Margaret Dumont

The Marx Brothers' second film, adapted from their 1928 Broadway hit. Groucho plays Captain Spaulding, an African explorer returning to society, who arrives at a Long Island estate at the same moment a valuable painting goes missing. What plot there is exists mainly to hang the brothers' routines on: Groucho's verbal avalanches, Chico's piano and patter, Harpo's silent anarchy, and Margaret Dumont's unflappable dignity under fire. Victor Heerman, who had directed them on stage, kept the camera out of the way and let the act play. The film's surrealist streak was admired by critics from Antonin Artaud to François Truffaut. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Comedy · Musical

The first Marx Brothers feature, adapted from their hit 1925 Broadway show and shot at Paramount's Astoria studio while the brothers were still performing it on stage at night. Groucho runs a Florida hotel during a land boom, Chico and Harpo are a pair of wandering con men, and a necklace theft tangles itself into a romance between the hotel clerk and the owner's daughter. The plot is furniture; what matters is the brothers' anarchic stage routines, captured raw before the Paramount films learned to build movies around them. Irving Berlin wrote the songs, including "When My Dreams Come True." The film preserves the pre-Code edge of the stage act, ruder and looser than the polished MGM comedies that came later. Published in 1929, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.

Comedy · Musical