#The marx brothers silver screen collection movie#
According to Steve Stoliar, author of Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House (soon to have its own movie adaptation), Groucho was alternately amused and annoyed by the pretentious analysis of the brothers’ comedy. The original William Hamilton New Yorker cartoon that made fun of film scholars trying to read meaning and significance into Marx Brothers films hung on Groucho’s hallway wall. They made a shambles of high society, laid waste to higher education, and made a mockery of war. But even their lesser films had moments that, however fleetingly, recaptured the rebellious spirit that made them a comedy institution, heroes to Vietnam War–era college students, and an influence on the likes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, George Carlin, Harold Ramis, and the team behind Bob’s Burgers.īut they didn’t think of themselves as satirists or comedy subversives. The Marx Brothers at their best could be counted on to do and say the wrong thing at just the right time. These movies put Agee’s maxim to the test. Here, they made two of their biggest box-office hits, but at what cost?Ĭritic James Agee once famously said that the Marx brothers’ worst “would be better worth seeing than most other things I can think of.” Their later films, mostly the MGMs, would compromise the brothers’ subversive, anti-Establishment comedy with icky love stories and elaborate production numbers. And then they signed with the tonier studio, MGM. These early comedies have the most quotable jokes, the most absurd situations, and the most indelible scenes. The group’s film career began auspiciously with Paramount, for which they made five classic movies. Decades into their career, they were already vaudeville headliners and Broadway stars who would have increasingly mixed success in capturing their iconoclastic comedy for the screen. Zeppo was 28, Groucho 39, and Harpo and Chico in their early 40s. The Marx Brothers were no overnight sensation by the time they released their first film, The Cocoanuts, in 1929. Photo: MGM Studios/Archive Photos/Getty Images
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