Popular Music before and after the Hays Code in the Films of the Marx Brothers
Published 2019-07-31
Keywords
- Motion Picture Production Code,
- Hays Code,
- Lord-Quigley Code,
- Marx Brothers,
- Popular Music
- Vaudeville. ...More
Abstract
Over the course of their career, the Marx Brothers experienced first-hand the transition from the variety show era to the consolidation of cinema as the most popular form of mass media. In their early films, they re-worked many of the comedy numbers they had perfected during their vaudeville period, numbers in which popular music played a decisive role in the establishment of expressive and parodic meaning. However, the establishment of the Hays Code in the early 1930s resulted in significant changes to their expressive language that had a crucial impact on that musical content. Taking the perspective of what Lawrence Kramer (2002) refers to as a “hermeneutic window”, this article offers some examples of the musical paradigm shift that occurred between the Marx Brothers’ first films (1929-1933) and their work with Metro Goldwyn Mayer in the years from 1935 to 1937.
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