Hepburn and Grant's Cinematic Partnership Kicked off in Style With Sylvia Scarlett

Sometimes, box office duds come up short at the box office simply because they're outright terrible cinema. It's hard to imagine any scenario where Battlefield: Earth or The Adventures of Pluto Nash would resonate with the public deeply enough to make big box office bucks. But more often than not, good movies are the ones that end up perishing at the box office while the likes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen rack up over $400 million domestically. Thankfully, good movies that come up short financially can end up garnering a better reputation over time. Take Sylvia Scarlett for instance, a 1935 comedy that ended up flopping at the box office despite being an immensely important movie historically since it was the first time director George Cukor, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant all worked together (Cukor and Hepburn had previously collaborated sans Grant on Little Women).

A Night At The Opera Has The Marx Brothers Changing The Studios They Work For But Not Changing The Quality of Their Comedy

A Night At The Opera signaled a new change of pace for the acclaimed Marx Brothers in that they were now making their comedic motion pictures at a studio that wasn't their longtime home of Paramount Pictures. They were now working at MGM, who dictated some changes to the brothers work compared to their prior efforts. In contrast to their earlier films, A Night At The Opera has, among other differing factors, a much more elaborate plot, one that involves a love story between two protagonists who aren't The Marx Brothers. While recent years have seen many claim the film to be wildly inferior to their earlier efforts, for my money (as a relative newbie to the world of Marx Brothers comedy, to be fair), A Night At The Opera more than maintains the high-quality of the Marx Brothers.