Marxist Watch: The Cocoanuts (1929)

Watched:  08/19/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR hosted by Eddie Muller

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Florey and Joseph Stantley

Apparently the first-ish Marx Bros. movie, The Cocoanuts (1929) is also an early talkie.  So, yeah, someone said "we're adding sound!" and someone said "What people need is to keep up with Groucho and then have Harpo say nothing.  Ever."

The movie is more interesting than laugh out loud funny - but it sure feels like a draft of what was to come and what would work for the Marx Bros. for years to come.  Playing scrappy underdogs not above some lightly criminal doings, but with hearts of gold, the Marx Bros. are dropped into a scenario where Groucho plays someone who has fallen backwards into legitimacy, while Chico and Zeppo show up on the scene to see what they can shake loose, moneywise, from a collection of wealthy people.

As I'll often point out here, maybe the biggest difference between the 21st and 20th Century when it comes to cinema is that the 21st Century does not like stories about scrappy underdogs making fun of the elite.  There is no Flashdance.  There is no Rocky.  Warner Bros. was so horrified about their own movie about a cartoon coyote taking ACME to court, they tried to bury the movie and then sold it to someone else to release.  We can't get a good Bugs Bunny cartoon, because they keep making him play basketball or be a middle-class guy instead of a rabbit fucking with bullies, from Elmer Fudd to Opera singers.  

We're siding with Yosemite Sam out here and it shows.

In this film, we get not just the first movie with the Marx Brothers, we get the first appearance of Signal Watch fave Margaret Dumont, the world's best straight-man.  Here she plays the mother of Mary Eaton, a young lady Dumont wants to marry for money, not for love.  

A priceless necklace is involved, a scheme to win the girl is hatched, the Marx Brothers get involved, and there's a whole sequence at a property auction (I guess Florida real estate was a hot commodity in the 1920's?) and then an engagement party.  Shirts are stolen, drinks are consumed, cracks are wised.

The lad Dumont wants Eaton to marry is a hotel clerk who is trying to become an architect, played by Oscar Shaw.  I didn't know the name Mary Eaton, and Oscar Shaw was new to me.  Eaton only made about five movies and dipped.  Shaw was apparently more of a Broadway guy and headed back to New York by 1930.

I'll be candid and say the eye-catching one here is Kay Francis, who plays a schemer looking to make some money and ruin Mary Eaton's life in the process.  Francis looks every bit the high-class flapper, and was the Queen of Warner Bros. in the 1930's.  I had to look at pictures of her from the 1930's to fully remember who she was (oh, how time makes stars fade away).  

Released in 1929, the movie is clearly from the first wave of talkies.  It's stilted, they actually stumble over one another's lines sometimes, and the camera is mostly just trying to sit still and let the Marx Brothers run around and do their thing.  But with sound came music, and so we stop for some musical numbers, from romantic ballads to floor-show routines as the bell hops in the hotel movie are all young women.

What is *not* surprising is that after however many vaudeville performances, the Marx Bros. have their routine down, and it's everyone else to catch up.

This one was more of a fun ride to see an early movie than anything that made me laugh uproariously, but it's a fun artifact.  It's just not where I'd start someone with the Marx Bros. if you're trying to sell them on the group.