Programme notes CH 04 — The Matinee
The Cocoanuts
A Florida hotel with no paying guests, a land auction with no land, and four brothers working the lobby.
The Marx Brothers’ first feature, shot at Paramount’s Astoria studio by day while they played Animal Crackers on Broadway at night. The microphones were so new that every rustle carried, and the crew soaked the papers in water to quiet them — watch the auction map in Groucho’s hands go limp as a dishcloth. That map is the centre of the film: Groucho walking Chico through a viaduct that Chico keeps hearing as “why a duck”. It is the oldest routine in the act, caught before the act knew what film could do to it. The overhead chorus shots, a step ahead of Busby Berkeley, are the film’s other joke, played straight.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Robert Florey · Joseph Santley
- Photographed by
- George J. Folsey
- With
- Groucho Marx · Zeppo Marx · Margaret Dumont · Kay Francis · Harpo Marx · Basil Ruysdael
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
The Marx Brothers’ first two pictures, both Broadway hits by Kaufman photographed at Astoria with the camera nailed down. Watch Margaret Dumont in each: a year apart, she has already decided that the way to play opposite Groucho is never to notice he is joking.