Stream On: When is a Marx Bros. film not a Marx Bros. film?
Jumping butterballs! ‘Room Service’ wasn’t written for the Marx Brothers; it was adapted for them from a successful Broadway play.
Room Service was the only Marx Brothers film from material not written specifically for them, and also the only movie they filmed for RKO, while they were under contract to MGM. The movie was adapted from a successful play at the suggestion of Herbert (Zeppo) Marx, who had retired from acting and become his brothers’ agent, and tailored by screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, who co-wrote A Night at the Opera.
/Amazon /Streaming /🍅64%🍿56% /Trailer /1938 /NR
The Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts (1929), was originally a 1925 Broadway show. (They began acting in Vaudeville in 1905.) The show, as well as Animal Crackers (1930), was written for the brothers on the stage by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, and what we see today are more or less filmed versions of the stage productions. These stage performances gave them the chance to test scripts before an audience and perfect the puns and timing for the films. The brothers went back on stage for test performances while filming A Night at the Opera in 1935.
From 1929 on they were mainly active in filming. In their first films they appeared as The Four Marx Brothers (Leonard aka Chico; Arthur aka Harpo; Julius aka Groucho; and Herbert aka Zeppo), but Zeppo left the stage after Duck Soup (1933). From 1929 to 1949 they made twelve films for Paramount, MGM, and United Artists—and one, Room Service, for RKO.
On the screen we can see the stage roots of Room Service—most of it takes place in a hotel room, and it’s much less hallucinogenic than a typical Marx movie, but the writing is familiar. Groucho wears a business suit, not a swallow-tail morning coat and his character’s name is Gordon Miller, not Rufus T. Firefly or some such. He’s a flat-broke theatrical producer, whose staff includes Harry Binelli (Chico) and Faker Englund (Harpo); he’s told by his brother-in-law Joseph Gribble (Cliff Dunstan), manager of the White Way Hotel, that he and his cast of twenty-two actors, who have run up a bill of $1,200, must leave the hotel immediately or face the wrath of supervising director Gregory Wagner (Donald MacBride, Animal Crackers).
Miller has hidden the cast and crew of his soon-to-open play, Hail and Farewell, in the empty hotel ballroom. He’s planning on skipping out on the hotel when he hears that one of his actresses, Christine Marlowe (Lucille Ball, I Love Lucy), has found a financial backer for the play. Miller must avoid being evicted and keep the company hidden in the hotel until he can meet with the backer and receive a check.
At the same time, Wagner discovers Miller's debt. Assured by Gribble that Miller had skipped without paying his bill, Wagner is surprised to find Miller still in the hotel, now joined by corn-fed Leo Davis (Frank Albertson, The Andy Griffith Show), the play's young author who has arrived unexpectedly. Davis is also broke and hopes to collect an advance on his royalties from the play.
Binelli (Chico) and Faker Englund (a part created for Harpo by Morrie Ryskind) are typical Chico and Harpo characters, except that Binelli wears regular clothes (plus his usual hat) and so does Harpo, although soon Harpo gets dressed in a miner’s outfit (he’s in the play) complete with a burning candle in his hat.
Characters chase one another in and out of the rooms à la A Night at the Opera but there are no musical numbers for Harpo or Chico (apart from a group rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”). It’s as if Groucho, Chico and Harpo exist in the real world, at any rate not the surreal universe that they in fact inhabit, and Room Service definitely has its moments. Frank S. Nugent wrote in the New York Times, in 1938, “While there may be some question about the play's being a perfect Marx vehicle, there can be none about its being a thoroughly daffy show.”
Sources include Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED), and Marx-Brothers.org.
Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon's prices. This column originally appeared on The Outer Banks Voice.