The Marx Brothers never had the best of luck with their male juveniles – with the female ingénues tended to be quite engaging (Lillian Roth, Kitty Carlisle), the blokes they were forced to romance were generally wet. This one has youthful drip Kenny Baker as a kid from a rich family who tries to run a circus; he’s got a high pitched voice and looks around seventeen, but at least he can sing and he’s not as annoying as Frank Albertson in Room Service. It helps he’s got a more sympathetic character: unlike Albertson’s whiny playwright, Baker’s circus owner seems like a nice kid with a sympathetic goal (though he refuses to marry his girlfriend when he looks like not having a job; his girlfriend says “looks like Emily Post was right – a woman should never propose to a man”.)
The circus makes a magical setting for the movie, the best one since the opera in Night at the Opera: late night train rides moving from town to town; characters including strong men, tightrope walkers and midgets; Eve Arden walking on the ceiling. Highlights include Groucho singing his best song, ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’; the brothers interrogating a midget; Groucho is seduced by Eve Arden (and tells the audience “there must be some way of getting that money without getting in trouble with the Hays Office – an aside that ranks with “I’ve got to stay here but why don’t you go out for a smoke while this blows over”); Harpo sticking his head in the ground like an ostrich; Groucho walking on the ceiling; Groucho seducing Margaret Dumont (the twist in this one is that she doesn’t appear in the film for an hour and they’ve never met before); Groucho crashing a high society do with a whole circus; the orchestra floating away off to sea at the end; Margaret Dumont on the trapeze.
Harpo does another lavish production number with a bunch of black kids – what was the deal with this? And it’s not as well directed as the some of the best Marx Brothers film. But it has a lot of charm and is very enjoyable.
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