The first time I saw the Marx Brothers was a double-bill matinee when I was little: At the Circus and A Day at the Races. The Marx Brothers were all different while the Ritz Brothers were all the same. My favourite was Harpo the silent one.
The movie I've seen more times than any other is the Marx Brothers college comedy Horse Feathers. (The title is meaningless, of course.) That's the one with Groucho as university president Quincy Adams Wagstaff. ("The faculty can keep their seats. There'll be no diving for this cigar!") We own the VHS videocassette, though now it's packed away somewhere. Good comedy never dates.
The Marx Brothers started out in vaudeville, and when silent movies were replaced by sound, acts like theirs became well-suited to Hollywood. (Another example is W.C. Fields.) Their early movies were made before the Production Code came into effect in 1934, so they have a lot of off-colour humour. In Horse Feathers there's even a scene in a speakeasy!
Groucho had an interesting life. He left school in Grade 8 but still became well-read in classic literature. In the 1930s he became one of Hollywood's most prominent anti-Nazis. (After 1945 he visited Berlin, found the spot where Hitler's bunker had been and danced on it!) In the '50s he had a big comeback with the game show You Bet Your Life.
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