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A Day at the Races (film)
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A Day at the Races (1937) is the seventh movie starring the three Marx Brothers, with Margaret Dumont, Allan Jones and Maureen O'Sullivan. Like their previous MGM feature A Night at the Opera, this film was a major hit.
plot revolves around Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho), who is a veterinarian illegally employed as the medical director of the Standish Sanitarium, which is owned by Judy Standish (O'Sullivan). One of things they have to do to save the sanitarium from developers is to keep Mrs.
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Encyclopedia
A Day at the Races (1937) is the seventh movie starring the three Marx Brothers, with Margaret Dumont, Allan Jones and Maureen O'Sullivan. Like their previous MGM feature A Night at the Opera, this film was a major hit.
Synopsis
The plot revolves around Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho), who is a veterinarian illegally employed as the medical director of the Standish Sanitarium, which is owned by Judy Standish (O'Sullivan). One of things they have to do to save the sanitarium from developers is to keep Mrs. Upjohn (Dumont) as a patient. She, of course, insists on being treated only by Dr. Hackenbush. To try to expose Groucho as a fraud, the bad guys call in Dr. Steinberg, played by Siegfried Rumann (also known as Sig Ruman), who was also Groucho's nemesis in A Night at the Opera and A Night in Casablanca. Exterior sequences were filmed at Santa Anita Park.
The film uses this plot as the framework around which to organize a series of skits. Among them is the "Tutsi Fruitsy Ice Cream" skit, often considered one of the funniest scenes in the movie, in which Chico gives Groucho a tip on a horse, but in code, so that Groucho has to buy book after book from Chico to decipher the code.
Another skit involves Chico and Harpo trying to interrupt a frame job involving Groucho's seduction by a femme fatale (Esther Muir). In the end, failing to dissuade Groucho from his interest in the woman, they end up disrupting the frame-up by concealing themselves under layers of wallpaper, using a bucket perched on Harpo's head to hold the paste.
The songs in the movie, by Bronislaw Kaper, Walter Jurmann, and Gus Kahn, are "Tomorrow Is Another Day,"and "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" (which also featured Ivie Anderson and other members of Duke Ellington's orchestra). Two more songs were filmed but cut. One, "Dr. Hackenbush", was sung by Groucho about what a great doctor he is ("No matter what I treat them for they die from something else"). The other, "A Message From The Man In The Moon", is missing from the main part of the film but shows up in the titles and is "reprised" by Groucho for the big, happy ending. The DVD release includes a recently rediscovered audio recording of the song, performed by Allan Jones.
The film also features one of the most influential lindy hop dance sequences ever filmed, danced to the "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" number and featuring the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, including Norma Miller and Dorothy Dandridge. The scene has no clear association with the larger narrative film, in order to simplify editing the scene from the film for release in the southern American states under censorship laws.
Reception
Although the film was generally well received, many fans consider it to be the beginning of the Brothers' decline, with a more formulaic approach taking hold of their work. In addition, the Brothers' leading advocate at MGM, producer Irving Thalberg, died in mid-production, thus depriving them of the studio executive who understood their humor best.
American Film Institute recognition
Musical numbers
- "Tomorrow Is Another Day"
- "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm"
- "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"
- "A Message from the Man in the Moon"
- "Cosi Cosa" (instrumental version at the race track)
Afterword
In My life with Groucho: A son's eye view Arthur Marx relates that in his latter years Groucho increasingly referred to himself by the name Hackenbush, suggesting that Groucho identified with this character more than any other.
Cast
External links
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