A Night in Casablanca

'I'm Beatrice Reiner, I stop at the hotel,' says Verea as the slinky spy; 'I'm Ronald Kornblow, I stop at nothing,' leers Groucho, manager of the said hotel in Casablanca mainly because previous incumbents have been mysteriously murdered. Independently produced, the Marx Brothers' penultimate vehicle is a vast improvement on their last four rapidly degenerating efforts for MGM. Lightweight, saddled with too much plot about spies and a hunt for hidden loot; but with Groucho enjoying a liberal supply of one-liners and Harpo very much at the heart of things, it is funny if hardly as subversive as their best work. Frank Tashlin contributed some of the brighter ideas, notably the opening gag of the building collapsing when Harpo obligingly stops leaning against it in response to a cop's enquiry as to whether he thinks he's holding it up, and the sequence in which all three Marxes delay spy-master Ruman's getaway by surreptitiously emptying his trunks as fast as he packs them.