The Cocoanuts

The creative talents of George S. Kaufman, Irving Berlin, and the Brothers Marx went into the production of the Broadway musical The Cocoanuts which ran for 216 shows in the 1925-1926 season. Of the talent involved it was the Marx Brothers who came out the winners.

George S. Kaufman was one of the great wits of the last century, but so were the Marx Brothers. They ad-libbed and eliminated much of Kaufman's well turned prose and things were pretty tense between him and the brothers on Broadway. He also did not like a certain song that Berlin wanted to use in The Cocoanuts and Berlin took it from the show after Kaufman ragged on him. The song was Always. The Cocoanuts was the first book musical that Irving Berlin ever wrote, he did mostly reviews before The Cocoanuts. It also is the only one without a single hit song from it.

But as a Marx Brothers comedy it made the Brothers reputations. The plot such as it is concerns the boom in Florida real estate in which a lot of people got wealthy and a lot lost their shirts, though not quite in the way Basil Ruysdael does when Harpo and Chico take it off his back while he's trying to frisk them in his duties as the house detective.

The Cocoanuts was shot at the Paramount Astoria studio in Queens and used a lot of Broadway performers in the roles. Besides the Brothers, only Margaret Dumont and Basil Ruysdael came over from the Broadway cast. But Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton had well established reputations on Broadway. Kay Francis is in the cast as the bad girl and she certainly went on to a substantial Hollywood career.

The main thing The Cocoanuts has going for it besides the Marx Brothers is the fact it is a filmed record of a Twenties era Broadway musical. Paramount made very few concessions in adapting The Cocoanuts to the screen. What we see is filmed play. Historic, but I fear not as entertaining as the later work of the Marx Brothers.

A brilliant film debut by the Marx Brothers in this 1929 musical comedy (from Broadway) about land speculation in Florida, jewel thieves, and well the Marx Brothers. In their first film, all the familiar schtick and word play are already in place with Groucho, Chico, and Harpo all excellent.

As usual there is also a romantic young couple--Mary Eaton and Oscar Shaw--and bad guys--Kay Francis and Cyril Ring. Also making her film debut at age 40 is the wonderful and imperious Margaret Dumont. Basil Ruysdael plays the house detective. Zeppo Marx plays the desk clerk.

A blah ballad is sung to death, but The Monkey Doodle-Doo song is terrific and well sung and danced by Eaton (a Broadway star) and chorus. Oddly staged productions number with chorus in monkey suits and tourists milling about in the background. But Eaton is quite good, considering the early sound equipment. And she has great legs.

Francis is fun in her second film (she made five in 1929) but teamed with the unappealing Ring. Shaw is OK but seems too old to be playing the juvenile lead.

But while Dumont, Francis, and Eaton are fun, it's the 3 brothers who dominate the film. Several classic bits, including the viaduct gag, Chico's great piano solo, Harpo getting to steal a few scenes, and of course Groucho riding roughshod over everyone. What a treat! While Kay Francis went on to major stardom in the 30s, Mary Eaton made one disastrous film after this hit, Flo Ziegfeld's Glorifying the American Girl. That ended her starring career in Hollywood.

The more I watch the Marx Brothers the more I appreciate Chico, who was always my least favorite of the 3. Now I notice his perfect comic timing and I just love his piano solos.

I've been told it's the first musical comedy to have been made. God only knows what that makes The Jazz Singer then - heavyweight drama, I suppose.

The first problem you're going to have if you want to see it is actually seeing it. The film has been very hard to find on DVD. A copy is now available on the recently released version of the UK box set of their early films but as yet has not been released on it's own. I believe this situation varies elsewhere in the world.

The second problem you'll have if you want to see it is actually seeing it. Beware cheap copies from distant lands. The film has fallen into disrepair due to neglect. This has meant that some copies of the film are almost totally unwatchable. I remember being given a copy of the film that was released in Australia where parts of the picture had been almost completely washed away while the soundtrack could barely be heard of the crackles of the tape.

Still, if you do find a good copy it is well worth watching. The filming is very static and the acting wooden in comparison to their later movies. However, given that this was their first release and based upon their second successful Broadway run, I think that can be forgiven.

The characters are already clearly drawn out and some of the sketches are as funny as anything they did later on in their career. The 'Why a Duck' sketch can rate along side the 'tootsie-frootsie' sketch as one of the best sketches between Groucho and Chico.

The music is forgettable, the plot wafer thin, but you'll laugh out loud more than the majority of the films you'll ever see.

Entertaining, but not much of a movie. This first effort from the Marx Brothers seems more like a variety show than a narrative film. The brothers, themselves, are hilarious, especially when playing off each other, but they are forced to share the screen with too many other attractions. There is the singing, romantic lead, his girl, the villainess, her cohort, the surly old cop (who also sings) and even a chorus line of dancing girls thrown in for apparently no other reason than to have dancing girls in the film. The story is flimsy and the supporting cast is awful, but that is to be expected. On the upside, the movie is incredibly funny, and that, of course, is its only real aim. Groucho, Harpo and Chico make the film fly whenever they are given the chance. It just seems like the filmmakers didn't quite yet know what to do with them.

Contrary to popular belief, Cocoanuts was not the first Marx Brothers movie. That honor belongs to Humorisk, a silent film which no longer exists. It was greeted with such hostility that one master reel was burned, and the other deteriorated in a producer's closet. It is difficult to imagine Chico and Groucho in a silent film, and while one might envision Harpo as the ultimate silent comedian, his whistling and horn-honking formed an essential part of his act.

By 1929, however, sound was here to stay, and many silent comics suddenly found themselves out of work. In fact, the only two comedians to successfully make the transition from silent to sound were Laurel and Hardy (Chaplin didn't make his first sound movie until 1940, and was never comfortable with sound). Comedy teams like Stan and Ollie and the Marx Brothers needed dialog; even Harpo communicated with his brothers using broad gestures and the aforementioned honks and whistles.

The biggest story of 1929 (besides the stock market crash) was the Florida land boom. Mr. Hammer (Groucho) is the manager of a struggling hotel, trying to lure customers so that he can sell them Florida lots. Of course, Astoria, Long Island, where this movie was filmed, is not exactly the Sunshine State, and the opening tribute to "sunny Florida" shows us some sand poured on a sound stage to simulate a beach and a painted backdrop of palm trees and coconut. Groucho pursues the rich Mrs. Potter (Margaret Dumont), whose daughter Polly (Mary Eaton) is in love with Bob Adams (Oscar Shaw). Also interested in Polly (or rather, her mother's money) is Harvey Yates (Cyril Ring). Together with his parter Penelope (Kay Francis), they decide to steal Mrs. Potter's expensive necklace and blame it on Bob, easing the way for Yates to marry Polly.

The highlight of the film is the famous "Why a duck?" routine. It's Chico versus the English language, and guess who wins? When Groucho tells Chico that there's going to be an auction, he replies: "I come from Italy on the Atlantic Auction." When Groucho talks about levees, Chico thinks that's the Jewish neighborhood. When he asks him what a radius is, Chico responds that it's WJZ, at that time a popular New York radio station. And when it comes to the word "viaduct" he is totally lost.

Groucho: "Here's a little peninsula and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland."

Chico: "OK, why a duck? Waya no chicken?" Having been told by Groucho to keep the bidding high during the auction, Chico, in a very funny scene, takes over the whole show, refusing to let anyone else in on the action.

As far as the music is concerned, it is difficult to imagine Irving Berlin writing such drivel as "When My Dreams Come True" and "Monkey Doodle-Do." The former is sung in a duet between Mary Eaton and Oscar Shaw (whom Groucho described as "strictly no-talent"). Indeed it's hard to determine which is worse-Shaw's acting or his singing.

There was a song written for "Cocoanuts," however, that was rejected because it made the show too long. It became one of Berlin's greatest hits. The song was "Always."

The print quality varies from good to fair. It appears that Universal spliced together scenes from several different prints to make one entire movie.