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ANIMAL CRACKERS - The Marx Brothers' Second Film

© John Vincent Brennan

Director Victor Heerman must have taken a long, hard look at THE COCOANUTS (1929) before tackling the task of directing the Marx Brothers second picture, ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930), because he managed to avoid almost every mistake that Robert Florey and Joseph Santley made on the first film. Florey and Santley wanted to make a faithful adaptation of a Broadway musical comedy, and to that extent they succeeded. Victor Herman, on the other hand, decided that what audiences wanted to see in a Marx Brothers picture was The Marx Brothers, and so that is what he gave them. He wisely cut out all of the music except the indispensable "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" and one love song. The few plot scenes he kept in, to move the story along, are brief, and usually have one or two Marx Brothers popping in at the end.

ANIMAL CRACKERS may not be the faithful adaptation of a Broadway hit that THE COCOANUTS was, but in allowing the Marx Brothers to dominate the proceedings this time around, he made a film that stands up much better and is not simply a humorous curio of days gone by but a vital, if somewhat static and stage bound, classic.

Once again written by George Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, ANIMAL CRACKERS established a great Marx Brothers tradition - the buildup to Groucho's entrance, and the subsequent discovery, by the audience if not by his co-stars, that he is a complete fraud. Here, as Captain Spaulding, African Explorer, he arrives in a sedan chair carried by four natives, and immediately argues about the fare. "From Africa to here, a dollar eighty-five? I told you not to go through Australia, you know it's all ripped up!" Later, during his lecture about his days in Africa, he unleashes a deathless joke: "One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." He makes no pretense at being anything but a fraud and a liar, and his rich and clueless host (the indomitable Margaret Dumont) cannot see through him, or his greasepaint mustache. Much of Groucho's charm (if you can call it that) is that, at his best, he lays his fraudulence on the table for everyone to see, and people are so shocked at being fooled, they simply refuse to accept it.

Harpo and Chico contribute some great scenes, including one in which they play bridge with Dumont and Margaret Irving. Chico has much of the same qualities as Groucho. "How do you want to play? Honest?", he asks Dumont before the game begins. In another scene, when Mrs. Rittenhouse's daughter convinces Chico that a sneaky favor she wants him to do is not really stealing, he leaves in a huff. He'll only do a favor it means breaking the law.