At the Circus (1939) on Netflix
Jeff Wilson owns Wilson's Wonder Circus and owes his partner John Carter $10,000. When the money goes missing, Antonio Pirelli, Punchy and attorney J. Cheever Loophole search for it.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb6.8/106,941 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Wilson's Wonder Circus is owned by Jeff Wilson, and he owes his partner John Carter $10,000. Jeff has put the money inside the cage of Gibraltar, a gorilla, and when he goes to collect it on the circus train, it disappears. Jeff's girlfriend Julie Randall performs a horse act in the show, and its performers include the strongman Goliath, Little Professor Atom and Peerless Pauline, who walks upside down on suction cups. Jeff's friend and employee Antonio Pirelli, called Tony, summons the attorney J. Cheever Loophole; together with Punchy they look into the missing cash while Carter presses for his payment.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about At the Circus (1939)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming At the Circus, the actor inside the gorilla skin grew so hot under the studio lights that he poked holes in it with an icepick during lunch. The skin's manager took it away in anger, so MGM found an orangutan skin in San Diego and hired a shorter actor, making the ape shrink in the second half.
- Buster Keaton, his career in decline, was working for scale at MGM as a gag man on At the Circus, and his elaborate sight gags clashed with the Marx Brothers' humor. When Groucho raised it, Keaton replied he was only doing what Mr. Mayer asked and the brothers didn't need help.
- Hundreds of girls applied for At the Circus and eighteen were chosen after "rigid tests": each had to be an expert ballet dancer with a good singing voice and prove it by toe-dancing on a cantering bareback horse while singing in key. Four had been circus riders.
- Screenwriter Irving Brecher posed as Groucho in At the Circus publicity stills alongside Harpo and Chico as a gag, wearing Groucho's greasepaint mustache, eyebrows and glasses; he resembled Groucho so closely he is nearly unrecognisable in the photos.
- Groucho's character J. Cheever Loophole takes his name from real financier J. Cheever Cowdin, who in 1936 lent Carl Laemmle and his son $750,000 to finance Show Boat. When the loan was called in before the film's release, Cowdin took control of their Universal Pictures and ran it until 1946.
- A key courtroom scene that first introduced Groucho as J. Cheever Loophole was filmed for At the Circus but cut from the finished picture.
