Room Service

There's a lot of contempt aimed at the Marx Brothers these days, with terms like "unfunny" bandied about. The fact is that their brand of comedy was very much of its time, with its reliance on largely consolidated personas and a lot of running about. Even in their best films it could be hit and miss, with the sharply witty lines given to Groucho often undermined by the duff mime material handled by Harpo and the silly Italian accent of Chico. Suffice to say, what worked in their stage shows in the 1920s didn't necessarily work in their subsequent films, and is even less likely to wash in the more jaded 21st century.

Room Service is a case in point. For starters, it was the only Marx Brothers film not written specifically for them (which by this stage meant just Groucho, Harpo and Chico; Zeppo had quit the act to become an agent). The threesome had had massive hits with their two previous projects with MGM, A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937), but RKO, after buying the rights to the hit Broadway play 'Room Service, squeezed the Brothers into its lead roles. The Allen Boretz and John Murray play (adapted by Morrie Ryskind) wasn't a great fit for them.

Groucho plays Gordon Miller, a theatrical producer trying to set up a Broadway play from his hotel room, with his associates Harry Binnelli (Chico) and Faker Englund (Harpo). They're harried, however, by their landlord, the hotel manager (MacBride and a debt collector (Loeb) trying to reappropriate his writer's typewriter. Inevitably, things get complicated, nay manic (though the Brothers are fairly restrained in this instance).