Here’s a nice little compendium reel of some Marx Brothers movie trailers. It’s by no means complete–the first four films are represented by sloppily assembled half-trailer/half-clip reels instead of proper trailers. (Possibly the original trailers were lost?) And perhaps ‘The Cocoanuts’, which dates from 1929, never had a proper trailer since so many theaters were still unequipped for showing sound movies. But once we get to ‘Duck Soup’ (1933) we see a trailer that looks like what trailers looked like. The trailer for ‘A Night At The Opera’ perserves the wonderful opening credit sequence where MGM’s Leo The Lion is replaced by each brother roaring in his place, but which was inexplicably cut from the release prints of the film. I must say that the trailer of ‘At The Circus’ makes the film look more enjoyable than I remember it being…but ‘The Big Store’ trailer clearly captures the film’s uninspired, mechanical nature rather well. Things leave off there–no ‘Room Service’, no ‘A Night In Casablanca’, no ‘Love Happy’. But the reel finishes with a very interesting long-ish trailer for Groucho’s solo outing ‘Copacabana’ (1947). I confess–I’ve never see the movie but the trailer does the job it’s meant to do; my curiosity is piqued.