A Night At The Opera --- Part Two

For all the trouble he’d taken, Thalberg’s formula would only work once. A Night At The Opera had a negative cost of one million to recover, not an easy thing for a comedy team who’d peddled similar onscreen wares since 1929. Then as now, you either liked The Marx Brothers or you (resolutely) did not. The ink was probably dry on trade raves shown here weeks before the picture opened. The majors had a knack for creating the perception of a hit --- never mind what Mr. and Mrs. Patron really thought. Reviews not corrupted were often ignored. Photos of lines outside Broadway theatres conveyed a more forceful message. Year-end accounts told the real story, and that wouldn’t be shared with the press or public. A Night At The Opera earned domestic rentals of $1.1 million, surely a (so far) peak for the Marxes, but less than MGM specials of that year were typically bringing. Foreign was $651,000. Worldwide rentals totaled $1.8 million. Final profits were only $90,000. Thalberg sought the Marxes because he felt Metro needed comedians. Season contracts with independent exhibitors came with expectation of a balanced program. Disappointment over A Night At The Opera would not discourage Thalberg, but would he have stayed with the Marxes had he lived to see the losing numbers A Day At The Races generated? That follow-up to A Night At The Opera, still in production at the time of Thalberg’s death, took a considerable bath in red ink. A negative cost of $1.7 million was not equaled by domestic rentals of $1.6. The eventual loss was $543,000. Subsequent Marx Brothers features would be downgraded in budget and prestige. At The Circus lost $492,000, Go West (at a cost of $1.1 million) came up short by $206,000. The Big Store’s trailer depicts crowds howling for the team to come out of announced retirement to do one last comedy for MGM, but were there so many left to care by 1941? A Night In Casablanca was said to have been made at Chico’s behest (he was in serious, if not life threatening, dutch over gambling markers). The 1946 independent released through United Artists would surprise naysayers and become the biggest grosser the comedians ever had, the unexpected all-time champ of Marx Brothers movies. In fact, it would be A Night In Casablanca that paved the way for A Night At The Opera to finally go into profit.

They could scarcely have picked a better time for an encore. 1946 was a US summit for theatre attendance. Seems everybody spent that first year back from the war going to movies. A Night In Casablanca may not have been prime Marx Brothers, but turnstiles were spinning to the tune of $1.8 million in domestic rentals, with $894,000 foreign. This was a record on both counts for the team. A worldwide final of $2.7 million suggested possibilities for a real comeback. The Marxes were in for a percentage. Were they fully apprised of how well this picture did? Looking back on the Paramount dispute, I wonder. The team was by now showing age. Making pictures was more trouble than they were worth. For Groucho, working alone seemed preferable. Would a major studio have embraced the team after A Night In Casablanca? MGM tested waters with a December 1948 reissue of A Night At The Opera. Their New York sales team had noted revivals of old Paramount Marx features at art houses around Manhattan. Flat rental peanuts to be sure, but what if the company really got behind A Night At The Opera with an all new campaign and top-line bookings? MGM’s newly christened reissue program (Masterpiece Reprints) had led off with the stunning success of A Rage In Heaven, a 1941 feature that took an amazing $1.2 million in profits during 1946. This was followed with more library favorites, and further gain --- Boom Town ($862,000), The Great Waltz ($1.0 million), and two Tarzans, Secret Treasure ($410,000) and New York Adventure ($434,000). A Night At The Opera was trade shown, ordinarily the exclusive province of new releases, and sold on a percentage basis. Domestic rentals were an outstanding $633,000, with foreign an additional $435,000, for a worldwide total of $1.0 million. The profit was $746,000. Save Love Happy and its unremarkable one million in domestic rentals, there would be no further Marx Brothers starring features (Groucho’s appearance but an extended cameo). A Night At The Opera would return by way of Metro’s Perpetual Product Plan, an early 60’s scheme wherein vintage features were sublet to independent distributors throughout the country, with final revenue split between franchise holders and MGM. Between September 1, 1962 and August 31, 1967, there were 202 bookings for A Night At The Opera at an average flat rental of $49. Total film rentals received by Metro amounted to $9,808. Most engagements were in urban revival houses. Any theatrical revenue for A Night At The Opera was found money, as this title had been playing syndicated television since August 1956.

A Trojan Horse entered the United Artists theatre shown here in December 1935, A Night At The Opera intersecting with technology that would one day finish off Hollywood’s Golden Age of leisure domination. The Los Angeles crowd above is welcoming arrival of a mystery apparatus (weighing in at 8,400 pounds and costing $75,000) being transported into the theatre. Manager Thomas D. Soriero became the nation’s first video showman that day. Television in its present stage is only a scientific novelty and a curiosity, he said, but television equipment on display and in use within the theatre by the patrons makes good publicity for any house. An onstage lecture preceded each run of A Night At The Opera and explained miracles awaiting the audience in lounges wherein transmitters and receivers had been installed. There was a bank of picture telephones at which you could both see and hear persons located in other parts of the theatre. Soriero, a self-described pioneer of television, gave assurance that the new medium was anywhere from five to ten years away from general usage. Some time in the future one will sit at home and watch the latest movies as well as current events and stage productions. Prophetic words in 1935. The Federal Communications Commission, itself a recently formed body, was receiving but a trickle of applications for station licensing. Receivers were still prohibitively expensive, and signals couldn’t transmit beyond four or five miles. Technical glitches included constant radio signal interference with television. Proponents insisted that the new medium would have no more effect on theatre attendance than radio broadcasting or home movies.

I’m guessing a lot of readers have been watching The Marx Brothers as long as I have. Maybe for too long. There’s a point at which you stop laughing and start wondering what it is that’s making other people laugh. I’ve long forgotten what first appealed to me about the team. I spent most of A Night At The Opera trying to remember. You get to a certain age and too many favorites from youth become objects under a microscope --- all of which keeps them interesting and maybe more stimulating --- but comedies wilt on cross-examination, and too much analysis of the Marx Brothers drains every laugh out of them. I confess to having paused several times to remind myself --- Ah, yes, this is supposed to be one of the funniest parts --- and indeed, maybe it would be again were I part of a larger and (more importantly) younger audience. It isn’t fair to blame any movie for one’s overexposure to it. A Night At The Opera is fascinating for what it reveals of a comedy act trying to hang on in changing times (and Opera certainly has some of their all-time best routines --- that bed moving sequence is a marvel of timing). But did viewers in 1935 (or since) want to see The Marx Brothers so humanized? Their last three Paramount features were filled with less people than foils, stereotypes as opposed to individuals. Louis Calhern in Duck Soup, Nat Pendleton in Horse Feathers, and Thelma Todd in Monkey Business belonged in a Marxian universe. The Brothers interact with these only to bedevil them. Sincere interaction is the last thing they need or we want. Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle are all the more distressing for friendly gestures they extend toward the comedians, as this is surely an antidote to the team being funny. The Marx Brothers must act in opposition to all of people and surroundings if they are to make us laugh. Whatever it is, I’m against it --- but three years later, Groucho’s delivering love notes from Allan to Kitty --- and rewarded with a kiss on the cheek that sends him into bashful retreat. Chico pledges unswerving loyalty to friend of long standing Jones. All those years we studied together at the conservatory, recalls Allan’s character. We’re still young, we got our health, replies steadfast Chico, who then volunteers to manage his buddy’s career, for nothing. Chico was many things prior to landing at Metro, kindly and reassuring not among them. Worse still is Harpo’s transformation. The edge if not danger he posed at Paramount is replaced with kiddie host geniality, a forerunner to harmless fools who’d smuggle bananas past Captain Kangaroo. The brats guffawing around Harpo’s piano would not have taken such liberties in earlier films. Accommodations made for these and other tender sensibilities make it harder for the Marxes to play off each other successfully. Soft hearts once revealed are less credible in the guise of anarchists. The loss is most keenly felt at the end when the team goes about demolishing the opera itself, simply because they are the Marx Brothers and this is what they do (or once did). Going through motions of destructive acts both pointless and forced (why wreck the opera when they were so determined to help Allan Jones sing in it?), the comics seem lost in a polished MGM universe, wherein Marx madness would be all too studied in application and conventional in results.