How "Duck Soup" Changed My Life

I’m not one to overstate the importance of things, so believe me when I say that Duck Soup changed my life. For some, a great life-changing moment occurs when they first laid eyes on their spouse, or when their children were born, not me.

                For me, it was watching four middle-aged Jews act like fools in a movie that was nearly as old as my grandmother.

                Allow me to set the scene:

                I was a youngster of about ten or so, visiting my father over Christmas vacation. He was living in this lovely condo up in North Carolina. That year, Christmas was all about Ninja Turtles (I got the sewer playset that year and if you don’t know how friggin’ awesome that was, I pity you).

                My father had been doing a Groucho impression for a while, the stooped walk, pantomiming a cigar, saying, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever hoid.” (Not “heard” but “hoid,” my father’s attempt at Groucho’s voice.) It always made me laugh when he did it, even though I had no idea who or what it was supposed to be.

                Roll around to New Years Eve. My father and I stayed up to watch the ball drop with Dick Clark (I am convinced that it will be Dick Clark, not Vincent Price, who becomes the last man on Earth), which, given my father’s usual nine-thirty bedtime, was impressive in and of itself. Shortly after he went to bed, I changed the channel over to AMC and what was beginning but Duck Soup. (I feel the need here to interject for those who don’t know this- once upon a time, AMC stood for American Movie Classics and showed nothing but classic black and white movies 24/7…and they were commercial free. Those were the days.)  Instantly, I recognized Groucho Marx, the name at least.

                The movie began, a little slow in the first few minutes, with Margaret Dumont’s opera-esque voice and Zeppo being, well, Zeppo.  And then Groucho entered, sliding down a fire pole to sneak into his own coronation. He then began insulting Margaret Dumont at ninety miles an hour, then joyfully singing about how, now that he was in charge, the country was really screwed. Then Harpo entered. Then Chico. Then…

                Well, you know.

                (If you don’t, then, shame on you. Go watch Duck Soup right now. You’ll be a better person for it. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s a great movie, ten thousand film critics and historians have already done that. )

                I was howling with laughter. I felt like some New Testament prophet that had been given a glimpse of heaven and heaven wore a greasepaint moustache. This was the real Groucho Marx, not the person my father (badly, I now realized) impersonated, not the fuzzy moustache and eyebrows hot-glued to plastic glasses and a rubber nose. This was pure, this was unfiltered. I looked at Groucho Marx and saw who Bugs Bunny wanted to be when he grew up.

                A pause here as I mention that when “Tiny Toon Adventures” did a whole episode based around Animal Crackers (with Babs Bunny as Groucho, Buster Bunny as Chico and Gogo Dodo as Harpo) I was the only kid in my class who got what they were doing. A few years later, I recognized Yakko, Wakko and Dot of “Animaniacs” as cartoon versions of the Marx Brothers.

Don’t think that I kept this to myself, either. Oh, no. I started sitting my friends down and making them watch. My best friend Christy fell for Harpo, to the extent that the following Halloween she and I (along with another friend who shall remain nameless as she didn’t “get” the Marxes) were Groucho and Harpo. Sadly, we lost the costume contest to two brothers dressed as Hans and Franz (from “Saturday Night Live”). Although, one of my favorite pictures is Christy, in complete Harpo guise, sitting in a fire truck. She calls it “Harpo’s ultimate horn.”

                Another one of my friends, Justin, who exposed me to things like the Brit-com “The Young Ones” and the genius of Mel Brooks, laughed as loud as I did at Duck Soup. In particular, I remember Justin and I, along with his younger brother, rewinding and watching the scene where Chico and Harpo harass poor Edgar Kennedy (the blustery lemonade salesman) over and over again. For weeks afterwards, Justin and I would stop each other in the hallway at school and give one another our legs.

Okay, so Duck Soup was (and is) a very funny movie, but how did it change my life?

                I learned something that night, or, more accurately, I was prevented from learning something.

You see, many people of my generation (and younger) have a prejudice against black and white films. They see them as boring, slow-moving, and OMG, like, so stupid and stuff LOL. Spoiled by the faster-than-you-can-blink style of editing (sometimes called “MTV editing) modern audiences have trouble sitting through a five minute scene that has only –gasp!- three edits. Thus, many of my generation, and younger, take one glance at a black and white film and go right back to texting.

                I, having watched, and loved, Duck Soup as an impressionable youth, never developed this prejudice. Because of Duck Soup, a whole new world of cinema was opened to me. And what a world it was! La Strada, The Island of Lost Souls, Seven Samurai, It’s a Wonderful Life, Psycho, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Apartment, The Wild Child, M, The Maltese Falcon, To Be Or Not To Be, All About Eve, The Bride of Frankenstein, and hundreds more would have been forever shielded from my prejudiced eyes had it not been for the wild anarchy of Duck Soup.

                 

                Thus, I must first thank my father, for, if it hadn’t been for his bad impression, my curiosity might never have led me to the shores of Freedonia. And then I must thank the Marx Brothers themselves for being the geniuses that they were to make a young boy born after everyone of them (even Gummo) had died laugh.

                And now, twenty years or so after that fateful night, I’m proud to say that my son, at the ripe old age of seven, has seen, and loved, Duck Soup.