From Duck Soup to Duck Rock: On Malcolm McLaren and the Marx Brothers

From Duck Soup to Duck Rock 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I.

 

Although Malcolm McLaren's album Duck Rock [1] was dedicated to his hero Haywire Mac [2], the title is actually a reference to the Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup (1933) and it's no coincidence that McLaren is pictured on the record sleeve wearing a high-cut, double-breasted corduroy jacket based on the one famously worn by Chico [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Duck Soup is a musical black comedy with a satirical edge, directed by Leo McCarey and written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby (with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin). Released by Paramount Pictures in November 1933, it stars the four Marx Brothers; Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo (the latter making his final film appearance). 

 

At the time, the film was not particularly well received; neither by audiences nor critics [4]. However, it's now regarded - along with A Night at the Opera (1935) - as the Marx Brothers' finest achievement, although, personally, I must confess I still don't find it funny even if I have come to appreciate the film's cultural and political significance [5].   

 

Apparently, it was McCarey who suggested the film be called Duck Soup, after earlier working titles - including Firecrackers, Grasshoppers, and Oo La La - had all been abandoned. Amusingly, McCarey had previously used Duck Soup for a silent film starring Laurel and Hardy [6]. 

 

A popular slang expression in the US at that time, duck soup referred to something easy to do (just as, conversely, to duck out of something meant to avoid doing it altogether). 

 

 

III.

 

Paul Gorman mentions that McLaren enjoyed watching Marx Brothers' films at a flea-pit cinema in northwest London during his student days [7], so there's a good chance he saw Duck Soup at this time. 

 

And, interestingly, due to the fact that the film ridicules war and nationalism and also pokes fun at censorship, it was popular with many others on the radical left (or associated with the so-called counterculture) in the 1960s [8].

 

But who knows what Malcolm found so appealing about this movie? 

 

If it wasn't the anarchic, anti-authoritarian, and irreverent elements, then perhaps it was simply the ducks swimming in a kettle and quacking away quite happily that most struck a chord with him; one thinks, for example, of the refrain used in 'Buffalo Gals': Duck! Duck! Duck!   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Duck Rock was released in 1983 on Charisma Records. I have previously published posts inspired by several of the tracks on the album, including 'Buffalo Gals' and 'Double Dutch' - click here and here.

[2] Harry K. McClintock (1884 - 1957), aka Haywire Mac, was (among other things) an American singer-songwriter in the hobo-punk tradition. He is arguably best known for his song "The Big Rock Candy Mountains", about which I have written here. 

[3] The Chico Jacket was part of the McLaren/Westwood collection 'Nostalgia of Mud' (A/W 1983): click here, for a post on this if interested. Unlike Chico Marx, McLaren chose to match the jacket with an Appalachian mountain hat, rather than Tyrolean style headgear.  

 

[4] Duck Soup was not a box office failure - in fact, it was the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1933 - but it didn't go down as well as the producers hoped, possibly because audiences found the anarchic buffoonery and cynicism of the Marx Brothers inappropriate at a time of economic and political crisis.

 

[5] Wishing to play down the political nature of the film, Groucho Marx insisted it had no real significance and was simply four Jewish comics trying to get a laugh. Nevertheless, the Brothers were delighted to hear that Mussolini banned the film in Fascist Italy, having found it personally insulting.

 

[6] The Laurel and Hardy silent short comedy Duck Soup (1927), was directed by Fred Guiol, with Leo McCarey acting as a supervising director. The film was considered lost until a print was discovered in 1974. It was remade as Another Fine Mess in 1930 (dir. James Parrott). 

 

[7] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), pp. 499-500. 

      The cinema attended by McLaren was the Tolmer, situated just a short walk from Euston Station. It was known as the cheapest cinema in London and attracted what might be described as a mixed audience, including cinephiles, prostitutes, and pensioners. It closed in 1972.

 

[8] Whether that includes Woody Allen and The Beatles is debatable, but both the director of Bananas (1971) and the stars of Help! (dir. Richard Lester, 1965) have admitted they drew insparation from Duck Soup.  

 

 

Bonus: to watch the official Duck Soup (1933) trailer on YouTube, please click here.

When Jiggs the Chimp Met Dorothy Lamour

Jiggs and Dorothy Lamour on set in 1936 filming Her Jungle Love (1938), 

where things started happily enough, but sadly ended in tears ...

 

 

I.

 

In his day, Jiggs was the top chimp actor in Hollywood, starring, for example, as Cheeta alongside Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan in Tarzan the Ape Man (dir. W. S. Van Dyke, 1932), as well as featuring in several later Tarzan movies (where he was sometimes cast as Nkima). 

 

He appeared too in the hilarious Laurel and Hardy short, Dirty Work (dir. Lloyd French, 1933), where he was even given a speaking role, uttering the famous last line of the film: 'I have nothing to say.' [1] 

 

Jiggs's was also cast (as Gaga) alongside Dorothy Lamour (as Ulah) in Her Jungle Love (dir. George Archainbaud, 1938). This was to be his final picture, for reasons we shall discuss shortly.  

 

 

II. 

 

Legend has it, that Jiggs had been brought over from Africa by Gary Cooper, but that the latter found him a bit too boisterous and so sold Jiggs to a pair of Hollywood animal trainers, who raised him alongside their pet collie, Spanky, of whom the young chimp was unusually fond - even refusing to work on set at times unless the dog, who exerted a soothing influence, was present. 

 

Unfortunately, it seems that although present on the set of the south seas adventure movie Her Jungle Love, Spanky failed to work his calming canine magic on his simian pal ...

 

For whilst Jiggs and the film's female star Dorothy Lamour initially had a happy relationship - he would lovingly groom her long hair for lice and make her laugh with his monkey tricks - things soured after Jiggs attacked the young actress and she had to be rescued by an on set assistant [2]. Afterwards, Lamour vowed never to work with an animal again (dropping Jiggs in favour of going on the Road with Hope and Crosby).  

That's certainly regrettable and it has left a black mark against his reputation ever since, even though Jiggs had previously shown himself capable of acts of great tenderness towards his female co-stars; one recalls, for example, the fact that on the set of Tarzan the Fearless (dir. Robert F. Hill, 1933) he carefully removed a thorn from the hand of Jacqueline Wells after she and lead actor Buster Crabbe had both failed to extract it.

 

Even more regrettable, however, is the fact that Jiggs died of pneumonia shortly before the release of Her Jungle Love in the spring of 1938; he was just 9-years-old. 

 

Jiggs was laid to rest in the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See the post published on 27 Nov 2023 in which I discuss the idea of having nothing to say: click here. 

[2] Unfortunatey, I don't know what caused this incident. As Jiggs was a sexually immature chimp, one doubts that he was overexcited by the alluring presence of Dorothy Lamour in a sarong. Readers who are interested, however, in the erotic relationship between human females and male chimpanzees, might like an earlier post published on 9 Feb 2017: click here. 

 

[3] Lamour died in September 1996, at the age of 81. She was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park - Hollywood Hills, in Los Angeles. Unlike Jiggs, who has no star, Lamour has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, awarded for her contribution to radio and the motion picture industry.  

I Have Nothing To Say

Jiggs the Chimp as Ollie's evolutionary predecessor in  

the Laurel and Hardy film Dirty Work, (dir. Lloyd French 1933) 

 

 

Sometimes, people tell me they would like to begin writing a blog. But when I ask what's stopping them from doing so, they reply:  I have nothing to say.

 

Having nothing to say, however, didn't prevent some truly great artists from producing some very interesting work; one thinks, for example, of Cage and Beckett, both of whom illustrate the crucial function of silence and how you can build upon or radically foreground nothingness: click here. 

 

One thinks also of Seinfeld - a show famous for being about nothing: click here.   

 

And one remembers also Oliver Hardy's refusal to be fazed by or comment upon events in the classic short film Dirty Work (1933). Even when he is devolved into a chimpanzee after falling into a vat containing Prof. Noodle's rejuvination solution, Ollie still has nothing to say: click here. 

 

If, after explaining all this, any would-be blogger still feels at a loss for words, then I advise them to stick with posting pictures of their cat on Instagram. 

 

 

I Wish I Was Skiing (Fragment from the Dementia Diary)

Stan Laurel (c. 1920)

 

 

When you are living in exile and singlehandedly caring 24/7 for an elderly parent with dementia, then, trust me, all days are bad days [1].

 

But some days are worse than other days and feelings of entrapment, isolation, and violent frustration are overwhelming. Today is one such day. 

 

But, for some reason, at times like this, I always remember Stan Laurel on his death bed telling the nurse that he wished he was skiing: 

 

'Oh, I didn't know you could ski, Mr Laurel', she replied. 

 

To which Stan jokes: 'I can't - but doing anything would be better than this.'

 

Amazingly, thinking of this and of Stan's smiling face - or whistling Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo theme [2] - always manages to bring solace and make happy. 

 

It's not that the latter promises a better tomorrow; rather, it reminds one that in the grand scheme of things there is no grand scheme and life is patently absurd. Ultimately, we are all descendants of Sisyphus, forever pushing a giant rock uphill, or, in the case of Stan and Ollie, a piano up a long flight of steps.      

 

Notes 

[1] For an idea of what a typical day involves, click here. 

 

[2] Laurel and Hardy's cuckoo theme - entitled "Dance of The Cuckoos", was composed by Marvin Hatley. For Stan, the tune's melody represented Oliver Hardy's character  - pompous and dramatic - whilst the harmony represented his own character; somewhat out of key and only able to register two notes: Cu-coo. 

      The original theme, recorded by two clarinets in 1930, was re-recorded with a full orchestra in 1935. It was first used on the opening credits for Blotto (dir. James Parrott, 1930). A full version of Hatley's absurdist masterpiece can be played on YouTube by clicking here. 

 

 

O For a Slice of Possum and Yam!

I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten

Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland [1]

 

 

I.

 

I don't know for sure when the utopian fantasy of Dixie first entered my imagination as a child, or why it has remained there ever since. I've never been to the American South and it's unlikely I ever will. But I've always dreamed of doing so ...

 

 

II. 

 

I suspect I first heard of this mytho-cultural region [2] in the classic Laurel and Hardy film Way Out West (1937). 

 

At the end of the movie, their troubles over, Stan and Ollie - accompanied by a young women on a mule - decide to head way down south where the hens are doggone glad to lay / scrambled eggs in the new mown hay ... [3] 

 

I don't know if that's true about the hens, but it illustrates the thing that people in the Southern States pride themselves on and value above all else: hospitality.     

   

III.     

 

Southern hospitality - like much else associated with Dixie - is today sneered at and cast in a negative political light. The courtesy, kindness, and generosity shown to strangers was founded, it is pointed out, on a system of slavery:

 

"African Americans had little place in this initial conceptualization of hospitality beyond the role of servant. Yet, it was the labor and hardships of the enslaved that allowed southern planters to entertain their guests so lavishly and seemingly so effortlessly. Southern hospitality from and for whites was in large part achieved by being inhospitable and inhumane to African Americans." [4] 

 

This (apparent) contradiction is usually presented as evidence of the corruption and hypocrisy of Southern society in the antebellum era, but it could be seen to provide a justification for slavery - if one wished to misinterpret the above somewhat perversely.

 

At any rate, one is reminded of Nietzsche's contention that, contrary to the liberal belief that slavery and suffering are morally objectionable and that society should therefore do everything in its power to eradicate these twin evils, culture requires cruelty ... [5]    

 

 

13-starred variant of the first national flag of

the Confederate States of America (1861-1865)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from I Wish I Was in Dixie (1859), by Dan Emmett (1815-1904). 

      If best remembered today as the composer of this song, Emmett was also founder of the Virginia Minstrels, the first troupe of performers in this tradition. To listen to a contemporary version of Dixie, sung by Bob Dylan, click here.

 

[2] Obviously, Dixie - or, if you prefer, Dixieland - isn't purely a mytho-cultural fantasy. But whilst it refers to the Southern States, there's no agreement about which ones; i.e., there's no clear or official definition of which states constitute the region, although most people would agree that, at the very least, it includes (or at one time included) the eleven states which seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy in 1860-61: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. 

      I have to admit, I like the idea that the location and boundaries of Dixie have, over time, become increasingly subjective and variable. I like also that the origins of the term Dixie are themselves obscure and disputed. 

 

[3] As they set off on their journey, the happy trio break into their version of the Irving Berlin / Ted Snyder song, I Want to Be in Dixie (1912): click here.

 

[4] Derek H. Alderman and E. Arnold Modlin Jr., 'Southern hospitality and the politics of African American belonging: an analysis of North Carolina tourism brochure photographs', Journal of Cultural Geography, Vol. 30, No. 1, (2012), pp. 6-31. The lines quoted are on p. 12. Click here to read as a pdf online.

      For a book-length study of this topic, see: Anthony Szczesiul, The Southern Hospitality Myth: Ethics, Politics, Race, and American Memory, (University of Georgia Press, 2017).      

[5] Nietzsche's thoughts on this topic are explicit and he doesn't shy away from drawing the social and political implications of his view that a high level of culture requires discipline, breeding, and hierarchy; that man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him.

      Of course, the good people of the South, such as Alexander H. Stephens, who vehemently defended the institution of slavery, based their arguments for white supremacy on spurious racial science, the so-called laws of nature, and biblical teaching; not Nietzschean philosophy. Similarly, when it came to being hospitable, they acted in the name of Jesus, not Zarathustra, and their good deeds were a reflection of their Christian beliefs. 

      It's difficult to imagine Nietzsche siding with the Confederacy, therefore, although there are some scholars, such as Martin A. Rhuel - a lecturer in German intellectual history at Cambridge - who would disagree. See his essay 'In defence of slavery: Nietzsche's dangerous thinking', in the Independent (12 January 2018): click here.