The movie is so nihilistic and immoral, I wonder if it counts as pre-code comedy, if it would’ve been allowed three years later. Aha, IMDB says there are some bits that were lost in ’35 during a post-code re-edit, including the meaning\/punchline behind the guys delivering blocks of ice to the apartment of the “college widow”.<\/p>\n
I didn’t even know there was a straight-man Marx Brother: Zeppo, here playing Groucho’s son, a student who has spent twelve years at college hanging out with the “college widow” (apparently a common term back then after Archie Mayo’s 1927 movie The College Widow<\/em>, which Horse Feathers<\/em> is partly parodying).<\/p>\n Director McLeod (who also made comedies with Cary Grant, WC Fields, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Harold Lloyd) did a fine job taking strings of unrelated scenes and jokes and stitching them together into what passes for a movie. The mad energy and nonstop jokes still make it a highly successful comedy. None of the four credited writers bear the name of Marx, so I wonder how much the Marx Bros. brought to the table besides acting. No real sense in a plot summary, since the movie itself doesn’t seem to give a damn for plot. No sense in recounting the jokes either, cuz it’s a goddamned fun flick and I’d rather forget most of it so I’ll enjoy it as much the next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The movie is so nihilistic and immoral, I wonder if it counts as pre-code comedy, if it would’ve been allowed three years later. Aha, IMDB says there are some bits that were lost in ’35 during a post-code re-edit, including the meaning\/punchline behind the guys delivering blocks of ice to the apartment of the “college […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[343,508,509],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1930s","tag-marx-brothers","tag-norman-mcleod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}