Young people today… Help them appreciate the Marx Brothers

October 24, 2014 • 10:23 am

by Matthew Cobb

I have just finished teaching to the second year Animal Diversity course here at the University of Manchester – I cover the invertebrates. I closed with 10 minutes on my favourite flies, some of which we have featured here with stupendous photos by Stephen Marshall. One of them is the Groucho fly (aka the hedgehog fly):

hedgehog
A Hedgehog fly, aka Adejeania – a Peruvian caterpillar parasitoid. Also known as the “Groucho fly”. The “cigar” is a pair of enlarged palps, probably used to detect prey. (c) Stephen Marshall

I realised that I would have to explain *why* it’s called the Groucho fly, as most of the students would never have heard of Groucho Marx. This turned out to be true – fewer than 10% of them knew the moustachioed one. So as part of their general education, I will put an extract of one of the Marx brothers films onto the internal website associated with the course.

But which one? I’ve come up with four brief extracts, from Horse Feathers, Duck Soup (x 2) and A Night at the Opera. Readers – please pitch in with your favourite scene, one that would inspire a 21 year old to go and delve about in the land of black and white…

EDIT: It has just occurred to me that some of our readers – in particular the younger ones, or those from non-Anglophone countries – may not have a very clear idea about Groucho’s talents, either. (My colleague Reinmar Hager, who is German, had never seen a Marx Brothers film.) If this applies to you, please chip in below and let us know if you thought the clips were funny…

105 thoughts on “Young people today… Help them appreciate the Marx Brothers”

  1. NO! They’ve never heard of Groucho Marx?! I am glad that you are going to expand their education in this direction! Tastes in humour change, of course, but it is worthwhile to understand what made previous generations laugh.

  2. Boy, are you in luck. There are several “You Bet Your Life” episodes on YouTube. The television show was high entertainment in the 1950s with non-stop extemporaneous wisecracks. Whether you use a few minutes or not you will probably enjoy the show.

  3. And here’s a Marx Brothers tip: his name is CHICK-o, as in a guy who chases chicks. How the other pronunciation ever got started I’ll never know.

    I also read long ago that Margaret Dumont once stormed off the set because she thought Groucho went too far with an insult. “How much would it cost for me to buy back my introduction to you?” is a favorite.

    1. When I first met my friend and colleague Elizabeth Dumont, aka Betsy the Bat Lady, whose cats have appeared here, my first question was whether she was related to Margaret.

  4. I was going to mention the mirror scene, but I see it’s already there. (One might also mention Harpo’s guest spot on I Love Lucy in which they re-enact that scene. But I won’t.) How about Rufus T. Firefly’s encounter with the Freedonian cabinet?

    Freedonia’s Secretary of War: How about taking up the tax?
    Rufus T. Firefly: How ’bout taking up the carpet?
    Freedonia’s Secretary of War: I still insist we must take up the tax.
    Rufus T. Firefly: He’s right, you’ve gotta take up the tacks before you can take up the carpet.

          1. “And I tried to remove the tusks. But they were embedded so firmly we couldn’t budge them. Of course, in Alabama the Tuscaloosa, but that is entirely ir-elephant to what I was talking about.”

  5. Your four choices are excellent. But, as your intention is an educational event at a university, why not use the scene in which Groucho is installed as university president and sings his famous song, “Whatever it is, I’m against it”?

      1. “We can’t afford both a college and a football stadium. Tomorrow we tear down the college.”
        “But where will the students sleep?”
        “The same place they always do–in class.”

  7. I still think that the scene from “Night at the Opera ” where all the people crowd into Groucho ‘s teeny tiny stateroom aboard ship is one of the funniest scenes ever filmed.

    1. You beat me to it. The “stateroom” scene is my nominee as well. Add two hard-boiled eggs to my order.

    3. Just watched thsi one (again) the other night. The stateroom scene is a favorite. I had forgotten the line, as Harpo’s sleeping limp body is falling all over everything and everthing: Oh, he’s ok, he’s got insomnia and he’s sleeping it off.”

  8. I taught a similar course in years gone by. I spent maybe a whole lecture talking about taxonomy and, in later years,cladistics. Because I am a taxonomist, this seemed reasonable to me. I wonder if you spent time on taxonomy as such.

    1. To take the other take, if I needed to introduce The Yoof Ov 2 day to black and white film … In no particular order, Doctor Strangelove , Casablanca, Ansel Adams, many early Westerns, $Ealing_Comedy$, H-H-Hancock’s Half Hour. And to scare them off, early Open University kipper-tied lecturers.

    2. I’m still trying to summon energy for a re – match with a text book on cladistics. It is a first year course.

  9. The opening scene in “Duck Soup” where Groucho makes his entrance and sings the ‘Hurray for Captain Spaulding’ song with the chorus always cracks me up. His various schticks, along with hilarious dancing is worth all of the bad acting by everyone else.

    The scene also has the immortal lines: “One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got into my pyjamas I’ll never know.”

    1. I wonder if: Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read is from any particular film, or apocryphal.

      1. I was sure I had read it in an essay by Irving S. Cobb (“From Pillar to Post, or How to Walk a Dog”), but it always seems to be attributed to Groucho Marx. Maybe he was quoting Groucho.

      2. Groucho is probably tied with Mark Twain for having the greatest number of quotes misattributed to him.

        1. I don’t know.

          George Carlin and Yogi Berra are both pretty popular for misattributed quotations.

      3. I’m still trying to summon energy for a re – match with a text book on cladistics. It is a first year course.

      4. A caver wouldn’t find that a problem. If the dog was the size of a yearling cow. And the paper was waterproof.

    2. You are thinking of “Animal Crackers”– but all their films at Paramount had such nonsense titles, it can be hard to keep straight!

      1. In the Paramount days, the Brothers used to refine their movie routines on the vaudeville stage circuit. The movie titles were often taken from those reviews. That’s also one of the main reasons their comedy came across so well – by the time they were filmed, the routines had been rehearsed, polished and audience-tested many, many times. And you thought that focus groups were a more recent invention.

  10. BTW, I also heard about Margaret Dumont was determined to hold that straight face and forget each insult, no matter what. Groucho claimed that she didn’t understand why people were laughing, which perpetuated the myth that she wasn’t very smart and didn’t know what was going on. This was obviously not the case. Makes me like her even more (both she and poor Zeppo had to be the straight woman and man in all of the movies).

    2. I remember when that movie was finally re-released in the early ’70s and I saw it with some friends. That hooked me on the Marx Brothers right there.
      “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don’t know.”

  12. Groucho is featured in an TV advert for something or other in the UK right now. Hard to believe the Marx Brothers aren’t better known in the US. That’s like not knowing who Mark Twain is.

      1. No joke! When I was a kid, we used to get three-month vaccinations during the summer…but these days they just give them a week or two every now and again.

        No wonder they all have attention defi — hey, look! Baihu twitched his ears! Must be dreaming of chasing squirrels.

        b&

  14. Of the nominated clips, I’d go with the second. It has the biologically-relevant cigar, which two of the others don’t. And it shows what made Groucho Groucho – the puns, the smart-aleck attitude, the rapid patter, etc.

        1. Really? I can see and hear him in my mind’s eye tossing that one off!

          Ah, well. Guess it shows that I’m not a true Marxist, after all.

          b&

    2. Always a good one for testing machine translation – you get such wonderful answers (just look at Google Translate)!

  18. “He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”

    I recently watched Duck Soup as part of my attempt to familiarise myself with classic cinema. Loved it! Though I’m yet to see anything else the Marx Brothers did, but I will rectify that soon.

  19. I’d recommend any clip of Groucho saying “of course you know this means war!” just so the kids know where Bugs Bunny got the line from.

    2. I had no idea! I somehow missed out on the Marx bros during my formative years. I think they weren’t that popular in Australia, but maybe it was just me.

      1. No, Marella, I’m sure you were very popular 🙂
        To see Marx Bros movies you had to have a small independent arty cinema in the neighbourhood. I’m pretty sure Bill Collins (who was at uni with my parents) wasn’t a fan, so they were almost never shown on TV, except for a few years in the ?early 80s when the commercial channels were trying harder.

  20. When I was in high school, there was an English teacher who was a huge fan of old comedies – Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy, Chaplin & Abbott & Costello (but not the Three Stooges, thank CC). It was not unusual for him to treat his students to a classroom showing of a classic short, and he also arranged for after school or weekend film fests in the school auditorium – and he owned a fair number of the movies (this was early ’70s, pre-video).

    Once in his class, while doing a segment on drama, our assignment was to team up in small groups, pick a scene from a play or movie and act it out for the class. I collaborated with a friend and we wrote an original routine in the style of a Marx Brothers bit. It started with Groucho striding into an office and giving this line:

    Groucho: “I’m here to see your wife.”

    Man: “But…I don’t have a wife.”

    Groucho: “That’s okay, I’ll wait.”

    The teacher went nuts because he couldn’t figure out what movie it came from. We hinted at the notion that it was from one of the Brothers’ stage shows, then owned up to the fabrication. We got an A+.

    1. We had an English teacher who also did Film Studies CSE for the Technical School years. He’d also do a lot of such films. And he did get genuine involvement from the class (rumour is, he was being mugged several years later in a nearby town and a voice in the dark told the thugs not to hit him “cos he was a good teacher”; still lost his wallet, but not his teeth) . He also did an after- school showing of “Triumph of the Will’ when that required a special license.
      But insanity of insanities, to a class studying Julius Caeser, he wasn’t allowed to show the play (Gielgud, ca. 1950, B+W) until AFTER we had completed the course.
      Eng.Lit remains the only formal exam I failed.

      1. The only exam I ever failed was Igneous and Metamorphic Petrogenesis. It has the advantage that when you tell people, they feel that failing it was perfectly reasonable. 😉

          1. The problem was that at the time there were about 7 different hypotheses about how things like the Sudbury Basin formed, which obviously means they’re all wrong, and I found it hard to get my head around them. Since then they’ve sorted it all out, and I’m sure it makes a lot more sense.

  21. As long as you are teaching biology, why not let Groucho teach biology (from “Horse Feathers”? Plus, this scene has the benefit of featuring all three of the brothers (no, I am not counting Zeppo)

    3. Yes, very good; almost forgotten this. (I believe the original skit for this dated back to their vaudeville days, and effectively defined Groucho’s on-stage persona.)

  22. I grew up in Belgium. The Marx brothers were, along with the likes of Fernandel, Louis de Funes and other French stars, staple black and white food during the rainy days in summer camp.

  23. My vote is for clip #2 (Rufus T. Firefly’s Introduction) because I’ve always loved the “minute and a huff” bit.

    For non-English-speakers, the third clip (the Mirror Scene) should work as well as the more recent M. Hulot and Mr. Bean comedies do for international audiences.

  24. Was Reinmar Hager born in Eastern Germany?

    The Marx brothers movies are still being shown on German TV on a regular basis.

    I found the dialog of the english originals disappointing. If feels like they are performing a string of sketches. The german syncros on the other hand are performed by professional voice actors.

  26. I am partial to the scene in Animal Crackers where Capt Spaulding haggled with the “musicians” over their rate of pay.

    “What do you get to play?”
    “Ten dollars an hour.”
    “What do you get if you don’t play?”
    “Twelve dollars an hour.”
    (something close to that anyway)

  27. Meh. Seems like most of the humor lies in bad puns and cartoonish physical comedy. Not really my cup of funny.

  28. Hey, there’s always the “Why a duck” routine when Groucho tells Chico about the viaduct.
    “OK, why a duck? Why-a no chicken?”

  30. I never saw any Marx Brothers before reading this post. Found Password clip amusing enough to make me want to see more. Wondered why the character in the hat has an accent, what accent it is, if that was supposed to be funny, what that has to do with European immigration to America at the time and why they talk so fast. Second clip (Fredonia) boring and stilted when not offensive but it made me wonder if the tremolo in the lady’s voice was an affectation in every language (French, German…) in the 1930s. Made me think of Springtime for Hitler. Found mirror scene sort of cutesy, a routine which could probably be done today as well. Found the last one interesting because it’s based on the fact that the character in the hat can’t read, made me wonder what percentage of the American population couldn’t read in those days. As for Class Clowns, suggested by another reader, I found it stupid and highly offensive. My vote is on “Sanity Clause” for the dark sideways looks the guy with the mustache casts at the hatted one. Nonetheless, I think the mirror scene is the only one you can be sure will cross the boundaries of time, taste and language.

    2. The Marx Bros. were originally in vaudeville, which used broad humor and many stereotypes. Their movies reflect that and the general humor of their time. Their grandparents were German vaudevillians before emigrating to the US, btw. The one in the hat is Chico (pronounced Chick-o). The mustached one is Groucho and Harpo should be obvious. They were given these nicknames by another vaudevillian during a card game.

    3. Well, I’m pleased to find the Marx Bros. can still offend people. What good is comedy if it doesn’t?

      (In an elevator in Rome:
      Priest: “Thank you for all the joy you’ve brought into the world.”
      Groucho: “And thank you for all the joy you’ve taken out of the world.”)

    4. The best bit is missing from the password scene.

      Harpo arrives at the door – knocks. The panel opens – and he is asked for the PW. Harpo (being mute in all of the movies) pulls his coat open to display a large fish – with a sword stuck down it’s throat.

  31. Hard to choose, I’ve always loved most of the classic Marx Brothers movies. However, the biology classroom scene posted above is also apropos.

    What’s next to expand these young’uns horizon into the past? The Three Stooges “Swingin’ the Alphabet”? Be-I-Be, Be-Oh-Bo, Be-I-Bicky-bye…

  32. “Duck Soup” is, in my and many others’ opinion, the finest Marx Brothers movie — in which you will hear Groucho declare (re Margaret Dumont): “I fought for this woman’s honor, which is probably more than she ever did.”

    Also consider Groucho’s opening song in “Horse Feathers”, which features the immortal lyric: “Whatever it is, I’m against it. And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it, I’m against it.”

  34. These are pretty good – although you left out my absolute favorite Groucho scene – in NIGHT AT THE OPERA when the police are searching his house for Harpo and Chico.
    Groucho claims he’s a recluse who lives alone even though the detective reminds him that the table is set for four. Without missing a beat, Groucho says: “That’s nothing. My alarm clock is set for seven.”

  35. Well I’m 26 and I’d never seen anything from the Marx Brothers before. I had heard of them though and, judging by what I saw here, I’ve also seen their influence. In one of Terry Pratchett’s novels the door password is “swordfish.”

    While they all had funny bits, I didn’t find them that funny overall. Maybe it was just that it’s now been copied too many times. I think that one that made me chuckle the most was the mirror scene.

    PS: I have seen some films from the same time though; those being The Wizard of Oz and Citizen Kane.

  36. I don’t know which movie it is but it features Harpo getting various women to hang onto his leg under his knee.
    Can someone identify which movie?

  37. Google “Marx Bros-A Day At the Races-tutsi fruitsi icecream”

    One of the few times Groucho is being scammed instead of scamming.

  39. Of all the clips suggested, I think the stateroom scene gives the best feel for the Marx Brothers as a team, but since the object is to familiarize the students with the person for whom the Groucho Fly was named, I’d nominate the clip of Groucho singing “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” from the film “Horse Feathers”. It shows Groucho delivering his anti-authoritarian comic lines and it provides a good example of physical comedy by displaying his unique brand of eccentric dancing. Not only that, but it shows him in an academic setting, which the students should be able to relate to, and as an added bonus, the background banner shows that the school he heads is named Huxley!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29E6GbYdB1c

  40. The Groucho fly is a taxonomic enigma, since it refuses to accept any taxon that would have it as a member.

  41. Another one, this time from “A Day At The Races.

    Groucho, as a horse doctor, is asked to take the pulse of a fallen man. After doing so for a few seconds while glancing at his own wrist, he finally declares, “Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.”

  42. My favorite line, from “The Cocoanuts”, still relevant in 2008: Groucho is pitching a Florida housing development: “You can even get stucco – oh how you can get stuck-o.”

  44. Readers here may be interested to know that tomorrow (27 October) is the anniversary of the day You Bet Your Life made its first broadcast as a radio show in 1947. Its transition to TV almost didn’t make it because Groucho had grown a real mustache, and the network people thought it was too different from the greasepaint one that he made famous.

    Groucho’s birthday was also this month. Julius Henry Marx was born on 2 October 1890; he died on 19 August 1977.

    And who can forget this memorable album cover?

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