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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Where The Boys Are

This is about spring break in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and the crazy relationships and situations that can happen.

It is narrated in the beginning to set the scene and tell you what is about to happen and what you are about to watch.

It stars Connie Francis who sings the title song and a few other songs during the movie. Also stars Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux, Barbara Nichols, George Hamilton (before his tan!), Chill Wills as the chief of police, Frank Gorshin (who played The Riddler in the old Batman tv series) as a kooky jazz player that ends up falling for Connie Francis' character, although you don't get to see much of that unfortunately as I think that could have been really funny to have expanded on that.
Also has Jim Hutton (Timothy Hutton's father) and Paula Prentiss who both were paired together in a few other movies. 

This 1960 movie starts out showing a view of Fort Lauderdale and then flashes you back to a midwestern all girl college showing a  blizzard of snow! Not unlike what seems to be happening as of late at what normally would have been spring break time. 

One girl (Dolores Hart) is outspoken about sex and shocking the old fashioned teachings in what seems like during an interpersonal relationship class that tiptoes around about how young girls and boys should act or not act, especially during spring break or when kept away from the opposite sex. The class was very proper and old fashioned and Hart's character calls it right out.

The four girlfriends take a road trip down to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break and while driving down, they spot a guy on the side of the road all sad with a sign hitchhiking to FL and they pick him up!

There are a lot of character actors who appear in this movie that have been in quite a few other movies.

Hotel concierge, waiter...see if you can spot them!

The original four let two more girls stay with them who can’t afford the room rate as they try to save money to afford to stay there and the room fills up with other girls along the way during the course of the movie.

Chill Wills is the chief of police which is just comical in of itself. He gives a speech that is just funny to prep the police officers for the spring break kids and the craziness that ensues.

 The hitchhiker (Jim Hutton) asks if the one girl (Paula Prentiss) is a "good girl" and when she says yes, he is disappointed as he is looking to have sex of course. 

The whole movie is about how each girl meets a guy and the different type of situations that can occur. Some of this was so familiar to me when I was in tech school in the Air Force and can imagine spring break is a lot like this even today.

Although the clothes and styles and cars have changed, not to mention prices, but the situations and relationships are still pretty much the same of what you can encounter. 

There is a situation in this movie that is downplayed a bit as far as the consequences go. Definitely more adult and not really a movie for kids at all.  You don't really see anything sexual, but it leaves it up to your mind to know what happened to the one girl. This shows what the mindset was back in 1960 as well when it comes to this sort of thing. 

It was a funny movie until the end and it definitely took a very downward turn and left you feeling sad. A sadness that remained and overshadowed the nice situations and relationships of the others. It's worth seeing if only for the great character actors and Frank Gorshin is hysterical and just kooky as he can be.

Duck Soup



Duck Soup stars the four Marx Brothers, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo.
This movie also stars one of their frequent leading ladies in their movies, Margaret Dumont who is normally the focus for Groucho and most of his insults and innuendos.

In this movie, it is based on a country named Freedonia whose government was mismanaged and so the leader was replaced by none other than Rufus T. Firefly, aka: Groucho.

This film starts out silly enough, with a pot of ducks and that is your first clue as to how zany it is.

Of course there is a rival country that wants a revolution to happen in Freedonia so that they can gain control over the country. They employ Chico and Harpo as spies and well, if you know the Marx Brothers, you know how well that was going to go.

This film is filled with a lot of sight gags, many of which the Marx Bros are famous for.
As the two countries go to war, check out all the different references to many of the wars in US
history, Revolutionary, Civil, World War I, and II with the different hats and helmuts and uniforms.

There is also a bit of singing, especially in the first half and not so much in the second.
There is one point where they come upon a piano and Harpo just starts to play the piano strings as a harp inside but it is only for a quick moment, unfortunately.

I've seen most of the Marx Bros movies over the years and they are some of my favorites for some great wit and slapstick humor.

Groucho is always quick with the snappy banter, one-liners, and double entendres and poor Margaret Dumont was the victim of much of it.

Always great for a laugh!