Horse Feathers
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| Horse Feathers | |
|---|---|
 Promotional Poster for "Horse Feathers" |
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| Directed by | Norman Z. McLeod |
| Produced by | Herman J. Mankiewicz (uncredited) |
| Starring | Groucho Marx Harpo Marx Chico Marx Zeppo Marx Thelma Todd |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 10, 1932 |
| Running time | 68 min. |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Horse Feathers (1932) was the fourth Marx Brothers film. It stars the four Marx Brothers, Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo, as well as Thelma Todd as Connie Bailey, and was written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S. J. Perelman, and Will B. Johnstone. Kalmar and Ruby also wrote some of the original music for the film. Several of the film's gags were taken from the Marx Brothers' stage comedy from the 1920s, Fun in Hi Skule.
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[edit] Plot
The film revolves around, among other things, college football and a game between the fictional Darwin and Huxley Colleges. (Huxley was a defender of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.) Many of the jokes about the amateur status of collegiate football players and how eligibility rules are stretched by collegiate athletic departments remain remarkably current. Groucho plays Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the president of Huxley College, and Zeppo is his son Frank, who convinces his father to recruit professional football players to boost the Huxley team's chance of winning. There are also many references to Prohibition. Baravelli (Chico) is an "iceman", who delivers ice and bootleg liquor from a local speakeasy. Pinky (Harpo, wearing his usual pink-colored "fright wig") is also an "iceman", as well as a part-time dogcatcher.
The opening number features Wagstaff and a group of college professors singing and dancing in full academic robes and mortarboard hats. The song sets the tone for Wagstaff's irreverant view of the school:
- I don't know what they have to say
- It makes no difference anyway;
- Whatever it is, I'm against it!
At one point Wagstaff and Baravelli are debating the cost of ice. Wagstaff argues that his bill should be much smaller than it is:
- Baravelli: I make you proposition. You owe us $200, you pay us $2000, and we call it square.
- Wagstaff: That's not a bad idea. I tell you what ... I'll consult my lawyer. And if he advises me to do it, I'll get a new lawyer!
Right after that one, the following risque joke illustrates that the Hays Office was not in total control of film scripts yet, also hinting at Chico's real-life lifestyle. The essence of this joke would be repeated by Chico in Duck Soup:
- Baravelli: Last week, for eighteen dollars, I gotta co-ed with two pair o' pants.
- Wagstaff: Since when has a co-ed got two pair of pants?
- Baravelli: Since I joined the college.
Through a series of misunderstandings, Baravelli and Pinky are recruited to play on Huxley's football team; this requires them to enroll as students at Huxley. A notable scene taken from Fun in Hi Skule consists of the brothers disrupting an anatomy class. In this scene, the part of the anatomy professor is played by Robert Greig, a character actor who appeared in over 100 films, many in the role of a butler. He appeared with the Marx Brothers as Hives, the butler, in Animal Crackers. After Chico and Harpo "bear him out", Groucho takes over the class and continues the lecture:
- Wagstaff: Let us follow a corpuscle on its journey... Now then, baboons, what is a "corpuscle"?
- Baravelli: That's easy! First is a captain... then a lieutenant... then is a corpuscle!
- Wagstaff: That's fine. Why don't you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?
He later "tops" that joke with this little poem in response to Wagstaff asking the students to explain cirrhosis, which Baravelli mis-hears as "so roses":
- So roses are red
- So violets are blue
- So sugar is sweet
- So so are you.
A little later, Wagstaff advises Pinky that he "can't burn the candle at both ends". Pinky then reaches into his trenchcoast, and pulls out a candle burning at both ends.
The film prominently features the song "Everyone Says I Love You", by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, which was later the title song of the eponymous 1996 Woody Allen movie Everyone Says I Love You. All four brothers perform the song:
Zeppo leads off with a "straight" verse, befitting his usual non-comical characterization:
- Everyone says I love you
- The cop on the corner and the burglar too
- The preacher in the pulpit and the man in the pew
- Says I love you.
Harpo whistles it to his horse, and later plays it on the harp. In keeping with his standard mute characterization, he does not sing it.
Chico sings a comical verse, with his standard fake Italian accent, while playing piano:
- Everyone says I love you
- The great big mosquito when-a he sting you
- The fly when he gets stuck on the flypaper too
- Says I love you.
Groucho sings a somewhat sarcastic verse while strumming a guitar, befitting his attitude throughout the film of being suspicious about the college widow's intentions:
- Everyone says I love you
- But just what they say it for I never knew
- It's just inviting trouble for the poor sucker who
- Says I love you.
Except when Harpo (the dogcatcher) whistles it to his horse, the song is used to serenade Connie Bailey (played by Thelma Todd).
Eventually, Pinky and Baravelli are sent to kidnap two of the rival college's star players to prevent them from playing in the big game. The intended victims (who are much larger men than Pinky and Baravelli) manage to kidnap the pair instead, removing their outer clothing and locking them in a room (see image). In order to escape, Pinky and Baravelli saw their way out through the floor. Where they obtained the saws, and how they got the saws into the floor, is left to the imagination. This is an example of the surreal edge of Marx Brothers humor, which later became a heavy influence on Bugs Bunny cartoons.
One direct example of that influence occurs in the speakeasy. Two men are playing cards, and one says to the other, "cut the cards". Pinky happens to walk by at that moment, pulls a large meat cleaver out of his trenchcoat and chops the deck in half. This none-too-subtle gag would be repeated by Bugs Bunny against Yosemite Sam in the 1948 cartoon, Bugs Bunny Rides Again.
The climax of the movie includes the brothers winning the football game by taking the ball into the end zone in a horse-drawn garbage wagon that resembles a chariot and which Harpo rides as such. A picture of the brothers in this "chariot" made the cover of TIME in 1932[1].
[edit] College Widow
A term that occurs often in Horse Feathers, but may not be familiar to modern viewers, is "college widow". The term, which is somewhat derogatory, referred to a woman who stays in college after graduation in order to find a husband. It is used to describe Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd). Such women were stereotypically "easy"; in the film, the character is shown as being involved with each of the Marx brothers and the principal antagonist, Jennings. A modern adaptation of the concept (albeit with a gender reversal) would be Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) from Dazed and Confused (film) who hangs around high schools because "[he] keeps getting older but the girls stay the same".
[edit] Swordfish
One famous scene features Baravelli guarding the speakeasy, and Wagstaff trying to get in. The password for entry is "Swordfish". This bit was the inspiration for the title of the movie thriller Swordfish. The sketch includes several jokes about fish, with some puns-within-puns:
- Wagstaff: I got it! "Haddock".
- Baravelli: 'At's a-funny, I got a "haddock" too.
- Wagstaff: What do you take for a "haddock"?
- Baravelli: Sometimes I take an aspirin, sometimes I take a calomel.
- Wagstaff: I'd walk a mile for a calomel.
[edit] Missing Sequences
The only existing prints of this film are missing several minutes, due to both censorship and damage. The damage is most noticeable in jump cuts during the scene in which Groucho, Chico and Harpo visit Connie Bailey's apartment. Several sequences were cut from the film, including an extended ending to the aforementioned apartment scene, additional scenes with Harpo as a dogcatcher, and a scene where the brothers play poker as the college burns down [2].
[edit] Musical numbers
- "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It"
- "I Always Get My Man"
- "Collegiate"
- "Everyone Says I Love You"
- "Bridal Chorus"
- "Wedding March"
- "I'm Daffy Over You"
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Original 1932 Time Magazine review
- Horse Feathers at the Internet Movie Database
- Horse Feathers at the TCM Movie Database
- Marx-Brothers.org
| The Marx Brothers |
|---|
| Chico Marx | Harpo Marx | Groucho Marx | Gummo Marx | Zeppo Marx |
| Films with Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo |
|
Humor Risk (1921) • The Cocoanuts (1929) • Animal Crackers (1930) • |
| Films with Chico, Harpo, and Groucho |
|
A Night at the Opera (1935) • A Day at the Races (1937) • Room Service (1938) • At the Circus (1939) • |
