Margaret Dumont
Nascimento : 1882-10-20, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Morte : 1965-03-06
História
Margaret Dumont would probably consider it a tragedy that she is best-known for her performances as the ultimate straight woman in seven of the Marx Brothers' films (including most of their best). By all accounts she never understood their jokes (offscreen and on), which is of course a major reason why she's so funny. Apart from a small role in a 1917 Dickens adaptation, she spent her early career on the stage, ending up with the Marxes in the late 1920s in the stage versions of The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930), and was given a Paramount contract at the same time they were. She played similar roles alongside other great comedians, including W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy and Jack Benny and also played straight dramatic parts (her chief love), but few of them made much impact - it is as Groucho Marx's foil that she ranks among the immortals, and she died shortly after being reunited with him on "The Hollywood Palace" (1964).
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A fascinating look at the most beloved comedy team in motion picture history. Exclusive interviews with those closest to the brothers supplement this collection of highlights from their film, theater, and television appearances and offer a compelling look at their lives both on and off-screen.
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Glenn Ford narrates this hilarious look back at the greatest comedians in movie history.
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É a sequência de Era Uma Vez em Hollywood, de 1974. A produção mostra uma retrospectiva dos principais filmes produzidos pela MGM dentre os períodos de 1930 a 1950. Neste segundo documentário, arquivistas destacaram números musicais pouco conhecidos dos arquivos da MGM, e também tributos a alguns dos times de comédia mais famosos da MGM, como os Irmãos Marx, e Laurel e Hardy, duplas românticas como Spencer Tracy e Katharine Hepburn, e uma montagem de estrelas icônicas como Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, James Stewart, Lana Turner e Greta Garbo. Gene Kelly e Fred Astaire apresentam o filme e Kelly dirigiu as cenas introdutórias, como a volta dele à Paris, na qual foi rodada dois dos filmes mais famosos da MGM "Sinfonia de Paris" e "Gigi".
Self (archive footage)
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
Mrs. Foster
A four-time widow discusses her four marriages, in which all of her husbands became incredibly rich and died prematurely because of their drive to be rich.
Persephone Updike
Jonathan Jones, a professor of ancient languages, comes into possession of an ancient coin. He translates its inscription, which gives him three powers: to inflict pain, slow down time or kill. Soon, he's pursued by enemy spies who have learned about the magic coin.
Noblewoman in Play (uncredited)
Mame Dennis, a progressive and independent woman of the 1920s, is left to care for her nephew Patrick after his wealthy father dies. Conflict ensues when the executor of the father's estate objects to the aunt's lifestyle and tries to force her to send Patrick to prep school.
Georgianna Fitzdingle
A TV star meets with opposition from adults who object to the opening of a rock 'n' roll palace for teens.
Mrs. Whitelaw
A gangster and his wife attempt to go straight. Comedy. Remake of the 1938 film "A Slight Case of Murder".
Mrs. Agnes Hawthorne
After beginning their train trip to California, a famous film actress and her daughter discover their compartment has also been assigned to a handsome biology professor. Comedy.
Mrs. Hendrickson
Lou Costello plays a country bumpkin vacuum-cleaner salesman, working for the company run by the crooked Bud Abbott. To try to keep him under his thumb, Abbott convinces Costello that he's a crackerjack salesman. This comedy is somewhat like "The Time of Their Lives," in that Abbott and Costello don't have much screen time together and there are very few vaudeville bits woven into the plot.
Aunt Dolly / Aunt Arabella
The story involves a rather odd flashback by Dale who is visiting El Dorado, home of her grandmother. She dreams about her grandmother's adventures including a romance with a cowboy who looks very much like Roy. Roy, of course, also exists in the present for Dale.
Mrs. Standish
Joe Davis Sr., headliner at a big nightclub, is visited by medical student son Joe Jr., who to Dad's chagrin wants to be a crooner, and soon comes between Dad and his girlfriend Claire. So glamorous dancer Bonnie is enlisted to distract Junior. Which does Bonnie want more, the fur coat or true love? Plot is a framework for numerous Ziegfeld style stage productions.
Mme. Traviata / Miss Rodholder
A trumpet player in a radio orchestra falls asleep during a commercial and dreams he's Athanael, an angel deputized to blow the Last Trumpet at exactly midnight on Earth, thus marking the end of the world.
Mrs. Allenwood
O compositor de canções românticas Steve (Red Skelton) ingressa numa faculdade feminina para tentar reconquistar sua esposa Caroline (Esther Williams), uma treinadora de natação. A partir daí começam muitas confusões, risadas garantidas e memoráveis balés aquáticos. Skelton em ótima forma e Esther Williams abalando os corações com seu corpo escultural, sem contar com inúmeras beldades como alunas da bela Williams. Uma comédia deliciosa.
Mrs. Croxton-Lynch
Circumstances force a womanizing playboy on leave from the Merchant Marine to ask two shipmates to help him by dating two surplus girlfriends.
Mrs. Willoughby
Hypochondriac Danny Weems gets drafted and accidentally smuggles his girlfriend aboard his Pacific-bound troopship.
Louise Harlan
Dois professores de dança trapalhões (Hardy e Laurel) ajudam um inventor desajeitado a vender sua nova invenção e facilitam o romance dele com uma bela jovem da alta sociedade. Eles fazem de tudo para salvar as finanças da sua escola de dança!
Ophelia MacDougal
A nightclub performer, jealous about the talents of an aspiring singer, tries to sabotage her chances at a professional career.
Mme. Langehanke (uncredited)
Breves histórias ligadas por um casaco azarado, uma boa oportunidade para ver algumas grandes estrelas no seu auge. A primeira história é um triângulo amoroso com Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, e Thomas Mitchell. O casaco vai para outro proprietário, um conto fantasioso com Henry Fonda, Ginger Rogers, e Cesar Romero. Em seguida é comprado por Elsa Lanchester para seu marido (da vida real), Charles Laughton, dando má sorte ao músico e compositor. Depois ele vai para as mãos de um advogado expulso, Edward G. Robinson, que encontra um colega de classe, George Sanders, em uma muito elegante reunião da faculdade. O casaco é levado por dois bandidos que o perdem e então é encontrado pelos mais pobres dos pobres da comunidade negra na depressão de 1930, interpretados pelo famoso cantor Paul Robeson e a grande Ethel Waters, que vão ao seu pastor, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, para quem o casaco finalmente traz algo de bom.
Mrs. Culpepper
Two Army sergeants disrupt a bar, a party and an Army-Navy dance.
Flo Faulkner - Landlady
This package for comedy and the musical numbers has Luke Brown being drugged by the gangster operators of the swank Boathouse Inn; most notably Roxie a sexy pickpocket. Brown has information that Chow Brewster and his cousin have inherited $3,000,000. The owner of the Inn intends to keep Brown under wraps until they can drive Chow to suicide. He will then marry Chow's cousin before she finds out about her inheritance.
Mrs. E. V. Lawson
A group of children put on a show in order to prove that a down and out musician was the real composer of a Broadway show's songs.
Mrs. Hemogloben
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is a 1941 film about a man who wants to sell a film story to Esoteric Studios. On the way he gets insulted by little boys, beaten up for ogling a woman, and abused by a waitress. W. C. Fields' last starring role in a feature-length film.
Martha Phelps
Um detetive é contratado para proteger a vida de um cantor, que herdou recentemente uma loja de departamentos do trapaceiro gerente da loja.
Mrs. Franklin Evans
A woman-hater who inherits a beauty salon gets a new perspective on females after capturing a gang of thieves.
Mrs. Suzanna Dukesbury
Jeff Wilson, dono de um pequeno circo, deve US$10.000 ao seu sócio, Carter. Antes que Jeff consiga pagar, Carter permite que seus cúmplices roubem o dinheiro, para que ele fique com o circo só para si. Antonio Pirelli e Punchy, funcionários do circo, juntamente com o advogado Loophole, tentarão encontrar o ladrão e recuperar o dinheiro.
Pantomime Teacher
Aspiring actress Louise Muban attends the prestigious Paris School of Drama during the day and works at a dreary factory assembling gas meters at night. She daydreams and "acts" her way through life, and her fellow students at school begin to suspect her stories are just that - fabrications. After Louise begins to weave an actual meeting with a debonair playboy into a fantasy of club dates and romance, her classmate Nana discovers the lie when she too meets the playboy. Nana sets a trap for Louise, and the result is an end to one fantasy and the realization of another.
Mrs. Bell-Rivington
Snooty heiress decides to track down her dead sister's kids, who are living a Bohemian life with their uncle in Greenwich Village. Once she finds them, she discovers that the Bohemian life is fun and free of the constraints her country-club life places on her. But she decides to take the uncle to court anyway to free him from the kids so he can paint.
Martha Arlington
Two men running a carnival airplane ride are hired to fly to retrieve what they think are photos for a reporter. Actually, they are retrieving diamonds stolen from a noted gem dealer. As it turns out, their plane crashes on the very estate of the dealer. Thinking the duo are police officers, the dealer offers his home for their convalescence from the accident. Meanwhile, the diamonds have been snatched by a kleptomaniac dog and buried on the estate. When the smugglers track down the pair, they try to convince the dealer that they are officials from an institution from which the two have escaped. Before long, the carnival fellows, the crooks, the gem dealer and his family, along with a platoon of cops, are tearing up the grounds to find where the dog has buried the diamonds.
Mrs. Abernathy
Two strangers, a man and a woman, are framed for a jewel robbery and thrown in jail. After they get out, they join forces to track down the real thieves.
Mrs. Penner
A singer finds another heir (Gene Raymond) to marry, to avoid the one (Joe Penner) her mother found.
Emily Upjohn
Em seu papel preferido, Groucho é o Doutor Hugo Z. Hackenbush - Dr., PhD, ABC, BBB, Zyb e mais um montão de siglas. Chico, Harpo e Margaret Dumont também participam desta comédia que é um verdadeiro coice no mau-humor. Divirta-se com um sorvete especial, o exame médico de Dumont, Harpo como uma bela garota e muito mais, à moda dos irmãos Marx.
Mrs. Whitney
Julia and Hap are a dance team. He drinks and gambles, she succeeds for a while with the help of producer Alan.
Mrs. Wentworth
A young man falls in love with a beautiful blonde. When he sees her being forced onto a luxury liner, he decides to follow and rescue her. However, he discovers that she is an English heiress who ran away from home and is now being returned to England. He also discovers that his boss is on the ship. To avoid discovery, he disguises himself as the gangster accomplice of a minister, who is actually a gangster on the run from the law.
Mrs. Claypool
Dois amantes que gostam e trabalham com ópera estão distantes porque o homem não é bem aceito como tenor. Os irmãos Marx, então, fazem com que o tenor normal esteja ausente para o outro ter sua grande chance, através de muitas palhaçadas típicas do grupo.
Woman in Audience Yelling 'Get Off the Stage' (uncredited)
A theatrical star, born on the wrong side of the tracks, marries a drunken blue-blood millionaire.
Mrs. Van Updyke
Tina (Wini Shaw), a singing Gypsy with a band of roving gypsies, is invited by Tom (Phillip Reed) to come over to his mother's (Margaret Dumont) estate where a lawn party is in progress. She brings along her friends and a whole caravan of gypsies take over the green, telling fortunes, singing and dancing. Most of the comedy is supplied by the kleptomaniac butler,Bellingham, (Eddie Shubert) and his employer who humors his nutty ways...as good help seems to be hard to find.
Mrs. Murchison (uncredited)
A managing editor sends a socialite reporter to spy on her boyfriend, mixed up in murder.
Mrs. Baxter
The Great Elmer and Company, two out-of-work magicians, help lovelorn Jerry Bronson adopt Spanky Milford, to distract him. When Bronson makes up and elopes, the pair are stuck with the little boy. But Spanky inherits a Kentucky fortune, so they head south to Banesville, where the Milfords and Wakefields are conducting a bitter feud.
Mrs. Fields
A college football team recruits a tough convict.
Sybilla Crum
Shortly after his arrival from South America to New York, Steven Humbolt is found dead in his apartment at the Savoia Hotel. Inspector Decker Dawes investigates the case and although the cause of death is described as apoplexy, Dawes is convinced it as murder, especially after he learns that Humbolt had been married fifteen times.
Wedding Guest (uncredited)
A polo-playing grandmother and her broke brood get back in the money with a Wall Street bet.
Gloria Teasdale
Rufus T. Firefly é nomeado presidente/ditador da corrupta Freedonia e declara guerra à sua vizinha, Sylvania, disputando o amor da rica Sra. Teasdale.
Duchess Sophie (uncredited)
Sarajevo June 28, 1914. Dushan, the Serbian mayor of a Hungarian town, has come to see the parade of Archduke Ferdinand. While there he runs into Geza, an old friend in the Hungarian Army and invites him to come to his house and visit him and his new wife.
Self
Short film made up of various clips showcasing the Cinecolor process, including a visit to a Marx Brothers film set.
The Queen of Deleria (uncredited)
Joe Penner as a incompetent crown prince in the middle of a revolution.
Blanche Ledyard
A Lothario tries to get arrested as protection from the gangster husband who has threatened him.
Mrs. Rittenhouse
Os Irmãos Marx levam anarquia à festa da alta sociedade em honra do explorador Jeffrey T. Spaulding, que volta da África e onde será exibido quadro caríssimo.
Mrs. Potter
During the Florida land boom, the Marx Brothers run a hotel, auction off some land and thwart a jewel robbery.
Aristocrat (uncredited)
At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Charles Darnay goes to Paris to rescue an imprisoned former family servant. He is himself imprisoned and condemned by the revolutionary forces there. His wife, the former Lucie Manette, is secretly loved by a gentlemanly wastrel, Sydney Carton. Carton embarks on a daring plan to save the husband of the woman he loves.
