While the majority of film scholars will hail \u201cDuck Soup\u201d and \u201cA Night at the Opera\u201d as the best of the Marx Brothers movies, my go-to Marx mayhem is their 1931 \u201cMonkey Business.\u201d Part of my devotion is emotional \u2013 this was the first Marx film I saw, back when I was around 10 years old and WNEW-TV Channel 5 in New York City would broadcast the film. And part of my devotion is intellectual \u2013 I genuinely believe it is the crazy siblings\u2019 best film.
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\u201cMonkey Business\u201d finds the Marx Brothers as stowaways on a luxury liner \u2013 where the vessel sailed from and where it is going to is never stated. Indeed, there is no backstory to the main characters \u2013 they don\u2019t have on-screen names and their presence on the ship is never explained. They just exist as surreal vagabonds who disrupt the humorless worlds of the wealthy passengers and the ship\u2019s pompous officers.<\/p>\n
Once they\u2019re presence is discovered \u2013 the Marxes are hiding in empty barrels marked \u201cKippered Herring\u201d \u2013 \u201cMonkey Business\u201d breaks loose as a wild chase with the brothers engaging in solo, duo and quartet antics. There is no plot for the first half-hour, but rather a series of interconnected skits with Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo getting into bizarre trouble. Some semblance of a plot finally occurs well into the running time involving a pair of rival gangsters who hire the Marxes as bodyguards \u2013 Groucho and Zeppo protect one of well-heeled mobsters while Chico and Harpo protect the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cMonkey Business\u201d is the sole Marx Brothers film where is an equal partner in the mayhem. His story arc involves the pretty daughter of one gangster and he has two very funny brief scenes with her \u2013 his initial meet-cute moment involving a dropped handkerchief and later when his declaration that he\u2019ll never leave her is interrupted when he needs to escape from the ship\u2019s crew who is trying to apprehend him. And Zeppo is the one who hatches the brilliantly cockamamie scheme for all four brothers to sneak off the ship by each pretending to be Maurice Chevalier.<\/p>\n
Margaret Dumont is absent from \u201cMonkey Business,\u201d but quite frankly she isn\u2019t missed. Blonde bombshell Thelma Todd becomes Groucho\u2019s foil as the frustrated wife of one of the gangsters, and her stateroom rendezvous with Groucho (complete with a wacky dance) is priceless. Todd was so effective that she was brought back in the Marxes\u2019 next film, \u201cHorse Feathers,\u201d with all four brothers seducing her. <\/p>\n
Admittedly, the film\u2019s zany energy loses steam when the story switches from the ship to a party at the Long Island estate of one gangster, and that part of the film includes the inevitable musical interludes with Chico on piano and Harpo on harp that always slowed the flow of the comedy. But that part of the movie has my all-time favorite Groucho line, when he tries to sell a ring to a society matron: \u201cWould you give me a buck and a half for it? It’s brass, you know. I got it from the nose of a savage, so it ought to fit you.\u201d<\/p>\n