A Night At The Opera --- Part Two

For all the trouble he’d taken, Thalberg’s formula would only work once. A Night At The Opera had a negative cost of one million to recover, not an easy thing for a comedy team who’d peddled similar onscreen wares since 1929. Then as now, you either liked The Marx Brothers or you (resolutely) did not. The ink was probably dry on trade raves shown here weeks before the picture opened. The majors had a knack for creating the perception of a hit --- never mind what Mr. and Mrs. Patron really thought. Reviews not corrupted were often ignored. Photos of lines outside Broadway theatres conveyed a more forceful message. Year-end accounts told the real story, and that wouldn’t be shared with the press or public. A Night At The Opera earned domestic rentals of 1.1 million, surely a (so far) peak for the Marxes, but less than MGM specials of that year were typically bringing. Foreign was $651,000. Worldwide rentals totaled 1.8 million. Final profits were only $90,000. Thalberg sought the Marxes because he felt the lot needed comedians. Season commitments from independent exhibitors came with expectation of a balanced program. Undoubted disappointment over A Night At The Opera would not discourage Thalberg, but would he have stayed with the Marxes had he lived to see the losing numbers A Day At The Races generated? That follow-up to A Night At The Opera, still in production at the time of Thalberg’s death, took a considerable bath in red ink. A negative cost of 1.7 million was not equaled by domestic rentals of 1.6. The eventual loss was $543,000. Subsequent Marx Brothers features would be downgraded in budget and prestige. At The Circus lost $492,000, Go West (at a cost of 1.1 million) came up short by $206,000. The Big Store’s trailer depicts crowds howling for the team to come out of announced retirement to do one last comedy for MGM, but were there so many left to care by 1941? A Night In Casablanca was said to have been made at Chico’s behest (he was in serious, if not life threatening, dutch over gambling markers). The 1946 independent released through United Artists would surprise naysayers and become the biggest grosser the comedians ever had, the unexpected all-time champ of Marx Brothers movies. In fact, it would be A Night In Casablanca that paved the way for A Night At The Opera to finally become an unqualified hit …

They could scarcely have picked a better year for an encore. 1946 was a US summit for theatre attendance. Seems everybody spent that first year back from the war going to movies. A Night In Casablanca may not have been prime Marx Brothers, but turnstiles were spinning to the tune of 1.8 million in domestic rentals, with $894,000 foreign. This was a record on both counts for the team. A worldwide final of 2.7 million suggested possibilities for a real comeback. The Marxes were surely in for a percentage. Were they fully apprised of how well this picture did? Looking back on the Paramount dispute, I wonder. By now, these comedians were showing some age. The picture thing may have become more trouble than it was worth. At least for Groucho, working alone seemed preferable. Would a major studio have embraced the team after A Night In Casablanca? MGM tested waters with a December 1948 reissue of A Night At The Opera. Their New York sales team must have noticed near constant revival of old Paramount Marx Brothers features in newly burgeoning art houses around Manhattan. Flat rental peanuts to be sure, but what if the company really got behind A Night At The Opera with an all new campaign and top-line bookings? MGM’s newly christened reissue program (Masterpiece Reprints) had led off with the stunning success of A Rage In Heaven, a 1941 feature that took an amazing 1.2 million in profits during 1946. This was followed with more library favorites, and further profits --- Boom Town ($862,000), The Great Waltz (1.0 million), and two Tarzans, Secret Treasure ($410,000) and New York Adventure ($434,000). A Night At The Opera was trade shown, ordinarily the exclusive province of new releases, and sold on a percentage basis. Domestic rentals were an outstanding $633,000, with foreign an additional $435,000, for a worldwide total of 1.0 million. The profit was $746,000. Save Love Happy and its unremarkable one million in domestic rentals, there would be no further Marx Brothers starring features (and you could argue Groucho’s appearance in that one was but an extended cameo). A Night At The Opera would return by way of Metro’s Perpetual Product Plan, an early 60’s scheme wherein vintage features were farmed out to independent distributors throughout the country with final revenue split between franchise holders and MGM. Between September 1, 1962 and August 31, 1967, there were 202 bookings for A Night At The Opera at an average flat rental of $49. Total film rentals received by Metro amounted to $9,808. Most engagements were in urban revival houses. Any theatrical revenue for A Night At The Opera was found money, as this title had been playing syndicated television since August 1956.

A Trojan Horse entered the United Artists theatre shown here in December 1935 and A Night At The Opera rendezvoused with technology that would one day finish off Hollywood’s Golden Age of leisure domination. The Los Angeles crowd we see is welcoming arrival of a mystery apparatus (weighing in at 8,400 pounds and costing $75,000) being transported into the theatre. Manager Thomas D. Soriero became the nation’s first video showman that day. Television in its present stage is only a scientific novelty and a curiosity, he said, but television equipment on display and in use within the theatre by the patrons makes good publicity for any house. An onstage lecturer preceded each run of A Night At The Opera and explained miracles awaiting the audience in lounges wherein transmitters and receivers had been installed. There was a bank of picture telephones at which you could both see and hear persons located in other parts of the theatre. Soriero, a self-described pioneer of television, gave assurance that the new medium was anywhere from five to ten years away from general usage. Some time in the future one will sit at home and watch the latest movies as well as current events and stage productions. Prophetic words in 1935. The Federal Communications Commission, itself a recently formed body, was receiving but a trickle of applications for station licensing. Receivers were still prohibitively expensive, and signals couldn’t transmit beyond four or five miles. Technical glitches included constant radio signal interference with television. Proponents insisted that the new medium would have no more effect on theatre attendance than radio broadcasting or home movies (did they mean Kodascope 16mm used by early collectors?).

I’m guessing a lot of readers have been watching The Marx Brothers as long as I have. Maybe for too long. There’s a point at which you stop laughing and start wondering what it is that’s making other people laugh. I’ve long forgotten what first appealed to me about the team. I spent most of A Night At The Opera trying to remember. You get to a certain age and too many favorites from youth become objects under a microscope --- all of which keeps them interesting and maybe more stimulating --- but comedies wilt on cross-examination, and too much analysis of the Marx Brothers drains every laugh out of them. I confess to having paused several times to remind myself --- Ah, yes, this is supposed to be one of the funniest parts --- and indeed, maybe it would be again were I part of a larger and (more importantly) younger audience. It isn’t fair to blame any movie for one’s overexposure to it. A Night At The Opera is fascinating for what it reveals of a comedy act trying to hang on for a changing audience (and Opera certainly has some of their all-time best routines --- that bed moving sequence is a marvel of timing genius). But did viewers in 1935 (or since) want to see The Marx Brothers humanized, and worse yet, associated with normal, functioning (if dull) characters such as Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle? Their last three Paramount features were filled with less people than foils, stereotypes as opposed to individuals. Louis Calhern in Duck Soup, Nat Pendleton in Horse Feathers, and Thelma Todd in Monkey Business belonged in a Marxian universe. The Brothers interact with these figures only to torment and bedevil them. Human contact is the last thing they need or we want. Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle are all the more distressing for friendly gestures they extend toward the comedians, as this is surely the antidote to their being funny. The Marx Brothers must act in opposition to all things if they are to make us laugh. Whatever it is, I’m against it --- but three years later, Groucho’s delivering love notes from Allan to Kitty --- and rewarded with a kiss on the cheek that sends him into bashful retreat. Chico pledges unswerving loyalty to seemingly incompatible friend of long duration Jones. All those years we studied together at the conservatory, recalls Allan’s character. We’re still young, we got our health, replies steadfast Chico, who then volunteers to manage his buddy’s career, for nothing. Chico was many things prior to landing at Metro; kindly and reassuring not among them. Worse still is Harpo’s transformation. The edge if not danger he posed at Paramount is replaced with kiddie host geniality, a forerunner to harmless fools who’d smuggle bananas past Captain Kangaroo. The brats guffawing around Harpo’s piano would not have taken such liberties in earlier films. Accommodations made for these and other tender sensibilities make it harder for the Marxes to play off each other successfully. Soft hearts once revealed are less credible in the guise of anarchists. The loss is most keenly felt at the end when the team goes about demolishing the opera itself, simply because they are the Marx Brothers and this is what they do (or once did). Going through motions of destructive acts both pointless and forced (why wreck the opera when they were otherwise so determined to enable Allan Jones to sing in it?), the comics seem lost in a polished MGM universe, wherein Marx madness would be all too studied in application and conventional in results.

Greenbriar Weekend Marquee

Any fresh image of Louise Brooks comes welcome to her followers, even when the subject is one so debased as the ghastly and pathetic Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, a two-reeler she made for Educational Pictures in 1931. Brooks would never have sunk to this were she not flat broke. Stars on their uppers did Educationals. Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon were two. The company booked comedies into theatres that couldn’t afford MGM’s better Hal Roach shorts. The 1931-32 season was actually a high point for Educational. Trade ads promised fifty-two two-reel comedies and seventy-six single reel subjects. Many of these were produced by Mack Sennett, the fallen king of slapstick now but a year away from bankruptcy. Windy Riley was a comic strip character among hundreds vying for newspaper space. He was a not so appealing loudmouth and braggart who got his comeuppance between panels one and five daily (as in the sample shown here). Windy's creator was artist Ken Kling. The strip began in December 1927 and was gone by 1932. Windy Riley Goes Hollywood would be the character’s only movie foray. A vaudevillian named Jack Shutta played it obnoxious as befitting his comic inspiration. The short would yet reside in public domain obscurity were it not for Louise Brooks. I read she got $500 for her second billed part, but I’ll bet it wasn’t half that. About all Louise did for this thing was show up. Talk about the diary of a lost girl. Among frustrations (for the audience) are chorines performing as Louise prepares to enter the scene. Just as she does, the camera cuts away! Educational’s crack director (re the pressbook) was one William Goodrich, nom de plume for still disgraced Roscoe Arbuckle, working his way out of a hole he’d dug at the St. Francis Hotel that long ago lost Labor Day weekend of 1921. Brooks would recall his looking like a dead man sitting in a canvas chair. Maybe she saw a little of herself in the defeated Arbuckle. The comeback he’d embark upon the following year via a good series for Warners would be cut short by Arbuckle’s premature death in 1933. Brooks got no such breaks. Windy Riley led to nothing other than bits, appearances left on editing floors, and thankless if not degrading "girl" parts in budget westerns. These ad cuts and exploitation samples are the first I’ve seen for Windy Riley Goes Hollywood. Ten so-called action photos in 8X10 size were issued, along with four 11X14 lobby cards, as well as a one-sheet, but I don’t know of a Brooks collector in possession of these. The short itself is an extra on Kino’s Diary Of A Lost Girl DVD. Pictorial quality is appropriately wretched.

Superman’s on the tarmac! No doubt parents had some explaining to do when Junior observed the Man Of Steel resorting to commercial air travel instead of flying himself to Asheville, NC that fourth week of August in 1957. George Reeves and musical company, including Noel Neill, were there to put on shows at the City Auditorium on the 26th and 27th. Noel would remember North Carolina for its poor audiences. There was one performance where only three people showed up; two parents bringing their kid. The show went on, though dispirited George spent solitary hotel nights nursing his bottle and ruminating over considerable dollars lost setting up (and paying for) the tour. Noel Neill’s account of his frustrations can be found in an outstanding book, Truth, Justice, and The American Way, which includes many rare photos (including one shown here of the musical aggregation on stage in Asheville). I wonder how many boomers have transported their imaginations back to these personal appearances. Some were lucky enough to have been in attendance when George came to their town. Most times preferring the Clark Kent guise, occasionally he'd wear the Superman costume to pose with fans. The ad shown here was for a Bluefield, West Virginia gig. Note the promise of seeing the entire cast of the television show. Wonder if John Hamilton got up and sang Mairzy Dotes. Reeves’ troupe used his Benedict Canyon house for rehearsals, but ended up moving out to the patio, as rooms inside were too small. People imagine George was into big bucks playing Superman, but such was never the case. Noel Neill remembers making (much) more money doing college speaking engagements in the seventies than she ever did on the show. We once drove past George’s residence during a trip to California. I guess that’s ritual for anyone who watched The Adventures Of Superman. Pretty spartan place. Jack Benny, Lucy, and the rest had things a lot better a few miles up the road. I’ve seen recent videos of the bedroom George occupied. You could barely have gotten a double bunks in there, let alone twins. Those stage performances must have been a blast though. Reeves was handy with string instruments and could sing too. There was a wrestling buddy along they called Mister Kryptonite. He and George went to the mat for a few falls at each show. Imagine the mob you’d have if such a thing could be staged today. Many fans have attended these shows in their dreams. I know I’d love to have been the fourth person in the audience that day in Asheville …

You Didn't Have Ice Cream All The Way Through ... --- Part One

I don’t happen to believe that the Marx Brothers sat naked in Irving Thalberg’s office and roasted potatoes, but show business legends die hard, so who am I to spoil everyone’s fun by saying this particular anecdote creeps me out and always has. Still, it dovetails nicely with 60’s era protest gestures applauded in yellowed editions of Ramparts magazine. Maybe Groucho understood this when he repeated the tale for collegiate disciples dogging his senior years. So who among the team’s army of madcap scribes dreamed up this offscreen japery, and when? I’m figuring it was planted in a column just prior to release of A Night At The Opera, or soon thereafter. If the team was to be gelded in front of Metro cameras, then at least preserve some vestige of Marx madness behind them. This viewer enjoyed a boyhood diet limited to their Paramount features. I didn’t come by way of A Night At The Opera until 1973. Funny how you remember best those classics that don’t deliver. At nineteen, I wondered if it was me or the movie. Groucho playing Cupid --- that seemed a violation of everything he stood for. Harpo the happy clown smashes his fingers under a piano lid and gaggles of Metro moppets laugh themselves silly --- sacrilege! Songs, dancing, and romancing. This was the dreaded laxative after a bountiful meal of Duck Soup. So what of the alleged flop of the latter? Did Duck Soup curdle and resolve Paramount to rid itself of Marxes? I don’t have gross figures any more than writers over forty years who’ve accepted received wisdom (itself dating back to columns of the day), but I do have a few for Horse Feathers, and that one was sure enough the company’s number one hit for 1932. At a negative cost of $647,000, the college comedy took a whopping (for 1932) $945,000 in domestic rentals. That was significantly better than runner-ups Shanghai Express ($827,000), The Big Broadcast ($775,000), and Love Me Tonight ($685,000). Co-ed hijinks spiced with Thelma Todd in negligees and a climactic football game would seem a safer bet than political satire, but was Duck Soup a total bust-out? I’m as curious as any Marx fan, and lest Paramount elects to open their ledgers for Greenbriar’s benefit (that’ll be the day), will probably remain so. One elusive number has surfaced, however. Turns out Duck Soup’s negative cost was $765,000. Did Paramount spend themselves into a corner?

Rife had been conflict between stars and studio since Gummo Marx visited from New York and discovered monkey business on the part of Paramount bookkeepers during shooting of the 1931 feature of the same name. Seems they’d forgotten all about profit percentages due the Brothers (after all, Your Profit Is Assured, said Paramount in the above trade ad). The matter simmered through much of 1932 as Gummo sought a proper accounting before inevitable civil actions brought things to a boil. The team then decamped to New York despite preparations being made for Duck Soup. Paramount’s countersuit claimed the Marxes owed them a picture and were refusing to honor their contract. By May 1933, matters was uneasily settled and the comedians, including Groucho and Zeppo (shown with reader identified Gummo aboard the 20th Century Limited here), returned to California to shoot Duck Soup. Overhead was thus piling up before Summer filming began. The Marxes were at least the most expensive comedians on this studio’s payroll. $765,000 exceeded money spent elsewhere on bigger pictures. Consider that MGM had $700,000 in Grand Hotel, Warners managed Golddiggers Of 1933 on a $433,000 negative cost, and RKO finished King Kong for just $672,000. Paramount’s own investment in other comedies was considerably less than Duck Soup. The all-star International House came in at just $337,838. Monies needed to wrap Mae West’s hit I’m No Angel amounted to $434,8000, and W.C. Fields in Tillie and Gus was done for a modest $235,000. The fact is that Paramount, even if it maintained a solid following for its Marx Brothers series, could never hope to profit in the face of expenses like those incurred on Duck Soup. Besides, there were plenty of other laugh-makers on hand to fill the void. Word was out that Duck Soup was a flop, but this wasn’t altogether fair to the Marx Brothers. The long wait of three or so decades to have their final Paramount offering declared one of the greatest sound comedies was hopefully worth it. Groucho acknowledged as much in old age.

The deal for A Night At The Opera seems to have had its genesis during bridge game conversation between Chico Marx and Irving Thalberg. The comedians had been off movie screens for going on two years and their confidence was shaken. A proposed independent start-up had piled on (financing) rocks, and it was figured the Marxes had lost their momentum. Thalberg made it clear to Groucho that his was a salvage job. These were comedians in need of new direction, and any deal with Metro would be conditioned upon their acceptance of same. Duck Soup was lousy, said Thalberg, to which Groucho could but meekly disagree. I can produce a Marx Brothers comedy with half the laughs that will do twice the business, promised Thalberg. His idea was really nothing new. He’d simply reapply the stage formula used in The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers, only this time romantic subplotters would figure more prominently. There was such a thing as too many laughs, after all. Morrie Ryskind would sum it up while the team was still on Broadway. You didn’t have ice cream all the way through, you know. Feckless stage juveniles had been a necessary conveyance for songs an audience might whistle going home and buy sheet music for the next day. Love stories functioned quite apart from the Marx Brothers and they seldom overlapped. Thalberg was resolved to integrate the two, even if it meant watering down the comedy. This would, at the least, have greater appeal for women. Vulgar and unrelieved laughter was best left to two-reel fillers. A Night At the Opera would deliver on the promise of its title. There would indeed be opera, and per Thalberg’s dictum, we’d take it and like it.

A shame no one referred back to the Paramount model, for they had fixed whatever needed fixing with the Marx Brothers. Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup ironed out wrinkles inherent in too-literal adaptation of Broadway hits now passé to increasingly sophisticated talkie viewers. Each was better than the one before, with Duck Soup the most polished diamond among them. Thalberg (shown with the team above) and MGM determined to reinvent that wheel. They sent their newly hired comedy team on the road to get live audience confirmation of what exhausted writers hoped might be funny. A half dozen features could have been made from screenplays discarded by Thalberg. How does one honestly know what works after a hundred or so readings and redraftings? One of the writers auditioned some material for his producer. Thalberg scanned the pages without cracking a smile, then turned to the man and announced this is the funniest material I’ve ever read. That story’s been told to Thalberg’s disadvantage, with emphasis on his tin ear for comedy, but many’s the feature and short I’ve watched without outright laughing, yet some rank among favorites for me, evidence I suppose that we don’t necessarily guffaw at everything we find funny. Sometimes an approving smile is expression enough, though comedies shared with a (preferably) large audience do have a way of breaking down inhibition. A Night At The Opera’s live act was fifty minutes of proposed highlights for the feature. They played it four times a day in scattered theatres and spent intervals figuring out what to save for the movie. Audience response determined the keepers. If corporate applied scientific principles got maximum efficiency out of car assembly plants and grocery chains, why not comedy? Thalberg assured control by assigning a humorless functionary to direct. Sam Wood was instructed to shoot repeatedly from every conceivable angle. Thirty or more takes was the enervating norm. The Marx Brothers must have been sick to death of this material once they finally got it all down on film. A Night At The Opera was specifically edited for packed houses. Pauses for laughs break up each routine, much as they would in the later Hope/Crosby road comedies, also designed for large audiences. No wonder some of these play so sluggishly when you’re watching alone.