The Cocoanuts (1929) | |
| Director(s) | Robert Florey, Joseph Santley |
| Producer(s) | Monta Bell, Jesse L. Lasky (executive uncredited), Walter Wanger (executive uncredited), Walter Wanger (uncredited) |
| Top Genres | Comedy, Musical |
| Top Topics | Pre-Code Cinema, Slapstick |
Featured Cast:
The Cocoanuts Overview:
The Cocoanuts (1929) was a Comedy - Musical Film directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santley and produced by Jesse L. Lasky, Walter Wanger and Monta Bell.
SYNOPSIS
The first, and widely regarded to be the zaniest, of the Marx Brothers' films. The film takes place in a Miami hotel during the land boom, and the Marxes hilariously oversee the arrival and departure of herds of comical millionaire travelers. The brothers freely reign ad-lib and riff on the Kaufman script. Florey was better known for his expressionist horror films.
(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).
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BlogHub Articles:
The Cocoanuts (1929, Robert Florey and Joseph Santley)
By Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 7, 2018 From The Stop ButtonThe only stand-out sequence in The Cocoanuts comes at the end, when Chico is playing the piano. One of the directors?or both of them?finally had a good instinct and cut to a close-up of Chico?s hands playing. It overrides the first shot of the piano playing, which doesn?t show Chico?s hands at all a... Read full article
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Quotes from
Hammer: Florida folks, land of perpetual sunshine. Let's get the auction started before we have a tornado.
[Answering telephone]
Hammer: Hello? Yes? Ice water in 318? Is that so? Where'd you get it? Oh, you want some.
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Facts about
The sight gags in which Harpo eats the lobby's telephone and drinks from the inkwell were not in the original play. Robert Florey improvised the gags to give Harpo bits of silent business to do.
Although Irving Berlin didn't produce a hit song for this show, it wasn't his fault. Berlin wrote his perennial classic "Always" for this score and submitted it to the show's author George S. Kaufman, who admitted he knew little about music. Kaufman commented that he disliked the opening line 'I'll be loving you, Always" given the numerous stories about men leaving their wives for younger women. He suggested that Berlin use the line "I'll be loving you, Thursday". Although the suggestion was made in jest, Berlin pulled the song and gave it to his wife as a present. The substitute song "A Little Bungalow" was not very successful.
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