Synopsis:

I've been a lifelong Marx Brothers fan from my earliest memories but all of their films come with certain baggage... Due to the commercial neccesities of the time and due to the radical nature of their comedy they usually peppered the popular songs of the day throughout the films, to keep people happy. At the time, this formula was boxoffice dynamite but some of these songs have not aged well and I almost always fast-forward through them. Also sometimes the plots, subplots and supporting talent isn't up to the match of The Brothers' firecracker humour. So wouldn't it be wonderful to have a collection of these films with all the killer and none of the filler?

Intentions:

I want these Marx Brothers edits to feel like nothing is missing (or nothing that you will miss anyway!), just pure comedy magic. With 'Love Happy', hopefully I've turned a somewhat painful mess into something rather enjoyable and more up to the usual high standard of The Marx Brothers.

Change List:

- Fixed all techinical problems with sounds, video and cutting where possible - Cut scenes without the brothers down to the bare minimum while still leaving the plot intact - Cut all musical numbers except the essential Harpo/Harp and Chico/Piano scenes - Reordered a few scenes to improve the narrative and pacing 00.00.00 Added TM2YC and Swordfish idents 00.00.30 Fixed badly done necklace fade 00.00.56 Fixed bad jumpcut by creating a new Newspaper fade 00.01.15 Fixed 15 second dialogue audio dropout 00.03.07 Shortened Mike dancing and Shortened Maggie intro 00.03.15 Shortened Maggie outro and shortened more of Mike's dancing 00.03.28 Shortened more of Mike's dancing again 00.04.57 Removed a couple of unnecessary establishing shots of Madame Egelichi 00.08.03 Removed sequence of Throckmorton walking through his shop 00.09.00 Removed some of Madame Egelichi's gloating 00.09.40 Removed shot of Sardines being opened 00.09.41 Removed reaction shot of the DeSoto Brothers 00.09.46 Removed two more reaction shots 00.09.55 Shortened torture of Throckmorton and created new fade 00.11.03 Removed Throckmorton using the telephone 00.11.29 Shortened Mike ancing and created new fade 00.15.02 Shortened shot of theatre troup 00.16.22 Shortened Maggie dancing 00.16.44 Shortened Maggie dancing again 00.17.18 Shortened Maggie dancing again 00.17.23 Shortened Maggie dancing again 00.18.10 Removed 'Who Stole the Jam?' musical number an created new fade 00.19.27 Fixed terrible Throckmorton matchcut 00.19.51 Removed closeup of Madame Egelichi 00.20.08 Shortened Madame Egelichi walking 00.22.27 Fixed damaged frame 00.26.42 Removed 'Willow Weep for Me' musical number 00.39.26 Removed a chunk of Mike's speech and recut footage 00.39.35 Removed 'Old Thesp's' speech and recut footage 00.39.41 Removed the whole start of the dressing room scene 00.39.55 Removed a chunk of the chat between Maggie and Mike 00.40.40 Shortened Mike talking with Madame Egelichi 00.40.43 Shortened more of Mike talking with Madame Egelichi 00.40.45 Fixed mis-timed Sardines Tin sound FX 00.40.47 Fixed (Or at least improved) problem with the dialogue audio 00.41.00 Removed more of Mike talking with Madame Egelichi 00.41.02 Removed more of Mike talking with Madame Egelichi 00.41.03 Fixed mis-timed Madame Egelichi dialogue 00.41.05 Removed Bunny talking 00.41.48 Removed dressing room scene and created new fade 00.42.05 Shortened shot of Sardines and pushed back Mike and Maggie scene 00.42.15 Removed needless exposition dialogue between Madame Egelichi and Throckmorton 00.44.24 Created new fade into Throckmorton alley scene 00.49.55 Removed some of Maggie's hysterics 00.52.07 Removed shot of Maggie leaving 00.52.28 Cropped shot to remove empty park bench 00.52.41 Cropped and reframed shot to remove empty park bench 00.55.38 Cropped and reframed shot to remove empty park bench 00.54.00 Cropped and reframed shot to remove empty park bench 00.57.56 Fixed problem of badly timed establishing shot by omitting it 00.57.59 Removed two shots of Madame Egelichi and Throckmorton 00.58.36 Removed footage of Maggie leaving her dressing room 00.58.47 Removed start of Maggie and Mike scene 01.00.03 Removed scene of Mike being beaten 01.04.11 Removed shot of Maggie checking on Mike 01.05.16 Fixed obvious jumpcut 01.07.10 Fixed bad fade by bring Chico piano scene forward and removing applause 01.08.40 Removed original fade to black 01.09.29 Created new near seemless matchcut/fade to put the two halves of the smoking bird scene back together 01.14.01 Fixed bad fade to black 01.15.52 Fixed another bad fade to black 01.19.18 Added in a missing United Artist's logo (Thanks to Dwight Fry for finding that for me) Original Length: 91 minutes FanEdit Length: 79 minutes Removed: 12 minutes.

Additional Notes:

As always my intention was to remove nothing of the brothers and streamline everything else. However with 'Love Happy' I did have to remove 30 seconds of Harpo that was featured at the end of a musical number that I've cut. Also despite the many technical improvements, there are still a few bad jumpcuts and continuity errors that could not possibly be fixed.

Other Sources:

Love Happy - Region 1 DVD

Special Thanks:

Thanks to Dwight Fry and other contributers to the thread.