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
The Maltese Falcon (1931 film) In the opening scene, an unidentified woman is shown straightening her stockings as she leaves Spade's office. Miss Wonderly (Bebe Daniels) is shown bathing, and later in the film is strip-searched by Spade over missing money. The 1931 film does not shy away from homosexual themes: Wilmer is called Gutman's "boyfriend". The homosexual subtext regarding Gutman, Cairo and Wilmer is abundant in Hammett's original story. Effie facetiously describes Cairo to Spade as "gorgeous". Spade taunts Dundy by constantly referring to him as "sweetheart", "darling", and "precious". All of this is absent from the better-known 1941 version. In 1936, Warner Brothers