Monkey Business (1931 film) Monkey Business (1931 film) Monkey Business is a 1931 American Pre-Code comedy film. It is the third of the Marx Brothers' released movies, and the first with an original screenplay rather than an adaptation of one of their Broadway shows. The film also stars Thelma Todd. It is directed by Norman Z. McLeod with screenplay by S. J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone. Much of the story takes place in on an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean. On board an ocean liner to America, four stowaways are involuntarily pressed into service as toughs for a pair of feuding gangsters
Monkey Business (1931 film) four stowaways because he can hear them singing "Sweet Adeline".) If so, it would be one of only a few times Harpo used speech on screen, as opposed to other vocalizations such as whistling or sneezing. At least one other possible on-screen utterance occurs in the film "A Day at the Races" (1937), in which Groucho, Chico, and Harpo are heard singing "Down by the Old Mill Stream" in three-part harmony. This was the first Marx film to be written specifically for film, and the first shot in Hollywood. Their first two films were filmed at Paramount Pictures' Astoria Studios