Full Marx – 01 – The Cocoanuts

Hellooooo, everyone! Welcome to the first episode of Full Marx brought to you by the fine folks from the Sneaky Dragon podcast!

This week, Ian Boothby and David Dedrick take a humorous look at the Marx Brothers, starting with their rough, up and down career in vaudeville, and their first movie, the early talkie The Cocoanuts – the film was a big success, but the Marx’s were very disappointed in it. Found out why on this week’s inaugural episode of Full Marx!

Thanks for listening.

14 thoughts on “Full Marx – 01 – The Cocoanuts”

  1. Steve Burstein

    The Buster Keaton Columbia shorts were very well received by audiences when they were released, and hardly had people running from the theater. Columbia comedy shorts were popular with audiences who missed silent comedy and saw the shorts as fond throwbacks.

    1. Thanks, Stephen! Although I’m a huge Keaton fan, I’ve not actually seen many of the Columbia shorts. I had just heard of them described as “chasers” and thought they served a purpose the name implied!

  2. Great show! You mentioned possible followups to the Marx Bros. movie podcasts. May I suggest their animated projects? I have written a new book about their cartoon career, and I would be happy to come on and discuss it with you. Let me know. Thanks.

  3. all in on this, especially liked the lengthy preamble about their pre-film careers. Would point out that the ‘moll’ was played by Kay Francis who would go on to be one of the biggest stars of the early 30s. Currently being repeated on the BBC radio iplayer are the Flywheel, Schyster and Flywheel recreations, not 100% Marx but an interesting curiosity

  4. Just heard your Cocoanuts podcast, and it made me rewatch the film after many years. Here’s a few things you didn’t bring up:
    –What’s with the dance scene in the opening credits being in negative?
    –Cocoanuts is probably their film with the most Jewish references–the levees in the map scene, Chico’s line to Oscar Shaw at the end of “Bravo, Galitzianer!” (a Galitzianer was a Jew from Galicia, in southeast Europe), and that Hammer’s original name in the play was Schlemmer, but the consensus was it was too Jewish for a mass market movie audience.
    –Groucho’s line in the lobby scene of “Everything will be A-K,” not OK. Ironic misspellings was a thing to do in the 1920s, and A-K probably was an ironic way of saying OK.

  5. Gents,

    Hope I’m not too late to this game. I became aware of Full Marx via Facebook’s Marx Brothers Council. I’ve just listened to your podcast of “The Cocoanuts” and thoroughly loved it. I will admit, though, that at first it seemed (briefly) annoying that instead of starting right off with the film, you delved into lots of details about the Brothers’ origins.

    As it turns out, though, I loved your commentary on their early days, through Vaudeville, and their shows, through “The Cocoanuts” film, as much as the movie discussion. As much as I thought I knew “everything” about my favorite family of comedians, you guys taught me more, e.g., that Harpo was brought on the team as a red-haired Irishman whose lines were reduced because he wasn’t “funny” such that he decided to stop talking; that critics went to see “I’ll Say She Is” because another Broadway show hadn’t begun its run – and that helped to catapult the Brothers into stardom; and Groucho calling the audience another “writer”.

    Your podcasts are brilliant. I look forward to the rest of them re: the Marxes – and your series on The Beatles!

    Thank you,

    Bruce Kanin

  6. That was a strange movie. I wasn’t expecting the long dance numbers, or how tangential the Marx Brothers were to the plot. I really appreciate all the context about vaudeville and how new talkies were, it helps the movie make sense in a way it didn’t when I watched it.

    Also: This podcast made me realize that I had the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges confused. I saw the latter on TV when I was a kid and really didn’t like them, and this somehow led to me avoiding the Marx Brothers for pretty much my entire life. I was vaguely aware of them thanks to pop culture parodies, but watching “Cocoanuts” for this episode was my first real exposure to them.

    Cheers!

  7. Thanks for taking the time to put together that podcast–the research must have taken a fair amount of time! You referred to TOO MANY KISSES as a “lost” film; it’s not. In fact, it was shown as part of Capitolfest in Rome, N.Y. a few months after your podcast.

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