The Big Store (1941)

Starring: The Marx Brothers (Groucho, Chico, Harpo)
Grade: A+

Though much later in the filmography of the Marx Brothers, The Big Store is still full of laughs and a lot of messy fun, a specialty of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo.

Summary

After Ravelli (Chico) shows some kids his piano playing skills at the music conservatory, some repo guys show up to take it. However, Ravelli tells them that somewhat famous singer Tommy Rodgers (Tony Martin) is going to fix everything. Recently, department store owner Hiram Phelps died, and he left half of his store to his nephew in Rodgers. Tommy gets in and stops the repo guys, saying he’s tearing down the conservatory and rebuilding it because he now owns the place. Once they leave, Tommy tells his good friend Ravelli that they’ll start on the renovation once he sells his half of the department store. Mr. Grover (Douglass Dumbrille) is the store manager, and he plans on taking the store for himself. He tells one of his underlings that if Tommy is dead, his share of the store reverts to Martha Phelps (Margaret Dumont), Hiram’s sister and Grover’s fiancée. In this event, he plans on marrying her to take full control of the store. To ensure this happening, Grover’s gives his man the job to take out Tommy. Waiting in the room is the hitman hired for the job, and he’s told to make it look like an accident. Later in the elevator at the store, Tommy tells Ravelli that the Hastings Brothers are more than likely going to buy Tommy’s share. Also in the elevator is the hitman. As Tommy and Ravelli talk, the lights go out for a moment, and the guy knocks out Tommy and escapes when they get to the floor and the lights turn back on. His girlfriend Joan (Virginia Grey), who works in the music department of the store, is the first one to come help him up, as is Mr. Grover. Ravelli suspects some random guy, but nothing comes of it.

Later, Martha wants to phone the police about the issue, but both Tommy and Mr. Grover pass off the whole thing as some one-time disgruntled employee problem. Grover doubles down and mentions how they don’t want any negative publicity or attention either, so Martha secretly goes to hire private detective and bodyguard Wolf J. Flywheel (Groucho). His assistant is Wacky (Harpo). Together, they run Flywheel’s business. It’s not too successful, but he tries to put on a front to hopefully get more money from Martha when she comes in. He says he’ll do the job for $20,000 but is willing to settle for $500 because he was clearly bluffing and needed the work. Before they leave to go back to the store, Martha tells Flywheel that no one at the store can know he’s a detective. Wacky drives them there. Once Flywheel and Martha leave, Wacky holds onto Martha’s purse because she accidentally left it in the backseat. In the office, Mr. Grover tells Joan’s brother Fred, the accountant helping Grover in his takeover plan, that he needs to make sure Joan isn’t a problem now that she’s messing with Tommy. In the music department, Tommy goes and flirts with Joan. They are interrupted when he hears of a customer trying to buy one of his records and they’re sold out, so he records a song right in front of the customer to give to her.

Martha takes Flywheel to meet Mr. Grover, and she tells him Flywheel has been hired as another floorwalker, even though they already have so many. After Flywheel walks around the question of his experience in department stores, he is revealed to be a bodyguard for Tommy after a mini-argument he has with Ravelli while Tommy takes a call, annoying Grover. Grover isn’t a fan of him, but Tommy agrees to the arrangement of two bodyguards once he befriends Flywheel. Next, Wacky tries to return Martha’s purse to the “Lost and Found” but is accused of stealing it after he runs from the store detective. He is retained and brought up to the office where everyone is at, though Flywheel vouches for him and tells everyone that this was all a plan to show how incompetent the store is. It also turns out that Wacky is Ravelli’s brother, and Tommy remembers this.

Everyone agrees to let Flywheel have the keys to the castle, so he enlists Ravelli and Wacky to keep an eye on the dealings of the store, as well as Tommy. Grover, however, is full of plans on how to stop this group, kill Tommy, and take over this store before this potential sale is official.

My Thoughts:

The Big Store is yet again, another underrated gem from the legendary Marx Brothers.

The comedic madness, something we always look forward to in a Marx film, is still there and so is the energy!

Once again, Groucho leads the pack with another classically over-the-top name, playing the lead detective on the case motivated by money, along with the simple fact that he loves to fuck with people. Groucho is hilarious, but you should know this by now. He’s just as quick as ever, especially when he messes with Mr. Grover, but the real entertainment is when he interacts with the no-name characters of the movie, meaning when he gives the customers or random people in the store problems. He’s effortlessly entertaining at it, with quip after quip after quip. Giving him, Chico, and Harpo the job of keeping the store together before this buy-out is funny in and of itself because you know they can’t help but take things into an inevitable direction of chaos. Once they stop interacting with the main cast for the main gag sequences and do their own thing, The Big Store turns into a laugh riot.

Without question, the best scene of the film had to be the bed department sequence. In the scene, some family is interested in buying a bed. To begin, they have to wake up Flywheel who’s sleeping on one, just so he can sell to them. However, right away, he’s mad at them for waking him up. From there, it spirals downward to the point where this family loses half of their kids because they get trapped into some big bunk bed hidden in the floor of the store. Thinking quickly, Flywheel, Ravelli, and Wacky try to sell off some random kids in the store to them and just say that they’re theirs, even if they are obviously not. It’s hilarious and set up and handled so beautifully by the anarchic nature of the brothers. There’s also the fantastic introduction scene of Flywheel and Wacky, something I guarantee will have you snickering the entire time. Of course, the inevitable bits of a Marx Brothers film are still there. There are still some instruments being played with but anything with Chico going to town on the piano is incredibly fascinating to me because of how talented those fingers are of his. Though Harpo’s harp-playing usually bores me, they try something new here. In a dream sequence, we see two other versions of Harpo (three total) playing different instruments on both sides of him as he plays the harp in the middle, like they are a band. In addition, there’s a scene in which both Wacky and Ravelli sit down and play on the same piano, and it was really cool to watch, seeing how they can both entertain and play on the same instrument at the same time. They have done this before, but it was still good enough to note here.

Though The Big Store may not be as well-remembered as classics like Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, or A Day at the Races, it still gets by on bits just as funny as before, a premise well suited to the personas of the brothers we know so well, and there’s an accompanying level of creativity flowing in all directions. Even the musical sequences get a twist, and it’s very welcomed.

Now, there are some unnecessary musical sequences that can’t be avoided, like from co-star Tony Martin who’s the star of the boring love subplot that exists in every movie starring the brothers. He’s a decent singer, but most of the scenes involving him singing are skippable. Martin plays the role that Allan Jones essentially played in A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, but he plays it in an even less entertaining way. I already thought Jones was average, but Martin was a step below that. He wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but he definitely didn’t make the story any more interesting when Groucho, Chico, or Harpo weren’t involved in a scene. On the other hand, Groucho’s rendition of “Sing While You Sell” was actually a great sequence that was both catchy and funny, giving us an amusing moment of Groucho breaking the fourth wall (something he does twice in the movie) talking about how expensive technicolor is. In the middle of the sequence however, there’s this really odd segue of Virginia O’Brien singing “Rock-a-bye Baby” as she looks into the soul of the viewer with a creepy, blank death stare. Not really sure what they were going for here, but her odd expression and tone while singing the song will stay with me for a while. It’s very unsettling. Why she did this and why it was accepted truly baffles me. Thankfully, they go back to Groucho and the rest of the song and ignore her afterwards.

It’s a real missed opportunity that Groucho didn’t use this as another chance to break the fourth wall with a quip because the weirdness of O’Brien’s segue needed to be acknowledged.

Furthermore, I didn’t understand the perplexing scene in which Wacky is accused of stealing Martha’s purse when he’s the one that brings it to the “Lost and Found” department of the store. The store detective tries to forcefully grab him, so Wacky runs and trips. Then, the store detective says he now knows Wacky is a thief because he ran away from him. What?! Why did this motherfucker try to detain him in the first place? Wacky brought the purse up on his own volition! He just found the thing and the store detective immediately tried to arrest him! Why wouldn’t he run?! This dude’s an executioner masquerading as a detective!

Besides Mr. Grover, some of the lower-level villains were a bit underdeveloped and though that’s not necessarily a big deal for a Marx Brothers film, I more mention it because of the missed opportunity. One blonde woman in particular is sent to act like some sort of music official to mess with Tommy and Joan, and she’s built up in the scene prior to make it seem like she was going to be a major supporting player. However, she comes to the music department when the two characters are gone. So, the trio of Flywheel, Ravelli, and Wacky mess with her, and then Wacky messes with her in a follow-up scene. After that, she’s gone. It’s a shame because she could’ve been one hell of a monkey wrench thrown into the narrative to give Tommy some trouble and make things interesting, but she’s forgotten about pretty quickly. Again, it’s not a horrible decision, but it’s at the very least a missed opportunity to flesh out the story and add some more conflict for the good guys to overcome, something they do pretty easily throughout the movie because no one can handle their ridiculousness.

Some say the climactic chase sequence was a bit overdone, but I thought it hit Chaplin-levels of over-the-top fun. Honestly, it might be the most action the brothers have ever seen in the climax of a film, so I’m cool with it. It’s yet another thing that differentiates The Big Store from other movies in the filmography of The Marx Brothers.

The Marx Brothers have so many great movies under their belts, and though it’s not talked about nearly as much as the others, The Big Store is another phenomenal one. In terms of ranking them amongst their other films, I would say it’s better than Room Service (a very close battle at that), and it may be just a step behind At the Circus. Obviously, this could still be debated because I loved all three movies.

Initially, this was intended to be the swan song of the brothers, and though this turned out not to be true, it was still good enough to potentially be one of their last great pictures. It contains all the elements of a classic Marx film and still has plenty of hilarious gags and one-liners to keep things fresh and funny. Honestly, it may have the best ending of any Marx Brothers film too. There is an argument for it! If you love their brand of humor, The Big Store is still hysterical, crazy, quotable, and gives us enough of the three brothers in important and meaningful roles to stake its claim as one of the best movies of 1941.

Basically, it’s another exemplary film from the brothers that show us they still got it and always will.