Maurice Chevalier under contract with Paramount, his name was so recognized that his passport was featured in the Marx Brothers film "Monkey Business" (1931). In this sequence, each brother uses Chevalier's passport, and tries to sneak off the ocean liner where they were stowaways by claiming to be the singer—with unique renditions of "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" with its line "If the nightingales could sing like you". In 1931, Chevalier starred in a musical called "The Smiling Lieutenant" with Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. Despite the disdain audiences held for musicals in 1931, it proved a successful
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