THE COCOANUTS: Blu-ray re-issue (Paramount, 1929) Universal Home Video

In 1924, The Marx Brothers had their first Broadway success with I’ll Say She Is, Zeppo Marx (a.k.a. Herbert) replacing Gummo, who had enlisted to fight in WWI. Garnering praise from noted theater critic, Alexander Woollcott, the brothers continued to hone their craft, along the way substituting the ridiculous for the sublime and vice versa as their anarchical style steadily gained in reputation within the cultural elite. It was not long before Hollywood came a-calling. The first two pictures The Marx Bros. made at Paramount, The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930) are, in fact, almost literal translations of their Vaudeville smash hits (Animal Crackers especially, consolidating the acidity of the brothers’ comedic genius by jettisoning all but two numbers from the stage show – both showpieces for Groucho). The Marx Brothers debut could not have been more perfectly timed, at a juncture when the movies suddenly learned to talk. As so much of The Marx Brothers success lay in their verbalized screwball, in hindsight, it seems as though ‘the talkies’ were invented expressly to capitalize on their legendary byplay and wisecracks.

In the days before formality and red tape crept into the business of Hollywood, the details of the brothers’ deal with Paramount would remain a little sketchy at best, and shrouded in secret. Adolph Zukor initially approached with an offer of $50,000 to reprise their roles in The Cocoanuts. Zukor reportedly scoffed when word trickled back via the live show’s producer, Sam Harris, Groucho was thinking of asking for a cool $75,000. This caused Zukor to infer he would spit in Groucho’s eye if ever such a figure was mentioned again. Paramount already owned the rights to the play, though not its performers. But Zukor – and perhaps even Groucho – had underestimated Zeppo, who plied the wily Paramount mogul with plaudits, before lowering the boom for an even cooler $100,000.00! Reportedly, Zukor turned to Harris after his fleecing, adding, “So what’s the problem? Let’s do this.”  If this story is less than apocryphal, Zukor was to win the final hand in this game of bait and switch, offering the brothers fifty-percent of the profits, but with the ‘hidden’ clause – only after all expenses incurred by the studio had been recovered. As Paramount was actually teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in 1928, Zukor saw to it, any profits from the first two films were funneled elsewhere to shore up his company’s ailing bottom line. Hence, the brothers collected few royalties. Zukor then compounded the insult by creating a shell corporation to preclude any further payouts. This shortsightedness in fully exploiting the Marx’s would backfire when Groucho made the decision to bow out of Paramount altogether, effectively, making the Marx Bros. free agents.

Working on a Marx Brothers movie proved trying for both sides. Used to spontaneity, only possible by performing uninterrupted in front of a live audience, the brothers felt constrained in having to hit their marks for the camera. Camera operators struggled to keep the boys in focus as they leapt about the proscenium. Shooting The Cocoanuts was further hampered by the fact the brothers had not yet finished their live stage run in Animal Crackers, making their first movie by dawn’s early light and well into the afternoon, only to leave the sound stages to give a full performance of their subsequent show each night. This strain was brought to the brink by the American stock market crash in 1929. Black Tuesday virtually wiped-out Groucho and Harpo’s frugally amassed, individual net worths of $250,000.  Bloodied, but unbowed, Groucho pursued Paramount’s attractive offer, trading the east coast for the west. Curiously, Groucho never purchased a house in Hollywood, believing the Marx Bros. popularity at the movies would be a mere fad. Groucho was reportedly mortified after seeing an advanced screening of The Cocoanuts, his chagrin abated when the movie went on to become an unqualified smash, ringing registers around the world. In the wake of this sudden flourish of success, the brothers signed a new 3-picture deal with Paramount.

Like virtually all of their work at Paramount, the strength of these movies is not plot-based. Rather, it is the skits audiences came to see, teeming with naughty pre-Code sexual innuendo alluding to sex without actually swatting at it heavy-handedly. The stories are slight to say the least and, essentially, can be summed up in single sentence synopses with a few minor embellishments. The Cocoanuts revolves around the slick and tart-mouthed Mr. Hammer (Groucho), owner of a posh but foundering Floridian resort, desperate to woo a wealthy dowager, Mrs. Potter (Margaret Dumont) into hosting her daughter, Polly’s (dull as paint, Mary Eaton) engagement party. Jamieson (Zeppo) is Hammer’s right-hand man, overseeing the hotel’s daily operations in his absence. But Polly is in love with hopeful, yet penniless/aspiring architect, Bob Adams (woefully charm-free, Oscar Shaw) who has great plans to expand the hotel’s prospects as Cocoanut Manor. Mrs. Potter does not think much of Bob and makes valiant attempts to inveigle Polly in a grand amour with the seemingly more socially acceptable and affluent, Harvey Yates (Cyril Ring). Unfortunately, Yates is a con artist, conspiring with an accomplice, Penelope (Kay Francis) to lighten Mrs. Potter of her $100,000 diamond necklace. When the scheme falls apart, Penelope plants evidence the foiled robbery was all Bob’s doing. Hence, Polly is forced to accept a proposal of marriage from Yates. Meanwhile, in the backdrop are Chico and Harpo – basically playing themselves - exploiting Hammer’s absent-mindedness and reoccurring distractions to stir the early rumblings of the hotel’s foreclosure into some truly hilarious and unbridled mayhem.

The Cocoanuts is, of course, based on the Broadway smash hit by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, with an unusually forgettable score by Irving Berlin. To accommodate the Marx Brothers Broadway commitments on Animal Crackers, the picture was made entirely on sound stages at Paramount’s Astoria production facilities, with studio-bound, painted backdrops subbing in for the sunny shores of Florida. As in the Broadway incarnation, the movie heavily relies on the Marx Brothers rare and distinct gifts to carry to load. Groucho’s caustic and insulting byplay, Chico’s fractured English and misunderstandings, complete with an electric piano solo interlude, and, Harpo’s impulsive and oversexed antics that, when viewed today, border on aggressive and predatory. Recalling The Cocoanuts was made during the absolute infancy of sound recording, all of the numbers here are performed live with an orchestra just out of camera view (no post syncing to pre-recordings then). Given such astronomical limitations, co-directors, Robert Florey and Joseph Santley achieve a remarkable fluidity in camera movement. This is quite uncharacteristic of the period. Just look at 1929’s Oscar-winning Best Picture, The Broadway Melody for comparison. Fair enough, there remains a distinct ‘theatricality’ to the exercise as a whole. But the musical numbers are given ambitious scope and attention to detail, some nice overhead shots for which choreographer, Busby Berkeley would later spark a tradition over at Warner Bros. Berlin’s score never goes beyond the pedestrian - a shame and, frankly, a shock for the composer who gave us so many memorable songs throughout his lengthy career.

Regardless, all the necessary trademarks one expects from a Marx Brothers show are here in spades: The Cocoanuts greatly benefiting from well-seasoned pros. Groucho’s flagrant flippancy, Chico’s eloquent befuddlement, leading to more frustration for Groucho during the now infamous ‘viaduct’ (a.k.a. ‘why a duck?’) skit; Margaret Dumont’s starchy dowager, unapologetically unknowing of Groucho’s doubletalk, and, Harpo, either chasing skirts, devouring virtually everything in sight or pickpocketing the silverware. The production is only slightly hampered by the virtually nondescript ‘young lovers’ of the piece. Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton are about as memorable as undressed Melba toast. Kay Francis and Cyril Ring are an amiable pair of monsters conspiring against the house, but destined to get their just deserts in the end. We must also tip our hats to opera star, Basil Ruysdael as the dour house detective, Hennessey who nevertheless gets to warble ‘The Toreador Song’ from Bizet’s Carmen; also, the Berlin specialty, ‘I Want My Shirt.’

Universal has certainly taken its own sweet time to releasing singles from the Marx Bros. catalog it previously boxed together on Blu-ray all the way back in 2016! Alas, in those eight years, the studio has done virtually nothing to properly curate, restore or otherwise address the horrendous quality – or lack thereof – in badly worn, and even more digitally manipulated source materials that are easily several generations removed from an original camera negative or, in the case of this movie, derived intermittently from 16mm elements. The Cocoanuts is in pretty bad shape, and seeing its imperfections in hi-def adds nothing to their appeal as a time capsule. When 35mm source materials are available, the image is in ‘watchable’ condition. Alas, at least half of The Cocoanuts is derived from 16mm dupes, so incredibly faded, with such blown-out contrast, it completely obscures all but the vaguest of outlines.

Fine details? What’s that? And contrast, even during the 35mm inserts just seems more than a tad boosted. Grain in 35mm appears to have been scrubbed. Age-related artifacts are eradicated. But in 16mm, virtually every anomaly known to man comes raging forth, creating havoc with our enjoyment of the film. The audio is 2.0 DTS mono and exhibits all the limitations of early Westrex recording – especially, done on a live stage without the benefit of post-sync dubbing. So, some scenes echo while others sound rather tinny. The only extra is, as before, an audio commentary from noted historian, Anthony Slide. It’s engaging in a way that the movie – as presented herein – is not. Regrets. Bottom line: while The Cocoanuts marks the Marx foray into motion pictures, it is not among their best. The Blu-ray is certainly well below par. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

1