A week or so back, I snickered (rather loudly) at the expense of Ann Coulter, to the extent of complimenting her, with rather heavy-handed irony, on her looong memory (‘cause she’s, you know, old) for pop cultural trivia, to wit: Her awareness of the fourth Marx brother, “Zeppo”.1 In the course of doing so, I spoke rather slightingly of Zeppo’s talents, saying that the best thing he ever did was to steal Maurice Chevalier’s passport in Monkey Business, setting up a scene where all four brothers (not just the three “funny” ones, as I said the first time around) try to get through customs as Chevalier, each of them singing “If the Nightingales Could Sing Like You” (They’d Sing Much Sweeter Than They Do) to prove it.
Well, as the above clip shows, the Chevalier imitations were a recycle from an earlier stage number from the show I’ll Say She Is, which ran on Broadway in 1926. (I couldn’t locate the MB clip.) What’s “interesting” to me is that, in both this clip and the movie, Zeppo sings the line “They’d Sing Much Sweeter Than They Do” as “They’d Sing Much Better Than They Do,” the substituted comparative being less specific, and thus less interesting, than the correct “sweeter”. In the film version, Chico further butchers the line as “They’d Sing Much Better Than You Do”, which isn’t even a compliment. Only Groucho, the true professional, gets it right (both times).
As for the clip itself, antiquarians, and no one else, will relish the cheesy couplets and dated references. The film itself is quite similar, though fifteen times longer, but the customs scene is still funny.
1. The snickering occurs in the "Afterwords" at the end of the piece.
