Topic: Steve Stoliar interview

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Steve Stoliar, who worked in Groucho's home during the final years of Groucho's life, recently re-published Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House.

I only stumbled on to it by accident, but Stoliar was on Stu Shostak's show on 2/29/12. He talked about his book and his memories of Groucho for the vast majority of the three hour segment. There's a 15 minute remembrance of Davy Jones at the beginning. You have to pay 99 cents to download the show (http://www.stusshow.com/archives.php) but if you have any interest in The Marx Brothers, it's worth every penny. Stoliar does a pretty good elderly Groucho impression as well.

I just might have to get the book.

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A lengthy text interview with Stoliar and film historian Stuart Galbraith IV -

http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s3762galb.html

In part -

Galbraith: You prefer the team's Paramount films to their later, MGM efforts, including A Night at the Opera, which some consider to be their very best. Why?

Stoliar: Why? Because!!! The Paramounts are purer, funnier, sillier, more absurd - even the first two, with their staginess. MGM had a way of "homogenizing" artists, even as they lavished great production values on them. I'd much rather see a breezy, pre-Code Warners gangster drama or nonstop Paramount comedy than admire sets and wardrobe in MGM's statelier - but not necessarily funnier - films. I don't dislike Opera, but for me - and for the purists - it's the beginning of the end, not the pinnacle. A Day at the Races represents quite a sharp drop from Opera, and then it's rather a plummet thereafter. Every film had moments or sequences, but in terms of consistently funny/entertaining, Opera starts the car rolling down the hill. Opera and Races were the Marxes' highest-grossing films, which means they were the right films for the mid-'30s, but younger generations like the craziness of the Paramounts.

Galbraith: Did you ever have this debate with Groucho, knowing that he practically worshiped Thalberg?

Stoliar: No, but Groucho himself shifted to favoring the Paramounts in later years - even as he continued to laud Thalberg. I'm sure his decades-long preference for Opera and Races was based on the prestige of being at MGM coupled with the fact that those were the two big moneymakers. But I guess the film critics, historians and baby boomers had succeeded in convincing him that the earlier films showed the Marx Brothers off to better advantage.

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As a whole body of work, I DEFINITELY prefer the Paramounts over the MGM's and pretty much agree word for word with everything Stoliar said.

Just to play slight devil's advocate, though it's an RKO film, am I the only person on the planet who likes ROOM SERVICE?  I realize it's not a great Marx Brothers film because it's not a vehicle specifically for them, but as a well acted and written drawing room comedy, I think it's great.  Does anybody else agree?

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Personally, I wouldn't say ROOM SERVICE is "great" but certainly superior to others like AT THE CIRCUS, THE BIG STORE, and GO WEST. For me, ROOM SERVICE is more solid than great.

And I couldn't agree more about Paramount vs MGM. Not even close. There's three legit, no doubt about it all-time classics in the Marx cannon: MONKEY BUSINESS, HORSE FEATHERS, and DUCK SOUP. I can watch those over and over, but can take or leave most of their other work. One wonders what they could have done if they stayed at Paramount.

[metaldams]

Personally, I wouldn't say ROOM SERVICE is "great" but certainly superior to others like AT THE CIRCUS, THE BIG STORE, and GO WEST. For me, ROOM SERVICE is more solid than great.

And I couldn't agree more about Paramount vs MGM. Not even close. There's three legit, no doubt about it all-time classics in the Marx cannon: MONKEY BUSINESS, HORSE FEATHERS, and DUCK SOUP. I can watch those over and over, but can take or leave most of their other work. One wonders what they could have done if they stayed at Paramount.

You and I definitely agree on the three best Marx Brothers films.  They're the three films made at Paramount while they were busy writing Marx Brothers scripts actually made for the movies instead of Marx Brother films where they were shoehorned with extra plot which had little or nothing to do with the team.

That said, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA is still a very good film, and for the genre of comedy team thrown together with romantic subplot, it's probably the best of its kind.  Still, even the best of its kind is not better than the Marx Brother at Paramount.

[Seamus]

Yeah, ROOM SERVICE only suffers if you start comparing it with other better movies in the Marx stable, but it's pretty entertaining in its own right (unlike CIRCUS, WEST, STORE, and NIGHT IN CASABLANCA).  Attempting to shoehorn the Marxes into a pre-developed script that wasn't written for them sounds like a blueprint for disaster, but not only does it work (mostly), it gives the movie a unique feel that makes it an interesting outlier in Marx canon. 

Come to think about it, I wonder if ROOM SERVICE was actually improved by the fact that it was written Marx-blind.  One of the reasons that some of their other scripts of this period were so poor is that they were  too self-conscious of what the Marx Brothers were supposed to be about, if that makes sense.  By this time Harpo had devolved from the escaped lunatic of the Paramount days to the cutsie, lovable scamp of the MGM era, Groucho and Chico were being written as comic heroes (contrary to their original characterizations), and the goal of the scripts was always for the Brothers to make things right for the young lovers.  ROOM SERVICE, by accident of the prepackaged script, allowed them to play a version of their original characters again, completely devoid of altruistic motivation and totally out for themselves.  It's nice that RKO came along and gave us a Marx Brothers movie like that in the middle of all those sappy MGM pictures.

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The other day, I noticed that Stoliar returned to Stu's Show a few weeks ago. I didn't know about it when it aired, but I paid the 99 cents for the archived copy. This stuff is just as fascinating.

http://www.stusshow.com/archives.php

Author STEVE STOLIAR ("Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House") returns with more stories of working for the legendary comedian during the last years of his life as well as getting to know Zeppo, Gummo, and Groucho's children and grandson Andy. Plus comedy writers MARK EVANIER (http://www.newsfromme.com) and BOB ILLES share their brushes with "Groucho Greatness". (Running time: 187 minutes)

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I also like "Room Service."  It's not the best, but it's not the worst, by far.  It's a pretty solid picture.  Like many of their films, the entire movie takes place inside one building: the hotel.  The Marx Brothers work well like that.  Also, it doesn't have any sort of romantic subplot, which puts it up above many of their other films.