Though by no means a bad movie, The Marx Brothers 1938 “Room Service” is not a particularly good one–it’s a curio at best. Originally a Broadway play which they had nothing to do with, it was adapted for the movies with them being wedged into it, filling roles that for the most part didn’t exist–Groucho being the major exception (he gets the lead role of ‘Gordon Miller, the broke theatrical producer). Given how little filmed material we have of the Marx’s it’s more than a bit of a shame that an entire movie of there’s was essentially a wasted excercise. Why would RKO have chosen to go ahead with the project? More puzzling, why would the Marx’s? Bu the real mystery of ‘Room Service’–or at least the most interesting one–is the ending. The American version uses the gospel song “Sweet Low Sweet Chariot”. However in the UK version a similar song, “One Last Sweet Cheerio” was carefully substituted on the soundtrack. It doesn’t appear that two different versions were shot. Rather, the second song is simply dubbed over the first–the lyrics for the most part sync up with Groucho and Chico’s mouth movements, though there is the evidence of something hinky about the second version. Why would this have been done? It’s possible that in the UK the American spiritual ‘Sweet Low Sweet Chariot[ wasn’t known, but the latter version–which does sound a bit English, doesn’t it?–was. Did it have something to do with censorship? Was there a racist element in the office of Great Britain’s censor that preferred to avoid anything connected with black culture? Did the fact that Paul Robeson–always a controversial figure politically–made a famous recording of the spiritual somehow offend the English censors? We’ll never know. But the subject is discussed quite throughly (and interestingly) on one of my favorite podcasts, ‘The Marx Brothers Council Podcast’. By the way, I dig the very swing-era little outro over the final ‘The End/RKO Radio Picture’ title. It beats both versions of the final song by an easy mile…
June 25, 2024
2 Responses
Roy Webb, RKO’s “music man” responsible one way or another or for all of the above, I agree with you about the snappy outro music. Webb got bashed over the years, in part by critics of Orson Welles, who didn’t like Webb’s score for Welles typically-mired-changed-ruined- in-post-production MacBeth film and score. But Webb had a large hand in music for RKO the way Max Steiner did or the Newmans did later at other bigger studios.
The redubbing is pretty good especially for the time, what an odd thing. They still live in Groucho’s very black asides during the song so they are still down south if the UK didn’t want that. I know music rights here in the U.S. vs. everywhere else still can be totally different, so maybe that’s the problem, a rights issue. Or could it be a re-issue issue and the rights for the recording had expired or been reclaimed in some strike and adjusted rights since. Or of course any element of Red Menace is always ready to throw an hammer into any glass window nearby.
I like the reissue/song rights theory. I didn’t know about the Webb/Welles connection–do you mean ‘Macbeth’ or ‘Ambersons’? The latter sounds more likely since OW didn’t supervise final edit etc. But I challenge you at my own peril!