Reviewing Every Movie I Own: The Big Store

The Big Store
June 20, 1941
MGM
Comedy, Musical
VHS
C

While this is much livelier than Room Service, I'm going to have to put it on the same level, because, unlike At the Circus and Go West, which offer "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" and the big train scene respectively, there's not really anything that the Marxes do here that stands out. In fact, the only amusing moments I recall are deadpan Virginia O'Brien, as Kitty, inventing rock & roll (OK, technically still swing, but she is singing about rocking, a baby), and Charles Lane showing up at the end and being very Charles-Laney as the Finance Company Man. (He always played the same stern type, including in It's a Wonderful Life.) Yes, it's nice to see Groucho romancing Dumont again and insulting the villain. (Douglas Dumbrille, who was the horse-scaring-voiced Morgan in A Day at the Races, is the even more sinister Mr. Grover here.) But there's just too much boring music, which sadly includes Harpo in a "mirror scene" that is nothing like the one in Duck Soup. Also, there's a perfect example of what I call gratuitous racism, where for no reason at all, four black cotton-pickers show up in the middle of the "Sing While You Sell" production. (OK, other than O'Brien's weird lullaby, I did like Groucho's remark about Technicolor being too expensive for the fashion show, which I suspect is a dig at The Women.) Don't get me started on the various ethnic families shopping for beds!

Jan Duggan, who did a few Fields movies, plays the wife Groucho insults in the bed department. Perennial elevator operator Buddy Messinger actually has a few lines this time. Russell Hicks was in Follow the Fleet. Al Hill and Pierre Watkin were in The Bank Dick. Lennie Bluett sang in A Day at the Races as well as this movie. And, yes, that's Auntie Em, Clara Blandick, as the nice old lady that the male romantic lead makes a record for.

Lew Harvey and Milton Kibbee would go on to Citizen Kane, Kay Deslys to Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. Victor Potel, who plays the father of the Swedish kids, would be a newspaper editor in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.