Margaret Dumont - Performances With The Marx Brothers

Performances With The Marx Brothers

She then came to the attention of writer George S. Kaufman, who hired her to play the dowager Mrs. Potter alongside the Four Marx Brothers in their Broadway production of The Cocoanuts in 1925. In October 1928, their next Broadway show, Animal Crackers, opened, and Dumont was again cast as the wealthy society dowager and their straight woman. In 1929 they filmed the screen version of The Cocoanuts.

Performing with the Marx Brothers, Dumont played wealthy high-society, posh-voiced widows whom Groucho alternately insulted and romanced for their money. The roles are Mrs. Potter in The Cocoanuts (1929), Mrs. Rittenhouse in Animal Crackers (1930), Mrs. Gloria Teasdale in Duck Soup (1933), Mrs. Claypool in A Night at the Opera (1935), Emily Upjohn in A Day at the Races (1937), Mrs. Suzanna Dukesbury in At the Circus (1939), and Martha Phelps in The Big Store (1941). Her work in A Day at the Races earned her a Best Supporting Actress Award from the Screen Actors Guild, film critic Cecilia Ager suggesting that a monument be erected in honor of her courage and steadfastness in the face of the Marx Brothers' antics.

Groucho once said that many people believed they were married in real life, even though they were not. A typical exchange, from Duck Soup, follows:

Groucho: Oh, uh, I suppose you'll think me a sentimental old fluff, but would you mind giving me a lock of your hair?

Dumont (smitten): A lock of my hair? Why, I had no idea you ...

Groucho: I'm letting you off easy. I was gonna ask for the whole wig!

Dumont also endured dialogue about her characters' (and thus her own) stoutish build, as with these lines, also from Duck Soup:

Dumont: I've sponsored your appointment because I feel you are the most able statesman in all Freedonia.

Groucho: Well, that covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself! You'd better beat it; I hear they're going to tear you down and put up an office building where you're standing!

and:

Groucho: Why don't you marry me?

Dumont: Why, marry you?

Groucho: You take me, and I'll take a vacation. I'll need a vacation if we're going to get married. Married! I can see you right now in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove!

Or her age (in their last film pairing, The Big Store):

Dumont (kittenish after Groucho steals a peck): You make me think of my youth.

Groucho: Really? He must be a big boy by now.

Dumont's character would often give a short, startled or confused reaction to such insults, but would not otherwise respond and appeared to forget the insult quickly.

Dumont's presumed ladylike innocence, in contrast to Groucho's perpetual leer, was fodder for Groucho's oft-stated comment that the brothers had to explain jokes like this to her:

Groucho (to the other brothers, during a battle sequence in Duck Soup): Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did!

and this, from A Night at the Opera:

Dumont: Do you have everything, Otis?

Groucho: I've never had any complaints yet!

But there could be fleeting moments of touching consideration shown by Groucho in their faux romances, as in the party scene from The Big Store:

Dumont: Oh, I'm afraid after we're married a while a beautiful young girl will come along and you'll forget all about me.

Groucho: Don't be silly. I'll write you twice a week.

Decades later in his one man show at New York's Carnegie Hall, Groucho mentioned Dumont's name and got a burst of applause. He falsely informed the audience that she rarely understood the humor of their scenes together and would ask him, "Why are they laughing, Julie?" ("Julie" was her nickname for Julius, Groucho's birth name). Dumont was so important to the success of the Marx Brothers films, she is one of the few people mentioned by Groucho in his short acceptance speech for an honorary Oscar (the other four are Harpo, Chico, his mother, and his companion Erin Fleming. Zeppo Marx was omitted). In her interviews and press profiles, Dumont preserved the myth of her on-screen character: the wealthy, regal woman who never quite understood the joke. Dumont's acting style, especially in early films, provides a window into the old-fashioned theatrical style of projecting to the back row, such as trilling the "r" for emphasis. She also had a classical operatic singing voice which screenwriters eagerly used to their advantage.

Perpetuating Groucho's joke on the subject, film critics and historians have incorrectly stated for decades that since Dumont never broke character or cracked a smile at Groucho's jokes, she did not "get" the Marx Brothers' type of humor. The fact is she knew the jokes were funny indeed, but as a seasoned actress and a professional kept a straight face no matter what. In the early Marx brothers films especially, when Groucho levels an insult at her, she can be seen giving an appropriate and fleeting "shocked" response as part of her characterization. One exception to her sticking with the script occurred in her last appearance with Groucho in 1965 on ABC-TV's Hollywood Palace. Mid-way through a recreation of a scene from Animal Crackers, Groucho stopped her as she was about to deliver her next line. "Don't step on those few laughs I have up here" he scolded, which made Dumont break up laughing.