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

[To read Part One of this essay, click here. For Part Two, here; Part Three, here; and Part Four, here.]

Horse Feathers: Pure Marx Brothers
Even before Monkey Business was in the theaters, the Marx Brothers were working on its follow-up, which Harpo announced in the July 4, 1931 issue of the New Yorker as The Marx Brothers At Vassar (Vassar at that time being the best-known all-women's university in America). The idea of placing the Brothers in an academic setting was an old one—twenty years before, Groucho had played a teacher to Gummo's and Harpo's students in the vaudeville show Fun In Hi Skule—and Groucho's pal Bert Granet had resurrected the idea at the same time he suggested the basic plot of Monkey Business.

Somewhere along the way, the project acquired the title Horse Feathers, which, in addition to following the pattern established by the previous movies of using some sort of animal in the title, is a mild expletive, a polite variant of "bullsh*t!," the sort of comment you might mutter under your breath when you hear a particularly idiotic statement—of which one no doubt hears many while pursuing an education.

Despite the bruising his ego suffered while writing Monkey Business, S.J. Perelman took the first crack at drafting a screenplay. Perelman had railed against the corrupting influence of college football while he was a student at Brown University and he drew on old grievances to provide the backbone of the plot, the story of a college president who seeks to promote sports over academics by recruiting a couple of ringers for the school's football team.

"Only a man who was forced to endure four years in a place where he didn't fit in and that refused to graduate him," wrote biographer Dorothy Herrmann, "could have made such devastating fun of it."

Longtime Marx Brothers collaborator Will B. Johnstone updated material from Fun In Hi Skule and songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, who had written the song score for Animal Crackers, provided various jokes and three new numbers—"Whatever It Is, I'm Against It," "I Always Get My Man" and "Everyone Says I Love You," the latter performed by all four Marx Brothers.

Producer Herman J. Mankiewicz and director Norman McLeod later recalled presenting the script at a meeting where the Brothers took turns spitting into a cup in the middle of the floor, wagering a dollar a piece on each bull's-eye.

Thelma Todd, who the year before had co-starred in Monkey Business, was once again cast as the female lead. Here she plays the "college widow"—which a 1935 newspaper article defined as a "maiden of a college town bereaved of graduated sweethearts," i.e., "an old maid," but which in the context of the movie suggests a sexual predator, what these days some might call a "cougar"—and in the course of the film's 68 minutes woos and is wooed by all four brothers, while also conniving with gamblers who want to affect the outcome of an upcoming football game. (See also The Marx Brothers Council Of Britain for a discussion of the term "college widow.")

In other key roles, Broadway actor David Landau plays the gambler; Nat Pendleton, who would later play police lieutenant John Guild in The Thin Man, is one of the football players; and veteran character actor Robert Greig, who had played the butler Hives in Animal Crackers, returned as an anatomy professor. Also, look for Theresa Harris of Baby Face in a bit part as Thelma Todd's maid.

The movie opens with the introduction of Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho), the new president of Huxley College. The school's in trouble—it's been neglecting football for education, or possibly the other way around—and Wagstaff is just the man to set things right.

"As I look out over your eager faces," he tells the assembled students and staff, "I can readily understand why this college is flat on its back. The last college I presided over, things were slightly different—I was flat on my back."

Rebuffing the advice of the school's trustees —"I think you know what the trustees can do with their suggestions"—Groucho launches into into one of the best songs in the Marx Brothers canon, up there with "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady."

I don't know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I'm against it
No matter what it is or who commenced it
I'm against it.

Included in the song are some lines that could only have been written during the pre-Code era:

For months before my son was born
I used to yell from night til morn
"Whatever it is, I'm against it!"
And I've kept yelling since I first commenced it
"I'm against it!"

The son in question is played by Zeppo, a student at the college for the last twelve years and "a disgrace to our family name of Wagstaff, if such a thing is possible." Zeppo tells his dad the only way to turn the school around before the big game against rival Darwin is to get better football players, starting with the two who hang around a local speakeasy.

"Are you suggesting that I, the president of Huxley College, go into a speakeasy without even giving me the address?"

Of course, Groucho confuses Harpo and Chico for the star players, who proceed to turn Huxley College into chaos. Along the way, Groucho butts heads with a gambler who's put his money on the opposing team, Harpo and Chico try to kidnap Darwin's star players only to get themselves kidnapped instead and everybody serenades the college widow with variations on "Everyone Says I Love You," but the real point of the movie is to serenade the audience with hilariously shameless wordplay and anti-social anarchy.

"Oh, Professor, the Dean of Science wants to know how soon you can see him. He says he's tired of cooling his heels out here."

"Tell him I'm cooling a couple of heels in here."

"The Dean is furious! He's waxing wroth!"

"Is Roth out there, too? Tell Roth to wax the Dean for awhile."

One set piece, the classroom scene with Groucho as the professor and Harpo and Chico as his students, was lifted largely from the vaudeville show Fun In Hi Skule which the Brothers had first performed twenty years before.

"Now then, baboons—what is a corpuscle?"

"That's easy. First there's a captain, then there's a lieutenant, then there's a corpuscle."

As a matter of fact, except for the football game at the end, which features slapstick more reminiscent of the Three Stooges, Horse Feathers comes closest of all the Marx Brothers' movies to approximating the anarchy of their early vaudeville shows. Indeed, I would suggest that while Duck Soup is often credited as the "purest" of their films (more on that in Part Seven), Horse Feathers actually deserves the nod as the one that distills the essence of the act into its most concentrated form, if you agree with me that, for good or ill, the musical numbers were as much a part of who the Brothers were as the steady stream of puns, one-liners and sight gags.

Besides, as Groucho himself suggests as Chico begins another piano solo, you can always "go out into the lobby until this thing blows over." At least the chore of romancing Thelma Todd is left to Zeppo rather than being farmed out to the likes of Allan Jones or Hal Thompson.

The film premiered in New York City on August 10, 1932, to generally favorable reviews. While some critics complained that the film was formulaic, others such as Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times praised its "originality and ready wit."

More recent critics have been more enthusiastic about Horse Feathers. The American Film Institute ranked the film sixty-fifth on the list of the 100 best comedies of the 20th century. Daniel Eagan, in his history America's Film Legacy, praises both Horse Feathers and its immediate predecessor Monkey Business for shedding the trappings of the Broadway musical while pushing their subversive anti-authority tendencies to the limit. Randy Williams, writing for ESPN in 2008, chose the film's finale as "the greatest scene in football movie history."

"From Prof. Wagstaff," Williams wrote, "racing in from the sideline to make a flying tackle while smoking a cigar, to Barovelli's unusual signal calling ("Hi diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, this time I think we go through the middle ... hike!"), the Darwin versus Huxley rival game sequence could cover most of the 11 top movie scenes by itself."

And last but not least, our good friend Erik Beck of the Boston Becks picks it as the second best Marx Brothers film of all time, behind only Duck Soup.

Personally, I have only one complaint about Horse Feathers, one I have aired before—that Groucho's verbal assaults which are hilarious when aimed at the impervious battleship Margaret Dumont become bullying and misogynistic when aimed at Thelma Todd. "Besides," I wrote, "the Marx Brothers are funniest when they stop making sense altogether and there's nothing nonsensical about Thelma Todd. I mean, who wouldn't want to make love to Thelma Todd? But Margaret Dumont? That's plain crazy."

But those moments when Groucho takes aim squarely at Todd are relatively few and overall, that seems like a minor quibble.

The film did solid business at the box office, but as with Monkey Business, failed to crack the year's top money makers.

When Horse Feathers was re-released in 1936, the studio was forced to make cuts in the film to satisfy the demands of the newly-enforced Production Code. Mikael Uhlin at Marxology has detailed those edits, which include Harpo as a dogcatcher luring mutts with a portable fire hydrant, suggestive comments aimed at Thelma Todd and a bonfire scene after the football game featuring the Brothers playing cards as Huxley College burns to the ground. The footage has yet to turn up despite extensive searches and is deemed lost.

Trivia: I read on the ever-reliable Wikipedia that the Brothers originally planned Horse Feathers as a sequel to Monkey Business, with more gangsters, but shifted gears after the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Charles Lindbergh's infant son made the idea unpalatable, but I haven't found any independent verification of that claim. Given that the kidnapping took place on March 1, 1932, and that Horse Feathers went into production at the end of the month, there was very little time for rewrites—although filming was subsequently delayed ten weeks when Chico was injured in an automobile accident.

Who knows.

A Little More Trivia: Thelma Todd almost drowned while filming the scene where she falls out of the rowboat.

[To continue to Part Six, click here.]

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

[To read Part One of this essay, click here. For Part Two, here, and for Part Three, here.]

The Marx Brothers Go To Hollywood
Even before the movie version of Animal Crackers was in theaters, the Marx Brothers began searching for writers for their next project, be it a new play, a radio show or another movie, finally settling on S.J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone and Nat Perrin. Johnstone, you may recall, was the author of the Brothers' first Broadway play, I'll Say She Is! Perelman was a humorist who wrote for the New Yorker magazine. He had been a Marx Brothers fan since their vaudeville days and his first collection of stories, Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge, published in 1928, carried on its dust jacket Groucho's famous endorsement: "From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."

The third writer, Nat Perrin, was a law student who had bluffed his way into a writing job with the Brothers with a forged letter of introduction from playwright Moss Hart.

"You'll rue the day you ever took the assignment," producer Herman J. Mankiewicz told Perelman, warning him that the Brothers were notoriously difficult to work with. "This is an ordeal by fire. Make sure you wear asbestos pants."

The team kicked around a couple of ideas, one placing the Brothers on an ocean liner as stowaways, the with Groucho playing the president of a university. Both ideas allegedly came from Bert Granet, a lifelong pal of Groucho's, who went on to become a staff writer at RKO and later the producer of such television shows as The Untouchables and The Twilight Zone.

It was Groucho who suggested the team flesh out the stowaway idea.

The writers set to work on the screenplay while the Brothers were in London fulfilling an obligation to British stage impresario C.B. Cochran. On their return, the writers brought the finished draft to a hotel room where they met the four Marx Brothers, the Brothers' wives (the unmarried Harpo brought not one but two "girlfriends") and Zeppo's recently-acquired Afghan hounds. Perelman read the draft aloud to the Brothers who listened in silence.

"It stinks," said Groucho when Perelman was done.

For the second draft, Mankiewicz brought in writer Arthur J. Sheekman, who along with Perelman, wrote the bulk of the screenplay. The Brothers recent trip to England inspired several scenes, such as one based on a Punch-and-Judy show Harpo had seen in London—



—and another based on Groucho's own run-in with a customs agent in New York, which began when Groucho listed his occupation as "smuggler." (The subsequent investigation led to the discovery of unreported duty items, which in turn led to a stiff fine.)



The Brothers also resurrected the opening scenes from I'll Say She Is! where they pretend to be a famous stage personality, here Maurice Chevalier who had recently starred in two Ernst Lubitsch musicals, The Love Parade and The Smiling Lieutenant.

The final screenwriting credits read "by S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone; additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman," but, in fact, gags came from all sorts of sources—vaudeville veteran Solly Volinsky, cartoonist J. Carver Pusey, singer turned movie star Eddie Cantor, the Marx Brothers' uncle Al Shean, legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht, English playwright Roland Pertwee, producer Mankiewicz (when he wasn't napping in his office) and the Marx Brothers themselves. Nat Perrin's lone contribution—a barber shop scene that featured a disastrous shoeshine—was substantially rewritten and he did not received a screen credit (he later wrote Duck Soup and The Big Store).

Perelman later described the process as "five months of drudgery and Homeric quarrels, ambuscades, and intrigues that would have shamed the Borgias."

For his part, Groucho felt Perelman's work, on both Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, was too literary and despite his on-going friendship with the young writer, was quite critical of him, both privately and publicly. "The trouble is the barber in Peru [Indiana] won't get it." Years later, though, Groucho allowed that Perelman was "a great writer with a brilliant comic mind that didn't always mesh well with the lunacies of the Marx Brothers."

Production began on Monkey Business in the summer of 1931. With no Broadway commitment to keep the Brothers in New York, Paramount insisted that they film Monkey Business at the studio's Hollywood facilities, which were undeniably superior to the sound stage in Queens they had used for their first two films. This was the first of their movies filmed in Hollywood, and the first written directly for the screen

It was also the first film that did not boast the supporting work of Margaret Dumont. Feeling the part of a gangster's moll needed a sexier actress, the studio cast Thelma Todd, a veteran of dozens of Hal Roach comedy shorts featuring Laurel and Hardy and Charley Chase. She's around for two scenes with Groucho, one where she finds him hiding in her stateroom closet, the second where the flirt on the veranda at a party.

"Mrs. Briggs," he tells her, "I've known and respected your husband for years—and what's good enough for him is good enough for me!"

For the romantic lead, the studio finally got the rather obvious idea of cutting out the middle man and casting Zeppo. I can't say he's great as he chases the girl (Ruth Hall), but he's better than either Oscar Shaw or Hal Thompson who performed the same thankless chores in The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers, respectively.

The expanded role didn't stop Zeppo from leaving the set in mid-production to vacation in San Francisco.

Although this was Norman Z. McLeod's first directorial effort, he quickly learned to leave the camera rolling, finding that the Brothers' ad libs were often funnier than the scripted material.

Even for a Marx Brothers' movie, the story is tissue thin. Four stowaways wreak havoc on an ocean liner, meet a couple of gangsters, go to work for them and wind up thwarting a kidnapping plot.

"How do you know there are four of them?"

"They were singing 'Sweet Adeline.'"

The shipboard setting is merely an excuse to move the Brothers from one comic situation to another, with each gag barely linked to the other. Not that this hurt the comedy any. By shedding the trappings of the Broadway musical, the Brothers' actions become even more deliciously transgressive, tormenting authority not for plot-driven reasons but simply because they can, an approach they built on to great effect in their next two movies, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup.

In fact, the forty-five minutes the Brothers spend on the boat is some of the best work of their careers. But then they finally make it through customs and something unfortunate happens—the plot kicks in. The final two reels revolve around rival gangsters, a swanky dinner party and the aforementioned kidnapping, and presumably writers Perelman and Sheekman wanted to spoof the gangster movies that were then all the rage, but very little comedy arises from this set-up and ultimately the storyline feels grafted on.

Too, there's something a little off about the gangsters finding the Marx Brothers funny—the Brothers are best when they are a threat to authority, subverting the established order, and it's a little sad to see them reduced to the role of court jesters—but until then, it's a great movie and even this last act has its moments. (Harpo disguised as the bustle of a woman's dress is particularly inspired).

Monkey Business premiered on September 19, 1931, to favorable reviews, with Mourdant Hall of the New York Times favorably comparing the film to Chaplin's The Gold Rush. The movie turned a profit at the box office, but despite the praise of the critics, it failed to crack the list of the year's top ten grossing films.

This pattern of decreasing box office revenue would be repeated with the Brothers' next two pictures.

Trivia: In the scene where the Brothers finally escape the near-sighted ship's officer and wave to him from the dock, the onlooker sitting on a crate in the background is none other than Sam "Frenchy" Marx, father of the Marx Brothers. He earned $12.50 for two days' work.

To continue to Part Five, click here.

Speaking Of The Marx Brothers, Tomorrow Is Thelma Todd Day on TCM

Margaret Dumont was so integral to the Marx Brothers' comedies, it's easy to forget that she wasn't in all their movies. In fact, two of their best, Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, co-starred Thelma Todd. I've written about her before, here, so I won't go through her story again, but I did want to remind those of you who get Turner Classic Movies on your cable system that Monday, August 30, 2010, is Thelma Todd day.

Monkey Business and Horse Feathers are among the featured films, showing at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. respectively. All times are Eastern Daylight Savings Time, by the way.

Here is the schedule copied straight from the TCM website:

30 Monday
6:00 AM Broadminded (1931)
A rejected suitor leaves town and gets mixed up in an international chase. Cast: Joe E. Brown, Ona Munson, Bela Lugosi. Dir: Mervyn LeRoy. BW-72 mins, TV-G

7:15 AM Son Of A Sailor (1933)
A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane. Cast: Joe E. Brown, Jean Muir, Thelma Todd. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. BW-73 mins, TV-G

8:30 AM REAL MCCOY, THE (1930)
Charlie pretends to be a hillbilly to impress country girl Thelma Todd in hopes of making her his girlfriend. Cast: Charley Chase, Thelma Todd Dir: Warren Doane BW-21 mins, TV-G

9:00 AM Short Film: WHISPERING WHOOPEE (1930)
Charley hires three "party girls" to help him land a business deal. Cast: Charley Chase, Thelma Todd Dir: James W. Horne BW-21 mins, TV-G

9:30 AM Short Film: DOLLAR DIZZY (1930)
Two millionaires try to escape the suitors out to marry them for their money. Cast: Charley Chase, Thelma Todd, Edgar Kennedy. Dir: James W. Horne. BW-26 mins, TV-G

10:00 AM Short Film: HIGH C'S (1930)
An entertainer serving in World War I puts music before military service. Cast: Charley Chase, Thelma Todd, Carlton Griffin. Dir: James W. Horne. BW-29 mins, TV-G

10:30 AM PIP FROM PITTSBURG, THE (1931)
Charley agrees to go on a blind date to a dance to help out his friend. Concerned it will be a big disaster like his last blind date Charley tries to be as off putting as possible and goes all out trying to make himself look bad. He is rude to her on the phone, refuses to shave, wears his friend's old suit and even eats garlic. Unfortunately for him, however, his date turns out to be the lovely Thelma Todd. Cast: Charley Chase; Thelma Todd Dir: James Parrott BW-21 mins, TV-G

11:00 AM Short Film: NICKEL NURSER, THE (1932)
A millionaire hires an efficiency expert to get his daughter in line. Cast: Charley Chase, Thelma Todd, Billy Gilbert. Dir: Warren Doane. BW-21 mins, TV-G

11:30 AM Hips, Hips, Hooray (1934)
Two salesmen try to market a flavored lipstick. Cast: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Ruth Etting. Dir: Mark Sandrich. BW-68 mins, TV-G

12:45 PM Cockeyed Cavaliers (1934)
Two nitwits are mistaken for the king's physicians in medieval England. Cast: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Thelma Todd. Dir: Mark Sandrich. BW-72 mins, TV-G

2:00 PM Short Film: CATCH AS CATCH CAN (1931)
ZaSu Pitts is a hotel phone operator who finds love in a wrestler with a little matchmaking help from friend Thelma Todd. Cast: Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts, Big Boy Williams Dir: Marshall Neilan BW-20 mins, TV-G

2:30 PM Short Film: RED NOSES (1932)
Comedic duo Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts get sent to a spa while recovering from being sick, but it turns out not to be the relaxation they need. Cast: Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts Dir: James W. Horne BW-21 mins, TV-G

3:00 PM Short Film: SHOW BUSINESS (1932)
Comedic duo Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts travel along with their musical monkey to a show but their antics on the train antagonize the show director. Cast: Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts Dir: Jules White BW-20 mins, TV-G

3:30 PM Short Film: ASLEEP IN THE FEET (1933)
Comedic duo Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts try their hand at being charitable by working at a dance club to raise money for a friend. Cast: Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts Dir: Gus Meins BW-19 mins, TV-G

4:00 PM Short Film: MAIDS A LA MODE (1933)
Hal Roach's comedic duo Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts find themselves in a jam when they get caught by their boss at a party. Cast: Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts Dir: Gus Meins BW-18 mins, TV-G

4:30 PM Short Film: Bargain of the Century (1933)
Hal Roach's comedic duo Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts find themselves in a jam once again when they are the cause of a police officer losing his job. Cast: Thelma Todd, ZaSu Pitts Dir: Charley Chase BW-19 mins, TV-G

5:00 PM SOUP AND FISH (1934)
In this Todd/Kelly short, the girls crash a high society party and have trouble fitting in. Cast: Patsy Kelly, Thelma Todd Dir: Gus Meins BW-18 mins, TV-G

5:30 PM ONE HORSE FARMERS (1934)
The girls buy a farm in Paradise Acres and get scammed. Cast: Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly Dir: Gus Meins BW-17 mins, TV-G

6:00 PM OPENED BY MISTAKE (1934)
Patsy looses her job and needs a place to stay over night after getting kicked out of her apartment. She convinces Thelma to let her spend the night at the hospital where Thelma works as a nurse. Cast: Patsy Kelly, Thelma Todd Dir: James Parrott BW-19 mins,

6:30 PM SING SISTER SING (1935)
Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly move into an apartment together and become roommates. They end up driving each other crazy and Patsy moves out! Cast: Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly Dir: James Parrott BW-20 mins, TV-G

7:00 PM Short Film: HOT MONEY (1935)
In this Todd/Kelly short, Patsy and Thelma come across some much needed money that happens to be stolen. Cast: Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly Dir: James W. Horne BW-17 mins, TV-G
7:20 PM Short Film: Hour For Lunch, An (1939) BW-9 mins

7:30 PM TOP FLAT (1935)
In this Todd/Kelly short, Thelma tries to convince Patsy that she's struck it rich. Cast: Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly Dir: William Terhune BW-19 mins, TV-G

8:00 PM Monkey Business (1931)
Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner. Cast: The Marx Brothers, Thelma Todd, Rockliffe Fellowes. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-78 mins, TV-G, CC

9:30 PM Horse Feathers (1932)
In an effort to beef up his school's football team, a college president mistakenly recruits two loonies. Cast: The Marx Brothers, Thelma Todd, David Landau. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-67 mins, TV-G, CC

10:45 PM Short Film: Another Fine Mess (1930)
Two vagabonds move into a deserted mansion and pretend to be its owners. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Thelma Todd. Dir: James Parrott. BW-28 mins, TV-G

11:21 PM Short Film: Grand Dame, The (1931) BW-8 mins

11:30 PM Short Film: Chickens Come Home (1931)
A man risks his marriage to help his best friend deal with blackmailers. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Thelma Todd Dir: James W. Horne BW-30 mins, TV-G

12:08 AM Short Film: Tree In A Test Tube (1943) C-6 mins

12:15 AM Devil's Brother, The (1933)
Two wannabe bandits are hired as servants by the real thing. Cast: Laurel & Hardy, Dennis King, Thelma Todd. Dir: Hal Roach. BW-90 mins, TV-G, CC

2:00 AM Short Film: Bohemian Girl, The (1936)
Two pickpockets raise a stolen child, not realizing she's royalty. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Thelma Todd. Dir: James W. Horne, Charles Rogers. BW-71 mins, TV-G

3:15 AM Maltese Falcon, The (1931)
In the first screen version of The Maltese Falcon, detective Sam Spade investigates the theft of a priceless statue. Cast: Bebe Daniels, Ricardo Cortez, Dudley Digges. Dir: Roy Del Ruth. BW-79 mins, TV-G, CC

4:45 AM Mary Stevens, M.D. (1933)
A woman doctor decides to have a baby without benefit of marriage. Cast: Kay Francis, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. BW-72 mins, TV-G

Speaking Of Thelma Todd ...

Thelma Todd made 119 features and short subjects in her all-too-brief career, appearing with such film legends as Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, John Barrymore and Clara Bow, but she'll always be known primarily for the two movies she made with the Marx Brothers, Monkey Business and Horse Feathers.

Born in 1906 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Todd worked as a school teacher for two years before attaining notice as a contestant in the Miss America pageant; shortly thereafter, she signed with Paramount Pictures and made her movie debut in 1926. Promoted as both "The Ice Cream Blonde" and "Hot Toddy," Todd excelled in comedies and wound up at the Hal Roach Studios where she made dozens of films including six shorts and features with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Many of her best films, though, were made while on loan to other studios, including her two pictures with the Marx Brothers. Both films were big financial successes and helped keep Paramount afloat during the depths of the Depression.

In addition to her film work, Todd also owned a highly successful nightclub in the Pacific Palisades called Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café.

Ironically, one of Groucho's quips from Monkey Business—"You've been getting nothing but dirty breaks; we can clean and tighten your brakes, but you'll have to stay in the garage all night"—proved to be Todd's epitaph. On December 16, 1935, Todd was found dead in her garage of carbon monoxide poisoning. The coroner labeled her death an accident but others have speculated that it was either suicide—she had argued with her ex-husband that same evening—or the work of gangsters who had recently tried to muscle in on the Sidewalk Café hoping to turn it into a gambling den.

She was just twenty-nine.

On August 30, 2010, Turner Classic Movies will feature the work of Thelma Todd as part of its annual Summer Under The Stars promotional event. Mark your calendars.

Best Supporting Actress Of 1932-33: Margaret Dumont (Duck Soup)

Here's another award that tied me in knots for a while and with good reason. The five nominees belong on a short list of the greatest character actresses of the era, each appearing in superb movies while giving performances that are both memorable and representative of their careers as a whole.

Elsa Lanchester gave the first great performance of her long career as a decidedly non-historical Anne of Cleves in the witty satire The Private Life Of Henry VIII. Conversely, Marie Dressler, beloved in her day, largely forgotten now, gave the last great performance of her career, playing a has-been actress and veteran flirt too old to any longer trade on her name or looks in Dinner At Eight. And Billie Burke and Una O'Connor provide wonderful comic relief to what at times are quite serious movies, the former as a ditzy socialite in the aforementioned Dinner At Eight, the latter as a terrified scullery maid in The Invisible Man.

Any one of them would have been a good choice. A couple of them were almost mine.

But simply put, Margaret Dumont was the most talented straight-(wo)man in the history of movie comedies, and Duck Soup being both the best movie of the year and the most representative of her gifts, she's my pick as the best supporting actress of 1932-33.

Born Daisy Juliette Baker in Brooklyn in 1882 (she claimed to have been born Marguerite Baker in Atlanta in 1889), Margaret Dumont was raised by her godfather Joel Chandler Harris, author of the Uncle Remus stories. Dumont trained as an opera singer and spent the first decade of the twentieth century working as a singer and comedic actress, both abroad and on the American vaudeville circuit. Described in reviews of the time as "a statuesque beauty," Dumont met and married the wealthy industrialist John Moller, Jr. in 1910 and retired from the stage, but returned eight years later after his sudden death.

It was playwright George S. Kaufman who recommended Dumont for the role of a stuffy dowager staying at a hotel run by the Marx Brothers in the Broadway stageplay, The Cocoanuts, and she proved so successful as a comic foil to the supremely irreverent Groucho, she was cast in a nearly identical part in the Brothers' next play, Animal Crackers, then reprised both roles for film.

"There has never been a good comedian that didn't have a good straight man," Groucho said. "Audiences don't think the straight man means anything, but it's very important."

The role of the stuffy rich widow was a part she played in all seven of the Marx Brothers films she appeared in, and she played the part perfectly—regal and self-possessed without being arrogant, naive and romantic without being vulnerable—so that the audience neither felt sorry for her not angry at her as Groucho bounces insults off her. Indeed, his attempts at seduction play as surreal rather than hostile, enhancing the anarchic quality of the Marx Brothers' humor.

"Not that I care, but where is your husband?"

"Why, he's dead."

"I bet he's just using that as an excuse."

"I was with him to the very end."

"No wonder he passed away."

"I held him in my arms and kissed him."

"Oh, I see, then it was murder! Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first."

(In real life, Groucho's aggressive banter drove three wives to drink. Maybe he should have married Margaret Dumont as many fans in the 1930s assumed he had.)

The widely-accepted notion that Dumont had no sense of humor, promoted by Groucho, studio publicists and perhaps by Dumont herself, is belied not only by the evidence of her early career as a comic actress but from her performances in the movies themselves.

Listen sometime to her delivery of a line like "It's a gala day for you" from Duck Soup (to which Groucho replies, "Well, a gal a day is enough for me. I don't think I could handle any more.") The line comes at the end of a long, florid speech and as she arrives at the straight-line, her pace slows up just a hair and she adds a slight emphasis to the words, setting the gag up on a tee for Groucho. She clearly understood how a gag was constructed and how to deliver a straight-line in a way that made the audience anticipate the punchline, which as Buddy Hackett once explained to Roger Ebert, goes a long way toward selling a joke.

"I'm a straight lady," Dumont once said, "the best in Hollywood. There is an art to playing the straight role. You must build up your man but never top him, never steal the laughs." Groucho recognized as much when upon accepting an honorary Oscar, he spoke of Chico and Harpo then added, "I wish Margaret Dumont could be here, too. She was a great straight-woman for me."

Dumont also knew how to react to Groucho's gags. It may sound counter- intuitive, but in a comedy it's important that none of the actors in it signal to the audience that they know they're in a comedy. Unless you're Harvey Korman on the old Carol Burnett Show, where half the fun was watching him trying and failing to keep a straight face, a comic actor has to react as though what is happening makes complete sense in the world he inhabits; to laugh at the punchline is to take all the air out of the gag. Dumont's reactions punctuate the humor without puncturing it. Nobody else in the Marxian universe ever did it better.

And then, of course, with her battleship bearing and her battleship body, Dumont not only feeds Groucho an endless series of straight-lines, but is a walking straight-line herself.

"I've sponsored your appointment," she intones, "because I feel you are the most able statesman in all Freedonia!"

"Well, that covers a lot of ground," Groucho says. "Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself. You'd better beat it. I hear they're gonna tear you down and put up an office building where you're standing."

Let's face it—it's funny because it's true. We're just too polite to say so.

And then Dumont was often given the thankless task of keeping the slender narrative of the Brothers' movies on track. This was especially true in Duck Soup where she insists on the appointment of Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) as leader of Freedonia; introduces him to his political and romantic rival Trentino of Sylvania (Louis Calhern); worries about the secret code (and two pair of plans!); and tries to prevent war; all without ever becoming tedious in the process.

The best example of Dumont's work in Duck Soup is the scene in her bedroom involving all three Marx Brothers. Attempting to steal secret war plans hidden in Dumont's safe, Chico and Harpo (disguised as Groucho), followed by Groucho himself, pop in and out of her room with all the freneticism of a British bedroom farce.

"Your Excellency, I thought you'd left!"

"Oh no," says Chico, "I no leave."

"But I saw you with my own eyes!"

"Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"

Here, Dumont plays off three different styles of comedy—Groucho's hostile levity, Chico's faux Italian malapropisms and Harpo's pantomime—but just as Ringo mastered every musical style John, Paul and George threw at him without losing the beat (or his temper), Dumont plays off all three of the Brothers expertly.

Eventually you come to realize what you're watching in Dumont and the Marx Brothers is the equivalent of a tight little Jazz band, with Dumont providing a steady backing rhythm that keeps Groucho's (and his brothers') wild improvisations grounded and on track.

It's surprising then that the Marx Brothers ever worked with anyone else, and I suspect some (very) casual fans might not even be aware that she didn't. In fact, though, after the release of Animal Crackers in 1930, the Marx Brothers left New York for Hollywood; Dumont did not follow them. Whether that was her choice or theirs, I don't know, but in any event, the studio opted for the glamorous Thelma Todd in her place. Todd was young, beautiful and a veteran of the Hal Roach Studios where she made comedies with Laurel and Hardy, among others. Yet as lovely as she was, and no doubt comically adept, Todd's presence in Monkey Business and Horse Feathers serves only to underscore what Dumont brought to the proceedings.

In her two movies with the Marx Brothers, Todd played a seductress who has all four brothers panting for her company. Unfortunately, as it turned out, there's nothing inherently funny about a middle-aged man attempting to seduce a beautiful young woman—embarrassing maybe, and certainly foolish, but funny? Indeed, at times, watching Groucho and his brothers fawning over Todd is a bit creepy (to me, anyway).

Further, what is surreal and subversive when aimed at Dumont becomes hostile and misogynistic when aimed at Todd. Take for example Erik Beck's (of the Boston Becks) favorite line from Duck Soup—"We go forth to fight for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did." Applied to Dumont, the idea is absurd and incongruous and just plain hilarious. Not only does the physically imposing Dumont look like she could snap a man in half (certainly Groucho, who was two inches shorter than Dumont), she also comes across as a woman so Victorian, she doesn't even know what sex is, much less engage in it wantonly—you'd probably just bounce off of her.

But can you imagine that same line spoken about Thelma Todd, or any other young, beautiful actress? Suddenly it becomes a credible insult and not a funny one at that.

Besides, the Marx Brothers are funniest when they stop making sense altogether and there's nothing nonsensical about Thelma Todd. I mean, who wouldn't want to make love to Thelma Todd? But Margaret Dumont? That's plain crazy.

In her 1937 review of A Day At The Races, film critic Cecilia Ager wrote perhaps the finest tribute ever to Dumont's talents:

"There ought to be a statue erected, or a Congressional Medal awarded, or a national holiday proclaimed, to honor that great woman, Margaret Dumont, the dame who takes the raps from the Marx Bros. For she is of the stuff of which our pioneer women were made, combining in her highly indignant person Duse, stalwart oak, and Chief Fall Guy—a lady of epic ability to take it, a lady whose mighty love for Groucho is a saga of devotion, a lady who asks but little and gets it.

"Disappointment can't down her, nor perfidy shake her faith. Always she comes back for more though slapsticks have crippled her, custard pies spattered her trusting face. Surrounded by brothers who are surely a little odd, she does not think so. To her, her world of Marx Bros. pictures is rational, comprehensible, secure. Calmly she surveys it, with infinite resource she fights to keep on her feet in it. Equally ready for amorous dalliance or hair-pulling, for Groucho's sudden tender moods, or base betrayal, all her magnificent qualities are on display in A Day At the Races, where once again her fortitude is nothing human. It's godlike."

It's a pity more people didn't recognize Dumont's gifts at the time. Her success with the Marx Brothers led to typecasting and pretty much finished her dreams of taking on dramatic film roles. She appeared in fifty movies in a career that began with an uncredited bit part in 1917's A Tale Of Two Cities and ended shortly before her death in 1965 with a televised performance with Groucho on The Hollywood Palace where she reprised her role as Mrs. Rittenhouse from Animal Crackers.

"Don't step on those few laughs I have up here," he ad-libbed at one point, for once cracking up the consummate straight woman.

Margaret Dumont called herself the best straight woman in Hollywood and when I look back over the history of film comedy, I can't think of a better one. And more to the point, I can't think of a more indispensable one. With all due respect to Zeppo, Margaret Dumont was the real fourth Marx Brother.

Postscript: Half a dozen sources note that Margaret Dumont won the Screen Actors Guild award for best supporting actress of 1937 for her work in A Day At The Races—sources beyond the ever-reliable Wikipedia, such as The Marx Brothers: A Bio-Bibliography by Wes D. Gehring and Hal Erickson's All Movie Guide. Well, maybe. The Screen Actors Guild Awards as we currently know and love them only came into existence in 1995, so perhaps these sources are referring to an earlier, now-defunct version of the award. Or perhaps it was some other award. Only I can't find any reference to any of the other winners of such an award from 1937 and the usually thorough Internet Movie Database doesn't mention it at all. But there are many things I don't know and maybe she did win some kind of an award for A Day At The Races. If so, good for her, because she certainly deserved some recognition in her lifetime.

Can anybody out there clear up the discrepancy? If so, I'd appreciate it if you'd drop a line in the comments box and fill me in.

In any event, she's now won a Katie-Bar-The-Door Award which trumps the Screen Actors Guild any day, and I'm sure if Margaret Dumont were alive today, she'd rise up out of her grave, and we'd only have to bury her again.

Note: To read about Duck Soup's screenplay, click here.