[This article is a study of the Marx Brothers’ song “Everyone Says ‘I Love You’” from its onscreen debut in their 1932 film Horse Feathers to its appearance in popular recorded music from roughly the same period. The article first appeared in the April 2016 edition of The Discographer Magazine and has been revised and updated for this website.]

When Peter Bogdanovich spoke with director Leo McCarey in the late 1960s about McCarey’s film Duck Soup (1933), Bogdanovich remarked: “A lot of people think it’s [the Marx Brothers’] best picture: there’s no harp or piano playing, no interludes, no love interest—those things slowed up their other comedies terribly…” The earlier Marx Brothers film Horse Feathers (1932) contains all of the elements that Bogdanovich singles out as weaknesses, in particular musical interludes. But while many people rightly consider Duck Soup to be the Marx Brothers’ greatest cinematic achievement, Horse Feathers is an accomplished film in its own right, and the … Read the rest