Parents' Guide to A Day at the Races

You can pretty much forget the storyline in this madcap collection of gags and classic Marx Brothers' wordplay loosely organized into a plot. Many scenes of A Day at the Races were deleted during editing, resulting in a movie even more random and nonsensical (like the explanation for why Harpo keeps barfing up balloons) than it had to be. Great bits include Groucho getting conned repeatedly by Chico at the racetrack ("Get your tutsi-fruitsy ice creeeeeeam!") and Groucho disastrously faking his way through conducting a medical exam. ("Don't point that beard at me; it might go off.") A Day at the Races also features large-scale musical numbers, including one in which a flute-playing Harpo leads a stereotypically portrayed African American community (living next to the horse stables) to break into the joyous, acrobatic gospel/swing-dance style known as the "Lindy Hop." This sequence itself (with Whitey's Lindy Hoppers and musicians from The Duke Ellington Orchestra) is fun and even historically significant: Viewers can see in the dancing the roots of R&B and rock-and-roll that were to evolve over a few decades. It also earned the Marx Brothers the only Oscar nomination that any of their films ever received. Unfortunately, the movie's reputation is tarnished, not just because of the demeaning African American portrayals, but also because this sequence ends with the comic trio donning blackface to try to dupe the police (it doesn't work).

A Day at the Races was the most commercially successful of the Marx Brothers' comedy features, coming after their classic A Night at the Opera. But it's not one of the troupe's best. There was a perception by the studio (confirmed by poor box-office receipts for Duck Soup, maybe the Marx Brothers' most anarchic movie) that audiences needed breathing room from the trio's rapid-fire, surreal humor. Studio executives also felt that women didn't get the jokes and would only buy tickets to see simple-minded sentimental romance and musical numbers. The result: No viewer is completely satisfied and modern audiences will really notice the lull between brilliant bits of comedy. Impatient kid viewers will likely be hitting fast-forward more than a few times.