A Day at the Races

A Day at the Races
June 11, 1937
MGM
Comedy, Musical
VHS
C+

Once again, as in A Night at the Opera, Sam Wood directs, Allan Jones is the male romantic lead, Sig Ruman and his beard are mocked by Groucho, and Kaufman, Pirosh, Seaton, and Boasberg worked on the script.  This time, Maureen O'Sullivan is the female romantic lead, and she's more appealing than anyone since Lillian Roth.  Also, the movie doesn't suffer the over-inflated reputation of its immediate predecessor.  So in a way, I have a softer spot for it than I do for Night, but I will admit that it's just not as good a movie.

It starts out all right, and for awhile I was thinking of giving it a B-, like Night.  The brothers all have their moments, Chico especially in the "tootsie-frootsing" of Groucho and in his Jew-does-Italian-does-Irish house detective disguise, Harpo during his medical exam (I like how he "shouts" aah), and of course Groucho, especially when he's dancing.  Margaret Dumont actually shows a range of emotion (from A to C) for a change, although she's not given enough to do with Groucho.  Yes, the Water Carnival sequence is far too long (the entire movie is about double the length of Thank You, Jeeves!), but Chico and Harpo again have some nice musical moments.

Then around the 80- or 90-minute mark (I wasn't watching the clock, and my VCR doesn't have the time points), things start to sour.  We get another down-on-their-luck sequence, this time with the Brothers and the romantic couple picking up their spirits by hanging out in Shantytown, where the local Negroes salute a flute-playing Harpo as Gabriel, as in the angel.  (It might make sense if he were playing a horn.)  It is the best musical sequence but is marred by disjointedness (it can't decide if it's a medley or a jam session) and of course racism.  While the singers and dancers are undeniably talented-- one of them, Etta Moten, also sang in Flying Down to Rio-- their exaggerated facial expressions, especially eye-rolling, will probably have you rolling your own eyes, in disbelief or disgust.  And then the whole undercutting of the big horse race near the end goes on far too long, paling in comparison to the football sequence in Horse Feathers, which was itself far from their best filmic climax.  The very ending of this film, with the characters singing bits of songs (including one of Groucho's that was foolishly edited out) and Groucho actually sounding sincere as he proposes to Dumont, isn't bad but it's too little too late.  Results, the Brothers' worst movie since The Cocoanuts, although still watchable in bits and pieces.

Frankie Darro, "Frankie" from Phantom Empire, appears as the rival jockey.  Marx and/or Fields regulars Edith Kingdon, Edward LeSaint, Edmund Mortimer, Frank O'Connor, and Cyril Ring have small roles.  Esther Muir, who appears as "Flo," would have a small part in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, as would musician Jack George and doctor Max Lucke.  Billy Dooley would go on to The Double Wedding, Lee Murray to The Wizard of Oz, Jack Kenny to You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, Vangie Beilby to The Bank Dick, Ray Flynn and Field Norton to Citizen Kane, Robert Middlemass and Buck Woods to The Road to Zanzibar, Victor Potel to Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Helen Dickson and Arthur Stuart Hull to It's a Wonderful Life, Florence Wix to High Society, and Harry Wilson to Some Like It Hot.  Furthermore, Kenny Baker, who would be Jones's counterpart in At the Circus, pops up here as a party guest, as does Carl M. Leviness, who has a much smaller role than Baker's in Circus.

Man on the Flying Trapeze

Man on the Flying Trapeze
August 3, 1935
Paramount
Comedy
DVD
B-

Well, this movie surprised me.  My expectations were low when I saw that Kathleen Howard again plays Fields's nagging wife, but there's more to her character here, although she's not given as much screen time.  The second half of the movie, with all the complications of Fields's job as a memory expert, his desire to see a wrestling match, and his family troubles (as usual, only the roughly 20-year-old daughter, here named Hope, is loyal to him), is much better than the first, although I can see how that first half sets things up.  The direction, by Fields himself, has much more energy than anything since International House, which admittedly was not just a Fields movie.  There are some nice comic touches, like the way his boss Peabody pronounces "decades" like "decayeds" and "condolences" like you've never heard it before.  Fields even gets a few lines past the censors, like "Nuts!" while stepping on walnuts, and calling a nosegay "nose candy."

Carlotta Monti, Fields's real-life live-in lover, does a fine job playing his secretary, even telling off Peabody, and she would play a receptionist in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.  Lew Kelly and Billy Bletcher were both in The Old Fashioned Way.  Jack Baxley would go on to Double Wedding, both Helen Dickson and Sarah Edwards to It's a Wonderful Life.  And one of the wrestlers is none other than future "star" of Plan Nine from Outer Space Tor Johnson!

Since it's a Paramount comedy, what does the title mean?  I thought that the classic song would be one that the burglars (one played by Walter Brennan, the other of course Tammany Young), the one friendly cop Fields meets, and Fields would sing in their basement quartet, but they don't.  I think the title is meant to be an ironic comment on how Fields's Ambrose Wolfinger isn't daring or young, nor does he float through the air (or life) with the greatest of ease, but there's something quietly heroic about him.  I think this is the first of his movies where I actually cared about his character.