Main Cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller
Release Year: 1938
Country: US
Run Time: 78 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Having paid $255,500 for the rights to John Murray and Allen Boretz' Broadway hit Room Service, RKO Radio then scouted about for a "perfect" cast. Thanks to the persistence of show-biz agent Zeppo Marx, RKO was able to secure the services of Zeppo's brothers Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx for $100,000. The result is an uneven but entertaining blend of traditional stage farce and Marxian madness. Groucho plays two-bit producer Gordon Miller, who has gone deeply into debt while trying to stage a turgid production called "Hail and Farewell". Miller and his entire cast are ensconced in the Great White Way Hotel, managed by his brother-in-law Gribble Cliff Dunstan, who is fed up with the troupe's inability to pay its bills. As Miller, his director Harry Binelli (Chico) and his business manager Faker Englund (Harpo) try to figure out new methods of raising money, in walks Leo Davis Frank Albertson, the wide-eyed playwright, who is unaware that his masterpiece is in danger of closing before it even opens. He soon figures out what's what after Harry and Faker hock his typewriter for eating money. When hotel inspector Wagner Donald MacBride threatens to throw Miller and his entourage out bag and baggage, the producer and his cronies fake a measles epidemic so that Wagner will be forced to allow them to stay. Salvation seems at hand when Jenkins Philip Wood, a potential backer, arrives with a blank check in hand. But after sampling a bit of the lunacy that has surrounded the play since its inception, Jenkins dashes off, refusing to finance such a chancy property. Miller manages to mollify Wagner by pretending that Jenkins has invested money in the show, but when this scheme falls through, our hero resorts to really drastic measures by pretending that Davis and Faker have both committed suicide because of Wagner's persecution. Weaving in and out of the proceedings are nominal heroines Lucille Ball and Ann Miller, as well as Philip Loeb (who played Faker in the original Broadway production), brilliantly cast as a mild-mannered bill collector. Room Service is hardly typical Marx Bros. fare, despite the efforts by screenwriter Morris Ryskind to inject characteristic verbal gags and visual bits into the action; the film works better as a situation comedy than as a Marx vehicle (Groucho's only comment on the subject was that his brother Zeppo should have arranged a larger salary). In 1943, RKO Radio remade Room Service as a musical titled Step Lively, which was actually something of an improvement on the original. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
A notch below the most boisterous Marx Brothers fare, such as Duck Soup and Monkey Business, Room Service capped a decade of sensational success for the masters of mayhem. Unlike some of their earlier films, which were based on their own vaudeville shows, Room Service was adapted from a Broadway play by Allen Boretz and John Murray that was not written for the Marxes. The script is a bit too constraining for Groucho, Harpo, and Chico (Zeppo does not appear), requiring them to play real characters rather than cartoonish self-inventions. Groucho is a producer holed up in a hotel room trying to scrounge up money to put on a show. A young comedienne named Lucille Ball appears in the lead female role, only her second starring role in almost a decade in film, but she doesn't make much of an impact. Still, for fans of the Marx Brothers, the movie is indispensible. It was remade five years later as a musical, Step Lively. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
Frank Albertson - Leo Davis; Donald MacBride - Gregory Wagner; Philip Loeb - Timothy Hogarth; Philip Wood - Simon Jenkins; Alexander Asro - Sasha Smirnoff; Charles Halton - Dr. Glass; Clifford Dunstan - Joseph Gribble; Marx Brothers
