Skip to main content

The Marx Brothers on Broadway, & Notes on New York Theatres in the 1920s

This post is the fourth in a series about the Marx Brothers in New York.

After playing the Palace Theatre, the pinnacle of the big time, the Marx Brothers drifted about on the lower rungs of the vaudeville circuit following a series of contractual disputes with the powerful moguls, E.F. Albee, and then the Shuberts. Fortune changed with their major Broadway debut on May 19, 1924, a stage review titled I'll Say She Is. Compiled mostly of recycled routines and music numbers, the play nevertheless showed off the talents of each brother.

I'll Say She Is played at the Casino Theatre, an extravagant theatre located near the intersection of Broadway and W. 39th St. Built in 1882 and designed by Francis H. Kimball and Thomas Wisedall, the theater boasted a facade showing off an eclectic mixture of Islamic and Gothic details. The circular corner tower was particularly eccentric. In their survey New York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890-1915, Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and John Massengale describe the Casino as "a theater with an exotic, individualistic, even hedonistic character that exemplified the values of the Cosmopolitan Era." (p. 206)

In his memoir (Harpo Speaks), Harpo writes that he had long anticipated the opening, as the show had been in tryout for a year and a half. The routine of the road was getting old, and the Marx brothers threatened to quit the road shows unless the review opened in a theatre in New York. They got their wish, though they believed their manager were just humoring them. Harpo was glad to finally be home in the city - his mother and father had rented a place on Long Island, and he spent his days at Lindy's or Reuben's. "I was back with my own people," he writes, "who spoke my language, with my accent - cardplayers, horseplayers, bookies, song-pluggers, agents, actors out of work, and actors playing the Palace."

The show was a smash success. In his review of the play for The New York World, legendary theatre critic Alexander Woollcott singled out the silent one for the most praise, calling Harpo "a shy, unexpected, magnificent comic." He describes the funny eldest brother "as a craft comedian with a rather fresher and more whimsical assortment of quips than is the lot of most refugees from vaudeville." So taken was Woollcott with Harpo that the big portly critic bolted into his dressing room the following evening and told Harpo he was the funniest man he's ever seen on a Broadway stage. The two became great friends, with the critic inviting the clown to join his legendary vicious circle at the Algonquin Hotel. Harpo joined the Round Table.

The success of I'll Say She Is led to more famous Broadway triumphs with The Cocoanuts and then Animals Crackers. The Cocoanuts, a zany production about the Florida real estate boom, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, opened on Broadway on December 8, 1925 at the Lyric Theatre on 42nd Street. The theatre, built in 1903 and featuring sculpture in a Renaissance style, was originally planned for opera productions. The Shuberts took it over for their lighter theatrical purposes. Later, the Lyric suffered the same fate as many other venues in the 1930s when it was converted into a movie house. It was later shut, with parts incorporated into the Hilton Theater. After the show closed its run in August of 1926, the Marx Brothers took The Cocoanuts on tour. In 1929 it was made into a motion picture, billed as "Paramount's All-Talking-Singing Musical Comedy Hit." The brothers didn't have to travel far for the filming. In 1920 Paramount Pictures built a studio in Astoria, Queens, New York to be near the Broadway theater district. The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers (1930) were both filmed at what is now known as the Kaufman Astoria Studios.

The Marx Brothers were unable to attend the film premiere of The Cocoanuts at the Rialto Theatre on Broadway and 42nd Street, as they were playing that night in their third and final Broadway show, Animal Crackers. A musical built on a thin plot of an African explorer (Groucho as Captain Spaulding) attending a party in his honor (hosted by the great Margaret Dumont as Mrs. Rittenhouse) while a valuable painting goes missing, Animal Crackers opened on October 23, 1928 at the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre. A Shubert house, the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre was located just off Broadway and had opened in 1912 as the New Weber and Fields Music-Hall. Animal Crackers was one of the theater's most successful productions until the advent of World War II. The New York Times bought the theater in 1940 and tore it down in 1945 to make room for its postwar expansion.

The 1920s on Broadway constituted the so-called "Golden Age" of the Broadway theater. Many new theaters were constructed along the Great White Way during the boom years of the 1920s, serving a burgeoning number of actors, designers, playwrights, critics, directors, and production companies seeking stardom in New York. The stage in New York was spectacularly successful financially. During the 1926-1927 season alone, over 260 shows opened on Broadway. By comparison, during the 2008-2009 season, 43 new productions opened.

"Strange figguhs..."

But wait, am I intruding?



Images: Broadway Theatres, c. 1920, and Casino Theatre, c. 1900, from The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection; image of Hilton Theatre by Walking Off the Big Apple; YouTube clip from Animal Crackers (1929).

Note on clip from Animal Crackers: Strange Interlude, a play by Eugene O'Neill and produced by the Theatre Guild, opened at the John Golden Theatre on January 30, 1928. Actress Lynn Fontanne played the featured roll of Nina Leeds. Contemporary audiences for Animal Crackers would have been familiar with Broadway culture and would easily readily understand Groucho's parody of O'Neill's internal monologues and the play's production history. Strange Interlude won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1928.

To read the other posts in the series, click on The Marx Brothers.

For much more on the theater district, see the post New York's Theater District: The Legacy of the Golden Age, A Walk and a Map

Comments

  1. A small correction: Harpo wasn't the eldest brother; Chico was. Harpo came next, then Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A New York Spring Calendar: Blooming Times and Seasonal Events

See the UPDATED 2018 CALENDAR HERE . Updated for 2017 . At this time of year, thoughts turn to spring. Let's spring forward to blooming times, the best locations for witnessing spring's beginnings, and springtime events in the big city. While the occasional snow could blow through the city, we're just weeks now from callery pears in bloom and opening day at the ballpark. In The Ramble, Central Park. mid-April Blooming Times •  Central Park Conservancy's website  lists blooming times within the park. During the month of March we begin to see crocus, daffodils, forsythia, snowdrops, witch-hazel, and hellebores. Species tulips will emerge in several places, but the Shakespeare Garden and Conservatory Garden are particularly good places to catch the beginning of Spring blooms. Central Park near E. 72nd St., saucer magnolia, typically end of March. •  Citywide Blooming Calendar from New York City Department of Parks & Recreation April is u

Museums in New York Open on Mondays

Please see this post for current announcements of reopenings . Please consult the museum websites for changes in days and hours. UPDATED September 23, 2020 Advance tickets required for many museum reopenings. Please check museum websites for details. • The  Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)  reopened to the public on  August 27 , with new hours for the first month, through September 27: from 10:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday to the public; and from 10:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.  on Mondays for MoMA members on ly. Admission will be free to all visitors Tuesday through Sunday, through September 27, made possible by UNIQLO. See this  new post on WOTBA for a sense of the experience attending the museum . •  New-York Historical Society  reopened on  August 14  with an outdoor exhibition, "Hope Wanted: New York City Under Quarantine,” in the rear courtyard. The exhibit by activist Kevin Powell and photographer Kay Hickman will highlight how New Yorkers weathered the quarantine

25 Things To Do Near the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

(updated 2016) The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) at 11 W. 53rd Street is near many other New York City attractions, so before or after a trip to the museum, a short walk in any direction could easily take in additional experiences. Drawing a square on a map with the museum at the center, a shape bounded by 58th Street to the north and 48th Street to the south, with 7th Avenue to the west and Park Avenue to the east, proves the point of the area's cultural richness. (A map follows the list below.) While well-known sightseeing stops fall with these boundaries, most notably Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and the great swath of famous Fifth Avenue stores, cultural visitors may also want to check out places such as the Austrian Cultural Forum, the 57th Street galleries, the Onassis Cultural Center, and the Municipal Art Society. The image above shows an intriguing glimpse of the tops of two Beaux-Arts buildings through an opening of the wall inside MoMA's scu

Taking a Constitutional Walk

A long time ago individuals going out for a walk, especially to get fresh air and exercise, often referred to the activity as "taking a constitutional walk." The word "constitutional" refers to one's constitution or physical makeup, so a constitutional walk was considered beneficial to one's overall wellbeing. (Or, as some would prefer to call it, "wellness.") The phrase is more common in British literature than in American letters. As early as the mid-nineteenth century, many American commentators expressed concern that their countrymen were falling into lazy and unhealthy habits. Newspaper columnists and editorial writers urged their readers to take up the practice of the "constitutional" walk. One such essay, " Walking as an Exercise," originally printed in the Philadelphia Gazette and reprinted in New England Farmer , Volume 11, 1859, urges the people of farm areas to take up walking. City dwellers seemed to have the

25 Things to Do Near the American Museum of Natural History

After visiting the American Museum of Natural History, explore attractions on the Upper West Side or in Central Park. Visitors to New York often run around from one major tourist site to the next, sometimes from one side of the city to the other, and in the process, exhaust themselves thoroughly. Ambitious itineraries often include something like coffee in the Village in the morning, lunch near MoMA, a couple of hours in the museum, a ride on the Staten Island Ferry in the afternoon, cocktails at the midtown hotel, a quick dinner, and then a Broadway show. It's a wonder people don't pass out at the theater. While sitting on the steps of the American Museum of History, consider exploring the Upper West Side and nearby sites of interest in Central Park. There's a better way to plan a New York trip. Consider grouping attractions together geographically. Several posts on this site address this recommended approach. The Wild West of the Tecumseh Playground Groupin

25 Things to Do Near the Metropolitan Museum of Art

(updated) Sitting on the steps in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of those iconic things to do in New York City. On a sunny day, the wide steps can become crowded with the young and old, the tourist and the resident. It's tempting to stay awhile and soak in the sun and the sights. Everyone has reasons for lingering there, with one being the shared pleasure of people watching along this expansive stretch of Fifth Avenue, a painting come to life. Certainly, just getting off one's feet for a moment is welcome, especially if the previous hours involved walking through the entirety of art history from prehistoric to the contemporary. The entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue The Metropolitan Museum of Art should be a singular pilgrimage, uninterrupted by feeble attempts to take in more exhibitions along Museum Mile. Pity the poor visitor who tries "to do" multiple museum exhibitions in one day, albeit ambitious, noble, and uplift

The High Line and Chelsea Market: A Good Pairing for a Walk

(revised 2017) The advent of spring, with its signs of growth and rebirth, is apparent both on the High Line , where volunteers are cutting away the old growth to reveal fresh blooms, and inside the Chelsea Market, where new tenants are revitalizing the space. A walk to take in both can become an exploration of bounty and surprise, a sensual walk of adventure and sustenance. A good pairing for a walk: The High Line and Chelsea Market Walking the High Line for a round trip from Gansevoort to W. 30th and then back again adds up to a healthy 2-mile walk. Regular walkers of the elevated park look for an excuse to go there. Especially delightful is showing off the park, a model of its kind, to visitors from out of town. A stroll through Chelsea Market. Time check. If you haven't stopped into Chelsea Market lately, you may want to take a detour from the High Line at the stairs on W. 16th St. and walk through the market for a quick assessment or a sampling. Among the sampli

Introducing Birds of Inwood

Introducing a New Website It's been a moment since I posted last. Please forgive me. I have been in the forest down the street. After spending many of my leisure hours taking photographs of birds in my local neighborhood of Inwood, I am introducing to you a new website featuring these beautiful and often enigmatic creatures. It's called  Birds of Inwood . As I write there, "Inwood is my Amherst." With time, my advancing age, and the pandemic, I have learned to find depth and beauty in places close to home.  I have also found to my delight that designing a new website presents great opportunities. Birds of Inwood is pretty flashy! The birds are even larger than life on these new pages! Please visit. You'll be glad I didn't call it "Flying Off the Big Apple." Check out my forest home. - Teri

Visiting New York on a Monday

Mondays are OK. Let's have a look at some of the museums open Mondays - • American Museum of Natural History • Jewish Museum • Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) • National Museum of the American Indian • Neue Galerie • Guggenheim Museum • South Street Seaport Museum Any of these museums could be paired with a nearby restaurant or bar, making a complete full afternoon or day in New York. Monday is especially good for a museum visit, because the crowds tend to be thinner, and restaurants, too, tend to be less busy than on a weekend. A fun museum and bistro walk on the Upper West Side would be a combination of the American Museum of Natural History and the nearby Cafe Lalo on W. 83rd St. I also would suggest a pairing of the Neue Galerie with a nearby cafe, but the two cafes inside the musuem are so good, why go anywhere else? Image above: The Guggenheim on left and Beaux-Arts townhouse on right. View from E. 88th St. by Walking Off the Big Apple.

14 Useful Mobile Apps for Walking New York City

Texting and walking at the same time is wrong. Talking on the phone while strolling down the street is wrong. Leaving the sidewalk to stop and consult the information on a cellphone, preferably while alone, is OK. What's on Walking Off the Big Apple's iPhone: A List Walkmeter GPS Walking Stopwatch for Fitness and Weight Loss . While out walking, Walkmeter tracks routes, time, speed, and elevation. This is an excellent app for recording improvised or impromptu strolls, especially with many unplanned detours. The GPS function maps out the actual route. The app keeps a running tally of calories burned while walking, useful for weight loss goals. Another welcome feature is the ability to switch over to other modes of activity, including cycling. An indispensable app for city walkers. $4.99  New York City Compass , designed by Francesco Bertelli, is an elegant compass calibrated for Manhattan, with indications for Uptown, East Side, Downtown, and West Side. While facing a cert