mike48128 Only The Marx Bros. could make a static stage play with essentially almost all the "action", confined to a set of hotel rooms, so lively and entertaining. Similar to what the 3 Stooges or W.C. Fields could do! This is RKO so there are no lavish over-blown fancy and silly musical programs here, but what an amazingly terrific and funny series of events. Chico's moose head on the wall and Harpo's "flying turkey" circling the ceiling! A shy and timid playwright. The dumbest bill collector in the world. Lucile Ball has a very small part and Anne Miller is wonderful as the love interest. As always, and similar to W.C. Field's "Old Fashioned Way", the entire "company" (of 22 actors) is free-loading on the 19th floor, and Groucho is trying to raise money out of thin air for his play. (Watching The Marx Bros. "inhale" dinner is hilarious, especially Harpo eating peas with a knife.) Groucho owes the hotel 1200 bucks for room and board! That was an awful lot of money in those days. Two people "die" in the film, but both deaths are "faked": The playwright, who has 67 cents to his name, and Harpo, ridiculously dressed as a coal miner with a lit lamp!, in costume. He puts on his "Ookie face" with a fake dagger in his back, and appears in the excerpt and final scene of the play, which, thankfully, only runs for 3 minutes at the very end. Frank MacBride, as the overwrought "home office efficiency man" is terribly funny and terribly loud, both at the same time. Jumpin' Butterballs!

ironhorse_iv Room Service might not be the most famous film comedy starring the Marx Brothers, but it's worth a watch. Based on the 1937 play of the same name by Allen Boretz & John Murray. Less frenetic and more physically contained than their other movies, the plot revolves around getting a stage play, Hail and Farewell, to be produced and funded by mysterious backer Zachary Fisk, while evading paying the hotel bill. The Marx Brothers are trying to fund this play. They have assembled the cast and crew of the play in the hotel ballroom, Gordon Miller (Grocho Marx) try to skip out of the hotel without paying before Gregory Wagner (Donald MacBride), the owner of the hotel finds out. MacBride is just as funny as the Marx Brothers as Wagner the efficiency expert, is really the stiff that the Marx Brothers are trying to tear down with their anti-authority hijinks. MacBride tends to shock out his catch phrase throughout the movie, that can be annoying. MacBride and the Marx Brothers work well with each other, as the scenes between them are just funny. Miller doesn't skip yet, after receives word that one of his actresses, Christine Marlowe (Lucille Ball) has arranged for a backer. Lucille Ball doesn't give much to the movie, as she plays second-banana, her comedic side really doesn't show in the film. She fades into the background. I felt that she could have been use more. It seems at the time, she was mostly use for eye-candy. Now Miller and the other Marx Brothers must keep his room, and hide his crew until the meeting with the backer can happen. Problems continue to happen, when the author comes to stay with them. Author, Leo Davis (Frank Albertson) is a Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy type character, that can be annoying at times, but Miller finds a way to use Davis to keep their room at less for the moment. The movie is an uneven but entertaining blend of traditional stage farce and Marxian madness. There are the same types of humor that you see in other Marx brothers films are in this film just in a limited area, because of that, the room becomes somewhat a character developing area. It's nice to see a movie with little cut scenes and one location. It gives the movie a small time feel, and how importation the place is. William A. Seiter's direction keeps the brothers limited to the area, gives the audience the best performance you ever saw in a hotel bedroom. Nearly the entire movie is filmed within two adjoining hotel rooms. There's no musical number except a few bars of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. That means no Harpo playing the Harp or Chico playing the piano. Still it wasn't needed. There are a number of funny supporting cast that continues to be gags throughout the film. The man from the collection agency, the man representing the financial backer for the play, the Russian want-to-be actor, and the doctor each pop up in one or two scenes to move the plot and supply the set up for a couple gags. Several high quality visual and verbal gags are included. This Marx Brothers film might not live up to Night of the Opera, or Duck Soap, but still it's worth noticing. Watch it.

ingemar-4 I watched two movies pretty much in parallel, Room Service and Stuck On You. While Room Service is certainly lacking much of the Marx' brothers usual tempo and gags, I was surprised to find that this was the one of the two that gave the most laughs by far, while the other mostly bored me. I had expected the opposite.Almost the whole movie takes place in a hotel room, which is certainly due to being a stage play, and that comes for a cost. There is more talking and less action than other Marx movies. The first half or so drags considerably, but the brothers do manage to use their characters in good ways. In particular, Harpo does a good job on bringing in some visual gags.Mr Wagner (Donald MacBride) is rather tiresome, but from the moment the backer is clear to him, he gets a well deserved break from being the sourpuss of the movie. And that's right where I start liking the movie. It takes quicker turns, scenes are getting increasingly hilarious (Harpo's death scene is great), and ends pretty much as expected but just right.I certainly wouldn't advice anyone new to Marx to start here, but once you are fond of the Marx brothers and like their characters, this is a nice bonus, which is better than I thought it would be.

John T. Ryan The blessing of civilization is structure. "A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place"; now there's a neat old proverb for you! We don't know who originally coined that phrase, but they really knew the importance of brevity. And one thing about these classic old sampler proverbial sayings is; that like most things under the Sun, they always have exceptions.Let's consider the cinema and its relation to the saying. Even more particularly, we'll zero in on the most anti-order film 'commodity' that we know. That would be the Marxes.The Marx Brothers act was one of rapid fire lunacy. They need to have room to operate; that is, the material that they use must be constructed to give the appearance of Ad Lib. It also must be loose enough to allow for the occasional real Ad Lib to fit in, when it does manage to come down the pike. This is all clearly evident in their 5 Paramount Pictures features. The art was perfected with their arrival on the lot over at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Mr. Irving Thalberg's desire to make even better Marx Brothers vehicles.The Thalberg prescription called for a road trip by the now 3 Marx Brothers in a sojourn into some live stage appearances. The object was not to make for a Las Vegas type Act in some exclusive engagement; but rather to take some proposed material and try it out before a live theatre audience. The most obvious example of this method would be the State Room Scene in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (MGM, 1935).Up to the point of ROOM SERVICE (RKO Radio Pictures, 1938), all of the Marx Brothers' movies had been films written just for them. Their Movies' genesis either one of two categories. Either they were filmed versions of their highly successful Broadway Farces, THE COCONUTS, ANIMAL CRACKERS or MONKEY BUSINESS (which contained much of the material from their 1923 Broadway Show, "I'll Say She Is!" The rest were all original screenplays written for the screen' They had expressed interest in doing a film using a play that was already written; so that when they had the offer to go on loan to RKO to do ROOM SERVICE, they jumped at it. ROOM SERVICE being a story of a conniving Producer, Gordon Miller (to be played by Groucho) and his conning his way into getting his Play produced. They had the time and the extra spending money would come in handy; particularly for eldest brother Chico, who gambled for a hobby.So, with some tiny little changes (like changing the name of the Director from Binion to Binelli, so that Chico could apply his pseudo-Italian to the part.) And as for Harpo, well there was no part for him to do. He was just sort of an 'ad-on person'; though to his credit, he managed to be Harpo long enough and to be the main player in the finale's show stopping gag.The cast was filled up with enough top talent though. Whatever the parts called for, they delivered. We had. Veteran Director William A. Seiter, who had done quite a few types of films and had done Comedies with Laurel & Hardy (SONS OF THE DESSERT, Hal Roach/MGM, 1933) and Wheeler & Wolsey (GIRL CRAZY, RKO Radio, 1932). Others in the comedy line that he had worked with were: the Ritz Brothers and Abbot & Costello. He had done just about all, and would continue working into the days of Television 1n the '50's and up to 1960.A lot of the action is like so many of those Stage Plays, with a lot of people running around, like Turkeys with their heads cut off. ("Turkeys" instead of "Chickens" 'cause it's only 2 days to Thanksgiving as this is being written.). There would be a lot of door slamming, hollering, laughing and loss of temper.Others filling out the cast were lovely young ladies Ann Miller & Lucielle Ball (double Woo, woo, woo, woo!!), Frank Albertson, Chris Dunstan, Donald McBride, Phillip Loeb, Phillip Wood, Alexander Asro and Charles Halton.Well, the Brothers had done what they had wanted to try. And we may be thankful for it; for without it, we'd be forever wondering just what it would have been. Imagination being what it is, who knows just what our minds would have cooked-up?* Lively and amusing, yes; but is it a real, dyed in the wool Marx Brothers movie? Sorry Charlie, I no think so!NOTE: * The folks at RKO went and re-made ROOM SERVICE in 1944, but this time as a musical. STEP LIVELY RKO Radio, 1944) starred Frank Sinatra, George Murphy, Gloria DeHaven, Adolph Menjou, Walter Slezak, Anne Jeffreys and Grant Mitchell. Oddly it also featured on of the Movie Comedy Teams of the day. It was Wally Brown & Alan Carney; who were known as "RKO's answer to Abbot & Costello".