Go West (1940 film)

Go West
Theatrical release poster.
Directed by	Edward Buzzell
Written by	Irving Brecher Buster Keaton (uncredited)
Produced by	Jack Cummings
Starring	Groucho Marx Harpo Marx Chico Marx John Carroll Diana Lewis
Cinematography	Leonard Smith
Edited by	Blanche Sewell
Music by	George Bassman (orchestrations) Georgie Stoll (music direction)
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	December 6, 1940 (1940-12-06)
Running time	80 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Go West (a.k.a. The Marx Brothers Go West) is the tenth Marx Brothers comedy film, in which brothers Groucho, Chico, and Harpo head to the American West and attempt to unite a couple by ensuring that a stolen property deed is retrieved. It was directed by Edward Buzzell and written by Irving Brecher, who receives the original screenplay credit.

Plot

Confidence man S. Quentin Quale (Groucho) heads west to find his fortune. In the train station, he encounters crafty brothers Joseph (Chico) and Rusty Panello (Harpo) who manage to swindle his money. The Panellos are friends with an old miner named Dan Wilson (Tully Marshall) whose property, Dead Man's Gulch, has no gold. They loan him their last ten dollars for a grub stake and he gives them the deed to the Gulch as collateral. Unbeknownst to Wilson, the son of his longtime rival and beau to his granddaughter Eve Wilson (Diana Lewis), Terry Turner (John Carroll) has contacted the railway to arrange for them to build through the land, making the deed holder rich.

Cast

• Groucho Marx - S. Quentin Quayle
• Chico Marx - Joseph Panello
• Harpo Marx - Rusty Panello
• John Carroll - Terry Turner
• Diana Lewis - Eve Wilson
• Walter Woolf King - John Beecher
• Robert Barrat - "Red" Baxter
• June MacCloy - Lulubelle
• Tully Marshall - Dan Wilson
• Iris Adrian - Mary Lou
• Joan Woodbury - Melody
• George Lessey - The Railroad President
• Joe Yule - Crystal Palace Bartender Joe
• Mitchell Lewis - Halfbreed Indian Pete

Production

Like other Marx Brothers films, Go West has several musical numbers, including "As if I Didn't Know" and "You Can't Argue with Love" both by Bronislau Kaper and Gus Kahn, "Ridin' the Range" by Roger Edens and Gus Kahn, "From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water" by Charles Wakefield Cadman and "The Woodpecker Song" by Harold Adamson and Eldo di Lazzaro. (In this song, Chico, playing the piano, rolls an orange on the keys in sync with the melody.)

Groucho was aged 49 during the filming of Go West, and his hairline had begun receding. As such, he took to wearing a toupee throughout the film, as he did the previous film, At the Circus.

Go West Screenwriter Irving Brecher stood in for an ailing Groucho when publicity stills for the film were first taken. Brecher bore a remarkable resemblance to Groucho and is all but unrecognizable in the photos, sporting Groucho's glasses, greasepaint mustache and eyebrows.

Musical numbers

• "As If I Didn't Know"
• "You Can't Argue With Love"
• "From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water"
• "Ridin' The Range"

Reception

Thomas M. Pryor of The New York Times called the film "an unevenly paced show" with "only one really funny sequence," referring to the climax. Variety wrote, "The three Marx Bros. ride a merry trail of laughs and broad burlesque in a speedy adventure through the sagebrush country," adding that the film had "many fresh situations for the Marxian antics." Harrison's Reports wrote that it was "much better than their last two pictures" and that the final twenty minutes "should thrill as well as amuse spectators." Film Daily called it "wildly funny in places, amusing for the most part and dead in one or two spots that a little editing could improve." John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote, "Possibly not the most strenuous Marxian product that we have seen, the picture nevertheless is very satisfactory and quite lunatic enough."

External links

• Go West at the TCM Movie Database
• Template:Amg movie
• Go West at IMDb