Review: THE BIG STORE / The Marx Brothers (1941)

February 23rd, 2010 by Scott Marks

The Big Store (1941)
Directed by Charles Reisner
Written by Sid Kuller, Hal Fimberg, Ray Golden from a story by Nat Perrin
Starring: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Douglass Dumbrille, Margaret Dumont, Tony Martin, Virginia Gray, Henry Armetta, Virginia O’Brien, Al Hill and Charles Lane
Photographed by Charles Lawton
Running Time: 83 minutes

Rating: for The Marx Bros.
Rating: for Douglass Dumbrille

This is the first Marx Bros. movie I’ve ever written about. After you get done describing the Brothers exchanges and jotting down gags what else is there to say? Only once did they work with a director worthy of their talent (Leo McCarey). The rest merely photographed them.

“The Big Store” is a far cry from the Marxes heyday and ranks somewhere in the middle of their M.G.M. downslide that began in 1935 when Irving Thalberg hired the boys after Paramount failed to renew their contract. Aside from producing “Freaks” and giving the Marx Bros. a job when they needed it, I never saw the genius in boy wonder Thalberg. The sickly Thalberg’s early demise came three years prior to “The Big Store’s” release, and his health wasn’t the only frail thing about him. He was personally responsible for fewer on-screen Brothers in favor of more musical numbers and juvenile romantic subplots.

To put it simply, Irving Thalberg favored cutaways to the Marx Bros. as opposed to cutaways from them. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? This man knew nothing of the aesthetics of cinema and he should have stuck with Garbo and left Groucho alone.

While I’m on the subject, Thalberg is guilty of one of the most heinous acts ever committed against the art of motion pictures. The studio exec was unsuccessful at taming the self-indulgent Erich Von Stroheim on “Foolish Wives” and “The Merry-Go-Round,” and it was on his watch that “Greed” was whittled down to 140 minutes from its admittedly unwieldy original 9 hour premier.

The Academy also named a cheap giveaway award after him. Your honor, I rest my case.

As a child, “The Big Store” was a regular visitor on “The Late, Late Show” and I coveted each repeat airing. Years later I saw the trailer that promised, “Howl . . . And Farewell! Their Last Picture.” Their third movie after Thalberg dies and L. B. is already pitching “Their first final farewell” from pictures.

Groucho plays Wolf J. Flywheel a bottom feeding gumshoe hot on the trail of low hanging fruit. Flywheel rooms with Wacky, a mute harp player (Guess who?) who acts as his secretary, chauffer, valet and all around Man Friday. Wacky and Flywheel live together in a pasteboard shack and listen to “Sing While You Sell” all day on the radio. This is the only Marx Brothers movie that starts with Harpo paired opposite Groucho instead of Chico. Purists take heart. As it turns out, Wacky and Ravelli are brothers. And on a purely anal retentive note, for the first time Grouch parts his hair down the side, not the middle. Anything but that flea-bitten rug he donned in “Go West.”

After sitting out a couple of pictures, the series venerable bovine foil Margaret Dumont resurfaces as department store magnate Martha Phelps, Groucho’s eternally oblique broad with a dowry. One of Grover’s (the inimitable Douglass Dumbrille) henchmen sandbags her nephew Tommy (a particularly greasy Tony Martin) during an elevator ride. Tommy is a reformed street punk turned bandleader who now makes it possible for downtrodden tykes to have the same opportunity in life that he had. Since the benevolent Tommy has recently inherited half the Phelp’s Department Store, Aunt Martha fears the time has come for protection. The rich widow hires Flywheel to act as a bodyguard for her nephew.

Tommy is a neighborhood legend. Ravelli (Chico Marx) brags about him to the repo man as they begin to cart away the musical instruments from Tommy’s conservatory. It’s a legendary institution where every child is taught Chico’s notorious shotgun style of piano playing. I hope the kids don’t grow up to play the ponies or burn up phone lines espousing eternal love to the missus while getting their head blown by a contract player.

Virginia Gray plays Tommy’s love interest (alas, there is always a love interest). While she’s a far cry from “Circus” staple Florence Rice, Ms. Gray chose to continue acting as opposed to enjoying the luxurious lifestyle afforded indentured game show panelist Kitty Carlisle.

There is a veritable bounty of musical entertainment on hand to thrill the masses and bore the Marxists. Chico doesn’t get a solo number, but he and Harpo team for a spirited rendition of “Mamãe Eu Quero.” Harpo’s turns at Beethoven and Mozart make me regret that there was no such thing as a scan button when I was growing up. The one good thing to be said of Harpo’s various musical interludes is that he never took up the bagpipe.

Tommy personally cuts a record (too bad it isn’t his throat) for future suicide victim and Dorothy Gale’s beloved Auntie/jailer Clara Blandick. Director Charles Reisner punches the clock by keeping Tommy in sharp close-up while customers float through the soft gauzy background. “If It’s You,” co-written by Artie Shaw, is the film’s most accomplished number.

With Reisner’s zig-zag direction and lyrics like “Sell this wienie with Rossini, ‘the showstopping (?) “Sing While You Sell” failed to persuade me. The director (who obviously learned nothing from working with Buster Keaton), would rather move the set than the camera. And never one to pass up a cheap “colored” gag Groucho slips into a darkie twang before we’re introduced to The Four Dreamers.

the-big-store-tony-martin

Groucho Marx once referred to “Tommy Rogers’ Tenement Symphony in Four Flats” as “the most godawful thing I’d ever heard.” In its most simplistic, puerile form “Tommy Rogers’ Tenement Symphony in Four Flats” represents an all-white America idealized by Louis B. Mayer’s kosher-style Dream Factory. The songs of the ghetto that inspire this allegretto were all originally yodeled by white voices. This sanitized slum rents to Cohens, Kelleys and Vermicellis with nary a black, Asian or Latino tenant in sight.

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