Subscribe

New reviews, interviews, and features via RSS or Email.

Related Reviews

Groucho Marx

• A Night at the Opera (1935)
• The Cocoanuts (1929)
• Animal Crackers (1930)
• Monkey Business (1931)
• Horse Feathers (1932)
• Duck Soup (1933)
• The Big Store (1941)
• Go West (1940)
• At the Circus (1939)
• Room Service (1938)
• A Night in Casablanca (1946)
• The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection (1933)

Harpo Marx (II)

• A Night at the Opera (1935)
• The Big Store (1941)
• Go West (1940)
• At the Circus (1939)
• Room Service (1938)
• A Night in Casablanca (1946)
• The Cocoanuts (1929)
• The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection (1933)

Chico Marx (II)

• A Night at the Opera (1935)
• The Big Store (1941)
• Go West (1940)
• At the Circus (1939)
• Room Service (1938)
• A Night in Casablanca (1946)
• The Cocoanuts (1929)
• The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection (1933)

Allan Jones (II)

• A Night at the Opera (1935)

Sam Wood

• A Night at the Opera (1935)

The Marx Brothers

• The Big Store (1941)
• Go West (1940)
• At the Circus (1939)
• Room Service (1938)
• A Night in Casablanca (1946)
• The Cocoanuts (1929)
• Animal Crackers (1930)
• Monkey Business (1931)
• A Night at the Opera (1935)
• The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection (1933)

This Film On

• Internet Movie Database (IMDB)
• Rotten Tomatoes

A Day at the Races

(1937)

111 min. MGM. Director: Sam Wood. Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx (II), Chico Marx (II), Allan Jones (II), Maureen O'Sullivan, The Marx Brothers.

The inimitable Marx Brothers followed up their magnum opus A Night at the Opera with the light-footed A Day at the Races, repository for another handful of elaborate and indelible comedy scenarios. Following the now-established Marx formula, A Day at the Races offers music, dance, and comedy as proof that vaudeville--which spawned the Marxes--wasn't quite dead.

In the popular summer resort of Sparkling Springs, Standish Sanitarium isn't drawing customers like it used to do; when Judy Standish (Maureen O'Sullivan) frets to Tony (Chico Marx)--her loyal man Friday--that the sanitarium faces closure, he sets to work to save it. Tony overhears the sanitarium's best customer--hypochondriac dowager Emily Upjohn (Margaret Dumont)--heaping praise on a former doctor, so Tony tracks the doctor down and convinces him to take a position at the sanitarium.

Unfortunately, the doctor is actually a veterinarian by the name of Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx). He must keep up his act, or nasty opportunist Morgan (Douglass Dumbrille) will force Judy to sell him the sanitarium. If only Hi-Hat, the horse owned by Judy's hubby Gil (Allan Jones of A Night at the Opera), can win the big race, the sanitarium will be saved, but the de facto team of Judy, Gil, Hugo, Tony, and the mute jockey Stuffy (Harpo Marx) will have to dodge Morgan and his slinky gal pal Flo (Esther Muir) to cross the finish line.

The Marx Brothers, of course, had established personas which represented a refraction of their collective id: irreverent, girl-crazy, anarchic, and irrepressible. Harpo and Chico--the musicians--represented the lawless heart, and Groucho the razor-sharp mind ever-ready to cut corrupt and greedy authority (as long as it's not himself) down to size.

A Day at the Races isn't Harpo's finest hour, though he delivers his typical lovely harp solo (the one in which a broken piano becomes a makeshift harp). His most lasting impression in Races is his central position in the "Who's Dat Man?"/"All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" smilin' shantytown song-and-dance number, which climaxes with a blackface gag (on the bright side, the swinging Crinoline Choir number showcases jazz singer Ivy Anderson, who was performing with Duke Ellington at the time, and includes Dorothy Dandridge).

Chico scores points as the driving force of the hilarious, theatrical "tootsie-fruitsie ice cream" sequence, a successor to Opera's contract duet with Groucho. Chico, too, gets to perform his signature musical number, shooting the piano keys with rakish sleight-of-hand. The Marxes' musical numbers come during a hokey yet impressive "Winter Carnival" sequence, during which musical ingenue Jones gets his first of two songs ("On Blue Venetian Waters" and "Tomorrow Is Another Day") and Vivien Fay dances ballet.

But A Day at the Races belongs primarily to Groucho, a comic force of nature with his punchlines built on fractured logic, beautifully bizarre dancing, and silly, loping gait (here's where Bugs Bunny learned his moves, folks). Even in repose, he's completely magnetic, because of course, he's never truly in repose. Groucho's best lines have a free-associative, ad-libbed quality, like his remark about a lineup of stuffed shirts: "Just a moment--I'm calming these paralytics."

Marx works wonders with a beautiful dame to manhandle, like Muir in a bravura, chaotic bedchamber sequence with the other brothers. When Muir tells Groucho, "I've never been so insulted in my life," Groucho shoots back, "It's early yet." Foils Dumont and Sig Rumann (the one with the pointy beard) play cannon fodder to Groucho with practiced perfection. In Races, pesky business manager Whitmore (Leonard Ceeley) gets the worst of it in a phone mêlée .

All this and more in A Day at the Races: Chico and Harpo communicating in fractured charades, a riotous examination in which all three brothers pose as doctors and lay waste to an operating theatre, and, naturally, a big finish at the races, complete with horse stunts. Modern comedians could learn plenty from the creative invention and breadth of performance abilities the Marxes display. Sure, the odd bit is dated, but A Day at the Races is mostly timeless and thoroughly entertaining.

Sponsored Links