Richards Favorite Videos

A brief line of his caught on microphone as he tells the announcer he will have to talk for him. Then he leans in and gives a verbal “honk”.

Harpo laughs:

The Brothers step into strange territory, try to trick a midget, and fail. There’s a moral in there somewhere.
From At The Circus.

A scene from a 1931 Paramount publicity film called The House That Shadows Built and the Four Marx Brothers appear to promote Monkey Business. It’s actually a reworking of a scene from their Broadway revue “I”ll Say She Is!” where they all do their Maurice Chevalier impressions (again) while trying to impress a talent scout.

This clip is from the fantastic Marx Brothers documentary “The Marx Brothers in a Nutshell.”

The Four Marx Brothers each do a verse from the song ‘Everyone Says I Love You’ from the movie ‘Horse Feathers’. Chico’s is the best, if not for the upbeat tone, then for the historical inaccuracy. Mosquito’s sting and Columbus chatted up Pocahontas. Awesome.

Recycled, yet fresh take on the bit from Duck Soup.

The melodramatic expression “This means war!” certainly did not originate with Duck Soup, but it is used several times in the film - at least twice by Trentino and once by Firefly - and would be repeated by Groucho in A Night at the Opera. Variations of this phrase would later become a frequently-used catch-phrase in Bugs Bunny cartoons.
The climactic production number Freedonia’s Going To War ridicules war by comparing nationalism to a minstrel show. One line is a variant on the old Spiritual All God’s Chillun Got Wings:
We got guns, they got guns, all God’s chillun got guns!
I’m gonna walk all over the battlefield, ’cause all God’s chillun got guns!
Other familiar tunes in the medly are Oh Freedonia (parody of Oh Susanna) & Turkey in the Straw (instrumental).

Captain Spaulding is the signature character played by actor Groucho Marx for the stage play and film Animal Crackers. The character of Captain Jeffrey (or Geoffrey, the name appears both ways in the film) T. Spaulding (the “T” stands for “Edgar”) first appeared in the Broadway play Animal Crackers and later in the 1930 film of the same name (shown here). Spaulding is a famous explorer on return from a trek across Africa to be the guest of honor at a high-society party. Although despite his hosts’ frequent claims that he is one of the most courageous travelers in the world, his own accounts of his safari reveal his cowardice. He eventually gets caught up in the mystery of a stolen painting.

The character’s theme song, “Hooray for Captain Spaulding”, became forever associated with Groucho in the public mind. A jazzy instrumental version of the song was later the theme for his quiz show, You Bet Your Life. At Groucho’s Carnegie Hall concert in the early 1970s, accompanist Marvin Hamlisch played the song as Groucho made his entrance on stage.

The song’s most famous line is “Hooray for Captain Spaulding / The African explorer / ‘Did someone call me schnorrer?’ / Hooray Hooray Hooray!”
Schnorrer is a Yiddish term meaning “beggar” or “sponger”

Groucho also delivered two of his most famous lines in the Captain Spaulding role, both while recounting his exploits in Africa: “We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren’t developed. But we’re going back in a couple of months!” and “One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I don’t know.” These were simpler times before political correctness sucked the joy out of humorous recounts of endangered species poaching and child pornography.

The dance step he does is called the Corkscrews.