As Wagstaff’s son, Frank, Zeppo Marx pitches woo to Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd), the young college widow (incidentally, you will be forgiven for having no idea what a “college widow” is or does). Groucho Marx plays Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the newly appointed president of Huxley College. You will be laughing too hard at any given gag to catch these fleeting moments of narrative orientation, so I will do you the kindness of summarizing what little plot the film has. The plot of Horse Feathers is advanced in the tiniest pauses of the film’s general cascade of vaudeville shtick. For those of you plagued by end-of-summer ennui, you will no doubt find 68 minutes worth of respite in watching the Marx Brothers in Horse Feathers, a perfect collegiate comedy to ease you, chortling and guffawing, into the last semester of this dizzy decade. Late August has arrived, that period of the year in which we struggle to squeeze in last minute summer activities and reading as the days grow noticeably shorter and cooler, knowing damn well that the daily grind of the school year lurks, in all its terrible banality, just around the corner. A newly restored DCP of Horse Feathers will screen at the Cinematheque's regular venue, 4070 Vilas Hall, on Saturday, August 31, at 7 p.m. McLeod's Horse Feathers (1932) were written by John Bennett, PhD student in UW-Madison's Department of Communication Arts.
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