Post 743 - Heresy At the Viaduct - Reimagining "The Cocoanuts" with The Four Marx Brothers

The Cocoanuts Reduction - 75 minutes 

The Public Domain introduced the first Marx Brothers film, The Cocoanuts, into its arms this year.  The 1929 early talkie is best taken in comparison to other films from Paramount, notably Follow Through, that were essentially filmed records of the stage success.  

"Hey, hey!  That's only for long distances."

What has always stood out for me is how the brothers, while uncomfortable in the new medium for this first outing, seem far less forced in their performances than others making the transition.  In Follow Through,  Jack Haley and Zelma O'Neal seem to be arching themselves to the overhead microphone ("You Belong to Me") or playing to an invisible back row ("I Want to be Bad").   The Marxes seem aware of their staging but are more comfortable in their own skins - the conversations are more directed to each other than to someone off-camera (although Groucho has several glances at the camera just to check where things are going).  Follow Through is online, in two-strip Technicolor, in all its contrived plot line splendor - Follow Through - 1930 - youtube

What didn't age well in The Cocoanuts is the subplot.  Oscar Shaw is hardly a youthful love interest, and Mary Eaton's voice is shrill even for 1920's musical tastes (they were an apparent "pair" at the time on stage).   Their presence, along with their stilted non-comic lines, really drag the film into curio status.

So I committed heresy - I started cutting.  Trimming.  Peeling out about a reel's worth from the original film.  

What couldn't really be helped was the absolutely feeble concluding scene, where the plot is all resolved, and Mary Eaton peels out yet another rendition of When My Dreams Come True.   Even with the edits, even with the removal of flubbed lines, the faults in the structure of that segment can't be masked - they can only be made shorter.  And just where did Polly get those two copies of the mysterious maps to Cocoanut Grove?

I found a 1926 Victor recording of "Gems from The Cocoanuts" in my audio archives, and it includes some music that didn't make the journey to the filmed version, so I took liberty to play with the opening montage, the Lovely Land Called Florida segment, and the closing reprise of Dreams Come True by replacing the final song with A Little Bungalow.  

What remains is a brisk 75 minute version of The Cocoanuts, retaining the repeated confusion of whether Groucho's missed train is the 4:15 or the 4:30, but removing many of the distractions from the brothers' scenes.  It makes their first film a logical prelude to their characters in Monkey Business, even if it doesn't completely lay the groundwork for their second film, the classic Animal Crackers  (which will go into Public Domain in 2026, with the benefit of added clips that were discovered in an uncensored British print just a few years ago).  

I have always found it interesting that it took so long for film producers to understand that the purpose of the chorus lines and the love interests was just to allow the Marxes the chance to rest between their dynamic scenes and reset the stage behind the curtain.  In film, you can just cut, and the sweat equity is already taken care of.  Bob Gassel of the Marx Brothers Council Podcast, - Link to that site here  - a genius at creating lost continuity, did just that a few years ago, in his "Paramount edits" of their MGM films, where the potently flawed At the Circus and The Big Store were both trimmed to a fairly palatable 45 minutes.  

Think what you may, The Cocoanuts is my current favorite tasty treat in this truncated form: 

The Cocoanuts Reduction on Vimeo

And, while I was at it, I thought their "final" film could have some uninvited attention, too (it entered the public domain several years ago):  

A Night in Casablanca Revisit - 74 minutes

Post 738 - Notes on "The Great Dictator" - presentation to GR Ford Museum, 1988

 BEHIND "THE GREAT DICTATOR"
Notes for 28 January, 1988
Gerald R. Ford Museum, Grand Rapids

Thank you.  I have been introduced as a filmmaker and I would like to clarify this a bit--I am a pharmacist and instructor in Battle Creek who makes films whenever he can.  My last completed work was an animated piece that seemed to follow disasters in the third world -- it turned up in Lisbon just before the American embassy was bombed, it played in Tunisia about the time Arrafat showed up, and it may have caused a typhoon in Australia, but I'm not sure.  So you guys in the back with the cheap suits and sunglasses, yes, I'm the one, and don't worry, I'm not showing that film tonight.  

As far as my lecturing goes, I had a tense few moments this morning when getting ready for this presentation:  I printed the wrong file from my word processor -- you all came very close to getting a test on the Function of Endorphins in Prostaglandin Inhibition.

*****
I am here because, like most of you, I devour films, I am a ceaseless filmgoer, and I have especial admiration for Mr. Chaplin and his work, without which we would have a large void and probably little if any interest in silent film.  He remained stubbornly independent, making personal films with varying degrees of success until he was well into his 70s.  He completed "The Great Dictator" when he was 51.

*****
The film you have just seen was banned, for obvious reasons, in Nazi Germany.  It was also banned in Italy. And Spain.  And occupied France.  And for a nervous two weeks, it looked like it would have been banned in parts of California.

It was premiered October 15, 1940, over a year before we entered World War II, at a time when 96% of America was proudly Isolationist, when Adolph Hitler was "good press," and when an announcement that The Funniest Man In The World was going to make a satire about dictators would bring sneers, protests, and violent threats from pro-Fascist groups in the United States.

The Longshoremen's Union was prepared to stand guard at the Hollywood premiere in the event of pro-Nazi demonstrations.

And all this for just a movie.

These days it would be hard to envision a similar circumstance, perhaps someone satirizing the lunacies in Iran or Libya, but even then, our response would not be as so emotionally charged as the reception this film got.  Perhaps the Evils we see today are not great enough, perhaps they are too closely woven into our everyday life to appreciate; the optimist in me hopes that we recognize these Evils for what they are, are not duped by them, and cannot, therefore, be angered when they are shaken in front of our faces with a leer and a funny hat.  I would like to believe this.  However, the pessimist in me knows that we have found far more subtle ways of controlling the media--a film is re-cut, a word is changed to give a movie a stronger rating and, with it, a smaller audience, theatrical distribution can be limited; and, if it's a foreign film with a politically charged theme, it can be quietly denied entrance to our country as "propaganda."  On television, vice presidents find they can increase their popularity by arguing with newscasters instead of answering their questions.

Of course, I am referring to Spiro Agnew.

But I digress.

It seems that in the America of 1940 enough people had bought the Germanic fantasies.  Praise was guarded for "The Great Dictator."

The few who congratulated Chaplin for having the nerve to make such a picture in the first place, at a time when the Hollywood Factories were skittish about anything anti-Nazi, wondered if Chaplin had not gotten in over his head.  Many critics complained that it wasn't funny enough.  Most reviewers tore the final speech to ribbons.   The British loved the film, but you see, they were biased -- Hitler was bombing London to smithereens.

President Roosevelt's only comment was to complain that the film upset some of our pro-Axis friends in South America.
   
And at a time when anti-Semitic films were playing to packed houses in New York, the League of Decency condemned "The Great Dictator" because, in it, they claimed Chaplin expressed a disbelief in God.

For those familiar with Chaplin's working methods, this film is filled with contradictions.  Chaplin had rarely worked with more than a sketchy outline, usually in his head:  for "The Great Dictator"  he devised a 300 page script.  The bubble dance with the globe, which looks improvised, was carefully written out, shot over six days, and had its first appearance at a party eleven years before.  The squawking, howling, gibbering mock eloquence of the opening speech by Hynkel was ad-libbed before the cameras.  The music so integral, so carefully composed for "City Lights" and "Modern Times" was scored here in three weeks.

Even the closing speech, criticized by the left as being too sentimental and by the right as being too pro-Communist, turned up in such diverse publications from the Reader's Digest and the British Communist Party.  On one occasion, Chaplin was asked to repeat it for the radio audience of 60 million.  The man who had given the talkies "six months" had seized sound with relish.

Within two years it would seem that Chaplin had been pulling his punches in this film, at least when compared with the seething propaganda of a war-frenzied Hollywood.  Every major studio was at War with the World -- the Three Stooges did their part, Warner Brothers sent Bugs Bunny into the Marine Corps, and the industry congratulated itself for its foresight by giving Walt Disney an Oscar for a cartoon called "Der Fuerer's Face."

Chaplin, the self-declared "peace monger," was not congratulated for having lead the parade.  His championing the cause for `a second front' to help Russia during the war, in fact, resulted in having him denied re-entry to the United States after a European visit in 1952, and monitored in Switzerland by the FBI until even after his death (they were interested enough when his body was stolen in 1979 to consider enlisting the aid of a psychic in Portland, Maine).

Governments, like people without a sense of humor, have selective memories.

(c) 1988, 2025 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary

Post 720 - Chatting Among Animators Last Night

And the conversation slipped to humorous matters on February 6:

OK, we got to talking about classic comedians last night at the ASIFA coffee, after musing about "just what isn't funny," and the names Harry Langdon and Pierre Etaix percolated up (and I'm afraid, I was the main instigator).  Langdon has gotten a bum rap in the opinion of yr hmbl typst, perpetuated by Walter Kerr in his otherwise amazing 1970s book, The Silent Clowns.  The lack of access to his films has seemed to support the allegation over the years, but his complete silent output has been made available on DVD, and online.  It proves otherwise.  In fact, I contend he was the silent era's equivalent to Andy Kaufman, because, when left to his own devices, he could be utterly surreal.  It didn't hurt that he was also an accomplished cartoonist.

Pierre Etaix was a writer for the French auteur Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle, Les Vacances de Mssr Hulot, Playtime, Trafic) who was a fierce fan of Keaton and later, of Jerry Lewis (The unfinished Lewis "worst film" of The Day the Clown Cried is floating around in truncated form, but it may have benefited by the addition of Pierre Etaix, if such was a possibility).  Anyway - Etaix's films were self-funded, suffering the fate of those of Tati's - when one of them didn't cover costs, the creditors swept in and took possession of the assets - the films - put up as collateral.  As a result, the Etaix gems, and they truly are gems, were unseen in the US until the last decade.  My widdle head went kerBOOM when I came upon them on Turner Classics, and I immediately ordered the whole set, and then sent Etaix a gushing fan letter - only to have it returned a month later because...he had DIED.  It gave me flashbacks to trying to contact Harold Lloyd as a tween in the early 1970s or Tati as a semi-adult in the 1980s.  Anyway, here are some links to the films associated with this rambling note (thank the coffee, the 20 degrees with 30mph winds outdoors, and a dog not letting me out of her sight until she gets fed for contributing to this extensive bit of typing).  SO - if you're interested, here's a way to kill some time!

Harry Langdon:

Three's a Crowd - 15 minutes in inspired a similar scene in "Seule Tod" by yr hmbl typst - this film has him trying for "pathos" in between moments of nitrate decomposition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zemRj97rAek

(warning - there is an unfortunate moment of "blackface" amid the ruins of this movie)

The Chaser - 56 minutes into it is the most bizarre "seduction" ever put to film.  This was his final feature for Warner's to be released - they never released his completed feature after this one, and it is now considered among the "lost films."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6EQOuC2n6Q 

If you want to see how a career can be demolished by alcohol, check out the 1935 feature from Columbia, Atlantic Adventure.  He plays a reporter's sidekick, "Snappy," and he is impaired on-screen to a greater degree than Barrymore managed in Grand Hotel. 

On youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ3XAm99nD8

And now, for Pierre Etaix:

Rupture - 1961 - the consequences of writing to a girlfriend who is no longer friendly - the sounds were recorded in post-production, often provided by Etaix himself because the studio foley man wanted to stick to stock noises.  It's an otherwise silent one-reeler, deliciously fatalistic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxOg4rmhnKM

Happy Anniversary - 1962

Reminiscent of One Week, a young married couple is thwarted in their celebration by the lack of parking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsjIbZ_YD7k&t=10s

Yoyo - excerpt - 1965

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwP8miXVl7I

And the infamous The Day the Clown Cried - a 30 minute assembly of clips, uncovered by David Thrasher during the evening's discussions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vF8FKuljU

 

A still from "Three's Company" - the creative sequence using the doll as surrogate for Langdon is hampered by severe nitrate decomposition, but you get the idea...

Post 661 - At the Station

 Int: The Ticket Office

ONE:  I can never read these train schedules. The last time I wound up in Duluth.

TWO:  I bet it’s hard to unwind after that.  

ONE:  And the food’s terrible on those cars.  

TWO:  It’s all in the timing.  Look, if you take an express train west, you can cross enough time zones so it hasn’t been cooked yet - that way it stays fresh.

ONE:  Is there a train that fast?

TWO:  Sure - I’ve missed dozens of them.

ONE:  I just need enough time to pack, repack, and still be able to lose my toothbrush.

TWO:  Well, you can always floss with some uncooked spaghetti.  It’ll be fresh.

ONE: Have you every tried to eat your weight in spaghetti?

TWO:  Naah, I end up wearing most of it.  But if you move fast enough, who needs clothes?

ONE:  I’m sorry, I missed something - is it that kind of a train?  

TWO:  No, but you can wear yesterday’s clothes and they won’t get dirty until tomorrow.

ONE:  And by the time you discover you need something, you’ve already used it.

TWO:  That's an idea - hey, everyone can just forget their luggage -- we’ll make a fortune with the lost and found!

ONE:  We can even get people back to the station before they know where they're were going.

TWO:  Sure - we can collect all that interest on their Daylight Savings.

ONE:  Or plan a party for tonight and have the hangover before we leave.

TWO:  Just think - we can put off to tomorrow what we put off for today, and still have two days left.

ONE: And you can finally achieve your life’s ambition - become the world’s fastest procrastinator.

 

(c) 2024 Jim Middleton, The Animating Apothecary