The American comedy film Animal Crackers was first released on August 23, 1930. The movie is ninety seven minutes in length, roughly the standard duration of any modern contemporary film. The film's premise focuses on a party thrown for Captain Spaulding, an event where a rare and valuable painting ends up going missing. Hilarity and mayhem ensue after the painting is noticed to have disappeared, with many of the central characters engaging in visual gags. Upon it's release, the film went on to become a major commercial success, and it was mostly well received amongst film critics of the day. Out of all of the Marx Brothers cinematic performances, they are probably best known for their role in Animal Crackers. References to the film are still very common in today's pop culture world, with it being one of the most heavily quoted films of that early period. If you haven't seen it, then you are in for a laugh.
With regard to the Marx Brothers specifically, the film features four of them, which include Zeppo Marx, Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, and Chico Marx. Other predominant characters are portrayed by Margaret Dumont and Lillian Roth. The film itself was directed by Victor Heerman, and written by George S. Kaufman, Bert Kalmar, and Harry Ruby. The distributor for the movie was the world renown Paramount Pictures, as was the case for many of the Marx Brothers films. The film was originally a very successful Broadway musical that was released in 1928, and it was adapted for the cinema. The film was originally released in black and white, however recently a short unpublished original clip was discovered that was filmed in multicolor. The multicolor process was first introduced to the film industry in 1929, a year before Animal Crackers was released. However it wasn't until years later that the process was incorporated into most of the films.
The film Animal Crackers contains numerous and noteworthy musical numbers, such as Groucho's songs Hooray for Captain Spaulding, and Hello, I Must Be Going. Both of these songs were written by Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar, and were recurring routines that Groucho would perform during the remainder of his career. Groucho Marx even used the song Hooray for Captain Spaulding as his radio and television game show theme song, as it had so much widespread appeal and recognition within the United States. Other songs that were featured in Animal Crackers, include Chico Marx's piano solo called "I'm Daffy Over You. If you are interested in listening to some of these songs, then head over to YouTube, as there are full length clips of the performances, and the sound quality is quite high. The official movie soundtrack is also available for purchase online at shops like Amazon, where you can download the music right after purchase.
I have personally seen this film twice, and must say that is definitely worth viewing, especially if you are interested in the early Hollywood films. The film is heavily performance based, much like what you would seen in a play or opera. With regard to the title of the film being called Animal Crackers, that should illustrate just how popular the crackers were around that time in the USA. The film obviously doesn't have anything to do with real edible crackers, but suggests it's full of wise cracks, or funny bits. We originally had thought about adding some short video clips of the film here on our web page, but thus far we have been unable to receive permission from the copyright holder. To find funny clips from the film, browse through YouTube, or Bing's video search feature, and you will find many to choose from. Thanks again for checking out this brief article, we hope it inspired you to set aside time to watch the film.
