Yesterday I posted a reel of trailers of a number of Marx Brothers movies. The reel failed to include trailers for their first four films and, in an uncharacteristically lazy moment, I theorized that perhaps they’d been lost. Wrong! Above is the trailer for their third film ‘Monkey Business’ (1931) in its full two minute and twenty second glory. Back in the day movie trailers were prepared by a company called the National Screen Service, who usually cut them while the film was shooting so as to have them ready as soon as the film wrapped. One has to keep in mind that post-production time in that era was practically non-existent–there was no Director’s Guild so there was no nine-week ‘directors cut’ period. The cut of the film was usually finished a few days after the shooting wrapped. Sound work, negative cutting, opticals etc. took only another week or two to jam together. A movie could be prepped, shot, finished and in theaters in four to eight weeks depending on the length of the shooting schedule. Due to this hurry-up process, the footage sent to National Screen Service often was different than the takes that wound up in the finished cut of the film, which results in some interesting discoveries for film scholars. In the case of the ‘Monkey Business’ trailer, note the moment when Groucho jumps onto Thelma Todd’s bed and says ‘I rest my case’. He then pats the space next to him and adds ‘Right here!’. This is an alternate take than the one used in the film–in the finished product they eliminated the ‘right here’ bit, probably because it was considered too racy even for those pre-code times. More Marx trailers as I turn them up this week…