Marx Brothers of "The Big Store" the team announced they were retiring from the screen. Four years later, however, Chico persuaded his brothers to make two additional films, "A Night in Casablanca" (1946) and "Love Happy" (1949), to alleviate his severe gambling debts. Both pictures were released by United Artists. From the 1940s onward Chico and Harpo appeared separately and together in nightclubs and casinos. Chico fronted a big band, the Chico Marx Orchestra (with 17-year-old Mel Tormé as a vocalist). Groucho made several radio appearances during the 1940s and starred in "You Bet Your Life", which ran from 1947 to 1961
Romeo and Juliet on screen expensive film since the 1925 silent "Ben-Hur". Like most Shakespearean filmmakers, Cukor and his screenwriter Talbot Jennings cut much of the original script: playing around 45% of it. Many of these cuts are common ones in the theatre, such as the second appearance of the chorus and the comic scene of Peter with the musicians. Others are filmic: designed to replace words with action, or rearranging scenes in order to introduce groups of characters in longer narrative sequences. However, Jennings retains more of Shakespeare's poetry for the young lovers than any of his big-screen successors. Several scenes are interpolated, including