Synopsis
Animal Crackers (1930) is Paramount's filmed version of the Marx Brothers' Broadway hit — you can watch it online on iFILM. Director Victor Heerman kept the four brothers together: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo.
The occasion is a grand party at Mrs. Rittenhouse's estate, where a painting worth one hundred thousand dollars promptly disappears. Groucho, playing self-styled African explorer Captain Spaulding, volunteers to investigate. Harpo and Chico do not help in any useful sense.
What makes this hold up ninety years later: Harpo never speaks a word on screen, and he's still the funniest person in every scene he enters. Groucho's one-liners come so fast that catching them all takes a second viewing. For a film made just two years into the sound era, the comic timing is startlingly precise. Stream Animal Crackers (1930) online on iFILM.
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