The Great Recasting Blogathon (Part One): Ocean's Eleven As A Silent Movie

I confess, I've given most of this year's blogathons a miss, mostly because I'm working on a mammoth non-blog project that requires nearly all of my time and energy. But here's one that tickled my fancy and allowed me to write about silent movies at the same time.

It's called "The Great Recasting Blogathon" and it's hosted by In The Mood and Frankly My Dear, a couple of classic movie blogs you might want to check out on your own.

The rules are these:

1. Pick a movie that was made in between 1966 and today
2. Change the year of production
3. Choose new leads from Classic Hollywood
4. Choose a new director from Classic Hollywood
5. Explain why you think it would work

Well, I'm recasting the 2001 version of Ocean's Eleven—as a silent movie, of course. As you probably know, Ocean's Eleven was a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film of the same name, which was itself a loose remake of the 1956 Jean-Pierre Melville caper classic, Bob le Flambeur.

But what isn't generally known—because I just this second made it up—is that Bob le Flambeur was itself a remake of one of the greatest silent films of all-time, the star-studded comedy Ocean's 11, starring Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford.

Don't remember that one, you say? Well, here's the story:

It was 1919, and the world's three most popular movie stars—Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin—had just joined forces with the world's most popular director—D.W. Griffith—to form a new distribution company they called "United Artists."

For years, studio middle men had charged exorbitant fees simply to send the quartet's films out to the nation's theaters, a service that required little more than a large envelope and a postage stamp. With the formation of United Artists, Fairbanks, Pickford, Chaplin and Griffith would henceforth lick their own stamps, and each entertained visions of vast sums of money rolling in as compensation for the effort.

There was only one problem: they had no new product to distribute.

"Hey, kids," suggested Fairbanks, "why don't we put on a show!"

A great idea, everyone agreed, but what kind of show? They hit upon the happy notion of a musical revue called The Jazz Singer until someone remembered that this was the silent era and they were going to look pretty silly belting out show tunes that no one could hear.

Next, Griffith proposed they do a variation on his usual storyline, which was to reduce a complex historical event to a question of who got into Lillian Gish's underpants first, à la The Birth of a Nation, Hearts of the World and Orphans of the Storm. The others were skeptical as it was, then vetoed the idea outright when they learned Gish wouldn't actually be in the movie—just her underpants.

"How about an adaptation of Little Women," said Pickford. "Of course, you three will have to play your parts in drag, but if I can play a twelve year old girl, surely you can, too."

"I've never done drag comedy," Chaplin lied, blushing, "and don't call me Shirley! Besides, I've got a great idea for a movie, a scathing indictment of capitalism and the industrial age I call Modern Times."

"Sounds fabulous," said Fairbanks. "When can you start production?"

"1936."

Reluctantly admitting they had no useable ideas, Fairbanks wired his old friend, writer Anita Loos. Loos had written a number of films for Fairbanks in 1916 and 1917, including the breakthrough hits The Matrimaniac and Wild and Woolly, and he was eager to work with her again. "She's busy writing a novel called Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," he reported the next day, "but for us, she's willing to set it aside for a percentage of the profits."

Griffith laughed. "Everybody knows movies never turn a profit! Why, even Gone with the Wind and Star Wars haven't turned a profit!"

Deluded by visions of great wealth, Loos cranked out one of her typically witty, fast-paced scripts, something she called United Artists Presents a D.W. Griffith Film Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford in a Story about a Team of Con-Artists who Break the Bank at the Gambling Casino in Monte Carlo so that One of Them (Fairbanks) Can Win Back his Ex-Wife (Pickford) While Making All His Pals (including Chaplin) Rich in the Process.

"The title's a bit unwieldy," Pickford said, "but otherwise, it's perfect."

"Yeah, well, to make it work you're gonna need a crew as nuts as you are!" Loos said. "So who have you got in mind?"

The top-billed talent was easy. Fairbanks would play the lead, a handsome con artist named Daniel Ocean, while Chaplin would play his sidekick, Rusty Ryan—an agreeable distribution of chores, as the former would require some vigorous stunt work while the latter entailed split-second comic timing.

Pickford would, of course, play the ex-wife, Tess.

Chaplin was especially looking forward to getting out of the Tramp costume for once. "That character has run its course," he said flatly. "A hundred years from now, who'll even remember him?"

For the plum part of the man they set out to rob, casino owner Terry Benedict, Pickford suggested Sessue Hayakawa. Hayakawa had risen to stardom on the strength of his seductively handsome yet cruelly ruthless villain in Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat, a rare feat in the deeply racist Hollywood of the day.

"If you've seen him in The Cheat," Pickford said, "you know he's perfect—hot and snaky and deliciously evil. You don't know whether to run away or cover him in whipped cream and eat him for dessert. Yummy!"

"Wait, what's this about whipped cream?" said Fairbanks.

In addition to a satisfying villain, the film also required an all-star cast of comedians to play a rogues gallery of crooks and con men—each with a specialized skill that would require careful casting.

For example, the part of "the grease man," a contortionist who opens the casino's safe from inside the vault, required not just a comedian but an acrobat of near superhuman athletic ability.

"Buster Keaton," Chaplin said immediately. "He's funnier than a locomotive, throws a pie faster than a speeding bullet, and can fall out of a building in a single bound. Not to mention his Twitter feed is a riot! He's playing second banana to Roscoe Arbuckle, but that's not going to last long. Offer him anything but top billing."

Keaton jumped at the offer when Fairbanks called. "I classify Chaplin as the greatest motion picture comedian of all time," he said. "Plus I need the money."

For one of two brothers who drive each other (and everybody else) crazy, Chaplin recommended his former British stage partner who was currently making comedy shorts for Bronco Billy Anderson. "Splendid chap named Stan Laurel."

For the other brother, D.W. Griffith suggested a fellow Southerner, a plump Georgian under contract at Vitagraph named Oliver Hardy. "I don't believe they've worked together before," Griffith said, "but something tells me Laurel and Hardy would make a sensational comedy team."

One of the film's pivotal roles was that of a high roller who would convince Hayakawa to open the casino's safe to him. "For this role, we need an older actor," Griffith said, "a twinkly-eyed ham who can get a laugh from a death scene."

"Theodore Roberts!!!" everyone said simultaneously.

Roberts had proven equally adept at drama and comedy during a run of highly-successful character parts in such films as Joan the Woman, Old Wives For New and The Roaring Road. Both Pickford and Fairbanks had worked with him before and would work with him again.

For another "older" part, that of a disgruntled ex-casino owner who would bankroll the caper, Chaplin suggested a colleague from his Mack Sennett days, Ford Sterling.

Audiences of the time would best remember Sterling as the first leader of the Keystone Kops. He had recently played the Kaiser in an oddball cross-dressing comedy, Yankee Doodle in Berlin, starring Bothwell Browne as an army officer who disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate enemy headquarters and enjoys the masquerade entirely too much.

"It'll be nice working with proper comedians again," he said after receiving Chaplin's offer. "Just give me a pie and tell me who to throw it at and I'm good to go."

For the role of the munitions expert, Chaplin suggested the legendary French comedian, Max Linder. Linder had been the biggest star in Europe prior to the Great War, and Chaplin had modeled his style after him, but Linder's career had gone into decline after the actor was injured by mustard gas on the Western Front.

"The notion of Max handling high explosives would get a terrific laugh in the overseas market," Chaplin said, "and I would like to help him revive his career."

To play the "inside man," an employee of the casino who could come and go without drawing attention to himself, they chose Noble Johnson, a talented character actor with an imposing physique and a gift for disguises. One of the few African-American actors working regularly in Hollywood, Johnson ran a studio of his own, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, dedicated to producing high-quality "race films" (as they were then known) such as The Realization of a Negro's Ambition. Griffith knew him from Intolerance where he had cast him as a Babylonian soldier.

The part of the computer nerd who hacks the casino's security systems proved to be a head-scratcher.

"What's a nerd?" asked Pickford. "For that matter, what's a computer?"

But after further discussion revealed that what the part required was someone who was supposed to be a genius but was in fact a quirky, funny-looking goofball, they settled on Ben Turpin whose eyes had been insured for $25,000 in case of accidental uncrossing.

"He was just a funny-looking guy," Buster Keaton said later. "You know what I mean? We introduced his character as 'a man's man,' and Ben Turpin entered. That was the biggest laugh of the picture."

Over a late supper in a suite in the Hollywood Hotel, Fairbanks reviewed the cast list with Pickford. "Turpin makes ten," he said. "Ten oughta do it, don't you think? You think we need one more? You think we need one more. All right, we'll get one more."

"What we need," Fairbanks told Chaplin at lunch the next day, repeating a suggestion of Pickford's, "is an innocent, all-American boy type—but here's the catch: one who can match me move for move in the scene where I climb down the elevator shaft. Who you got?"

"That would be Harold Lloyd," Chaplin said. "He recently invented a boy-with-glasses character that I think is going to be a big hit. And he's handsome and can climb buildings even better than you can."

"Well, we'll use him anyway," Fairbanks said.

The film, now retitled Ocean's 11, began production in the summer of 1919. Griffith directed the action sequences with his usual flare, but Chaplin balked at taking comedy advice from a man who thought the sack of Babylon was a laugh riot. Although Griffith received sole directorial credit, scholars now believe Chaplin was responsible for most of the film's non-action sequences.

While the two men would remain partners in the United Artists venture, they de-friended each other on Facebook soon after filming was complete, and for years thereafter rang each other's doorbell late at night and ran away.

Less apparent on the set, but no less problematic, was the tension between Fairbanks' 100% irony-free acting style and Chaplin's compulsion to deflate all larger-than-life figures. The scene, for example, where Ocean talks Rusty into robbing the casino—"Why not do it?"—took over 400 takes alone, with either Fairbanks boisterously breaking character or Chaplin kicking him in the pants.

Still, film-industry insiders and the movie-going public alike were abuzz with anticipation of the picture's Christmas Day premiere, and the four co-founders of United Artists had high hopes for a commercial and critical success. "This is going to be bigger than The Birth of a Nation," Griffith boasted. "Funnier, too."

Then tragedy struck. While awaiting shipment to theaters across the country, the highly-combustible elements in the movie's silver nitrate film stock caught fire, destroying not only the warehouse where the film was stored, but also the original negative and every print.

In a moment, Ocean's 11 joined the long list of silent films lost forever. Only a few fragments remain:



Film fans can only dream of what might have been.

"We're ruined," Fairbanks sobbed, "ruined before we ever made a movie!"

"Hardly," said Pickford. "While you were busy buckling your swash, I had the foresight to insure the film for $10 million with Lloyds of London—which is $9 million more than it cost to make! Not only are we not ruined, we're richer than ever!"

"Mary, you're wonderful!" said Fairbanks, dropping to one knee. "Will you marry me?"

"You bet I will, you gorgeous hunk o' man, you! Come here and kiss me!"

"Rowr!"

Tomorrow: More posters from silent movies you will never see.

TCM's Classic Movie Trivia #4

In lieu of actual content.

In how many Laurel and Hardy shorts did Jean Harlow act?
A. 2
B. 3
C. 6
D. 8

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Redux (1931-1932)

Universal Studio's cycle of classic horror movies officially began in early 1931 with Bela Lugosi's Dracula, but for me, it's Frankenstein that really kicked it off. Boris Karloff and James Whale only made three movies together—Frankenstein, The Old Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein—but it feels like more than that, maybe because this trio of movies established so many of the conventions of the genre. Or maybe because they're just that good.

1932 also saw the release of Scarface, the best gangster movie made before The Godfather despite starring Paul Muni rather than James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart or Edward G. Robinson. But Howard Hawks directed it and given that he makes a serious claim to the title of best American director ever, maybe I shouldn't be surprised after all.

As for the actress awards, I was tempted when I expanded the Katies to the "Golden Globe" format to bump Joan Crawford up from supporting to lead and give her the award for drama. But I like Mae Clarke, the girl who got the grapefruit in the face in The Public Enemy, and I've got a later award in mind for Joan. Feel free to argue with me. My mind is subject to change.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Frankenstein (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.)
nominees: Freaks (prod. Tod Browning); Grand Hotel (prod. Irving Thalberg); Scarface (prod. Howard Hughes); Waterloo Bridge (prod. Carl Laemmle Jr.)
Must-See: The Champ; Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde; Emma; Five Star Final; Frankenstein; Freaks; Grand Hotel; Scarface; Shanghai Express; Skyscraper Souls; Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas; Waterloo Bridge; What Price Hollywood?

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Music Box (prod. Hal Roach)
nominees: Monkey Business (prod. Herman J. Mankiewicz); Private Lives (prod. Irving Thalberg); The Smiling Lieutenant (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
Must-See Comedy/Musical: The Guardsman; Monkey Business; The Music Box; One Hour With You; Private Lives; Red-Headed Woman; The Smiling Lieutenant

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: À Nous La Liberté (prod. Frank Clifford)
nominees: La Chienne (prod. Pierre Braunberger and Roger Richebé); I Was Born, But ... (prod. Shochiku Film); Mädchen in Uniform (prod. Carl Froelich and Friedrich Pflughaupt); Marius (prod. Robert Kane and Marcel Pagnol)
Must-See Foreign Language Pictures: À Nous La Liberté; La Chienne; I Was Born, But ...; Mädchen In Uniform; Marius

ACTOR (Drama)
<winner: Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde)
nominees: Wallace Beery (The Champ); Paul Muni (Scarface); Edward G. Robinson (Five Star Final); Warren William (Skyscraper Souls)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (The Music Box)
nominees: James Cagney (Blonde Crazy); Maurice Chevalier (The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You); The Marx Brothers (Monkey Business); Robert Montgomery (Private Lives)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge)
nominees: Constance Bennett (What Price Hollywood?); Marlene Dietrich (Shanghai Express); Barbara Stanwyck (The Miracle Woman); Dorothea Wieck (Mädchen in Uniform)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Norma Shearer (Private Lives)
nominees: Joan Blondell (Blonde Crazy); Claudette Colbert (The Smiling Lieutenant); Lynn Fontanne (The Guardsman); Jean Harlow (Platinum Blonde and Red-Headed Woman)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Howard Hawks (Scarface)
nominees: Tod Browning (Freaks); Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel); Rouben Mamoulian (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde); James Whale (Frankenstein and Waterloo Bridge)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: René Clair (À Nous La Liberté)
nominees: Sidney Franklin (The Guardsman and Private Lives); Ernst Lubitsch (The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You); Yasujirô Ozu (I Was Born, But ...); James Parrott (The Music Box)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Lionel Barrymore (Grand Hotel)
nominees: John Barrymore (Grand Hotel); Boris Karloff (Frankenstein); Raimu (Marius); Roland Young (The Guardsman and One Hour With You)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Miriam Hopkins (The Smiling Lieutenant and Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde)
nominees: Joan Crawford (Grand Hotel); Ann Dvorak (Scarface); Aline MacMahon (Five Star Final); Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Ben Hecht; continuity and dialogue by Seton I. Miller, John Lee Mahin and W.R. Burnett; from a novel by Armitage Trail (Scarface)
nominees: René Clair (À Nous La Liberté); Frances Marion (story), Leonard Praskins (dialogue continuity) and Wanda Tuchock (additional dialogue) (The Champ); Christa Winsloe and Friedrich Dammann (as F.D. Andam); from the play by Christa Winsloe (Mädchen in Uniform); S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone (screenplay); Arthur Sheekman (additional dialogue) (Monkey Business)

SPECIAL AWARDS
Lee Garmes (Shanghai Express and Scarface) (Cinematography); C. Roy Hunter (Frankenstein) (Sound); Charles D. Hall and Kenneth Strickfaden (Frankenstein) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Jack Pierce and Pauline Eells (Frankenstein) (Makeup); Wally Westmore (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) (Special Effects)

Best Actor Of 1932-33 (Comedy/Musical): The Marx Brothers (Horse Feathers and Duck Soup), Part Seven

[To read previous entries in this essay, click 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Duck Soup: The Brothers At Their Best
Let's just cut to the chase. If you've never seen Duck Soup, back away from the blog, turn off your computer and go find it—right now! It's available for instant streaming from Netflix, if you're set up for that, and you can always buy it here from amazon.com if you're not.

Because the fact is there are certain works of art so essential to the human experience that, love them or hate them, not to have experienced them at least once dooms you to a life of aimless wandering in the desert of cultural ignorance. Hamlet, the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo's David. And if I had to choose just one Marx Brothers movie that meets the definition of essential, Duck Soup would be it.

Now, those of you who have been following this blog for a while know I'm not prone to dogmatic pronouncements. I'm a live and let live guy (in a live and let die world) and if you don't like the same movies I like, that's perfectly alright with me. There are no wrong answers, I always say, just movies you haven't seen yet.

So when I tell you in such uncertain terms that this is one of the movies you should see, well, you know I'm not kidding around. Go. See the movie. Then come back and read this post. We'll wait.

For everybody else, here's a quick reminder of why Duck Soup is so wonderful:



Duck Soup is the story of a nation in crisis: Freedonia's economy is in a shambles, it's treasury depleted, and only the largess of a wealthy benefactor, the rich widow Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont) keeps the country afloat. Moreover, Freedonia's bellicose neighbor, Sylvania, is massing troops on the border, and with a month's rent already paid on the battlefield, war seems inevitable. The country teeters on the brink of anarchy.

Freedonia is desperate for a savior and riding to the rescue is that fearless man of the people, Rufus T. Firefly. A fighting progressive—or an iron-fisted dictator, depending on which news source you follow—Firefly takes office pledging broad reform.

"If you think this country's bad off now," he promises, "just wait 'til I get through with it!"

If this sounds like a cynical critique of every head of state since Pontius Pilate last washed his hands, it is. It's also the funniest. That Duck Soup seems as fresh now as it did when it first premiered seventy-seven years ago is a testament both to how well it was made and to how little human nature ever really changes.

The film features some of the funniest and most famous scenes in the Marx Brothers canon, especially the mirror scene, but also Chico's trial for treason, a running battle with the owner of a lemonade stand, and the wild finale where the besieged Brothers are rescued by, among other things, a school of dolphins. Many factors are responsible for Duck Soup's greatness: Leo McCarey's face-paced direction; the expert supporting work of Margaret Dumont, Edgar Kennedy and Louis Calhern; and a top-notch screenplay that despite contributions from many sources—not just credited writers Harry Ruby, Bert Kalmar, Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, but also Grover Jones, Norman Krasna, Herman Mankiewicz, Leo McCarey and the Marx Brothers themselves—was the most cohesive and inventive of the Paramount era.

Above all, though, Duck Soup works thanks to the performances of Groucho, Chico and Harpo themselves. Groucho, of course, was already without peer in terms of comic timing, and his delivery could take jokes that on the printed page were pretty flat—asking Margaret Dumont to take a card, for example ("Keep it. I've got fifty-one left")—and turn them into brilliantly absurdist gems. But in Duck Soup, he also looks physically comfortable for the first time, no longer worried about hitting his mark (always a problem for him), inhabiting his character and commanding the screen like a seasoned movie actor instead of a transplanted theater performer.

Harpo's business is not quite as anarchic as in previous movies (personally, I think Animal Crackers is his best showcase), but it's tighter here, tying back into the plot. He's just as easily distracted as ever, but now, for example, when he tries to crack a safe and winds up breaking into a radio by mistake, there are consequences which lead directly to two of the movie's best moments—the mirror scene and Chico's trial for treason. And, to reiterate an earlier point, he for once has a nemesis (two, actually, in the persons of Edgar Kennedy and Louis Calhern) worthy of his antics.

As good as Groucho and Harpo are, though, the real surprise of the movie is Chico. I'm not suggesting Chico wasn't good in previous movies, but his role had been limited largely to malapropisms, piano solos and translating for the silent Harpo, a role Chico seemed content to play as long as he got his paycheck on time. In Duck Soup, however, entire sequences that have nothing to do with tormenting Groucho or supporting Harpo—the meeting with Louis Calhern, the peanut vendor scenes with Edgar Kennedy, the scene in Margaret Dumont's bedroom, and the trial for treason—are built around him and in these scenes, Chico showcased a comic talent the equal of his brothers.

In part, Chico's expanded role was an unexpected dividend of the Brothers' otherwise unsuccessful radio venture. Without Harpo and the piano to fall back on, the show's writers (Perrin and Sheekman) were forced to devise new ways to feature Chico and to beef up his role to equal Groucho's and many of these new sketches, including the "Shadow-day" business in Calhern's office and the trial scene late in the movie, wound up in the movie to Chico's benefit.

Leo McCarey was the other driving force behind Chico's more visible role. A veteran of the Hal Roach Studios, McCarey had his own comic sensibilities and the confidence to impose them on the Marx Brothers. He perceived that the perfect complement to their comedy of aggression was the comedy of the "slow-burn" reaction—what Houghton Mifflin defines as "a gradually increasing sense or show of anger"—perfected by such Hal Roach acts as Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields. To that end, he brought in veteran performers Edgar Kennedy and Louis Calhern, adapted bits from the silent era such as the three-hat gag to bring them to a slow boil, and let Chico and Harpo go to work on them.



I wish I could tell you Zeppo fared as well. In consciously setting out to make the best Marx Brothers movie ever, director Leo McCarey ruthlessly streamlined the story, eliminating every element not directly related to producing laughs. In addition to cutting the usual harp and piano solos, he also cut a scripted romance between Zeppo and Raquel Torres (who played dancer Vera Marcal) as well as Zeppo's number "Keep On Doin' What You're Doin'" (recycled a year later for the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy, Hips Hips Hooray), effectively reducing the youngest Marx Brother to a bit player in his own movie.

Duck Soup premiered on November 17, 1933 to mixed reviews. The usually supportive Mourdant Hall of the New York Times called it "noisy" and not nearly as funny as previous efforts. Variety complained that the movie "could easily have been written by a six-year-old," but overall recommended the film. Everybody loved the mirror scene.

In terms of box office, Duck Soup wasn't quite the flop of legend, turning a profit, but nevertheless grossing less than any of its predecessors. In part, the movie was done in by Paramount's financial difficulties which left little money in the budget for promotion, but the Marx Brothers were also victims of bad timing—as Tim Dirks at The Greatest Films put it, "audiences were taken aback by such preposterous political disrespect, buffoonery and cynicism at a time of political and economic crisis, with Roosevelt's struggle against Depression in the US amidst the rising power of Hitler in Germany."

Of course, Duck Soup's reputation as a masterpiece is now secure, the sort of movie that—as Woody Allen posited in Hannah and Her Sisters—can give you a reason for living even on the worst of days. In 1990, the Library of Congress selected Duck Soup for preservation in the National Film Registry. Ten years later, the American Film Institute ranked it as the fifth best American comedy of all time. Personally, I rank it even higher than that.

Despite its status as an essential film classic, the experience of making Duck Soup was not a happy one. The Brothers and Leo McCarey did not enjoy working together—and indeed never worked together again. Chico and Harpo missed the piano and harp solos, and Zeppo was so miffed, he left the act permanently and never performed in another movie.

In addition, shortly after production began, the studio fired producer Herman J. Mankiewicz. Although he and Mankiewicz remained friends for life, Groucho was blunt in describing Mank's efforts as a producer, calling him "an irritating drunk who didn't give a hang about the movie project." (Apparently a typical day at the office would consist of napping, drinking and talking to his wife on the phone, and Mankiewicz only kept his job because Paramount executive B.P. Schulberg owed him large sums of money from their frequent poker games. When Paramount reorganized in 1933, Schulberg lost his job and Mankiewicz soon found himself on the curb.)

Mostly, though, the unhappiness on the set was a direct result of the Brothers' deteriorating relationship with the studio and soon after Duck Soup's premiere, the Marx Brothers and Paramount Pictures would permanently part company. For the first time in more than a decade the Brothers found themselves out of work and at a crossroads.

Trivia: When watching Hollywood films made between 1933 and 1935, you're likely to see the "NRA" logo before the opening credits. No, that's not an endorsement of the National Rifle Association, but instead refers to the National Recovery Administration. Part of Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" effort to lift the country from the depths of the Depression, the National Industrial Recovery Act allowed the NRA to negotiate with various industries on behalf of the federal government to establish codes of "fair competition," including a minimum wage for workers and collectively-agreed-upon prices for goods and services.

Participation was voluntary and those businesses which adhered to the negotiated fair competition codes displayed the NRA logo on their products. (Those that didn't participate often found themselves subject of a boycott.)

In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared the NRA an unconstitutional delegation of legislative powers to the executive branch. Although the National Recovery Administration ceased to operate, several of its basic concepts, including the minimum wage, were included in the National Labor Relations Act (a.k.a. the Wagner Act) passed later that same year.

[To continue to Part Eight, click here. To read more about Duck Soup, click here.]

Nominees For Best Actor Of 1932-33 (Comedy/Musical)

James Cagney (Footlight Parade)


Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (Sons Of The Desert)

Herbert Marshall (Trouble In Paradise) (here, with Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus)

The Marx Brothers (Horse Feathers and Duck Soup)

Michel Simon (Boudu Saved From Drowning)