The Comic World of the Marx Brothers' Movies: "anything Further Father?"The Comic World of the Marx Brothers' Movies: Anything Further Father? is the first book to consider the Marx Brothers in the context of comic theory and practice. It includes a gag analysis of three famous scenes: the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera, the mirror scene in Duck Soup, and the tootsie-frootsie ice cream scene in A Day the Races. |
Contents
| 17 | |
| 28 | |
How the Marx Brothers Developed Their Movie Characters | 33 |
The Marx Brothers Movies The Cocoanuts | 52 |
Animal Crackers | 59 |
Monkey Business | 67 |
Horse Feathers | 71 |
Duck Soup | 78 |
At the Circus | 96 |
Go West | 101 |
The Big Store | 105 |
A Night in Casablanca | 109 |
The Last Movies | 113 |
The Marx Brothers Movies in Context | 118 |
Conclusion | 123 |
Bibliography | 126 |
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Common terms and phrases
accent action actually Animal Crackers answers appears asides asks audience beautiful beginning blonde called Casablanca character Chico and Harpo Circus close clown Cocoanuts College comedy comes comic course dancing developed dialogue Dollar don't dressed Duck Soup enters especially example figure final gags girls give Go West going Groucho says hands harp Harpo plays Horse Feathers imitates Italian jokes keeps kind later Letters live looks Lydia manager Margaret Dumont Marx Brothers Monkey Business movie needs never Night nonsense obvious Opera parody performance plays plot puns Races remarks replies role romances scene seems sequence silent singing society song speaks stage Store Strange style tell tion tries usually vaudeville woman York Zeppo
Popular passages
Page 29 - Warner Brothers"? Do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as The Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor's eye, and even before us there had been other brothers—the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit, and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
Page 32 - Surely there should be dancing in the streets when a great clown comic comes to town, and this man is a great clown. He is officially billed as a member of the Marx family, but truly he belongs to that greater family which includes joe Jackson and Bert Melrose and Fratillini brothers, who fall over one another in so obliging a fashion at the Cirque Medrano in Paris.
Page 48 - Hello, I must be going. I cannot stay, I came to say I must be going. I'm glad I came, but just the same, I must be going.
Page 21 - Harpo's arms. Of the people I have met, I would name her as among the few of whom it could be said that they had greatness. She had done much more than bear her sons, bring them up, and turn them into play actors. She had invented them. They were just comics she imagined for her own amusement. They amused no one more, and their reward was her ravishing smile.
Page 49 - One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.
Page 71 - And you're willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of "Minnie the Moocher" for seventy-five cents. MRS. CLAYPOOL: Oh! DRIFTWOOD: For a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie.
Page 24 - I'll Say She Is," it behooves your correspondent to report at once that that harlequinade has some of the most comical moments vouchsafed to the first-nighters in a month of Mondays. It is a bright colored and vehement setting for the goings on of those talented cutups, the Four Marx Brothers. In particular, it is a splendacious and reasonably tuneful excuse for going to see that silent brother, that sly, unexpected, magnificent comic among the Marxes, who is recorded somewhere on a birth certificate...