Жылқы қанаттары мен Маркс бауырлардың ойындары

1932 film starring the Marx Brothers

The film revolves around college football and a game between the fictional Darwin and Huxley Colleges. Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the new president of Huxley College, is convinced by his son Frank, a student at the school, to recruit professional football players to help Huxley's losing football team. Baravelli is an "iceman", who delivers ice and bootleg liquor from a local speakeasy. Pinky is also an "iceman" and a part time dogcatcher. Through a series of misunderstandings, Baravelli and Pinky are accidentally recruited to play for Huxley instead of the actual professional players. The climax of the film, which ESPN listed as first in its "top 11 scenes in football movie history," includes the four protagonists winning the football game by successfully performing a version of the hidden ball trick and then scoring the winning touchdown in a horse drawn garbage wagon that Pinky rides like a chariot. A picture of the brothers in the "chariot" near the end of the film made the cover of Time magazine in 1932.

The caricatures of the four brothers that are briefly flashed during the credits are taken from a promotional poster from their previous film, Monkey Business.

Production of the film was hindered when Chico was severely injured in a car accident, suffering a shattered knee and multiple broken ribs. This delayed production by more than two months and limited Chico's participation in filming. As a result, the movie was filmed so that Chico was sitting down in the majority of scenes he was in. It required a body double to be used in some of the football scenes, most notably during the shot where the Four Marx Brothers chase a horse drawn garbage wagon, climb in and head off in the opposite direction; Chico's double is taller than the other brothers by several inches.

A term that occurs often in Horse Feathers, but may not be familiar to modern viewers, is college widow (see also The College Widow, a 1904 play). The somewhat derogatory term referred to a young woman who remains near a college year after year to associate with male students. It is used to describe Connie Bailey. Such women were considered "easy". Miss Bailey is shown to be involved with each of the characters played by the Brothers, as well as the principal antagonist Jennings. At one point during the climactic football game, Wagstaff exclaims, "Jumping anaconda!" This is a ‘minced oath’, an expression used in sports stories of the time to show the colourful language used by coaches, without using actual samples, not then considered fit to print. This particular one also alludes to the notorious stock market performance of Anaconda Copper immediately preceding the Great Depression. All of the Marx Brothers had experienced severe losses in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Groucho had delivered other jokes related to the stock market in the Brothers' preceding films (for example, "The stockholder of yesteryear is the stowaway of today" in Monkey Business), and used Anaconda itself in a Eugene O’Neill parody in 1930's Animal Crackers.

The only existing prints of this film are missing several minutes, owing to censorship and damage. The damage is most noticeable in jump cuts during the scene in which Groucho, Chico and Harpo visit Connie Bailey's apartment. Connie: Baravelli, you overcome me. Baravelli: All right, but remember—it was your idea. Several sequences were cut from the film, including an extended ending to the apartment scene, additional scenes with Pinky as a dogcatcher, and a sequence in which the brothers play poker as the college burns down. (A description of the latter scene still exists in a pressbook from the year of the film's release, along with a still photograph.) The August 15, 1932 Time magazine review of the film says of Harpo in the speakeasy scene, "He bowls grapefruit at bottles on the bar." This joke is also missing from the current print.