In 1992, attending a publishing trade fair, I was strolling down the corridor of a hotel in Anaheim, California, checking the locks, when an elegantly dressed and coifed woman burst out of a room and, anxiously peering at the press credentials strung around my neck, gasped, “You’re a journalist? Come in! Have some caviar! The star will be here in a minute!”

The star, I soon learned, was the great songwriter Marvin Hamlisch, who was promoting his recently published autobiography, The Way I Was. For whatever reason, I was the only journalist in sight, whence the publicist’s panic — and never mind that I was representing an outdoor sports magazine at the time, far removed from the target audience for the book at hand.

I dipped into the caviar, had a drink. Hamlisch entered the room. He looked at me, and I at him, entombed in an uncomfortable silence. Finally I said, “I’m a great admirer of the work you did with Groucho Marx in his 1972 concert at Carnegie Hall. I have the album and play it whenever I need cheering up.”

At that Hamlisch smiled broadly, sat at a grand piano the size of an aircraft carrier flight deck, and played a few bars of “Show Me a Rose” and “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” (“Lydia, oh Lydia, that en-cyc-lo-pidia / Lydia the Queen of Tattoo”). The publicist was relieved, and another crisis in literary history was averted.

Groucho Marx and his fellow Marx Brothers and fellow-traveling Marxists were all about the music. Their films were full of arias, production numbers, marches, ditties, croons, and assorted billing and cooing (“that’s bulling and cowing”), all helped along by the brothers’ extraordinary skill as players of just about any musical instrument they could lay their hands on. (Unable to time travel, they knew not the Moog or the theremin, but that was about it.)

Strange to say, then, that perhaps their best-loved film has only a couple of toe-tappers — “Hail Freedonia,” a goofy national anthem with the timeless promise “If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait till I get through with it,” along with a version of “Pop Goes the Weasel” that’s very unlike the children’s song.

Duck Soup (1933)

By best-loved film I mean, of course, Duck Soup, which, though it has nothing to do with the holidays except the coincidence of being released on November 17, in time for Thanksgiving (and Christmas/Hannukah) then and now, has everything to do with cheer. Thus it is that I give it a fresh viewing each year about this time, with ever more good reason to do so, given the growing lack of reasons to be cheerful.

The 1933 film is about — well, what is it about? A little Liechtensteinish or Fenwickian country called Freedonia is about to go bankrupt, which makes the evil ambassador of the neighboring state of Sylvania lick his chops with the happy prospect of conquest, even if Freedonia lacks oil, strategic values, or much visible commerce apart from peanut vending.

Freedonia’s grande dame, Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont, the quintessential foil), who has bailed the treasury out, threatens to call in her debt unless a program of fiscal austerity is put in place. Enter not Milton Friedman but Groucho in the role of Rufus T. Firefly, who has his eye out on her fortune:

Firefly: After I leave here tonight, will you ever forgive me? Here are the plans of war. They’re as valuable as your life, and that’s putting ’em pretty cheap. Watch them like a cat watches her kittens. Have you ever had kittens? No, of course not. You’re too busy running around playing bridge. Can’t you see what I’m trying to tell you? I love you. Why don’t you marry me?

Mrs. T.: Why, marry you?

Firefly: You take me and I’ll take a vacation. I’ll need a vacation if we’re going to get married. Married! I can see you right now in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove, but I can’t see the stove. . .

And so Duck Soup goes, anarchic and madcap, full of surprisingly racy double entendres and bad puns (Firefly: “Look at Chicolini. He sits there alone, an abject figure.” Chicolini: “I abject!”), running just a little longer than an hour but leaving its viewer happily exhausted.

It exhausted quiet brother Zeppo Marx, too, whose job it was to provide a calm center in the storm that was Groucho, Chico, and Harpo’s collective zaniness. Zeppo, who died in 1979, made no more films with his siblings after Duck Soup, preferring instead to manage the act behind the scenes.

Groucho recalled, “Except for the chorus girls, being a straight man in the Marx Brothers wasn’t fun for him. He wanted to be a comedian too, but there just wasn’t room for another funny Marx Brother. . . . But offstage he was the funniest one of us.” Give Duck Soup a watch. Hail Freedonia!

–Gregory McNamee

Other Marx Brothers movies to cheer you up, ranked

Besides Duck Soup, what are the best other Marx Brothers movies to see? In what order?

The vaudeville-based comedy act made a total of 13 feature-length movies, from 1929 to 1949. (They had performed on stage since 1905.) Five of those films remain in the the American Film Institute’s “100 Years… 100 Laughs” list nearly a century later.

If you’re thinking, “Aw, I don’t wanna watch an old comedy movie!”, I know what you mean. That said, last time I watched a Marx Brothers film (and it’s been too long — I need a fix of stress-relieving laughter), I was struck with the thought: “These sketches and gags are as good as any modern comedy material. This stuff is still fresh.”

A quick online search makes it clear: Duck Soup is usually considered in the top three. So it’s as good a place to start as any. But you really don’t want to accidentally watch one of the lower-tier movies after that. So again, other than Duck Soup, what are the best ones? Turns out the answer varies a bit based on: Which movie has the best wordplay, wildest sightgags, zaniest music, smartest ongoing plot, and most all-around, ensemble-rich, inspired mayhem.

• The IMDB rankings list the Marx Brothers movies, best-to-worst, as follows: Monkey Business, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Go West, Horse Feathers, A Day at the Races, At the Circus, The Big Store, A Night in Casablanca, Room Service, Love Happy.
• A fan site called The Marx Brothers Council Podcast has competing rankings from three aficionados. They are apparently purists, since each lists Animal Crackers at the #1 spot, even though it doesn’t make the AFI’s top five. Animal Crackers is an early film (after the apparently more learning-curve-hampered The Cocoanuts) that puts together many of the Marx Brothers’ funniest, most thoroughly worked-out stage routines, but perhaps doesn’t fully utilize the film medium. Each of the site’s three rankers varies on their #2 through #10 picks.
• A film-ranking and charting site called Gold Derby lists the best-to-worst as follows: Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, The Cocoanuts, A Day at the Races, Monkey Business, At the Circus, Room Service, Go West, The Big Store, A Night in Casablanca, Love Happy.

• We’re most inclined to believe the rankings of Rotten Tomatoes, whose list goes like this: A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup, At the Circus, Horse Feathers, Animal Crackers, The Cocoanuts, A Day at the Races, Monkey Business, Go West, Room Service, The Big Store, A Night in Casablanca, Love Happy.

• If you want to be told the exact order to watch the films in, Vulture really pins it down as follows: Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera, Monkey Business, The Cocoanuts, A Day at the Races, Room Service, A Night in Casablanca, Go West, At the Circus, The Big Store, Love Happy.

Conclusion: Start with any of the following: Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, or A Day at the Races.

Unless you’re a die-hard (and you might well become one), you can safely avoid Love Happy (1949). It’s at the bottom of the most lists, and apparently was a Harpo solo vehicle that Chico attached himself to, along with Groucho, in order to pay off Chico’s gambling debts. It might still be fun to watch to catch an early appearance by Marilyn Monroe, though.

–Screenopolis Editor