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Strapped lunatics, starving artists. The stranded writer, the vanishing producer, the cast camped out in the lobby. "I think it's a terrible play, but it makes a wonderful rehearsal." The Marx Brothers at the luxurious White Way Hotel, about to be kicked out: Groucho and Chico scramble to pile a whole closet of coats and hats on themselves, Harpo strolls in bare-chested. "He just don't believe in shirts." "An atheist, eh?" Manager (Cliff Dunstan) and efficiency expert (Donald MacBride) stumble in and out of the room looking for payment, the callow playwright from Oswego (Frank Albertson) alternates between despair over his opus and longing for the pert secretary (Ann Miller). Cf. Cukor's Dinner at Eight. The "frowzy little dungeon" of show business, through it pass stuffed moose heads and bogus suicides, the Baudelairean albatross is a smuggled turkey that flies out the window. Even working at half their usual speed with ill-fitting Broadway material, the Marxes can't help bending reality to their will. A malady is needed in order to keep the characters from being thrown out, so Harpo chugs from an iodine bottle and spews at the dramatist through a spaghetti strainer et voilà, instant measles. Shakespeare and the tapeworm, the We Never Sleep Collection Agency on the case, the Russian thespian turned waiter turned thespian. Death and resurrection of the author, it's all brought to the premiere night with a standing ovation. "It's awfully hard to celebrate when you're running from an audience that wants its money back." William Seiter's astringent stance was not lost on Godard (Détective). With Lucille Ball, Philip Loeb, Philip Wood, Alexander Asro, Max Wagner, and Charles Halton. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |