A Night at the Opera (film) DVD commentary. But this could not have occurred, because Sam Marx had died in 1933, during pre-production of "Duck Soup", two years before "A Night at the Opera" was released. The rumor arose because Frenchy had had such a cameo appearance in the Marx Brothers' earlier "Monkey Business". There is, however, a reference to the Marx Brothers' mother, Minnie Marx, during the stateroom scene, in which a woman asks, "Is my Aunt Minnie in here?" Part of the concept of casting the Marx Brothers as stowaways on a ship was recycled from "Monkey Business". As Groucho's and Margaret Dumont's characters
Marx Brothers the Beaugard painting is stolen, so the script was contrived to include a power failure, which allowed Zeppo to play the Spaulding part in near-darkness.) In December 1917 the Marx brothers were noted in an advertisement playing in a musical comedy act "Home Again". By the 1920s, the Marx Brothers had become one of America's favorite theatrical acts, with their sharp and bizarre sense of humor. They satirized high society and human hypocrisy, and they became famous for their improvisational comedy in free-form scenarios. A famous early instance was when Harpo arranged to chase a fleeing chorus girl across the