Main Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, John Carroll, Diana Lewis
Release Year: 1940
Country: US
Run Time: 80 minutes
Plot
The Marx Bros.' Go West was on the drawing boards as early as 1936, when MGM executive Irving Thalberg commissioned Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby to come up with a script in which the Marx boys get involved with a rodeo. The project was shelved in favor of A Day at the Races, then revived in late 1939, two years after Laurel and Hardy's Way Out West proved the commercial viability of comedy-Westerns. By this time, Kalmar and Ruby were no longer involved, and the script became virtually the sole responsibility of Irving Brecher, who'd previously penned the disappointing Marx vehicle At the Circus. If Go West is an improvement over Circus, it is probably because the Marxes were permitted to try out their material on tour before a variety of live audiences. Set in 1870, the story begins as S. Quentin Quayle (Groucho Marx) tries to raise enough money for a train ticket to the West. He spots a couple of likely pigeons, prospectors Rusty (Harpo Marx) and Joe (Chico Marx), and attempts to sucker them out of the required 500 dollars. In what turns out to be the film's funniest scene, Rusty and Joe turn the tables on Quayle, divesting him of everything he owns -- including his trousers. The plot then rears its ugly head as villains Beecher (Walter Woolf King) and Baxter (Robert H. Barrat) scheme to wrest a lucrative railroad contract from hero Terry Turner (John Carroll). Rusty and Joe make things easy for the bad guys by stupidly signing over a valuable gold mine deed which they were supposed to deliver to heroine Eve Wilson (Diana Lewis). With the help of Quayle, Rusty and Joe try to recover the deed, only to be sidetracked by a bevy of dance-hall girls. After several middling complications, the film boils down to a race between heroes and villains to register their bids and win the railroad contract. This requires Quayle, Rusty, and Joe to keep a locomotive in commission by chopping up the passenger cars for fuel, one of several Keatonesque sight gags packed into the film's hilarious finale. The opening and closing scenes of Go West are so good that one is willing to forgive and forget the dull romantic subplot and the misfire gags in the midsection. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
"Go west" may have been good advice for all those young men Horace Greeley was counseling, but the Marx Brothers should perhaps have thought twice about it. Not that Go West is a bad film, as some of its sequences are quite good, but it's not a film that was really worth the talents of the boys. One of the problems is that the Marxes work best in a totally artificial studio environment; when they're shot on an actual city street, there's something a little odd about them, and when they're shot in an actual Western exterior, it's incredibly distracting. Of greater importance, the creators of the film didn't really find a way of letting the boys subvert their setting. In spite of all their efforts and their total involvement in the plot of the film, they don't really seem to be taking the characteristics of Western films and exposing the silliness underneath those characteristics. Fortunately, the film does provide a number of routines -- the initial meeting between Groucho, Harpo, and Chico; the stagecoach sequence; some of the safecracking bit; and most of the climactic train race -- that give the trio a chance to show off their comic chops. Margaret Dumont is unfortunately missing from Go West, but June MacCloy's deep-voiced chorus girl is a great deal of fun, and helps make up for the bland performances of John Carroll and Diana Lewis, and the so-so villainy of Robert H. Barrat and Walter Woolf King. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Go West (1940) was the 10th Marx Brotherscomedyfilm, in which the three brothers, Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, head to the American West and attempt to unite a couple by ensuring that an evil railroad baron is thwarted. The scene is set in Dead Man's Gulch. Groucho is "S. Quentin Quale", Chico is "Joe Panello" and Harpo is "Rusty Panello". It was directed by Edward Buzzell and written by Irving Brecher, who receives the original screenplay credit, and others.
In their obligatory first meeting scene the Marx Brothers perform the classic "That's a Ten-Spot ($10)" routine, in which Groucho is fleeced by his dimmer siblings. Some surprisingly risque lines for an MGM production make it through to the screen. For instance, Chico exclaims, "Ten dollars you want for that old beaver?" "--I'm not in business for love you know. I was in love once and I got the business", deadpans Groucho. As Harpo is picking his pocket, Groucho complains to the camera, "There's something corrupt going on around my pants...and I just can't seem to locate it."
There is a confrontation between Harpo and "Red" Baxter (Robert Barratt), in classic Western style, as they stride together in the saloon. The patrons laugh when Harpo draws a whisk broom instead of a pistol—but he nearly takes Baxter's head off when the broom fires! In the process of recovering a stolen deed, Groucho and Chico are plied with liquor by the statuesque, deep-voiced Lulubelle (June MacCloy) and her sisters. The tipsy Groucho sings (to the tune of Oh Susanna) "Oh, I come from Alabama with a bottle on my hip/If I drink six more mint juleps I sure am gonna slip!"
The film also contains amazing stunts on a moving steam train when the brothers try to separate the carriages and leave the bad guys stranded behind them. This progresses to a stage when they want to stop the train. They've tied up the engineer, and Chico asks him how to stop it; he says "Brake! The brake!" The literal-minded Harpo breaks the brake! Deciding instead to extinguish the fire, one of them goes with a bucket to draw water from a barrel. The viewers can see the other side of the barrel is labelled "kerosene". Once this is thrown on the fire with dramatic results Groucho says "If that's water I'm glad I never touch the stuff". Now they decide to go faster and end up off the tracks for a while and ramming into a house and farm. Then Harpo begins to tear apart the wooden carriages and using it to build up the fire. At one point, Groucho faces the camera and quips, pointing at the bandanna over the engineer's mouth, "This is the best gag in the picture!"
The brothers win the race, but when the train stops the entire framework has been gutted out and used as firewood. Harpo is honored by being selected to drive the golden spike à la Leland Stanford, but on his backswing with the sledgehammer he drives a railroad executive into the ground instead!
Other typical Groucho highlights include: his double getting bounced down the stairs yet again; the silly table dance to a jazz violin in the finale of the torch song; a bizarre vocal accompaniment to "Ridin' the Range"; and uttering the immortal line, "Time wounds all heels".
