Exclusive Interview with “uncut” A NIGHT AT THE OPERA discoverer Thomas Racz
August 10th, 2008 by Scott Marks
I was in seventh grade when I first met the Marx Brothers proper. There were You Bet Your Life reruns and fuzzy memories of The Incredible Jewel Robbery, but it wasn’t until that fateful gathering of the Boone Booster Club that I first witnessed my first Marx Bros. feature.
The Booster Club was a perk for students attending Daniel Boone elementary school in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood. One Tuesday morning a month we were allowed to dispense with our studies and watch a real movie, not one of those crappy science documentaries, on school time.
The person responsible for curating the series should have been taken out and shot at sunrise. Instead of screening The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T or the original Babes in Toyland, they exposed impressionable minds to the insipid remake of the latter in addition to Blackbeard’s Ghost (another live-action Disney hellhole), the feature length version of Journey to the Beginning of Time (which worked better in 5 minute installments on Garfield Goose and Friends) and two episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. spliced together to form a feature. There was a Martin and Lewis film, but the clueless booker chose Taurog over Tashlin.
Classrooms full of kids congregated in the school’s assembly hall where uniform focus was unheard of, the sound system was just slightly better than a subway train and the tattered window shades allowed more light to come in than the Sistine Chapel. In spite of all of the hardships cast upon this budding young cinephile, the 107 minutes spent watching A Day at the Races was the single greatest learning experience in eight years of public school education.
As if preordained, WBKB-TV scheduled a 1 am screening of Races later that weekend and I pleaded with my parents that since it wasn’t a “school night” to let me stay up way past my bedtime. My mother, generally the softer touch of the pair, wanted nothing to do with the idea. My father actually stepped up to the plate and, after hearing my appeal, uncharacteristically ruled in my favor. He assured my mother that “the kid will be asleep ten minutes after it starts and we’ll never hear about it again.”
Right as usual, dad. Over the next four months Ch. 7 not only ran all the Marxes (save Animal Crackers), they also padded their late night Friday and Saturday slots by giving equal billing to Mae West and W.C. Fields. It was a Paramount package sent from heaven. Much to my parents chagrin, I saw each one of them through to their conclusions no matter how late the party ended.
It marked the first of my almost 200 audiences with A Night at the Opera and when word arrived that Hungarian student Thomas Racz might have discovered a rough cut with never before seen footage, I had to still my beating heart. Imagine my delight when Thomas dropped a line to Emulsion Compulsion. His story sounded vaguely familiar.
First off, Thomas is 18, not 21 as earlier reported. A University student taking a major in English and a minor in history, Thomas writes that he “was fourteen when I first saw A Night at the Opera, and instantly I fell in love with the Marx brothers. Now I have a collection of their movies (even Groucho’s three solo films), radio, and television shows, and of course books. I think it is sad that they only made thirteen movies together. For me that’s not enough. I also have a huge collection of the works of other comedians, but I never could get the same amount of joy out of them.”
Thomas is so inspired by the Marxes’ patented brand of insanity that he started to write a play in the Brothers’ style, “but it is only one-quarter finished.”
Photo courtesy Thomas Racz and Marxology
The original article published on Marx Bros.org stated that Thomas “has done it again,” so naturally I was curious to learn of any previous discoveries, Marx-related or otherwise. According to Thomas, ”The first rarity to my credit was a still from A Night at the Opera, which you can see on Mikael Uhlin’s Marxology site. I was lucky to find it on an auction site.”
It was Mikael who first asked Thomas about the existence of an uncut version in Hungary. “It made my mind wonder about it,” Racz said, “but I didn’t give much chance to it. Then the guy who sold me the still wrote me an e-mail, and told me that he has another one. It was yet another scene that isn’t in the movie. I e-mailed it to the Marxology site.” Thomas’ work had just begun. He quickly “checked the list of films in the Hungarian National Film Archive, to find that our (copy of) A Night at the Opera is 95 minutes long, and the copy is from 1935.” The 1948 re-release version, from which all subsequent prints and video copies were struck, runs 90 minutes.
Thomas went to the Hungarian National Film Archive asking if he could arrange a screening. The next week he “got into the projection room, and rolled the first reel.” His first impression led him to believe that this was not the Holy Grail of Marxdom: “When I saw the splice after the credits, I thought that this is the same print I have on DVD. So the after-credit splice IS there, unfortunately.”
Damn! Goddamn!
Dejected, Thomas just about gave up, but “decided to watch the first reel because I paid for it. I didn’t expect anything new. Then I saw the yet-unknown shot of ‘Lasparri’ who isn’t Lasparri at all, and I got a weird feeling. As the reel went on it contained extra sentences and shots I’ve discussed earlier. Therefore I think I’ve found something, even if it’s not what I was hoping for.”
The Marx Bros. and Irving Thalberg
He contacted the Marxology site and to Thomas’ frustration, “from then on everybody said that this IS the complete uncut version, which is an exaggeration, I think, but I might be wrong, because the cut could have been made before the film got out, in 1935.” What Thomas found something “truly weird, and unusual.” “All of the references to Italy were in it,” he continued. “I presume that this is the original cut, and not an after war one. My theory is that Thalberg cut that scene after the failed preview screening, to make the movie tighter. It is a rough cut, which is why I think it was made by Thalberg, who was in a hurry to get the reel ready for a second screening.”
What remains missing is an opening musical number that was described in the screenplay from the film that was published in the early 70s. Racz reports that the introductory 4 minute “street singing scene” is not in this version. He once again emphasizes, “I never said ‘this is THE original uncut print.’ I just reported what I’ve found.”
I offered to pop for another reel, but according to Thomas “Hungary is out of the PayPal system,” He told me that he wouldn’t accept money anyway because he thinks “it would be useless to see another reel, because seeing and knowing is one thing and doing something with it is another.” Apparently he has met with stiff opposition when trying to get the archive’s cooperation. He writes, “The people at the archive absolutely refused to lend me the print let alone to do something with it. I’m currently waiting for a message.”
Thomas explains why he didn’t contact any media outlets: “I deliberately didn’t contact the press, because the only thing they can do is to write down, ‘somebody in a far away country has seen a print of a classic movie, but he can’t do anything with it, so that’s that.’”
Thomas proudly boasts, “I think I’m the only one in this country who could’ve noticed the differences, because I memorized all the dialog. I love the Marx brothers, I love classical American comedy, and I also love your site.” (***blush***) “I once made a presentation about the life of Jerry Lewis, and your site was the ideal one to find pictures, I thank you for those.”
You are more than welcome you young, wonderful genius! I wish that you were one of my former students. All they ever “discovered” were crappy Aeon Flux videos and Jerry Colonna albums. I can’t begin to tell you how much your work has touched my heart and rekindled an already blazing passion for the Marxes. God bless someone your age for sidestepping Will Ferrell and Jack Black in favor of true comedic giants.
Hopefully someone at Turner Broadcasting and/or Warnewr Home Video will take notice of Thomas’ discovery and get the print cleaned and pressed for a Christmas DVD release. Until that time, your work is not yet complete, my young friend. Can you find me a copy of Horse Feathers that doesn’t have all those jarring splices that splinter the boys’ attempts at seducing Thelma Todd? Better yet, any of my wealthy readers want to stake me to a round trip ticket to Hungary so I can spend a day at the Racz’s?
Links: The Marx Bros. Photo Gallery
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