A Day at the Races

I think that was the last of the major Marx Brothers movies that I needed to see. Can't ever go wrong with the Marx Brothers. This one was the best in dance, though perhaps the weakest in comedy. Well: weak comedy in the Aristophanes sense, but quite satisfying in the Menander sense (Aristophanes comedy = haha, Menander comedy = genre with love story and happy ending). It was a lot more like regular musicals...which made the musical sequences seem less awkward, at least. Like A Night at the Opera, more coherent in story, but you miss out on all the random craziness that makes those early movies so priceless.

Horse Feathers is still my favorite...

Or is it? Hard to tell because it was my first. I just remembered that Margaret Dumont (Mrs. Teasdale, etc.) was not in Horse Feathers - which would be a serious loss. I might have to watch them all again. Anyways, in looking up Dumont's ouvre on imdb, I ran across this bio:

"Margaret Dumont would probably consider it a tragedy that she is best-known for her performances as the ultimate straight woman in seven of the Marx Brothers' films (including most of their best). By all accounts she never understood their jokes (offscreen and on), which is of course a major reason why she's so funny."

Ha!