“We took some pictures of the native girls but they weren't developed. But we're going back again in a couple of weeks!”—Captain Spaulding (played by Groucho Marx), in Animal Crackers
(The play Animal Crackers, featuring the Marx Brothers, opened on Broadway on this date in 1928, at the 44th Street Theater, and proceeded to run for 191 performances. While doing the show, the comedy team committed to making their first film, Coconuts—thus bringing their brilliantly anarchic style, filled with the kind of double entendres above, to masses that, during the Great Depression, very much needed to see it.
By the way, the play was written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, who would go on to collaborate with George and Ira Gershwin on the great Pulitzer Prize-winning musical about Presidential politics, Of Thee I Sing.)
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