08/24/2026
Scroll up top for info on ANIMAL CRACKERS movie tickets!
The Marx Brothers performed live in Sacramento many times, touring the country on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit. The earliest performance I have found so far is “Fun In Hi School”, which they put on September 1911 at the Pantages Theatre (when they would have been in their early 20s). Most everything afterwards is at the Orpheum’s Clunie Theatre. They toured with their play “Home Again” from late 1914 to 1918, bringing it through Sacramento in October 1915 and again in February 1918. They would tour their show “N-Everything” through town in 1920 & returned in1922 with “On the Balcony”. They kept getting more popular, and there may be more local shows I missed in the years of 1922-1930, before they became mostly seen on the silver screen.
Over their stage career, they would have many live chances to hone and develop their routines and characters, including their names, on the vaudeville stages of the country. The attached review from 1915 calls Arthur (later Harpo) the funniest brother and mentions that Leonard (soon-to-be Chico) has “an odd way of shooting the piano keys with his thumb and forefinger,” which sounds like it was already one of Chico’s signature moves, even if the name wasn’t there yet.
Like most of their early films, “Animal Crackers” was a play that the Brothers had toured with. But they were ready for the big time, and that meant film. So while they shot their first film, “The Cocoanuts”, in the daytime in Long Island, they went back to Broadway and did the play “Animal Crackers” at night. It soon became their 2nd film.
In Sacramento, the film version of “Animal Crackers”, opened August 30, 1930, in the 1100 seat Capitol Theatre, 615 K Street. How many of our “eternal residents” were in attendance? I wonder…
