html> AT THE CIRCUS - MARX BROTHERS

MARX BROTHERS
AT THE CIRCUS
1939
EDWARD BUZZELL

and

Mantan Moreland and Ben Carter
Unfinished Sentences

The Scarlet Clue

Buzzell is a Brooklyn Born musical actor who had a career on Broadway. He went to Hollywood to star in a film version of George M. Cohan’s Little Johnny Jones one of the plays he had starred in on Broadway. He starred in some Vitaphone shorts and then started directing there as well. He moved to Columbia and then to MGM where he did the film he is most famous for. He also directed the Marx Brothers in Go West as well, but is also known for Nepture’s Daughter with Esther Williams.

The Marx Brothers

Originally there were 6 brothers, the children of Minnie Schönberg (born in Germany) and Sam Marx (born in France)

Manfred Marx (1885-1888?)
Chico Marx (Leonard) March 22 1887 – Oct 11, 1961
Harpo Marx (Adolph/Arthur) Nov 23 1888 – Sept 29 1964
Groucho Marx (Julius Henry) Oct 2, 1890 – Aug 19, 1977
Gummo Marx (Milton) Oct 23, 1892 (or 1893) – April 21 1977
Zeppo Marx (Herbert) Feb. 25, 1901 – Nov. 30, 1979

Almost a Marx sister was Margaret Dumont (born Daisy Juliette Baker in Brooklyn, NY(Oct 20 1882 – March 6 1965). Although IMDB claims “By all accounts she never understood their jokes (offscreen and on), which is of course a major reason why she's so funny.” Kitty Carlisle (Night at the Opera) claims she absolutely did. She is in The Coconuts, Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, At the Circus and The Big Store

The Marx Brothers appear generally as a "team" although one or more may hae a cameo role.

FILMS

Humor Risk (1921) unreleasd
The Cocoanuts (1929) Paramount
Animal Crackers (1930) Paramount
Monkey Business (1931) Paramount
Horse Feathers (1932) Paramount
Duck Soup (1933) Paramount
A Night at the Opera (1935) MGM (Thalberg)
A Day at the Races (1937) MGM (Thalberg died during the filming)
Room Service (1938) RKO
At the Circus (1939) MGM
Go West (1940) MGM
The Big Store (1941) MGM
A Night in Casablanca (1946) United Artists
Love Happy (1949) United Artists

Chico persuaded the other 2 to come back for the last 2 films because of his gambling debts.

Movies with one (or more) of the Marxes. (G=Groucho; H=Harpo; C=Chico)

A Kiss in the Dark (1925) Zeppo (maybe)
Too Many Kisses (1925) Harpo
The House That Shadows Built (1931) GHCZ “I’ll Say She Is” from a review they had done on Broadway
Hollywood on Parade No.5 (1932) GHC (one reel)
Hollywood on Parade No.9 (1933) C (one Reel)
Screen Snapshots (1933)
La Fiesta de Santa Barbara (1935) H (19 minutes)
Hollywood: The Second Step (1936) C (10 minutes)
Yours For the Asking (1936) G (an extra)
Sunday Night at the Trocadero (1937) G (20 minutes)
Screen snapshots No. 2 (1943) G (9-10 minutes)
Screen snapshots No. 8 (1943) GHC (10 minutes)
Stage Door Canteen (1943) H (One of Many)
The All-Star Bond Rally (1945) H (2 reels) one of many)
Copacabana (1947) G (starring role)
Mr. Music (1950) G (plays himself)
Double Dynamite (1951) G (lead)
A Girl in Every Port (1952) G (lead)
The Story of Mankind (1957) GHC In different scenes
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) G
Showdown at Ulcer Gulch (1958) GC (cameo) Chico’s son in law produced film for Saturday Evening Post Sales Convention
Skidoo (1968) G
Groucho also had his own T.V. series - a quiz program called You Bet Your Life KINDS OF COMEDY AND HUMOR

ETHNIC HUMOR

Ethnic humor involves jokes made by one group generally about another group. In group jokes are not usually thought of as ethnic, but that depends on definition. Ethnic humor can be defined by any joke based on the stereotype of the group labeled in the joke, as opposed to any joke based on the stereotype of the group labeled in the joke as told by a none member.

Many ethnic jokes are told by different groups about others with just a change in the group.

There are a number of variables here. One is the actual ethnicty of the performer; a second variable is the ethnicity of the character they are playing and the third is the ethinicty involved in the joke. So let's say a Scottish performer like Harry Lauder appearing as a "stereotypic Scot" makes jokes about the Scots. Many Scots were unhappy about his doing this.

This is not only a situation which arises in humor, but Carmen Miranda, born in Portugal and raised in Brazil, played a kind of Brazilian. When she came to America in the "Good Neighbor years", she became something of a stereotype and the Brazilians turned against her for "degrading the culture" despite the fact that she was super energetic and super talented. But she got known as "The Lady with the Tutti Frutti Hats". Her popularity in Brazil faded and she died at a young age. A documentary about her life called Bananas Is My Business is worth watching.

A related but different problem has to do with performers playing outside their ethnicity or perhaps race. The shift from race to ethnicity was made to imply a difference between something seen as "biologically determined" (like "race" and "sex") and something seen as culturally determined (like "ethnicity" and "gender". Despite this, the "new" terms seem to have simply replaced the old ones. While the implication of "gender" was that there could be many, forms now say "Gender: Male/Female" indicatiing that nothing has changed but the word.

Many performers argue that acting is about being what you are not, so there should be no problem with non Asians playing Asians or Asians playing non Asians, for example. The problem is that Asians rarely get to play characters who are not specifically Asian, while non Asians get to play Asians as for example Sidney Toler, Roland Winters and Peter Ustinov who have all played Charlie Chan. (In all fairness it should be noted the first actor to play Charlie Chan was a Japanese-American actor named George Kuwa. He played Chan in a silent serial (now lost) made by Pathe called The House without a Key (1926). The second Charlie Chan film was The Chinese Parrot (1927) released by Universal and starring Kamiyama Sojin and is also a lost film. Both appear to have reduced Chan's role. E.L. Park, a Korean actor, played Chan in the next film Behind the Curtain (1929) - the first sound film with Chan. The reviews were generally unfavorable.

This is in some ways particularly upsetting since Earl Derr Biggs, the creator of Charlie Chan, modeled him after a real life well known and well regarded Hawaiian police officer named Chang Apana as something to counter act the "yellow peril" ideas that were in vogue at the time.

Interestingly enough, the person who followed Park in 1931 was Warner Oland, generally felt to be the first non-Asian Charlie Chan. Oland however is 1/4 Mongolian which raises the question "Is there a specific "blood quantum" needed to become an "Asian". Worse, what does it do to the questions of "race" vs. "ethinicty" is one is going into that problem?

In the past ethnic humor was very common. The Marx Brothers play with ethnic humor in many ways. The brothers were Jewish, but Chico plays at being Italian. It was not uncommon for them to involve African Americans in musical numbers with some “mimicking” as does for example Al Jolson in his vaudeville acts. Mae West was also thinking of doing a similar kind of act.

There are several aspects to the problems of dealing with ethnic groups.. Part if the question lies in the nature of the humor, the other has to do with impersonation.

Some actors, like Iron Eyes Cody playing at beign an Indian in real life as well as in the films (he was the "Indian" who shed a tear in the ads about the environment).(Cody was Italian)

This really deals with an economical question. Since Asian performers rarely get to play parts that are not specifically Asian it blocks them from job opportunities when a role specifically marked as Asian say, goes to a non Asian. This question has 2 forms. Should non ethnic specific roles be played only by people from any ethnic group and when the role is specifically a member of a specific Asian group be played ONLY by people from that group. Some examples:

Charlie Chan is specifically marked as a Chinese character

Mark Yanagita (Steve Park) in Fargo. Did the Character have to be Japanese? Park is Korean-Ameircan and interestingly was criticized for taking non positive Asian role in Fargo. Does this mean that people from specific ethnic backgrounds can not be negative roles?

Shep Proudfoot (Steve(n) Reevis) in Fargo. Did the character have to be Indian? Reevis is Blackfeet from Montana) Won an award from First Americans in the Arts for Fargo and the TV film Crazy Horse.

The Charlie Chan films have been criticized for the depiction of Asians and African Americans

(a) Mantan Moreland as Birmingham Brown
(b) Benson Fong as Tommy Chan.

Exchange between Moreland and Ben Carter (who gets third billing even though he has less than 3 minutes screen time) is from their vaudeville act that was played to all Black audiences with the same characters they played in the films.

So there are two arguments: one that argues only members of the ethinc group should play those parts ecause they understand the members of their ethinicity better and the other is economic saying that people from ethnic groups that are only allowed to play members of that group are being economically deprived because of this. One wonders if one should have to cast only royalty to play royalty and only real serial killers to play real serial killers.

Timing in Humor

Timing is an important aspect of most if not all performance. Watch almost any film and watch the timing of the actor’s interactions in their conversations. There are frequently pauses that are somewhat unnatural; (most performance is unnatural although we often talk about it as being “natural”. There are many aspects of normal speech – false starts, ellipses, incomplete statements, overlapping conversations as so on.

In comedy timing has the same kind of problem, but the problem of setting the joke up is an additional problem. Jokes generally have a set-up and a punch line

1. The Setup — Establishes the premise of the joke by providing the audience with the necessary background info. The setup should be as tight as possible (new open mic comics tend to ramble on with unnecessary details).

2. The Punchline — Wham! The laugh line. The setup led the audience in one direction, and you surprised them by suddenly going off in a different direction. That twist, that element of surprise, is a punchline’s chief ingredient.

3. Tags (optional) — Also known as toppers, tags are additional punchlines. Sometimes they build on the original, sometimes they twist and snap back and forth in surprising new directions. Think of a skier slaloming back and forth, twist, twist, twist…

The Marx Brothers (particularly Groucho) do these constantly in their movies. Many of them are based on puns or double meaning. One of the shortest set-ups and punch lines is:
Battered women? Sounds tasty.

Maybe tasteless but tasteless is one kind of film.

Consider a “routine” which is not a single joke, but a series of lines which may be based around a single set-up. Two of the classic routines we will see this term: Abbott and Costello’s “Whose on First” and Mantan Moreland and Ben Carter’s “Incomplete sentences” are two classic example.

Problems for comedy in film are complex because audience reaction is not there and so interaction between performer and audience disappears. How long to wait for the laugh to stop?