THE BIG STORE
US, 1941, 83 minutes. Black and white.
The Marx Brothers, Tony Martin, Virginia Grey, Margaret Dumont, Douglass Dumbrille, Virginia O’ Brien.
Directed by Charles Reisner.
The Big Store came after the great success of A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, directed by A-director Sam Wood. After that the brothers made Go West and The Big Store at MGM, with Charles Reisner as director, who directed some of the Abbott and Costello comedies. Many see it as a come-down for the brothers. They didn’t make another film for five years until A Night in Casablanca.
The Big Store has a flimsy plot, the plans of a tycoon to take over the department store (Douglass Dumbrille, regular villain in many films including Lost in a Harem, directed by Reisner, with Abbott and Costello. The store is owned by Margaret Dumont, who appeared as the foil for Groucho Marx in seven Marx Brothers films. It is also co-owned by a young man, played by Tony Martin early in his career. He has several songs, especially a love song that he records for an avid fan, as well as serenading Virginia Grey. There are other songs in the film, including The Tenement Symphony, a strange mixture of classics, popular crooning at the time with reference to a lot of the great musical classics. There is also a comic song sung by Virginia O’Brien? (who always sang without any facial expression) and taken up by Groucho Marx in an ensemble presentation. The Tenement Symphony is presented in the department store – on a stage that looks like a variation on Carnegie Hall.
While the plot is flimsy, it does give an opportunity for Groucho Marx, as Wolf J. Flywheel, to pretend to be a detective and solve the mystery in the department store. Harpo portrays his assistant and chauffeur – who also has an opportunity, of course, to play the harp. The harp sequence is quite impressive with two mirrors where Harpo plays a cello in one mirror and a violin in the other, forming a trio with his harp-playing. The music is both classic and contemporary. Harpo also has an opportunity to do a piano duet with Chico, always a staple of the Marx Brothers’ films.
What the films are mainly remembered for, apart from the musical interludes, are the one-liners from Groucho, the innuendo, his silly walk, his moustache, his eyebrow-raising – and his continued baiting of Margaret Dumont.
There is an elaborate chase sequence throughout the store as the culmination of the film, the brothers in pursuit of the villain, on skates, on bicycles, on wheels, up and down chutes – an amusing culmination to one of their minor films.
