A Night in Casablanca

In the days of the Depression, when even Hollywood wasn't able to afford high priced films, the Marx Brothers were merely set in front of a rolling camera and untied. The result was a mad sweep stake through the Celluloid, with no handicaps. In comparison, the inflationary "A Night in Casablanca" turns out to be nothing more than a potato sack relay at a Yosian picnic.

Despite lavish sets and a horde of turbaned, five o'clock shadowed extras, "A Night in Casablanca" is a funny picture, but far below the capacities of the Brothers Marx. Its primary fault lies not in the plot, but that there is a plot at all, which, vaguely, concerns a group of post-war Nazis and their attempt to transfer stolen European loot to South America. Director Archie Mayo, evidently a man with a conscience, turns his three charges into fumbling sleuths, who, finally, get their man, if not their woman. Such concern over villains and their "just deserts' cuts the Marx Brothers out of much of the fun, giving Sig Rumann-labelled for future generations as the typical National Socialist-as many scenes as Groucho, Chico and Harpo together. And unlike Margaret Dumont, the gracious Mrs. Rittenhouse of earlier Marx Brothers triumphs, Rumann is not content to remain a foil, and Groucho must contend with him as both a Nazi and a gag-stealer. Harpo, with a new wig and a slightly more fashionable, belt-trailing polo-coat, does his soulful best, but too often must fade out for the sake of the plot. The "situation" routines, a part of the permanent repertoire of the Marx Brothers, were few. Groucho's gags, when he grabbed the opportunity to pull one, were in character. When asked by a seductive Parisienne: "Won't you join me?" he answers, "Why are you coming apart?" The love angle between Charles Drake, a strapping young Frenchman with uncombed hair and Lois Collier, and ex-horse opera heroine, is happily , hardly enough to keep balcony couples interested.

What the management chooses to call the "cohit" is none other than old Richard Dix, sharp of eye and tongue, as "The Mysterious Intruder." S.A.K.