Chico, or his stand-in, can be seen from the back in the opening shot of the town square.
Correct! It was a trick question -- didn't think anyone would get it so quickly.
Actually, it's from the front, but his head is partially obscured. It actually looks like he's reading through the script.
Definitely Chico and not a stand-in, though.
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I was reading the chapter about this film in GROUCH HARPO CHICO AND SOMETIMES ZEPPO, by Joe Adamson, last night. He basically trashes the film and all but calls it an utter piece of crap!
I have several books on the Marx Brothers, mostly bought when I was a kid in the 70s. I need to revisit all of them, but if I remember correctly, none of the ones written in the 60s and 70s thought much of anything made after A DAY AT THE RACES.
Back then, we didn't have the internet to look up all this stuff, so it was a treat to see a book on the Marx Brothers (or any other of my favorite classic comedians) . I would almost always get my mother to buy one for me at the bookstore in the mall.
When reading them, you'd discover all the films you hadn't yet seen, and didn't even know existed! Back in the 70s, it was fairly easy to see 4 of the 5 Paramount films on TV (minus ANIMAL CRACKERS, of course). By "fairly easy" I mean perhaps 1 or 2 per year! In the NYC area, the local stations were fond of cutting stuff out, which you knew because right after the credits, they would superimpose "Edited for television" on the screen, at which point I'd let out a big groan! In these days before the VCR, you had to watch these movies "live"! For the Marx Brothers, the Paramounts were usually shown on a weekend afternoon, which was both good and bad. Good: you didn't have to beg your parents to let you stay up past midnight to watch them. Bad: in the good weather, you usually had something better to do on a weekend afternoon than to plant yourself in front of the TV for an hour and a half!
Regarding the edits: The films were provided to the TV stations uncut, but the hacks at the TV stations had to cut out scenes for time so they could fit in more commercials. There was neither rhyme nor reason to their methodology, and believe it or not, they would excise comedy scenes rather than "filler"! They were sort of clever though -- the stuff they cut out would be masked by a commercial break. In other words, the Marx would be in the middle of a scene, such as the speakeasy scene in HORSEFEATHERS, and it would cut to a commercial. When it came back on, they wouldn't be in the speakeasy anymore! What made it frustrating in this case is that they decided to broadcast this particular film in a 1 hour and 15 minute timeslot! In the normal hour and a half timeslot, the film would fit with no edits.
The final 3 M-G-M films were shown often, and probably cut for time, too. For who-knows-what-reason, they showed these 3 much more than the first 2, which usually wound up being shown at weird times or on days I couldn't watch, so I didn't get to see these 2 in full until the 80s!
So I became very familair with 7 of their films as a kid, but it was a longer journey to see the other 6 as the years went on.
In July of 1979, ANIMAL CRACKERS made it's TV debut in prime time on CBS on a Saturday night. This was an event for me at the time. I never did get to see it in the theater in 1974 during it's brief re-release.
During the VCR era, you could rent all the M-G-Ms, and you could finally see ANIMAL CRACKERS at your leisure! Pretty much all the rest became available, though I'm not sure how long it took to release LOVE HAPPY -- but no one really cared about that one!
There were other ways to see at least parts of their films in the 70s. Castle Films released 5 extracts from the Paramounts on 16mm, Super 8, and Standard 8mm for home use:
THE PIGSKIN CAPER
THIS IS WAR
THE INCREDIBLE JEWEL ROBBERY
THE STOWAWAYS
MONKEY BUSINESS
You can probably guess from which features they were from, though JEWEL ROBBERY was from the TV show of the same name. The downside was that they only ran for an average of 8 minutes each. You could get them in both sound and silent versions. I got 2 of them back in the 70s -- I now have all 5.
Also, in the 70s, a company called Ivy Films released A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA and LOVE HAPPY in Super 8, full-length. I now have a copy of the former that I bought within the last few years.
So it was a far cry from being able to see most of these films on-demand via youtube (when they don't get taken down) or your favorite streaming service.