Hail, Hail, Euphoria!: Presenting the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, the Greatest War Movie Ever Made

by RoyBlount (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2011

  $16.36

  Seventy-seven years ago a slim, agile, quick-witted, self-assured young man, identifying with but transcending his ethnic minority, was summoned to save a nation from financial ruin. As the nation's new president he brought together a team of rivals, a band of brothers. And those brothers' names: Pinky, Chicolini, and Lt. Bob Roland. And that leader's name: Rufus T. Firefly. It was a movie, and what a movie: Duck Soup , the Marx Brothers at their most intense, in their finest hour. In Hail, Hail, Euphoria! Roy Blount, Jr. takes us through the history and making of Duck Soup , examining the comedic genius of the Marx Brothers with the insight and appreciation of a true fan. Though first released in theaters nearly eighty years ago, Duck Soup continues to impress audiences and serve as an important cultural reference. In Hannah and Her Sisters , Woody Allen's character, Mickey Sachs, is considering suicide when he happens to see a bit of Duck Soup and has an epiphany: How can anyone even think of killing himself when this world affords such high-low comedy as the Brothers' spectacular musical number, The Country's Going to War , in which the call to arms involves, among many other rousing elements, takeoffs on gospel ( All God's Chillun Got Guns ) and the Virginia reel. There is nothing anywhere else in the history of American culture quite like Harpo's contribution to the do-si-do. You can't write a whole book about how funny a movie is. But this is a movie that can be discussed and probed in many directions. The parallels to current politics are obvious, and then there are links to be made involving Woody Allen and mirrors ( the Duck Soup scene in which Harpo pretends to be Groucho's reflection is famous, but there's a little-noted Allen mirror scene whose autobiographical resonance is startling), George W. Bush and projectiles, Margaret Dumont and moms, Groucho and Karl, Jews and Irishmen.