Marxist Rebellion

Steve Kurtz from the November 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Nevertheless, there’s plenty of interest here, especially the useful debunking of legends. Take the mythical day in Nagadoches, Texas. In 1909 the brothers supposedly were doing their musical act when a mule started acting up outside. The whole audience ran out to see the commotion and upon drifting back into the theater encountered a different act: Angry at being upstaged, the boys unleashed their unique brand of delirious humor for the first time. Louvish documents that they’d already been incorporating comedy for quite a while. He also uncovers interesting information about their film careers, including excerpts from script drafts, a discussion of their fight with the new management at Paramount in 1932, and an in-depth look at all the work that went into creating their first two MGM films. He even gives half a chapter to Groucho’s most famous on-screen foil, Margaret Dumont, who, it turns out, was seven years older than claimed.

Louvish is also the first writer I’m aware of to satisfactorily answer what might be called the Duck Soup question. This film, now considered their masterpiece, was also their first financial failure. Why? It turns out that it wasn’t in fact a big flop, just a falling off from previous receipts. A series of films often gets more and more expensive while the box office take starts going down. Even the most popular series of films in the 1930s, the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, was losing money by the last two. Duck Soup, the brother’s fifth and final film at Paramount, simply followed this common progression.

While both books are useful additions to a Marx Brothers library, neither in the end really gets under the skin of this team. The Marx Brothers were great, or they wouldn’t be worth so much ink. But if one hasn’t seen them already, these books won’t explain what makes them great. (To those who don’t think they’re great, I can only say stop reading, because you can’t convince someone what’s funny through argument.)

The Marx Brothers’ approach is rare, almost unique, in comedy. Most great clowns play the underdog: Chaplin and Keaton have to overcome great odds to win the day, and even W.C. Fields is usually put upon, often playing a simple man with an awful family. The Marx Brothers burst this convention, as they do so many others. In Monkey Business they’re stowaways on a liner. The usual comic strategy would be to avoid the authorities at all costs. Not the Marx Brothers. While the others are running wild, Groucho is busy upbraiding the captain for the poor accommodations.

No other comedians attack with the full force of the Marx Brothers. They’re a comic assault. At their best, they’re nothing but laughs coming at you in waves–it’s almost impossible to catch all their jokes in one viewing. The humor hits all the bases–they’re silly enough to be enjoyed by children but deep enough to be quoted by philosophers. If we side with them, it’s not because they ask for sympathy but because their targets–especially stifling, mindless convention–are our targets. The Marxes are the most liberating of clowns.

If there’s one word that best sums up their approach, it’s effrontery. Consider Groucho. The films often start with Groucho assuming a position of responsibility and openly stating he intends to overthrow accepted traditions while defrauding people. Groucho has funny lines, of course, but it’s more than that. It’s the cascade of words that make him what he is. Long strings of jokes that double back on themselves, insults that dissolve into non sequiturs, insurmountable problems shrugged off as insignificant, asides to the audience, intentional literal-mindedness just to cause trouble. The torrent he releases leaves one in a world where there’s no clear place to stand–speech as a means of imparting information is itself called into question.

Meanwhile, equally talented brother Harpo creates the same effect without saying a word. His ridiculous appearance, with horn, baggy clothes, and fright wig, is already an insult. He (literally) chases women, makes faces, steals anything (even birthmarks), and sleeps with horses. When a bum asks for coffee, he has a steaming cup ready in his voluminous coat. When a cop shows him his badge, Harpo, unimpressed, shows him numerous badges of his own. He tears up telegrams because he can’t read. Most important, his signature characteristic–he doesn’t speak–is itself effrontery. Keaton and Lloyd spoke in their silent films; we just couldn’t hear them. Harpo is the only major clown who works silent in honest-to-goodness talkies. It’s more a matter of stubbornness than anything else.

Finally, there’s Chico, perhaps the least funny brother but also the most perverse. He seems to be intentionally stupid, as if he’s denying reality because it doesn’t fit in with his plans. But more than this, his character alone is an insult. If all the Marxes did dialect comedy, they’d be a dated act. But while his brothers have long since moved on, he’s still doing Italian, for no discernible reason. Whatever connection it once had to vaudeville, his persona has become unmoored. Rarely in their movies is his Italian ancestry referred to, or made a plot point (in fact, in Animal Crackers his phony background is openly mocked). But that doesn’t stop him from chattering away in his ridiculous accent: "Atsa fine, boss."

The Marx Brothers created, refined, and embodied characters that still touch a chord–we can’t be this outrageous in life, so it’s good to have champions doing it for us. The Marx Brothers aren’t merely satirizing high society or education or government; they’re questioning the very idea of authority. Their comic existence makes absurd the concept that someone is owed deep respect because of a title or a degree. Expectations are constantly overturned, clichés are mocked, and social conventions are laughed off as not worthy of serious attention.

Other comedies end in certain predictable ways: Buster Keaton gets the girl, and Chaplin shuffles down another lonely road. But since the whole concept of a Marx Brothers film is that nothing in it matters, there is no "correct" way for it to end. To be sure, this turns off a certain type of viewer. The brothers offer no story to carry us along; their films live or die minute by minute on their material and their personalities, which are too aggressive for some. When Harold Lloyd makes a college football film, there’s an hour of deep humiliation before the climactic game where Harold turns everything around and wins the day. Horse Feathers ends with a football game too, but since nothing preceding it really meant anything, there’s nothing riding on the outcome. The Marx Brothers certainly don’t care–they win by cheating outrageously. The exultation comes not from their victory, but from their admission that these things don’t really matter anyway.

They inspire, then, the laughter of ultimate liberation. Most comedy plots are about an imbalance in the world being set right. The Marx Brothers see through this–there’s no correct balance to begin with. They don’t need the approval of the world to create meaning, instead creating meaning themselves. In Duck Soup, they fight for their country but switch sides as the mood strikes them. In the end, they win the war by pelting the foreign ambassador with fruit. Victory is declared, and Margaret Dumont breaks out into the national anthem. So they pelt her with fruit as well.

After a Marx Brothers film is over, we stumble out of the dark into the real world. At least for a little while, we can remember how we felt liberated from the mindless conventions all around us. And we can carry a little of that craziness with us, to help keep us sane. Surrealists such as Salvador Dali mistook the Marx Brothers for one of their own because they thought the team represented freedom from logic. But that’s got it backward: They stand for freedom from nonsense.

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