522 - The Big Store, United States, 1941. Dir. Charles Reisner.

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

522 - The Big Store, United States, 1941.  Dir. Charles Reisner.

Where everything is a good buy.  Goodbye!

Cyd Charisse's husband Al Morris made a name for himself playing saxophone in an orchestra that included future great Woody Herman.

Al Morris then changed his name to Tony Martin and became a pop crooner, with hits for years.

Then he went into movies and starred in everything from Shirley Temple's Poor Little Rich Girl (1936) to Judy Garland's Ziegfeld Girl (1941)--also starring Jimmy Stewart, Hedy Lamarr, Lana Turner, Jackie Cooper, and Eve Arden--to Bob Hope's Here Come the Girls (1953), to singing in Nicholas Ray's Party Girl (1956), starring Robert Taylor, Cyd Charisse, Lee J. Cobb, and John Ireland.

Along the way he starred in a little Marx Brothers movie called The Big Store (1941).

Tommy Rogers owns half of the big store, the Phelps Department Store, as he and his aunt Martha have inherited it after the sudden death of their uncle, Hiram Phelps.

(Hiram, you may remember, was the real first name of Hank Williams.  It was a more common name back then.)

Tommy wants to sell out, because he wants to open a music school.

But evil store manager Grover is plotting to murder him, marry his aunt, and murder her in order to become the owner of the store.

Really.

This is a musical comedy, right?

Yes, it is.

Aunt Martha is on to Grover.  So she hires none other than Wolf J. Flywheel to provide store security and get to the bottom of things along the way.

And Flywheel brings his associates with him, the crack team of Ravelli and Wacky.

Can you tell how this is going to go?

Because Flywheel is played by Groucho Marx, he chases after Aunt Martha.

The film is filled with sight gags, slapstick, and singing.  It was the last film the Marx Brothers made with MGM.  They made a couple more with United Artists and continued their careers separately.

Margaret Dumont plays aunt Martha Phelps in her seventh and final film with the Marx Brothers.

Virginia Grey plays Tommy Rogers' girlfriend Joan Sutton.

Douglass Dumbrille returns from A Day at the Races (1937) to play villain Grover.