy who never shuts up and pair him with someone who carries his own silence with him and think that's a good idea? But MGM did.

The Brothers would have actually been better served by going to RKO in 1933 instead of MGM, since that studio had a proven track record in producing decent anarchic-comedy films with Wheeler and Woolsey. But Chico's card-playing crony was Irving Thalberg, not Merian C. Cooper, so MGM was a foregone conclusion.

And it's also important to note that the creation of the Breen Office in 1934 would have probably been a death blow to the Marxes even if they'd stayed at Paramount or moved to RKO instead of Metro. Breen had no use for the kind of nose-thumbing at Constituted Authority that was their stock in trade, and they would have ended up gelded under his regime no matter where they signed. Socially-subversive comedy at every studio was essentially dead after Breen took over the Production Code Authority, surviving in vestigal form only in animated cartoons and the occasional two-reeler.

 

[Zombie_61]

...I'm not fond of any of the films they made after leaving Paramount. "Night At The Opera," despite containing some classic individual bits, makes me furious for the way the picture completely misunderstands the essence of Harpo by trying to turn him into a "sympathetic" character. Harpo needs pathos like I need a velocipede...

This was more unfortunate hamstringing that resulted from The Brothers signing with MGM and their scripts becoming more "structured". Mr. Thalberg wanted them all to be sympathetic characters who directed their antics at the "villains" of those movies, presumably as a way to explain or rationalize why their characters behaved the way they did. I'm convinced Thalberg didn't understand humor and thought there had to be some form of motivation behind every little manic act, and never seemed to realize some people do unusual things purely for their own amusement or personal reasons. Unfortunately, that structure became the template and their movies suffered as a result.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The MGM approach to humor always seemed to be the kind of humor that would appeal to the kind of people who find humor declasse. The only comedian who ever fared particularly well at Metro was Skelton -- and only because he had none other than Buster Keaton supervising him on his best films. When Keaton left, the quality of Skelton's pictures immediately plummeted.

Interestingly, Keaton was assigned to work with the Marxes on "Go West" and "At The Circus" to little effect -- he and Groucho didn't get along at all, although he did come up with a few visual bits for Harpo.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

I find it amazing that anybody would think Room Service was one of the brother's worst films. I have always thought it was one of the most hilarious budget films off all time. If you watch the movie, it only uses a couple locations, but you could easily not notice because it is so incredibly funny and fast paced... absolutely brilliant. I first watched it probably twelve years ago, and to this day my brother's and I trade lines out of the movie.

 

[Formeruser012523]

The MGM approach to humor always seemed to be the kind of humor that would appeal to the kind of people who find humor declasse. The only comedian who ever fared particularly well at Metro was Skelton -- and only because he had none other than Buster Keaton supervising him on his best films. When Keaton left, the quality of Skelton's pictures immediately plummeted.

Interestingly, Keaton was assigned to work with the Marxes on "Go West" and "At The Circus" to little effect -- he and Groucho didn't get along at all, although he did come up with a few visual bits for Harpo.

When Keaton left MGM, his humor plummeted as well, but I think all us fans know that, but this isn't a Keaton thread. Thanks Lizzie, now I'm seriously depressed. Didn't realize that when Buster no longer worked with Skelton his humor was of lesser quality.

And I always wondered what Marx Bros. movies he "helped" on.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's a couple of Skelton films in particular where the Keaton influence was most evident -- "A Southern Yankee" is full of Keaton gags from start to finish, and Skelton carries them out quite effectively. And "Watch The Birdie" is a flat-out remake of "The Cameraman." The effect of these pictures isn't pure Keaton, of course -- it's more Keaton finding something in Skelton that nobody else knew was there -- but they're a cut above the usual MGM postwar comedies, and are without doubt the most effective "comedian comedies" the studio made in the sound era.

Buster was invigorated by the success of these films, and the feeling that Skelton was a performer who understood the Keaton style of humor, and proposed to Metro that he be allowed to set up his own producing unit for the Skelton films, in the same manner as the Freed unit produced musicals. He even offered to work without pay until the films he'd give them had recovered their cost. But MGM wasn't interested, and instead sent Skelton over to the Freed unit to make the ineffectual "Three Little Words." Within three years, Skelton's movie career was over, and Buster had quit his job at MGM to spend the rest of his life doing beach movies, industrial films and television guest shots.

Groucho's problem with Keaton was mostly that MGM sent him -- it was a blow to his pride that the studio thought he needed this "washed up old silent-picture guy" to try and tell him what to do. But the collaboration did produce the train bits in "Go West," which elevate that picture a bit above the usual work the Brothers were turning out at that stage of their careers.

 

[vitanola]

"Harpo needs pathos like I need a velocipede"

I don't know. You might find one useful as well as decorative...