Review of A Day at the Races (1937) by Edith N — 19 Aug 2010

They Will Persist in the Unnecessary Romances.

Originally, the copy of this movie we got from Netflix skipped from the beginning of the race to Harpo's leading away the leading horse at the end. This missed a lot, we suspected. I ended up having to skip the setup scene and just get straight to the race, and to be honest, I'm still not entirely sure how the horse went from not-winning to winning. Either way, it seems that the crew actually got Chico to bet on the other horse, despite it being a fixed race for plot purposes, because they gave him twenty-to-one. Which may well tell you all you need to know about one Leonard Marx. Though an interesting addition to that is the story that, when Bugsy Siegel died, a check from Chico paying off a gambling debt was found in his wallet. According to Groucho, had Bugsy tried to cash the check, it would have bounced, and Bugsy would not have been the one shot.

As is usually the case, there's really no point in describing the plot in any kind of detail. Vaguely, it is about the attempts to keep the Standish Sanitarium open. This involves convincing Emily Upjohn (reliable Margaret Dumont) to give quite a lot of money to it, which they do by hiring her personal physician, Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho). There is also the tedious subplot involving Judy Standish (Maureen O'Sullivan) and Gil Stewart (Allan Jones), a nightclub singer who has bought a racehorse in an attempt to win a great deal of money, which he sees as a sure thing, to Judy's dismay. Chico works for the sanitarium, and Harpo is a jockey. Oh, and Hackenbush is a veterinarian. That's okay, though, because Mrs. Upjohn is a hypochondriac who's as healthy as, well, one of his previous patients. There are also shady characters who want to drive Judy to bankruptcy and foreclose on the sanitarium, because they'll be able to get it for a song and build a casino there instead. Hilarity ensues.

Once again, the racetrack scenes made me feel all nostalgic and even vaguely homesick. This is true in almost any American movie featuring a racetrack, because by and large, they feature the same racetrack. This was filmed, as IMDB tells us, at the Santa Anita Park and Racetrack in Arcadia, California. I used to cut through their parking lot once a week, walking from the mall to my psychologist's office. That's just getting started, though. I went to at least one formal open house thingy with my grandparents, I don't know why. And, most notably, I was born essentially just across that vast, acres-large parking lot. You see, across the street is the Arcadia Methodist Hospital, in which I was born. Then, a few blocks from that, there is the Queen of Angels (I think) church, where I'm pretty sure my parents were married and where I know my grandfather's, and probably grandmother's, funerals were. Watching the movie, I was never entirely sure where it was set, but I knew where it was filmed.

There is, of course, a Marx Brothers Movie Formula. Groucho woos Margaret Dumont, and he is otherwise generally an outsider. Either Chico or Harpo, and usually both, have connections with the Tedious Romantic Subplot. The members of the Tedious Romantic Subplot have some need to get ahead in the world, needing a recording contract or mortgage paid off or some such. Margaret Dumont is rich, stuffy, and stupid. There will also be several musical numbers. Most of them will be too long. Oh, Harpo does deserve his harp number, since it's pretty much what he does. However, there is, in this one, a long sequence where we get to see what Gil does to keep his job singing in a nightclub. This despite the fact that Gil's singing in a nightclub is pretty much entirely superfluous to the plot. All we really need to know is that he owns a racehorse and needs it to win. Jane mentions, early on, the prospect of a recording contract, but it's pretty promptly forgotten.

Any good Marx Brothers film features a lot of lines you'll remember even when you're not entirely sure where you've heard them. This one includes the classic, "If I hold you any closer, I'll be in back of you." "Either he's dead or my watch stopped." And so forth. Really, it's the main reason to watch a Marx Brothers movie. There is always at least one conversation between Groucho and Chico wherein each side thinks his side makes sense. Arguably, it does. It's just that the two combined somehow never do. Groucho is aware of this, though Chico probably is not. There are sterling moments in any Marx Brothers movie. The quality is largely based on how many of those moments there are, and there are quite a lot of them here. It's very much worth watching, for all it's not their best. By all accounts, it's nowhere near their worst; by the end of things, according to what I've heard, they're very bad indeed.