A Day at the Races (1937)

The last great one, with Groucho as Dr. Hugo Hackenbush, a horse doctor posing as the head of a sanitarium, and Chico, as a racetrack ice cream vendor, swindling him with a racing code book in the "Tutsi-Fruitsi" scene, one of their best double acts. The gags were tested in 140 stage shows before filming, and the race finale was shot at Santa Anita. It is also long, at well over 100 minutes, and MGM's formula weighs heavier than in A Night at the Opera. Be warned about one sequence: "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm," sung by Ivie Anderson and danced by Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, is a thrilling number that ends with the brothers in a blackface gag, and it plays badly now.