Word: harpo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...extravaganzas anymore, with their water-ballets and cupie-doll tenor heroes thrown in among the more or less emasculated brothers. So Monkey Business from the tacky Paramount days comes as blessed relief, reaffirmation and so on. It is wonderful. This is the one where Groucho, Chico and most importantly Harpo all do imitations of Maurice Chevalier singing "Eef a Nightengale Cood Sin Lak You" and where Grouch announces that "love goes out the door when money comes innuendo". The script was by S.J. Pereiman and it doesn't really matter who directed since it is hardly a film anyway Pereiman...
...movie is peppered with direct steals from famous stars, roles and songs, most of which originated in the '30s. The hunch-backed servant Igor (Marty Feldman) has the bulging eyes and eerie mischievousness of Harpo Marx, or of the Charles Adams cartoon character who later became known as Uncle Fester. He delivers one-liners like Groucho. Cloris Leachman, who does a terrific job of frowning and mugging through an unrewarding part, may have pilfered from Dame Judith Anderson's role in Rebecca as the forbidding keeper of the Baron's castle. Young Frankenstein stalks about with the mad intensity...
...Story of Mankind is a 1957 Warner Bros. star vehicle that never is shown anymore, but the Welles borrowed it from Warner's library and it's clearly worth a look. Groucho Marx plays Peter Minuit and Harpo stars in a vignette about Isaac Newton. Dennis Hopper, Virginia Mayo and Peter Lorre are also featured. Weekend at midnight...
...that we know about Mons Herbert (who does not appear in the musical) is that he was once given a compliment by Harpo Marx as having "a dazzling mouthful of gold." Aside from any curiosity over the title, he is all but forgotten until the last line. Then the actors ask, who is Mons Herbert, anyway? Four actors act and sing the roles of misnamed, star-crossed lovers and their experience with a flend in search of a potato salad recipe. The playing out of these situations takes us through a beauty contest for cows, the trauma of a lost...
SIDES One and Two were clearly conceived as a rock side and a ballad side, respectively. Three of the cuts on the first side are pedestrian rock songs that are nearly indistinguishable from each other. The standouts are "Shake Your Hips," a Slim Harpo tune that the Stones do in a version a little slower than, (but otherwise identical to) the original; and "Tumbling Dice," the single, which is nice enough but hardly up to the standard of most Stones 45s. Jagger's voice is mixed down so low on this whole side that the lyrics are completely unintelligible...