![]() This too feels like high time - a bit of subversive individualism is just what this country needs. Fields: Comedy Collection,” a box of five films that includes the essential “It’s a Gift” (like “Monkey Business” and “Horse Feathers,” directed by Norman McLeod), and “The Bank Dick,” along with “My Little Chickadee,” more of a vehicle for Mae West than for Fields “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” featuring Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and “International House,” in which Fields is just one face among many. If I were in charge of television, I would broadcast it twice daily.įor reasons best known to accountants, it has taken until now for the film to come to DVD, but come it has, as the crowning glory of “The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection,” a new set from Universal that finally brings to disc the Marxes’ first five - and to my mind, best - films: charting their quick mastery of the medium from the stage-bound translations of their Broadway shows “The Cocoanuts” (1929) and “Animal Crackers” (1930), to the hyperkinetic farce of the shipboard “Monkey Business” (1931), the college-set “Horse Feathers” (1932), with its dancing bewhiskered dons and finally “Duck Soup,” in which a declaration of war is turned into a minstrel show: “They got guns, we got guns, all God’s chillun got guns.” The film, now largely regarded as their masterpiece, did so poorly on its release that it ended the brothers’ relationship with Paramount, despite their having made the cover of “Time” just the year before, which just goes to show you.Īt the same time, Universal has also released “W.C. I felt the need to see it again there is a certain kind of humor that works like homeopathy - that fights madness with madness. The mythical country of Fredonia, over which Groucho Marx improbably presides in that film, was beginning to feel a lot like home. Over the last couple of years, I’ve thought often of “Duck Soup,” the four Marx Brothers’ 1933 comedy of inept government and arbitrary war. “Just Wait ‘Til I Get Through With It” by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby All the films in “The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection” have been released individually. Marx Brothers DVDs - An article last Sunday about Universal Home Entertainment’s digitally remastered boxed set of Marx Brothers DVDs said that “Duck Soup” had not been released previously on DVD. Los Angeles Times Sunday DecemHome Edition Sunday Calendar Part E Calendar Desk 1 inches 45 words Type of Material: Correction ![]() Marx Brothers DVDs - An article in Sunday’s Calendar section about Universal Home Entertainment’s digitally remastered boxed set of Marx Brothers DVDs said that “Duck Soup” had not been released previously on DVD. Los Angeles Times Wednesday DecemHome Edition Main News Part A National Desk 1 inches 47 words Type of Material: Correction ![]()
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