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The Cocoanuts Overview:

The Cocoanuts (1929) was a Comedy - Musical Film directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santley and produced by Jesse L. Lasky, Walter Wanger and Monta Bell.

SYNOPSIS

The first, and widely regarded to be the zaniest, of the Marx Brothers' films. The film takes place in a Miami hotel during the land boom, and the Marxes hilariously oversee the arrival and departure of herds of comical millionaire travelers. The brothers freely reign ad-lib and riff on the Kaufman script. Florey was better known for his expressionist horror films.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).

The Cocoanuts BlogHub Articles:

The Cocoanuts (1929, Robert Florey and Joseph Santley)

By Andrew Wickliffe on Jul 7, 2018 From The Stop Button

The only stand-out sequence in The Cocoanuts comes at the end, when Chico is playing the piano. One of the directors–or both of them–finally had a good instinct and cut to a close-up of Chico’s hands playing. It overrides the first shot of the piano playing, which doesn’t show Chico’s hand... Read full article

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The Cocoanuts Quotes:

Hammer: [to Margaret Dumont] An empty bungalow just for you and me, where we could bill and cow - no, we could bull and cow...
Hammer: Well, my mother and father talked it over and they finally moved to New York, a little house in the Bronx. And it was in that little house that Abraham Lincoln was born, much to my father's surprise. And that, boys and girls, was the beginning of the Lincoln Highway.
Hammer: [on phone] You want to know where you can get a hold of Mrs. Potter? I don't know, she's awfully ticklish.
Hammer: Three years ago I came to Florida without a nickel in my pocket. Now I've got a nickel in my pocket.
Hammer: I can see it now: you and the moon - wear a necktie so I'll know you.
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The Cocoanuts Facts
The only Irving Berlin musical that did not spawn a "hit" song.
Of the film's two directors, Groucho Marx once said, "One of them French-born Robert Florey didn't understand English, and the other one former dance director Joseph Santley didn't understand comedy."
During the "Why a duck?" sequence, it seems that Groucho almost calls Chico "Ravelli", which is Chico's character in Animal Crackers. Since they were shooting The Cocoanuts in the morning and acting in Animal Crackers at night, this mix up is understandable.
Co-writer Morrie Ryskind claims he was told that movie audiences would not accept the musical convention of having an orchestral background appear from nowhere at the start of a song. For an entire day, an orchestra was hired to be filmed as playing the background to the movie's love songs, but the movie's crew forgot to film them. The movie went out without the orchestra shots, and, "No one cared, of course," said Ryskind.
The sight gags in which Harpo eats the lobby's telephone and drinks from the inkwell were not in the original play. Robert Florey improvised the gags to give Harpo bits of silent business to do.
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