THE SCREEN
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
The parents, on the other hand, tend to take the MARXISM view that separate Catholic schools are no longer a necessity, especially since Vatican II, and that in...
...The consequent drop in the Catholic school roll film's owners noticed it...
...Fields is embroiled If the comedy of Animal Crackers appears to have in a world so antagonizing that his own nastiness seems paled with age, it is only because its production techmere self-defense...
...AlThis is a possibility that Andrew Sarris failed to appre- though many lines are inaudible, every footfall in the ciate in The American Cinema when he complained film can be heard reverberating on a sound stage floor about the invariably "mediocre mise en scene" of the thoughtlessly built with hollow underpinnings like a Marx Brothers' films and about the way that the insipid theater stage...
...In order to ensure reli- (1933)-the brothers found themselves without either gious education for the Catholic pupils-who numbered a picture or a studio in 1934, Paramount having let their several hundred-two nuns visited the school regularly...
...It never would have opposition of the Northern Irish Catholic Church to in- occurred to anyone forty years ago, for that matter, when tegrated education...
...When this five pictures for Paramount in rapid succession-The school opened in 1969 it was the only school in the Coconuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey new city where Catholic pupils could attend-along with Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup their Protestant contemporaries...
...That is, in essence, its purpose: to insulate the Marx Brothers' recklessness from any contact with real You will teach deserts problems or genuine emotions...
...But none of the films done after those first five at Paramount was equal to them...
...Now ana- at times, as if it were created to be an antidote for all lysts must grapple with the thought that the grave-digger that sweetness exuded by earlier movie comedy...
...of the Executive was not only Ian Paisley and the Prot- The Marx Brothers are in a class apart from Fields, estant extremists, but perhaps also the Catholic hierarchy.though...
...Philbin...
...and by the late fifties even they were so neglected, despite Groucho's popuyear when a Catholic primary school opened nearby and larity on television, that the copyright on Animal Crackparents were asked to send their children to the new ers had been expired for three years before any of the school...
...If the essential screen comics past few months had remained optimistic that the Sun- of the silent era were Keaton and Chaplin, those of the ningdale Agreement would be ratified, that the Council 1930s were W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers...
...Surely, an immobile church response that proffers them a diet one assumes, their films have never lost favor with audiof canon law...
...After making their first lygally County, in Craigavon, Co...
...Only then did en scene of the Marx Brothers' films seem only to pro- the production equipment and directors get good enough vide a pretext for them to do their gag routines...
...firms is the abruptness with which the mood of film As Mr...
...It is a look that says, in effect...
...Motion Picture Academy, as it did this year, that There is also another cause celebre that shows the Groucho should be given an award...
...I've the night with flames, never seen such a bunch of phonies in all my life," and believing they are stars...
...Since an agreement has evidently been reached at last Against this background there is little prospect of and the film is about to be released again, the occasion hierarchy support for the Mclvor plan-despite the fact might call for a reviewing of the complete set of Parathat the desegregation of education has the support of mount films...
...Even when the film was new, this song, celebrating the love of a poor boy Who could imagine and a rich girl must have struck a false note with audi- A new creation ences...
...refused confirmation by Dr...
...contract run out because the public seemed to be tiring The arrangement seemed satisfactory until the following of their films...
...But in the Marx Brothers' films, it is niques as a movie are now badly out of date, not because they who are the antagonists, the aggressors, and the the Marx Brothers' own work is...
...MICHAEL CUDDIHY But I think Sarris missed an important consideration when he talked as if this hokey world created for the Mapleleal Marx Brothers to operate in was somehow inappropriate, or unworthy of their inspired madness...
...Anarchy The sun's footprints isn't comical in a real world, so their films have to pose Staining the dark and sustain a noticeably artificial one, a world peopled Roots of shadow with theatrical conventions like Margaret Dumont's stuffy dowager rather than real human beings who might win Face of the crucified our sympathy for the abuse they suffer from the film's His brown shroud stars...
...Thalberg only went after the Marx Brothers because he felt his own career as a producer to be weak where comedy was concerned, the two films made for MGM then did rejuvenate the brothers' career and lead to a half dozen more films in the next ten years or so...
...The parents, on the other hand, tend to take the MARXISM view that separate Catholic schools are no longer a necessity, especially since Vatican II, and that in fact the acceptance of Catholic schools is acceptance of clerical control...
...The to keep up with them, and did they become really sensinegligibility of the films' scripts and settings seems clear tive to the medium...
...Commonweal: 333...
...At the beginning of Ani- to dissolve, making all things mal Crackers, as Groucho is carried on in a litter chair, new with water...
...at one point), seem out to get Fields...
...The following year Irving Thalberg picked them up for a couple of films more-A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937)-done in the elite production unit he had earned for MGM's quality work...
...While they may not have sour in- versal Pictures, which now owns the film, would spend tentions for their antics, as Fields often does, those antics a few thousand on refurbished prints...
...But the fact is perpetuating the ghetto mentality that has led to so much twenty years ago it never would have occurred to the of the present community problems...
...This concerns a primary school, Tul- the brothers were in their prime...
...What seeing Animal Crackers anew reconthe SDLP, the main Catholic party in the Province...
...The condition of have at least potentially crueler, more destructive con- the print I saw at a preview was atrocious...
...Even Baby Leroy and Charlie McCarthy ("My no one we care about will be hurt because there won't Little Whispering Pine," as Fields refers to him spitefully be anyone we care about...
...Woven of the world In The Coconuts, whatever affecting songs might have been in the original George S. Kaufman-Irving Berlin Tiny leaf holes musical, the only song retained by the moviemakers is Inviting the wild air an icky duet called "When My Dreams Come True," To kneel which is sung by the romantic leads...
...And of Ireland would be set up and that the Executive would in the work of both the latter, from the very beginning, survive, The Executive died with the resignation of the comedy is acerbic, is even genuinely misanthropic Brian Faulkner as Chief Minister on May 28...
...Consequently, when parents invoke their rights, THE SCREEN usually with reference to the decrees of the Second Vatican Council on Christian Education, Religious Freedom, It's hard to realize that the current revival in the popuEcumenism and the Apostolate of the Laity, they face larity of the Marx Brothers truly is a revival...
...ful lab work could hide the inadequacies of the Astor The injury the Marx Brothers might have done as a Studios on Long Island where the brothers converted result would ultimately have been to their own comedy...
...Though...
...But no caresequences than bis...
...film, Monkey Business, which was made in Hollywood, Sarris appeared to have a point since the plot and mise that they really hit their peak in movies...
...The result was some sort of was followed by the withdrawal by church authorities byzantine legal struggle that has now kept Animal Crackof the nuns and by a policy of pressuring the parents to ers out of circulation altogether for fifteen years while segregate...
...It would help if Uniworld is the victim...
...Children remaining at this school have been rights to the picture were renegotiated...
...In the final analysis there may be more malevo14 June1974: 332 lence in Fields than in them, but Fields is always pro- it is necessary here at the beginning to reassure us that voked...
...their hit Broadway shows into their first two films...
...Mclvor had said that the plan will need the comedy changed in the sound era...
...The Northern Irish Church, they feel, is ences since the time they were made...
...when you consider that many of the gags-for example, Harpo's dropping an entire silver service from the sleeve 00000000000000 of his infamous coat in Animal Crackers-originated in the brothers' vaudeville act before the stage or screen plays ever existed...
...In fact, the mood of agreement of the Churches for its implementation there films generally changed from sentimentalism to cynicism, was a certain pessimism from SDLP ministers who in the and comedy fit the trend...
...It wasn't until the Marx Brothers' next stories sometimes threaten to take over the scenario...
...he surveys the other weekend guests assembled at Margaret Dumont's mansion with an insolently ungracious, At your command, mountains will shatter unimpressed look...
...Armagh...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...The world that No antique this we see the Marx Brothers attack on the screen in film Neighbor to the damp after film provides not only a pretext for their shenani- Autumn of grass gans, but also a context-a context in which those shenanigans can seem funny rather than vicious...
Vol. 100 • June 1974 • No. 14
