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Thus they hooked up with Irving Thalberg at MGM who knew how to gentrify the Marx Brothers into mainstream box office. Barry Wood is a Rockford Register Star copy editor. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff." Sheer genius. 'Duck Soup' interestingly was the Brothers first financial loss. In the wacky world of the Marx Brothers, upstart is a fighting word.
In the words of Groucho himself: "If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. The brothers were unfazed by such negative publicity, though, and were far too certain of the rightness of their cause to be dragged off track by grumbling dissenters.
Released in 1933 Duck Soup ruffled plenty of feathers, with American audiences dismayed by its cynical take on war and international politics at a time when the world was just waking up to the crisis of Nazism. Every move Groucho makes, Harpo - disguised in similar attire - mimics perfectly. Standout moments include the madcap sequence in which Chico and Harpo drive a lemonade seller to distraction by swapping their hats around, and the amazingly choreographed scene in which the silent Harpo hides from Groucho by pretending to be his reflection in a broken mirror. The film boasts delirious verbal banter, interludes that could have been dreamt up by avant-garde surrealists on the Parisian Left Bank, and a total lack of respect for the rules. Duck Soup is without doubt the distillation of everything that the Marx Brothers claimed as their own. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont) for another 20 million so they can reduce taxes but she insists that Rufus T. Unpredictable, hilarious, and completely deranged. A joker is appointed president of a small country and goes to war with his neighbor in this anarchical Marx brothers farce. At first, many critics deemed the film to be a commercial failure because its popularity paled in comparison to other Marx Brothers’ productions like The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, and The House That Shadows Built.Furthermore, many sensitive American audiences were offended at the rampant political disrespect, buffoonery and. A subversive comedy that bulldozes everything in its path, Duck Soup's satire of war and nationhood may be borderline insane, but that only makes its distrust of pompous politics all the more scathing. The Marx Brothers’ film Duck Soup was first released in 1933. Meanwhile, Chico and Harpo play a pair of spies sent to infiltrate Freedonia's regime. War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing except for anarchic belly laughs in this subversive Marx Brothers outing in which Rufus T Firefly (Groucho Marx) leads Freedonia into a pointless conflict with a neighbouring state after he's called an upstart.