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) in the Paramount promotional film "The House That Shadows Built" (1931). The concept of the Marx Brothers being stowaways on a ship would be repeated in an episode of their radio series "Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel" (1933) in the episode "The False Roderick" and would also be recycled in their MGM film "A Night at the Opera" (1935). The essence of Groucho's joke, "Sure, I'm a doctor—where's the horse?" would serve as an integral plot element for their film "A Day at the Races" (1937). Also repeated in that later film would be the uproarious medical examination that Harpo and