LITMIR.BIZ

      HARPO GIVES HIMSELF BREASTS Harpo reenters, wearing Basil-the-basso-detective’s shirt, as the gathered assembly sings “He Wants His Shirt” to the tune of Carmen’s “Habanera.” Harpo’s chest, proudly puffed out, imitates a mammary shelf; with thumbs he further stretches his shirt into fake breasts, although, with honker protruding and cigarillo in mouth, he stakes a phallic claim. He removes the shirt, gives it to Basil, and reaches out to shake his hand—but the offended party doesn’t notice the peace offering. Accustomed to rebuff, Harpo with cigarette/lollipop in mouth gazes perplexedly into his intermediate sliver of respite. How to describe this home-region? Harpo’s gaze always wants to deviate toward that neutral destination, a corner of truce, requiring no eye contact. The comic height difference between Basil and Harpo paradoxically favors the shortie: knowing his smallness, he can make use of it. Basil may be tall, but Harpo, undeterred by his own apparent insignificance, dominates with sombrero and cigarillo. He inconspicuously inserts a bubble in his mouth (I notice only because I’m advancing frame-by-frame); he blows the bubble, which, more Bazooka than smoke ring, steers Harpo back to playland, away from nicotine adulthood. Observe Harpo’s oral inconsequence: while Basil sings, out Harpo’s mouth the compensatory gum-globe protrudes, explanatory as a cartoon’s “thought bubble.” Harpo looks downward at the sphere—a mini-artwork—he happily blows. He looks like an entranced boy in a Chardin painting (The Soap Bubble)—an image of suspended time, of art’s effort to deter movement by making material interventions (bubbles, paint-marks) that seem insubstantial but that convey, in their ephemerality, a buried power. A bubble is the extent of Harpo’s accomplishment, and it is, I believe, monumental.

      HARPO’S CODPIECE Harpo finesses “crotch,” that difficult zone. Strange sashes, gathering below his waist, mark his crotch but also turn it into a miasma of visual confusion and excess, prompting the question: what’s going on down there? Harpo’s clothes comically emphasize his phallic side but also reformat it. His sash looks like a postcastration bandage—or a disguise to keep the penis invisible—or a device to emphasize it—or an inventive, unclassifiable development in haute couture.

      FLEEING SOMEONE ELSE’S STINK BOMB Listening, at the dinner table, to Groucho’s speech, Harpo finds it so cheesy that he stiffens his shoulders (the “I’ve taken a dump” look), grimaces, chews a cigarette, and eases off-camera, as if holding his nose against the fumes of oratorical offness. He inconspicuously returns to the table and wipes his mouth; off-camera, he took a swig. As Margaret Dumont declaims her speech in stickily operatic recitative, Harpo rises with a semi-Gookie, shoulders hunched, and stands to leave again, moving a few steps toward the exit and then slowly pivoting to look once more at Margaret, whose verbal inauthenticity appalls him. He seems frozen in a wince, as if someone threw a pie in his face—but Harpo himself hurled the banana cream. He holds the wince for an abnormally long beat. Language sickens him. All he wants is food and drink, objects to suck and hold, tasty appendages, costumes he can bend and reinvent. I love Harpo’s “I’m fleeing your stink bomb” semi-Gookie, his face a fixed mask of displeasure, arms monkey-stretched and pendent, fag dangling from his lips, sombrero incongruous. Harpo’s stink bomb–fleeing posture offers a model for righteous, visible protest: he authorizes anyone to skulk away from unpleasant harangues and overblown festivities.

      THE “SHOVE-OFF” GESTURE Cyril-the-crook stands to give a toast, whose pomposity Harpo can’t bear: rouged lips spread, teeth clenching a cig, shoulders tightened and hunched, he escapes to the punch-bowl table and aims back to the orator a dismissive “aw shucks” hand movement, which goes unseen.

      From TV reruns of the Little Rascals, in the 1960s, my little brother learned a similar gesture: Froggy, a runty, croak-voiced Rascal, waved his hand at an ignoramus and said, “Aw, raspberries,” as if saying “fuck off” or “go fly a kite.” Once, in seismic revolt, my brother said “Aw, raspberries” to my mother. “Aw, raspberries” undermines the potentate with a remark so puny, so comically mismatched to the occasion (raspberries aren’t Molotov cocktails), that the Law can only mope and retreat.

      THE STACKING GAME Harpo again returns to the banquet table. His lipstick— reapplied between takes?—looks fruity. He hits his own knee to test its reflex. Then he hits the vamp’s knee. Out pops her leg, which Harpo lays on his lap. Recanting, he gives the “Aw, raspberries!” hand gesture and rests his leg on Chico’s lap instead. Chico refuses the gift, but Harpo tries again. The stacking game has commenced, a pleasurable chance for limbs to echo and confuse: hand, hand, leg, leg. Chico puts a leg on Harpo’s, and Harpo an arm on Chico’s, and eventually their extremities are mutually entangled—an instance of pretzel consciousness. The brothers cram together in symbiotic homeostasis, gaily amniotic, like Tristan and Isolde, or Siamese twins, or death-drive doppelgängers.

      To the crowd, Groucho says, “I want to present a charming young lady”; in response, Harpo stands, takes off his hat, and bows, although Chico, disgusted, tells him to sit down. The silent lad eagerly claims any stray designation, even “young lady.”

      Inappropriate behavior: last night I dreamt that I threw a filthy party. An unwanted guest dropped food on my grand piano’s keys and clogged the toilet with mechanical objects—hardware not meant to be flushed down.

      RECOGNITION Last cameo: all four Marx brothers together face the camera and wave, greeting us. Harpo waves with a limp wrist—signal of babyishness, comfort, soggy boundaries, “cuteness,” exemption. (The gods have granted Harpo amnesty from stiffness.) Limpness causes him no remorse. Waving, the hand moves independently from the wrist. I admire his well-differentiated joints; his body’s tuned elements can wiggle separately, with a temperate, inverted bravura that masquerades as foolishness but transmits unspoken wisdom.

      Intercut with the Marx brothers waving is goody-goody Oscar “Schwartz” Shaw embracing Mary Eaton while she sings “When My Dreams Come True.” The film ends with Harpo’s unspeakable dream-wish fulfilled: chance and intrepidity have reunited the far-flung brothers. We celebrate their reabsorption into recognition’s home-like echo chamber. (They recognize each other, and we recognize them:

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