At the Circus (1939)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Edward Buzzell

Writer:

Irving Brecher (writer)

Release Date:

20 October 1939 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Family | Musical

Tagline:

NOT SUITABLE FOR GENERAL EXHIBITION (Australian one-sheet poster)

Plot:

The Marx Brothers try to help the owner of a circus recover some stolen funds before he finds himself out of a job.

Plot Keywords:

Circus | Marx Brothers | Gorilla | Shyster | Stolen Money

Cast

Groucho Marx	...	Attorney Loophole
Chico Marx	...	Antonio
Harpo Marx	...	'Punchy'
Kenny Baker	...	Jeff Wilson
Florence Rice	...	Julie Randall
Eve Arden	...	Peerless Pauline
Margaret Dumont	...	Mrs. Dukesbury
Nat Pendleton	...	Goliath
Fritz Feld	...	Jardinet
James Burke	...	John Carter
Jerry Maren	...	Little Professor Atom (as Jerry Marenghi)
Barnett Parker	...	Whitcomb
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Byron Foulger	...	Courtroom clerk (scenes deleted) (scenes deleted)

Also Known As:

A Day at the Circus (USA) (working title)
The Marx Brothers at the Circus (USA) (promotional title)

Runtime:

87 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Passed | Australia:G | Finland:S | Germany:o.Al. | Sweden:Btl | USA:Approved (certificate #5436)

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

The Marx Brothers had been out of favor at MGM since the sudden 1936 death of their producer and benefactor Irving Thalberg during the production of A Day at the Races (1937). So in the middle of the production of 'At the Circus,' longtime Thalberg rival Louis B. Mayer removed songwriters Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg from the Marx Brothers film and reassigned them to the 'prestige' MGM production The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Goofs:

Continuity: When Jeff first gets on the train, his badge keeps changing position on his coat.

Quotes:

J. Cheever Loophole: I don't know what I'm doing here, when I could be at home in bed with a hot toddy. That's a drink!

Movie Connections:

Spoofs Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

Soundtrack:

Tiger Rag

The Problems Of Circus Movies.

The decline of the Marx Brothers does not begin with ROOM SERVICE, which is hysterical at it's conclusion, but with AT THE CIRCUS. Groucho always insisted that had Irving Thalberg lived his care would have made the other films in the contract after A DAY AT THE RACES as good as that and A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. This meant that the film had to be taken on the road as a Vaudeville show, and the material tested carefully. But Thalberg was dead, and Louis B. Mayer was quite unsympathetic to these three clowns who were...well clowns, and who had gotten too good a sweetheart contract from Thalburg in terms of profits. Mayer thought of comedians as interchangeable, and could not care about allowing talented ones to test their material - you hand them a script and that was that: they are paid to make it funny. If they don't you fire them.

So it is traditional to blame AT THE CIRCUS, GO WEST, and THE BIG STORE on Mayer's hostility. That hostility played a major role (there is just no denying it), but in the case of AT THE CIRCUS there is another point that is frequently overlooked. In movies by comedians, it was rare for a circus comedy to be really funny. W.C.Fields, YOU CAN'T CHEAT AN HONEST MAN was an exception - a truly funny circus comedy, but it's strength was the film record of Field's radio feud with ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy. Had it been set in a movie studio or a bank or a foreign country it would have been just as successful. But other comedians were not as lucky. Charlie Chaplin worked two years on THE CIRCUS, and while a good film it was not the great film he hoped to make. The atmosphere of a circus should have been inviting to comics - after all, here clowns were really clowns. But for some reason the special needs of movie funny-men were hard to translate into the atmosphere of the big top. Possibly the best use of the big top as a comic background was in Laurel & Hardy's short film THE CHIMP. The first quarter of the film shows how they wreck the circus (which was on it's last legs anyway). But the remaining three quarters of the film deal with the boys problems with a rooming house owned by a jealous Billy Gilbert, and the title "chimp" they hope to sell to a zoo.

With the Marxes the circus just does not absorb them too much. Groucho is there, hired as a lawyer to assist Kenny Baker and his pal Chico. Harpo, as Chico's brother, is a circus roustabout. But there is little example of their involvement in the circus life of the troop or of the animals (Harpo should have been involved with circus horses, anyway). Bits of the film are actually quite good - like Chico and Harpo trying to find papers in Nat Pendleton's (the circus strongman's) room. They manage to turn it into a Christmas nightmare for poor Pendleton. And Groucho certainly has two great moments: the business of trying to get on the circus train without knowing the password (even one of the animals knows the password), and his singing "Lydia The Tattooed Lady".

There were some cuts, apparently. Groucho had a sequence where his trial skills were shown in a court presided over by Edgar Kennedy. One wishes they had kept that in the film. The poor portions, mostly tied to the sickeningly sweet and naive Kenny Baker (fighting the crooked James Burke) are overwhelming. At least Groucho was able to have another session with Margaret Dumont as Mrs. Dukesberry (Baker's aunt), and poor Margaret gets shot out of a cannon in the end. But the drab spots outnumber the good ones. Not too bad, but still just mediocre as a result.