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Horse
Feathers (1932)
In director Norman Z. McLeod's satirical academic/sports
comedy from the Marx Brothers, their fourth comic masterpiece:
- the opening scene of Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff
(Groucho Marx), President of Huxley College, addressing the faculty
members and students during his inauguration: ("... As I look
over your eager faces, I can readily understand why this college
is flat on its back. The last college I presided over, things were
slightly different. I was flat on my back. Things kept going from
bad to worse but we all put our shoulders to the wheel and it wasn't
long before I was flat on my back again"); he also began to
sing in the musical number: "(Whatever It Is), I'm Against
It" - describing how he would nihilistically respond to trustee
suggestions, ridiculing them: "I don't know what they have
to say. It makes no difference anyway. Whatever it is, I'm against
it"; the second verse was for a different song: "I Always
Get My Man"; the bearded faculty professors joined the contemptable
Wagstaff, slavishly bowing and pointing to him, and circling around
him in a soft-shoe routine. When the dance was finished, he told
them: "All right scram, boys. I'll meet you in the barber
shop"
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Pinky (Harpo Marx)
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"Cut the Cards" - Literally With a Hatchet
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Wagstaff's Attempt to Recruit Two Football Players
in Speakeasy, with Baravelli
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- the sequence at a speakeasy where doorman Baravelli
(Chico Marx) demanded to know the secret password ("swordfish")
- Pinky (Harpo Marx) provided a clue by pulling a sword fish from
his coat and sticking a small sword down its throat
- Wagstaff's misguided attempt to buy (recruit) two
football players, Mullen and McHardie (Jim Pierce and Nat Pendleton)
at the speakeasy, and ending up with Pinky and Baravelli, to play
the big game between Huxley and Darwin
- Pinky (Harpo Marx) providing a hot cup of coffee
from the inside of his coat for a bum on the street
- Pinky's scene with his horse blocking traffic and
a cop who wrote him a ticket
- the classic Biology classroom scene with Wagstaff
instructing students by improvising profusely and confusingly on
the topics of blood, the heart, and the circulatory system - and
the Alps! ("As you know, there is constant warfare between the
red and white corpuscles. Now then, baboons, what is a corpuscle?...We
now find ourselves among the Alps. The Alps are a very simple people
living on a diet of rice and old shoes. Beyond the Alps lies more
Alps and the Lord Alps those that Alps themselves. We then come to
the bloodstream. The blood rushes from the head down to the feet,
gets a look at those feet, and rushes back to the head again...");
the sequence ended with a peashooter fight between him and two unruly
students
- the non-sensical, frenetic, madcap sequence of Baravelli,
Prof. Wagstaff, gambler Jennings (David Landau), and Pinky all showing
up at flirtatious 'college widow' Connie's (Thelma Todd) apartment
at the same time
- Wagstaff's romancing and serenading of the "college
widow" during a canoe ride on a duck pond when he strummed
on a guitar - and his response to her baby talk:
"If icky girl keep on talking that way, big stwong man's gonna
kick all her teef wight down her thwoat"
Wagstaff's Romancing of the "College Widow"
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- the sequence of the attempted kidnap of the two
star Darwin College athletes
- the climactic zany Huxley-Darwin football game (partly
inspired by the silent Harold Lloyd classic The
Freshman (1925)) involving audible football signals, banana
peels, an elastic band, and a chariot
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Professor Wagstaff's Inaugural Address and Musical Number
Speakeasy Password "Swordfish"
Peashooter Fight
In Connie's Apartment
Concluding Football Game
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