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
Monkey Business (1931 film) "the best this family has given us." The film was evidently based on two routines the Marx Brothers did during their early days in vaudeville ("Home Again" and "Mr. Green's Reception"), along with a story idea from one of Groucho's friends, Bert Granet, called "The Seas Are Wet". The passport scene is a reworking of a stage sketch in which the brothers burst into a theatrical agent's office auditioning an impersonation of a current big star. It appeared in their stage shows "On the Mezzanine Floor" and "I'll Say She Is" (1924). This skit was also done by the Marxes