The trick was to integrate Groucho, Harpo and Chico into such a story without diluting their own anti-establishment brand of humor-no mean feat, considering the insipid nature of most romantic subplots in films of this sort. The plot of the film revolves around our helping two lovers, Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones, get together. This immediately established sympathy for Harpo, and puts the audience on his side. If you recall the opening of Night at the Opera where Harpo is trying on the costume of the lead singer, the singer comes into his dressing room and discovers Harpo, and begins beating him. “I can make a film with you that would have half as many laughs as your Paramount films, but they will be more effective because the audience will be in sympathy with you,” he told Groucho.Īs Groucho told Richard Anobile some forty years later, “He was right. He became acquainted with Chico Marx on the high-stakes bridge circuit in Beverly Hills, and this led to a discussion about the brothers moving to M-G-M. It was Irving Thalberg, the brilliant production head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and erstwhile “boy genius” of Hollywood, who came to the Marx Brothers’ rescue. (According to small-town theater owners, grassroots America much preferred the homespun comedy of Joe E.

The Marx Brothers’ earlier films had been successful, but this one, regarded today as a classic, had laid a giant egg in its own time. So, why bother comparing apples and oranges?Ī Night at the Opera came about, in fact, because Duck Soup had failed so badly at the box office in 1933. Even so, it’s still a great film, and it contains some of the finest Marx Brothers’ comedy ever concocted.

Certainly there’s no comparison on a point-by-point basis: Duck Soup is a classic of satire and nonsense comedy, offered at full-strength.Ī Night at the Opera is a much more traditional Hollywood film, with musical numbers, a romantic subplot, and “straight” second leads to offset the comedy stars. Marx Brothers aficionados have argued for years over the relative merits of A Night at the Opera and the “purer” Marx movies such as Duck Soup.

Groucho marx in a night at the opera