My second favorite Marx Brothers movie.

This one is 1932's Horse Feathers (7.7 stars, #65 on AFI's 100 Years 100 Laughs), starring all four Marx Brothers again (this one has Zeppo has Groucho's son!)

It's about an incompetent college president (Groucho) who is facing yet another losing football season. So, he decides to hire two ringers (professional players) to play on the college football team. Through a series of misunderstandings, he hires two bumbling idiots (Chico and Harpo). Groucho also must deal with his son, who is in love with the college widow.

Part of this movie is spoofing the college widow that was part of nearly every college during the '20s and the early '30s. She was a young woman who either stays in college, hoping to find a husband (occasionally still referred to as a young woman getting her M.R.S.) or she is the wife or girlfriend of a college professor who is dallying around with a young college student. It's sort of a dead genre now, but it was a very identifiable fixture of college movies at that time.

It's a testimony to the Marx Brothers' chaos that this element is still funny. Although this is the only movie that modern audiences will probably ever see of that element.

But, college widows will occasionally referenced still today with young females. When I went to college, I was constantly asked—to the point where it really stopped being funny—if I was going for my M.R.S. Most of these people asking me that had never seen a Marx Brothers movie. But, it's the same type of reference.

One of the things that tickle me the most about this movie is in the first 5 minutes. Groucho starts singing "I'm Against It!" ("Whatever it is, I'm against it!") I work in a university. That seems to be the theme song of a lot of professors. Whatever it is, I'm against it! This ranges from email exchanges (one professor I work with makes it a point of pride that he doesn't know how to check his email.) to curriculum changes (it doesn't matter if it will make their lives' easier, they're against it!) to assessment. Any change in policy, they're against it! They have to put something new in their syllabus, they're against it! Nice to know things don't change in 80 years.

One thing that hasn't changed and still holds up today is eligibility in college sports. Occasionally, you'll hear about a college team that has eligibility problems with their athletes. It also features one of the funniest and best football sequences at the end of it, where all four brothers get in on the action.

This movie is just chaos, but I see a lot of true-to-life things in it.

Great movie.

Till next time.

Kat