A Day at the Races

A Day at the Races
theatrical release poster
Directed by	Sam Wood
Produced by	Sam Wood Irving Thalberg (uncredited) Lawrence Weingarten (uncredited)
Written by	Robert Pirosh George Seaton George Oppenheimer
Starring	Groucho Marx Harpo Marx Chico Marx Allan Jones Maureen O'Sullivan Dudley Dickerson
Music by	Walter Jermann Bronislau Kaper Franz Waxman
Cinematography	Joseph Ruttenberg
Editing by	Frank E. Hull
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	June 11, 1937
Running time	111 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

A Day at the Races is the seventh film starring the three Marx Brothers, with Margaret Dumont, Allan Jones, and Maureen O'Sullivan. Like their previous MGM feature A Night at the Opera, this film was a major hit.^[1]

Plot

Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx) is a veterinarian who is hired as chief of staff for the Standish Sanitarium, owned by Judy Standish (Maureen O'Sullivan), at the insistence of her most important patient, the rich Mrs. Upjohn, (Margaret Dumont), who insists on being treated only by Dr. Hackenbush. The Sanitarium has fallen on hard times, and banker J.D. Morgan (Douglas Dumbrille) is attempting to gain control of it. Judy hopes that Mrs. Upjohn will make a large donation and stop that from happening.

Meanwhile, Judy's boyfriend, singer Gil Stewart (Allan Jones), has taken his life's savings and bought a horse with it, instead of paying for vocal lessons to further his career as a radio singer. His hope is that the horse, Hi-Hat, will win a big race, and the money will save the sanitarium. Unfortunately, he now has no money to pay for the horse's feed, and he and Tony (Chico Marx), who works for the sanitarium, and Stuffy (Harpo Marx), Hi-Hat's jockey, have to resort to trickery to fend off the Sheriff (Robert Middlemass). Tony raises some money by scamming Hackenbush in the "Tutsi Fruitsy Ice Cream" scene, in which Tony gives Hackenbush a tip on a horse, but all in code, so that Hackenbush has to buy book after book from Tony to decipher the code.

At the Sanitarium, its business manager, Whitmore {Leonard Ceeley) – who is Morgan's stooge – attempts to rattle Mrs. Upjohn's faith in Hackenbush by having her discover him in a compromising situation with a floozie, (Esther Muir). Hackenbush is saved by Stuffy and Tony, who pose as house detectives and then as paperhangers, pasting the vamp to the wall behind layers of wallpaper. Next, Whitmore brings in the eminent Dr. Steinberg (Sig Ruman), who exposes Hackenbush as a quack.

Hackenbush, Tony, Stuffy and Gil hide out in Hi-Hat's stable, where Judy soon joins them. Morgan finds them and is about to have them arrested when the horse sees him and bolts, running for the racetrack, where he jumps the fence and enters the ongoing race, with Stuffy riding him and spurring him on by showing the animal a picture of Morgan.^[2][3][4]

Cast

Cast notes

• In My Life with Groucho: A Son's Eye View, Arthur Marx relates that in his latter years Groucho increasingly referred to himself by the name Hackenbush.^[5]

Production

The screenplay went through numerous outlines, treatments and drafts before arriving at its final version. As they had with A Night At The Opera, the Brothers honed the comic material during a Vaudeville tour.

Groucho's character was originally named "Quackenbush" but was changed to "Hackenbush" over fear of a lawsuit by a real Dr. Quackenbush.

During production, Irving Thalberg, who had brought the Marx Brothers to MGM, died suddenly of pneumonia at age 37. It is generally believed that after Thalberg's death the studio never gave the proper care to the Marx Brothers and that the three movies made at MGM afterward are weaker than the first two as a result.

Music

The songs in the film, by Bronislaw Kaper, Walter Jurmann, and Gus Kahn, are "On Blue Venetian Waters", "Tomorrow Is Another Day," and "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" (which also featured Ivie Anderson and other members of Duke Ellington's orchestra). Two more songs were filmed but cut. One, "Dr. Hackenbush", was sung by Groucho about what a great doctor he is ("No matter what I treat them for they die from something else"). The other, "A Message From The Man In The Moon", is missing from the main part of the film but shows up in the titles, some incidental music, and is "reprised" by Groucho for the big, happy ending. The DVD release includes a recently rediscovered audio recording of the song, performed by Allan Jones.

The film also features a lindy hop dance sequence set to the tune of "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm", and featuring the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, including Frankie Manning, Al Minns and Norma Miller. The dance sequence was nominated for the short-lived Academy Award for Best Dance Direction.

Musical numbers

• "On Blue Venetian Waters"
• "Tomorrow Is Another Day"
• "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm"
• "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"
• "A Message from the Man in the Moon"
• "Cosi Cosa" (instrumental version at the race track)

Critical recognition

In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked A Day at the Races as the 59th funniest film of all time in its AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs.^[6][7]

References

Notes

Further reading

• Elisabeth Buxbaum: Veronika, der Lenz ist da. Walter Jurmann – Ein Musiker zwischen den Welten und Zeiten. Mit einem Werkverzeichnis von Alexander Sieghardt. Edition Steinbauer, Wien 2006, ISBN 3-902494-18-2

External links

• A Day at the Races at the Internet Movie Database
• A Day at the Races at AllRovi
• A Day at the Races at the TCM Movie Database
• Full description of A Day at the Races from Filmsite.org