Movie
Photo: Ralph F. Stitt, Rivoli Theatre · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons Photo shows actor Groucho Marx (1931)
Otis B. Driftwood
A business manager with no discernible business, a stateroom with too many people in it, and the greasepaint mustache that ruined opera for everyone.
- Actor
- Groucho Marx
- Film
- A Night at the Opera
- Year
- 1935
- Medium
- Movie
- Style
- Painter's Brush
- Fan Votes
- 0 legendary · 0 meh
Why Otis B. Driftwood's Mustache Matters
A Night at the Opera (1935) was the Marx Brothers' first film for MGM, and Groucho's Otis B. Driftwood is the fast-talking engine of it — a self-appointed business manager who attaches himself to a wealthy widow and then to an opera company, with chaos following at a brisk pace.
The greasepaint mustache is in full form, paired with the cigar and the crouching walk. The famous stateroom scene, in which a tiny ship's cabin fills with stewards, manicurists, engineers, and two hard-boiled eggs, is among the most celebrated sequences in comedy, and Groucho's painted lip is dead center of the frame for all of it.
The film also contains the "sanity clause" contract negotiation with Chico, which the mustache committee considers required viewing for anyone who has ever signed anything.
- *A Night at the Opera* (1935) was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1993.
- The film was produced by Irving Thalberg, who insisted the brothers test their material in front of live audiences before shooting.
- The stateroom scene was reportedly refined over weeks of live performances on a vaudeville tour.
How to Grow the Painter's Brush
Thick, full, and softly rounded at the ends. A friendlier Chevron. The Ted Lasso.
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