1930 film starring the Four Marx Brothers
Animal Crackers is a 1930 American pre-Code Marx Brothers comedy film directed by Victor Heerman. The film stars the Marx Brothers, (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo), with Lillian Roth and Margaret Dumont, based on the Marxes’ Broadway musical of the same name. Mayhem and zaniness ensue during a weekend party in honor of famed African explorer Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding. A critical and commercial success upon its initial release, "Animal Crackers" was shot at Paramount's Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, the second film the Brothers would make in New York City.
"Animal Crackers" was adapted from the successful 1928 Broadway musical of the same title by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, also starring the Marx Brothers and Margaret Dumont. Also reprising their Broadway roles were Margaret Irving as Mrs. Whitehead and Robert Greig as Hives, the butler. Greig appeared with the Marx Brothers again in "Horse Feathers" (1932).
Plot.
Society matron Mrs. Rittenhouse is hosting a lavish party at her home on Long Island. The guest of honor is renowned explorer Captain Geoffrey (or Jeffrey) T. Spaulding, just returned from Africa. Also, the famous art collector Roscoe W. Chandler will unveil his recently acquired painting, "After The Hunt," by an artist named Beaugard.
Capt. Spaulding makes a grand entrance and announces that he cannot stay and must leave immediately (singing "Hello, I Must Be Going"). Signor Emanuel Ravelli, hired to provide music for the party, arrives followed a few moments later by his "partner" the Professor.
Mrs. Rittenhouse's daughter Arabella devises a scheme for Chandler to notice her fiancé John Parker's artistic talent and sponsor him: they'll replace the Beaugard painting with an almost perfect copy of it John painted as an art student. Arabella asks Ravelli to switch the paintings. Meanwhile, another weekend party guest, the socially prominent Grace Carpenter, thinks up the very same idea with her older sister, Mrs. Whitehead, as a means of humiliating Mrs. Rittenhouse. Grace also copied the painting as an art student and asks Hives to replace the Beaugard with Grace's poor copy, unaware that they are removing John's copy.
Ravelli and the Professor run into Chandler and recognize him as "Abie the fish man", who really hails from Czechoslovakia. Later that night, a thunderstorm has put out the lights and Ravelli and the Professor attempt to replace the Beaugard. In the middle of the job, Capt. Spaulding and Mrs. Rittenhouse wander in.
During the party, the painting is unveiled. Chandler immediately notices the poor quality and realizes someone has stolen his painting. John feels discouraged, thinking the painting is still his copy. Suddenly the lights go out again, and when restored, the imitation Beaugard is missing as well.
The next day, the police arrive to search for the missing painting. John finds Grace's copy of the Beaugard and reveals to Arabella that someone else must have had the same idea to switch paintings. After getting the painting back from the Professor, John and Arabella bring it to Capt. Spaulding. The Professor is apprehended, and the three paintings are returned. Chandler momentarily mistakes John's copy for the genuine Beaugard. Realizing his talent, Chandler hires John to do a series of portraits for him. The Professor, escaping arrest, sprays the guests with a knockout substance from a Flit gun. After everyone is laid out on the floor and fully subdued, the film concludes with the Professor knocking himself out.
Jokes.
Four of Groucho's best-known quips:
(The American Film Institute listed this at number 53 in the 100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time.)
Other quotes from Groucho:
The film also contains the well-known Chico–Harpo scene in which Chico keeps asking Harpo for "a flash" (meaning a flashlight), and Harpo – not understanding – produces from his bottomless trenchcoat and baggy pants a fish, a flask, a flute, a "flit", a "flush", etc.
Zeppo figures in a well-known scene in which Groucho dictates a letter to his lawyers in rambling pseudo-legalese. Zeppo gets to one-up Groucho: When asked to read the letter back, Zeppo informs him, "You said a lot of things I didn't think were very important, so I just omitted them!" whereupon a minor skirmish ensues: what he's omitted is the body of the letter. (Joe Adamson, in "Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo", observed that this scene disproved the common notion that Zeppo was the least of the Marx Brothers: "It takes a Marx Brother to pull something like that on a Marx Brother and get away with it.")
One more complex running joke has Groucho turning the dialogue into a scene out of the Eugene O'Neill play, "Strange Interlude", in which the characters continually spoke asides that convey their thoughts. Groucho's voice becomes deep and droning as he steps apart from the other characters to comment on the scene:Living with your folks. Living with your folks. The beginning of the end. Drab dead yesterdays shutting out beautiful tomorrows. Hideous, stumbling footsteps creaking along the misty corridors of time. And in those corridors I see figures, strange figures, weird figures: Steel 186, Anaconda 74, American Can 138 ...
The comedy, thus, is in the unpredictable shifting of the scene's meaning, from two socialite ladies and a world-famous explorer mingling at a party, to a parody of O'Neill's work, to a mimicking of a man reading out stock prices. Incidentally, Groucho had heavy investments in Anaconda Copper and after having lost everything in the stock market crash of 1929 experienced a bout of depression as well as insomnia.
In the final scene, Harpo uses a Flit gun to pacify an entire crowd, finally spraying Groucho, who falls unconscious to the ground. The current prints of the film have the "Flit" name blotted out, since Paramount Pictures didn't get permission to use the trademarked name.
Production.
There was a day during the filming of "Animal Crackers" when Groucho couldn't appear. The scene being filmed was Groucho and Margaret Dumont discussing strange noises during the theft of the painting. Zeppo stepped in, wearing Groucho's costume and makeup, and the scene was rigged so there was a power failure. Thus the action could be filmed almost in darkness, hiding the deception. The giveaway is when "Groucho" turns his head to investigate the noises, the light catches Zeppo's distinctive profile.
Musical numbers.
Groucho's songs, "Hello, I Must Be Going" and "Hooray for Captain Spaulding", both written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, became recurring themes for Groucho through the years. The latter song became the theme of Groucho's radio and TV game show "You Bet Your Life". It referred to a real Captain Spaulding, an army officer arrested a few years earlier for selling cocaine to Hollywood residents. The original full version of "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" was edited in compliance to the Hays Code when it was re-released in 1936: the sexually suggestive line "I think I'll try and make her" was removed – it came after Mrs. Rittenhouse's line: "He was the only white man to cover every acre." It was long believed that this footage had been lost forever, until a pre-Hays Code print was discovered in the archives of the British Film Institute. This forms the basis of Universal's Blu-ray restoration, released in October 2016.
Ironically, Groucho used an even more risqué line in introducing Chico's piano sequence: "Signor Ravelli's first selection will be, 'Somewhere My Love Lies Sleeping', with a male chorus." Chico's own piano composition "I'm Daffy over You" would be played again in their next feature film, "Monkey Business", in the film's score and by Harpo on the harp.
Releases.
The original 1930 film release ran 99 minutes. In 1936, the film was reissued with several small cuts to accommodate the Production Code. This version ran about 98 minutes.
Paramount Pictures did not originally contract for renewal rights to the play and did not renegotiate when they were due to expire. Therefore, the studio's rights to the play expired in 1956 and reverted to the authors of the Broadway stage play: the playwrights George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, the composer Harry Ruby, and the lyricist Bert Kalmar. When MCA Inc. acquired the rights to the film in 1958, they also tried to secure the rights to the play but would not meet Kaufman's and Ryskind's financial demands.
These legal restrictions prevented the film from being televised in the United States, but it "could" be televised in Canada, outside the restricted area. (The same situation prevailed in 1968, when stage rights forced MCA to withdraw the Olsen and Johnson comedy "Hellzapoppin"' from TV distribution in America, but not Canada.) "Animal Crackers" had not been seen in the United States since playing neighborhood theaters in reissue (alongside "Duck Soup") in 1949. Marx Brothers fans were unable to see "Animal Crackers" until 16mm copies of a Canadian TV print began circulating on the collectors' market. Some theaters took a chance on showing these inferior, unauthorized copies to paying audiences, but these revivals were not heavily publicized and escaped MCA's notice.
One of these screenings took place at the Old Town Music Hall theater in Anaheim, California, in December 1973. UCLA student and Marx Brothers fan Steve Stoliar attended the screening, and impulsively contacted Groucho Marx to enlist his support for an unlikely campaign to attempt to persuade — or pressure — Universal to re-release the film. Groucho agreed to appear at the UCLA campus for a publicity event. On February 7, 1974, Groucho and his assistant, Erin Fleming, visited UCLA under the aegis of Stoliar's newly formed "Committee for the Re-release of Animal Crackers" (CRAC). The event drew around 200 students, over 2,000 signatures on re-release petitions, and several reporters. Universal scrambled to appear responsive: a spokesman told a "UCLA Daily Bruin" reporter that the studio was "delighted" by the interest, and that "we have negotiated with the heirs of the writers (Morrie Ryskind and George S. Kaufman), but they were asking much more than we wanted to spend. Just recently we reached an agreement, and we're waiting to sign the contracts." (Not quite: Ryskind was still in the pre-heir stage – he lived until 1985. The songwriter Harry Ruby was also alive, though he died only two weeks later, aged 79.) The spokesman added that he expected the film would soon be released. As the "Daily Bruin" put it, "The rest of the day belonged to Groucho, as he showed surprising flashes of his old brilliance." Asked to name his favorite comedian, he said: "Me." He also said that ""Animal Crackers" is the best of our movies."
Groucho's UCLA appearance generated national press coverage. An appearance on the nationally syndicated "Merv Griffin Show" soon followed. In April 1974, Groucho and Stoliar "received an answer from Universal. According to Vice President Arnold Shane, they were 'delighted with the response of the students.'" On May 23, 1974, attempting to gauge public interest, Universal screened a sharp new print of the film at the UA Theater in Westwood, just south of the UCLA campus. Groucho made a personal appearance and walked unescorted into the theatre on the left aisle. People in the audience stood up and started applauding and soon the entire theater joined in. Encouraged by the response there – the lines stretched around the block for months — on June 23 the studio screened the film at the Sutton Theater in New York. Groucho attended the New York premiere. A near-riot broke out and a police escort was summoned. From there "Animal Crackers" went into national release.
Because of these rights issues, "Animal Crackers" had never been seen on television until July 21, 1979, when CBS broadcast a special showing of the film.
The complete, uncut "Animal Crackers", which had only been available for decades in an edited version for the 1936 reissue, was restored from a 35mm duplicate negative held by the British Film Institute and released by Universal Pictures in 2016 in DCP format for theatrical distribution and Blu-ray for home video as part of "The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection". The restored edition features an optional commentary track by film historian Jeffrey Vance.
Reception.
Like its predecessor "The Cocoanuts", "Animal Crackers" was a financial success. By June 1932, the film had earned $1.5 million in worldwide theatrical rentals.
Multicolor clip.
In the 1990s, a 15-second clip filmed in Multicolor during the rehearsal of a scene in "Animal Crackers" was found and aired as a part of the Turner Classic Movies documentary "Glorious Technicolor" (1998). The