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Jimmie convinces the Hathaways that Pearl, whom he introduces as Virginia Lee, a cultured, stage-struck socialite, will back their company if she is given a bit part. Vehicle for the Broadway opening is The Mikado, with Danforth singing the lead, Frank Moulan the Lord High Executioner, and Irene Hervey, most fetching in a kimono, chorusing Three Little Maids from School with Vivian Hart and Carita Crawford. The finale is interrupted when conscience, stirred by the sound of approaching police sirens, impels Jimmie to reveal that the show has no backing and the house has been "papered" (packed free)—a confession which evokes unanimous demands for the show to continue, and Pearl's forgiving embrace.
For the foreign version of The Girl Said No, music from Princess Tingaling was substituted. Against U. S. screenings the D'Oyly Carte Company, whose British copyrights will not expire until 1961. can only protest. All credit for this costless coup goes to Producer Andrew L. Stone, who was immediately signed up by Paramount.
A Day at the Races (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Groucho Marx washes his hands in a basin, discovers that he has his wrist watch on. He removes it. puts it on a table, notices a bystander eyeing it. He puts it back in the basin, says: "I'd rather have it rusty than missing."
Chico Marx runs an ice cream wagon at a racetrack. When he spies Groucho placing a bet on Sun-Up, he intercedes, sells the visitor a tip. When Groucho fails to understand the tip. Chico produces a code book from the ice cream wagon, sells Groucho the code book. When Groucho fails to understand the code book, Chico sells him a master code book. By the time the transaction ends, Groucho has a whole library of code books. Chico has Groucho's money, which he bets on Sun-Up.
At a cabaret entertainment, Harpo Marx finds his way to the piano, starts to play Rachmaninoff's Prelude. When he hits a bass note, the piano begins to misfire. When he plays allegro, the top flies off. When he becomes angry, all the keys begin to fly around his ears. Pleased, Harpo removes the strings, uses them for a magnificent harp solo.
Jokes like these, peculiar to the Marx Brothers, are somehow as funny on the screen as they are unfunny in print. A Day at the Races, which took a year to make, is happily distinguished from previous Marx pictures in that it contains more of them. A wild, complex, totally implausible fable about a run-down sanatorium, its impudent porter (Chico), an imported horse-doctorphysician (Groucho) and the steeplechase in which a speechless jockey (Harpo) gets the money to pay off the sanatorium's debts through his brilliant ride on a horse who hates the gambler who is trying to buy the sanatorium for use as a casino—it all adds up to nothing at all except superlative entertainment. A gag sequence omitted but photographed for advertising purposes was one in which Horse-Doctor Groucho plied his trade on a horse that fitted perfectly into the Marx family.