The unrestrained anarchy of the brothers' antics onstage was often mirrored in their off-stage behavior. The film even parodies contemporary theater: Eugene O'Neill's play, Strange Interlude, inspired a scene in which Groucho's character, Captain Spaulding, has an interior monologue concerning his marriage proposals to two different women. In Animal Crackers, musical numbers are interspersed with a storyline concerning the theft of a valuable painting. The Marx Brothers' first two films provide a unique look at how the brothers' developed their brand of humor and how they worked on stage, since both were essentially filmed versions of their popular theatre plays. In fact, while they were shooting their first film at Paramount Studio's East Coast headquarters in Astoria, NY, the brothers spent their evenings performing Animal Crackers on Broadway (It was their second stage hit). Share Animal Crackers (1930), like The Cocoanuts (1929), started out as a stage hit for the Marx Brothers.
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