Animal Crackers

Animal Crackers

Set in Mrs. Rittenhouse's home on Long Island, 

Margaret DuPont plays Mrs. Rittenhouse, a rich widow who is enamored with Groucho Marx' character, Capt Spaulding, an explore come from Africa. 

This movie is a classic Marx bros film and it in included Zeppo Marx as well.

This is really more like a musical  with all the songs in it. A black and white movie from 1931.

A famous painter, Mr. Chandler, also pursues Mrs Rittenhouse.

Groucho arrives being carried in by several native men and then the whole party gets going.

You have to listen to what he says, lots of insults that everyone seems to just take tongue in cheek. Of course Groucho is sporting his famous painted mustache and smoking his signature cigar.

Obviously Margaret likes Groucho’s character as he is there on invite to a party she is throwing.

He keeps insulting her and she ignores it and praises him instead, calling him charming.

Chico is a musician who comes in and goes over the silly backwards charges of him not being there and drops into a classic insanity of one topic to another.

And then his partner comes in....Harpo, wearing his top hat and wig and honking on the funny horn and he doesn’t speak at all throughout the whole movie.

The silly shenanigans continue throughout the story.

Camera is shaky during filming, you can see it as it moves with the actors to follow them out of the shot.

Some of the plot is about two women intending to swap out a famous painting that Mrs Rittenhouse just received as a gift from Mr. Chandler, for a duplicate the one lady painted. They plan to do this as an embarassing joke to play on Mrs Rittenhouse.

There is also a young couple in love and they want to get married but the guy is a painter and they don’t have the money to do so, and she suggests for him to swap the famous painting with his copy of it. So they get Chico and Harpo to swap the paintings for them.

Chaos ensues as you never know which painting is which.

Groucho flirts with Margaret as usual, but usually he does this to swindle money from her.

He does these weird interludes where he steps from the scene and up closer to the camera in a serious way and then steps back to the scene to be his usual goofy self.

The film quality isn’t too good as you can see the white flecks rolling past.

Chico figures out the famous painter is actually a fish man from Czechoslovakia and he extorts money from him to keep quiet about it as Harpo steals money out of his pocket.

Groucho tries to get Mr. Chandler to pay for an expedition and its just one goofy skit after another with each of the Marx bros.

One of my favorite parts of the Marx brothers movies is when Chico plays the piano and then Harpo comes in to play the piano as well but then later on, he plays the harp. There is nothing so mesmerizing as watching Harpo play the harp. How silly and inane his characters are in any of the Marx brother movies, but when he sits before the harp, it is like a love affair with a gorgeous stringed instrument. I believe he taught himself and I have a cd of him playing the harp. It is just so elegant and beautiful to see him play and listen to him. Oh how I would love to be able to play the harp like he does!

Harpo also whistles a song while he plays.

This movie is zany and classic Marx brothers. 
A definite favorite!

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