AHC: Giraffes on Horseback Salad

With a PoD no earlier than Salvador Dalí's 1937 meeting with Harpo Marx, can this film get made? (My instinct says "no", but I'd still love input.) This is an excerpt from the script:
Dalí said:
The “Surrealist woman” is lying in the middle of a great bed, sixty feet long, with the rest of the guests seated around each side. Along the bed, as decorations, are a group of dwarfs caught by Harpo. Each is supported on a crystal base, decorated with climbing flowers. The dwarfs stay as still as statues, holding lighted candelabras, and change their positions every few minutes.

While love tears at Jimmy’s heart, Groucho tries to crack a nut on the bald head of the dwarf in front of him. The dwarf, far from looking surprised, smiles at Groucho in the most amiable way possible. Suddenly in the middle of dinner, thunder and lightning begin inside the room. A squall of wind blows the things over on the table and brings in a whirl of dry leaves, which stick to everything. As Groucho opens his umbrella, it begins to rain slowly.

Although the guests show surprise, they try for a time to continue their meal, which is, however, brought to an end by showers of rain. In a panic, the guests rush in all directions, while from the hall a torrent of waters washes in, bringing with it all sorts of debris, including a drowned ox. A shepherd makes a desperate effort to collect his flock of sheep, which climb up on the sofas and the bed in an effort to avoid being carried away by the water. A cradle is carried in on the flood containing a baby crying piteously, followed by the mother, hair streaming behind her.

The “Surrealist woman” crosses several rooms - rain falling more and more heavily - but stops in front of a door and hesitates. She goes in, followed by Jimmy, who has never left her side. On the other side of the door, there is no more rain and everything changes. It is the childhood room of the “Surrealist woman,” where by her orders nothing has been touched since she was ten. Overcome by emotion, she sits down in front of a mirror at a child’s table.

Meanwhile, the Marx Brothers announce that a great fête is going to take place. For this, large preparations have to be made. Four acres of desert are cleared of cacti and of all vegatation and flattened out like a tennis court. The undergrowth that is cleared away is piled around the field to make a barrier, behind which stands are erected for spectators.

There is a competition for the person who can ride a bicycle the slowest with a stone balanced on his head. All the participants have to grow beards. In the middle is a tower in the form of a boat’s prow to be used as a judge’s box.

Before the spectacle begins, the vegetation around the fields is set alight. This prevents the spectators in the stands from seeing anything at all. From the top of the tower the sight is wonderful, with columns of smoke going up vertically, surrounding hundrds of cyclists &emdash; each balancing a rock on his head &emdash; threading their way with the sun setting behind.

In the tower, Harpo is playing his harp ecstatically, like a modern Nero. By his side, his back to the spectacle, Groucho is lying, smoking lazily. Nearby, the “Surrealist woman” and Jimmy watch the spectacle, lying side by side. Behind them, Chico, dressed in a diving suit, accompanies Harpo on the piano. Scattered across the gangway leading to the tower, an orchestra plays the theme song with Wagnerian intensity as the sun sinks under the horizon.
 
I think it would be incredibly difficult for it to be made, considering that Hollywood Studios will probably be reluctant to make anything so bizarre.
 
Who'd direct it? Certainly not Sam Wood. Who could? Bunuel, maybe. or james Whale.

The brothers were under contract to MGM, who certainly wouldn't have given it the green light. Thalberg had rejected the original script of A Night At The Opera, which featured Groucho as a shady (of course) promoter with the intention of overbacking a production so terrible that it would have inevitably folded after opening night, an idea that obviously can't form the basis of a good film.

Thalberg insisted that a comic movie couldn't have a comic plot: you had to have a conventional plot, with comic scenes inserted. Hence the dreariness of much of ANATO, and its successor A Day At The Races, although they were hits at the box office. He was dead, or dying, by the Dali events, but I still can't think of any other studio that would have taken it on.

Groucho thought the script wasn't funny, which is sufficient reason for me to think it wouldn't have been a success.: it seems too weird.
 
My information is from a book by Joe Hyams: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo, which I read in the mid-70s, but as far as I know hasn't really been superceded.

I don't think it's in print, but it's worth a look if you can get hold of a copy, full of interesting (and funny) stuff about the brothers lives. For instance, when Groucho was indisposed Zeppo used to play him on stage, and the audience never noticed.

It mentions Horseback Salad: Dali was especially taken by Harpo.

Edit: there's a post gone missing above this, for some reason.
 
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It would be an interesting movie- and I got a weirder idea. What if Disney made it? They did plan a Dali project- and the Marx Brothers did make a "cameo" in a cartoon playing polo (along with Charlie Chaplin), opposite the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. Or perhaps it could be done after the Marxes left MGM but when Chico needed money. (Marilyn Monroe as The Surrealist Woman?)
 
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