Teasdale: I held him in my arms and kissed him.Rufus T. Teasdale: I was with him to the very end.Rufus T. Firefly: I bet he’s just using that as an excuse.Mrs. Firefly: Not that I care, but where is your husband?Mrs.
He asks her to take a card from the deck he’s holding, she does, and he replies, “You can keep it I’ve got 51 left.” Rufus T. She introduces him with a grand proclamation, but in typical Groucho fashion, he’d rather have some fun. Government officials are asking for a loan of $20 million to help bail the country out of debt, but she replies, “The government has been mismanaged,” and tells His Excellency that she’ll only give Freedonia the money they badly need if he steps down from his position, giving his leadership to Rufus T. Gloria Teasdale, explaining how she intends to give no more of her late husband’s money to the fictional Freedonia (“Land of the Spree, and the Home of the Knave”). But before Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo even come on-screen, Dumont appears as Mrs. It’s only 68 minutes long, so every line is packed with multiple gags, ranging from psychical comedy to witty wordplay by the time you’re done laughing at the famous mirror scene, you’ve missed three jokes about selling peanuts.
#Marx brothers mirror scene movie
My favorite Marx Brothers film (and possibly favorite movie altogether) is Duck Soup.
#Marx brothers mirror scene how to
Like her characters, she was occasionally uptight and always mindful of her manners - and she knew how to take a joke, even if she didn’t always understand the punchline, and not be fazed by Groucho Marx. It wasn’t much of a stretch: Dumont was a socialite herself, with homes in California and France. Suzanna Dukesbury, and it’s not too tough to guess that those roles were for uptight socialites, the perfect opposite to the Marx Brothers’ deadpan delivery and slapstick shenanigans. She would also appear in The Cocoanuts (1929), At the Circus (1939), and The Big Store (1941), which are all funny, but not quite as great.ĭumont played characters named Emily Upjohn and Mrs. Of the 16 movies the Marx Brothers made together, at least four could be considered the greatest comedy of all-time: Animal Crackers (1930), Duck Soup (1933), A Night at the Opera (1935), and A Day at the Races (1937), all of which starred not only Groucho, Chico, and Harpo (not poor Zeppo, though), but also Margaret Dumont. Either way, she was cast in the Broadway production of The Cocoanuts, thus beginning her career with Groucho & Co. passed away in 1918, Dumont returned to acting, and was soon introduced to the Marx Brothers by either theater producer Sam Harris or writer George S. She was gorgeous, talented, tall, and smart, but in 1910, she quit the stage and married John Moller, Jr., the son of a millionaire businessman who made his money from owning many sugar refineries. As a teenager, she became an opera singer, then a stage actress, changing her name to Daisy Dumont, then Margaret.
She first lived in Brooklyn, NY, but moved to Atlanta, GA as a child to live with her godfather, Joel Chandler Harris, the author of the Uncle Remis stories.
Margaret Dumont was born Daisy Juliette Baker in 1888.
What a shame she only essentially invented the “straight-woman” character, paving the way for Ann Perkins and Pam Beasley, among dozens of others, years later. Groucho Marx called her “practically the fifth Marx Brother” and she appeared in nearly 60 films in a career spanning four decades, but the name Margaret Dumont is relatively unknown in today’s pop culture.