Humor Risk
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About Humor Risk
The film is lost, and the plot is known from later accounts. In Kyle Crichton's 1951 biography of the Marx Brothers, Harpo plays the hero, a detective named Watson, who enters in a high hat by sliding down a coal chute into a basement. Groucho plays the villain. The last shot Crichton describes puts Groucho in a ball and chain, walking off.
Cast & crew
More about Humor Risk
Dick Smith, also listed as Richard Smith, directed this silent two-reeler. Jo Swerling wrote it. It was shot in 1921. It is the first film with the Marx Brothers, and the only one until The Cocoanuts in 1929. Wikipedia records a children's matinee in early December 1921 and says the print shown may have been incomplete. It was not put into regular release. Trade ads billed it as the first of a series called Comedies Without Custard. No print is known.
Themes
In film history
The Marx Brothers' first film, made eight years before The Cocoanuts, and the one that did not survive.
Preservation
Lost. No print has been identified. Published stories disagree on whether Groucho burned a copy, whether a negative sat in a closet, or whether Reelcraft sold the reels under another title in 1922.
Notes
- Kyle Crichton wrote that one stray print survived and that friends of the brothers used it for jokes at their expense.
- Hector Arce's account is different: Groucho burned the print, and the negative stayed in the closet of their associate Posen.
- Matthew Coniam notes a report that Reelcraft filed the picture under another name.
- Reelcraft sold nearly 200 negatives at auction in 1922.
- The title is also spelled Humorisk.
- The title parodies the 1920 film Humoresque.
Scenes
- Harpo's detective comes in down a coal chute, still wearing the high hat.
