We were just
four Jews trying to get a laugh.
—remark by
Groucho Marx, summing the rationale behind their work here (see End note 1)
[Edits 7/19/13.]
About two weeks ago there was a buzz in the U.S. surrounding a book, covered by The New York Times and perhaps others, by a youngish professor (see End note 2) to the effect that Hollywood colluded with the Nazi regime in the 1930s, at least to the extent that the U.S. studios—which as we know were famously headed in the 1930s by Jews such as Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, the brothers Warner, and others—were concerned that their product do well in the German market, along with other markets. (Germans had money to spend, too.)
About two weeks ago there was a buzz in the U.S. surrounding a book, covered by The New York Times and perhaps others, by a youngish professor (see End note 2) to the effect that Hollywood colluded with the Nazi regime in the 1930s, at least to the extent that the U.S. studios—which as we know were famously headed in the 1930s by Jews such as Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, the brothers Warner, and others—were concerned that their product do well in the German market, along with other markets. (Germans had money to spend, too.)
On a level, this analysis—with the
gasp! suggestion that so American an
entity as the Hollywood movie-studio system colluded with the Nazis—seems like
self-parody, and I wonder how much I would dignify it. What would Groucho Marx
have said about it?
Meanwhile, on the evidence of Duck Soup, would Hitler have favored
every Hollywood product that studio moguls dared release? It’s possible that on
seeing four Jewish comedians make a zany satire of matters of politics and war,
Hitler would have—what? betrayed a slight twitch of his moustache, as if he
were slightly discomfited?
Maybe, on the other hand, he
would have shown approval of the few racist moments in the film. Seriously, Duck Soup is something that, if you had
to see only one work of the Marxes to see what they were best about,
would be the most essential. The three most famous brothers are all here—Groucho, as Rufus T. Firefly, a charlatan of sorts requested to be the leader of
small country Freedonia after a female financier (played by Margaret Dumont, a frequent collaborator with the Marxes) has reached her limit in
lending it money; Chico, playing bumbling, Italian-accented spy Chicolini;
and Harpo, playing mute fellow spy Pinky. Zeppo is also on hand, as
an assistant to Firefly, but is rather inconspicuous (and this was his last
movie role with his brothers). This, directed by Leo McCarey, was the last Marx Brothers film made for
the Paramount studio.
The movie shouldn’t offend
anyone, except for its racist moments—which really, clearly, reflect the times
in which it was made: at one point, Groucho, in his typical rapid-fire way,
delivers a joke, punning with the word “headstrong,” first used with its
ordinary meaning, by developing that the two families the Headstrongs and the
Armstrongs mated, “and that’s why darkies were born” [paraphrase? now probably closer to right], which
today falls like a lead weight (though, to give him possible credit, he seems
to give a shrug delivering this line, as if slightly embarrassed by it).
Later, during a musical
sequence, the brothers are barreling through a series of numbers including some
takeoffs on Stephen Foster songs, like “Oh! Susanna,” which, originally, were
often songs written for whites (back in about the 1840s), but were presented as
if they were sung by Blacks, and I think originally performed in blackface. One conspicuous adaptation of a song is the Marxes' "All God's Children Got Guns," which is based on a spiritual with a title not much different in wordage from this one. They also try to be even-handed with their parodying by including square-dancing, which is, of course, a white (country/Southern) folk practice.
You have to remember that in the
1930s, the separation between the races, even in the area of popular art, was
such that even no less an exemplar Black singer/bandleader than Cab Calloway used to do his stage routine, waving his head around with long, weird
hair, somewhat as if fitting a sort of minstrel image, though he performed for
Black audiences at such venues as the Cotton Club in Harlem, N.Y. He was in a
different world then. By the time he appeared in the film The Blues Brothers (1980), not only did he have a long, esteemed
career (such as earned him a place in the movie among its parade of exponents
of blues-related culture), but Black culture was enough blended into white
popular culture (via music and other avenues), following the social revolutions
of the 1960s and ’70s, that no one would have seen him in 1980 as merely a
denizen of a purely Black area of entertainment. (Cab Calloway, by the way, was the son of a lawyer, and had been expected [or hoped by his parents] to enter the law himself. I think he also, at some point, personally knew Thurgood Marshall, who eventually became a U.S. Supreme Court justice.)
Duck Soup is, to a good extent, a child of its time, but in some
ways it is so timeless that parts can still make us laugh abruptly today.
End note 1.
End note 2.
Ben Erwand is the author; he is identified as of Harvard's Society of Fellows, according to a New York Times article published June 25 (at least in the Internet version), "Scholar Asserts That Hollywood Avidly Aided Nazis," by Jennifer Schuessler. This piece notes his book is titled The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact With Hitler, and is due out in October from the Harvard University Press.
