Reelin' In The Years -- A Day at the Races (1937), directed by Sam Wood

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "A Day At The Races", by Jurassic 5

       I’m not going to be one of those folks that says that comedy was so much better back in the day, as often times that seems to go hand-in-hand with ‘I want to make fun of minorities but I don’t want people to make me feel bad for doing it’, but I will say that it is distinctly different. I imagine much of that has to do with the fact that the comedy stars of the day came out of vaudeville, a style of theatrical variety show that had begun in the 1880s and had been phased out with the rise of cinema. Whereas many top comedic stars today got their start as stand-up comics before transitioning to the silver screen, those coming out of vaudeville were consummate performers: Acting, singing, dancing, musicianship, you needed to be well-rounded back in those days. That emphasis on stand-up also emphasizes the performer these days, whereas comedy then was based on the act. People didn’t turn on the Colgate Comedy Hour to see Bud Abbott and Lou Costello the people, they turned on to see the characters of Abbott & Costello, if that makes sense. At least they did until they were replaced by Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, and even then Jerry Lewis wasn’t the same guy as ‘Jerry Lewis’. Just ask the French.

       I was a big 3 Stooges fan when I was a kid, in large part because TCM or whoever loved to push marathons of their stuff back in the day, and it wasn’t until I was in late high school/early college that I first heard of the Rolling Stones to the Stooges’ Beatles, the Marx Bros. Where the crux of the 3 Stooges style lied in the fact that they were stooges and thus fucked up everything they attempted, the Marx Bros. (lascivious fast-talker Groucho, Italian con artist Chico, and prop-loving, anarchi mute Harpo, occasionally joined by their straight-man brother Zeppo or Gummo in the vaudeville days) made everyone else the stooges. As soon as they stepped into a room they were three steps ahead of everyone else there, and then it was a race to see how much they can fuck with those people before the scene ended. They were still good guys at heart, helping those in need, but they were totally fine with lying, cheating and stealing whenever the situation called for it (or because they felt like it at the time). Kinda like Eddie Guerrero when he was a babyface.

       A Day at the Races was the second Marx Bros. film to be released by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer after their move from Paramount (the home of their first five full-length films) and the second in a row to be directed by Sam Wood (who you might recall from Raffles) , following A Night at the Opera. Maureen O’Sullivan plays Judy, the young and beautiful owner of a sanitarium located near the Sparkling Springs Lake summer resort which has recently fallen on hard times. It’s looking like she might have to sell the place to shady businessman Morgan, and finding out that her lover Gill (Allan Jones) has spent all the money he’s saved up as a singer in order to buy a racehorse in order to pay her debts does nothing to lift her mood. Tony (Chico), the sanitarium employee, offers a suggestion: Get Ms. Upjohn (played by Marx Bros. regular Margaret Dumont), the resident rich lady and hypochondriac to pay off the debt! Well Miss Upjohn isn’t really in the mood to break open the pocketbook, convinced as she is that something is wrong despite all the doctors saying she’s fine. So if that’s the case, then they better call in Ms. Upjohn’s favorite doctor, Hugo Hackenbush (Groucho), physician and diagnostician, but mostly a veterinarian. Then you’ve got Stuffy the jockey (Harpo) who ends up meeting Gill at the race track while running from his own troubles, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a cinematic jambalaya.

       Of course you’re not going to a Marx Bros. movie for the plot, you’re there to see them do their schtick, and in that A Day at the Races fulfills that need. I find it hard to describe what makes the Marx Bros.entertaining, because so much of it is based on the dexterity of how they perform and how they use language (probably not a good choice for an ESL class movie night) that you really need to see it to get the full effect. This is clear whenever one of the Bros. are aimed at somebody, but Races also dedicates a decent chunk of time to longform skits involving the Bros. interacting with each other, which has a different sort of energy entirely. The only one who can match a Marx Brother is another Marx Brother after all, and seeing them play off each other is a treat all on its own. The first big skit of the film in fact, when Tony unknowingly meets Hackenbush for the first time and cons him into buying a tip on a horse, which is in a code you need to buy a code book to decipher, and so on and on, feels exactly like something they pulled out a hundred times back on the vaudeville circuit. Hell, you don’t even need the rest of the film for context, it works perfectly well on its own with a definitive beginning and end. 

       Marx Bros. films are often very musical ones as well, with most if not all of their films featuring a virtuoso solo performance by Chico on the piano and Harpo on the harp (natch). Races takes this a step further by sticking two lengthy musical numbers in the second half, including a reprise at the end. Allan Jones does his Zeppo impression here, by which I mean ‘generic old-timey Hollywood ballad’, but I do enjoy the second, jazzier number. Combined with those long skits it does throw off the pace of the film, so things end up coming across as a bit chaotic by the end. A bit of a ‘we’re running out of time so let’s wrap everything up now’ kind of thing. Not bad, just different.

       Really I’ve only got two gripes with this movie. One is an unfortunate case of blackface, when the Marx Bros. are trying to escape from the villains in a crowd of Black people, but not too much attention is drawn to it and no jokes are made at the expense of Black people during the scene so it’s not as bad as it could have been. The other issue is with Harpo, or rather how he’s utilized in this film. Not only does he seem less actively chaotic than he has in other films, but he also seems kind of...superfluous, I guess is the word? As if they struggled to find something for him to do except at the very end of the film. I also must admit that I hate his ‘whistling as talking’ gimmick, and when he breaks it out here it lasts just long enough to get me in a sour mood. They get back by the next scene, but that fucking whistling is not doing it for me dude.

       When talking about the best Marx Bros. movies, I imagine folk with more cinema experience than I do likely lean towards their output with Paramount (that Zeppo tho). Honestly I’d probably agree, although it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to watch their early stuff. However I think A Day at the Races (as well as A Night at the Opera) works as a good showcase of their stuff, and showed that they still had plenty left in the tank. At least until they reached A Night in Casablanca, by which time the wheels were definitely falling off the car. 1937 though? Still good, and so it gets the recommendation.

       This year’s potential inductions included Disney’s landmark animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Leo McCarey’s family drama Make Way For Tomorrow, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage. We’re heading closer and closer to some dark times on the timeline, so how about for our next stop we get into some heavier fare?