Horse Feathers ***** (1932, Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Zeppo Marx, Thelma Todd) – Classic Movie Review 3060

Director Norman Z McLeod’s classic 1932 comedy Horse Feathers is the Marx Brothers’ fourth movie and it is brilliant fast-paced, hilarious vintage fun, with the four siblings wreaking their usual havoc in a college setting.

Groucho Marx plays Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the new college president of Huxley University, who sets out to fix a football game. Intending to recruit two football players who hang out in a speakeasy, he by mistake hires bumbling misfits Baravelli (Chico Marx) and Pinky (Harpo Marx) to help his school win the big game against the rival Darwin University. Discovering Darwin has beaten him in hiring the real players, Groucho gets Baravelli and Pinky to kidnap them.

Chico Marx cometh as the iceman (and an Italian-American bootlegger), Harpo Marx shines as a dog-catcher and fourth brother Zeppo Marx rather worryingly plays Groucho’s son Frank, who is busy romancing the college widow, Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd vamping outrageously). But where is Groucho’s eternal foil Margaret Dumont?

The movie is top Marx, with full Marx for the script and performances. The brothers are on their finest zany form and the movie is full of great gags by humourist S J Perelman, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and Will B Johnstone (‘I think you’ve got something there, but I’ll wait outside until you clean it up’) and nice songs (music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby).

Horse Feathers is as brilliant as the better-known and more highly regarded Duck Soup (1933) or A Night at the Opera (1935).

Also in the cast are David Landau, Florine McKinney, Jim Pierce, Nat Pendleton, Reginald Barlow and Robert Greig.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3060

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