The Marx Bros. – A Night in Casablanca

“A Night in Casablanca” (German: “Eine Nacht in Casablanca“) is the twelfth joint film of the legendary Marx Brothers and a parody of the film “Casablanca” with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman from 1942. UCM.ONE releases this film with the English title: “A Night in Casablanca” on the label M-Square Classics for the first time in HD scanned and restored as a limited media book with DVD and Blu-Ray together with a 16-page booklet in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Synopsis:

Morocco during the Second World War: The German army (“Wehrmacht”) has deposited stolen valuable art objects in a secret mezzanine of a hotel. Count Pfefferman alias Heinrich Stubel, his assistant Kurt and his lover Beatrice Rheiner are now trying to get them out of the country. To this end, they murder the managers of the hotel in the hope that Count Pfefferman will be appointed manager. Unfortunately, Ronald Hühnerpuster (Groucho Marx) is hired as manager. Now they also try to get him out of the way. But finally, together with Rusty (Harpo Marx) and Corbaccio (Chico Marx), he finds out where the works of art are hidden in the hotel. They now do everything they can to prevent them from getting out of the country and the villains from getting behind bars.

About director Archie Mayo:

Archibald L. „Archie“ Mayo – born on 29 January 1891 in New York – began his career first as a stage actor and gag writer before he went to Hollywood in his early twenties and made his directing debut in 1917 with his first short film “A Nurse of an Aching Heart“. Until the middle of the 1920s Mayo made several short movies especially for the Christie Studios, his first feature “Money Talks” he shot in 1926 with Claire Windsor and Owen Moore in the leading roles. His other movies between 1927 and 1937 were made almost exclusively in cooperation with Warner Brothers. Here he made movies with well-known faces like Kay Francis, James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck. He quickly gained the reputation to be an efficient director who didn’t focus on himself but on his leading actors and tailored movies and roles to them.

The thriller „The Petrified Forest“ from 1936 is one of his most famous movies. The leading roles were played by the film legends Bette Davis, Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart. In the 1940’s he concentrated more on comedies and had great success with “Charly’s Aunt” (1941) and “A Night in Casablanca” (1946), the penultimate movie of the Marx Brothers. After his last appearance as a director, the fantasy movie “Angel on My Shoulder“, he retired from the film business in 1946. He spent the last years of his life together with his wife Barbara Lane until he died of cancer in 1968 at the age of 77 in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was buried on the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and his work as a director, which amounts to 89 movies, was honored with a star on the Walk of Fame.

Die Marx Brothers – blooming nonsense!

When you think of comedy in film, there are some names that have burned themselves into the memory of film culture forever. Whether Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin or the bizarre Monty Pythons, they all went down in film history. This series also includes Leonard, Adolph, Julius, Milton and Herbert Marx, alias the Marx Brothers: Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo and Zeppo.

The brothers grew up in a poor family in New York’s Upper Eastside. Their mother Miene came from Friesland, their father from Alsace. They inherited their mother‘s, a harpist, musical talent, her father had been a ventriloquist. The mother therefore encouraged her sons’ artistic education at an early age, with Harpo in particular standing out and mastering six instruments in the course of his life. He owed his nickname “Harpo” to his love for the harp. Chicos instrument of choice was the piano, Zeppo sang, while Groucho both sang and played guitar. They made their first appearances in Vaudeville, inspired by their uncle Albert Schönberg, who was famous as one half of the duo Gallagher and Shean. Groucho made his debut  as a singer in 1905 and founded the trio “The Three Nightingales” with his brother Gummo and Mabel O’Donell in 1907. One year later Harpo expanded the trio to a quartet and finally formed, together with their mother and their aunt Hannah, the “Six Mascots“.

„If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world’s against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier to do, do it.“ (Harpo Marx)