They had no brother Karl

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33869, 14 June 1975, Page 10

They had no brother Karl

Hooray for Captain Spaulding! Verbal and Visual Gems from “Animal Crackers." By Richard J. Anobile. Michael Joseph. 224 pp. N.Z. price £3.95. An explorer returning from Darkest Africa on a litter chides his native bearers for bringing him via Australia. He collapses when a caterpillar is discovered on his coat, but recovers in time to thank those who are assembled to meet him for their ‘‘magnificent display of effusion." Later he quips, when someone has said piously that “marriage is a noble institution,” “the trouble is .you can't enforce it." Later again he comes up with such profundities as “if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does." and “with an 8 cent, nickel you could go to the news stand, buy a 3 cent newspaper and get the same nickel back again." He tells a woman on whom he has designs “don't give me that innocent stuff or you will be alone.” He says to his secretary, after he has insulted him "if I were a man you'd resent that." ' / Fans of the Marx Brothers will have realised that the explorer in question is Groucho Marx in what was probably his greatest role. “A Night at

the Opera" and “A Day at the Races” were possibly superior films, but Groucho never did better than he did as Captain Spaulding in “Animal Crackers..” This book contains 800 frame blowups from that film, coupled with much of the original dialogue. A short introduction sets “Animal Crackers” in the context of the careers of the Marx Brothers before the reader — or viewer — is handed over to the brothers themselves. Few will not laugh loudly over the book. But something is missing. Even when so lavishly' illustrated and so faithful to the words of the soundtrack, the book can never substitute for the movie. The “author’s” efforts come to seem at the end rather futile. The book gives about as much a taste of the real thing as a three-page summary in “Great. Books of the Western World” would give of “Remembrance of Things Past.” The only real value of a book about an individual film is as a souvenir. Those who have seen “Animal Crackers” will be able to pick this book up and be reminded of the delights contained in the film. Those who have not seen the film should not think they are doing much better than looking at a picture postcard.