Musical Humor and the Marx Brothers with musicologist Beth Levy

Please join us in the third floor CAC Colloquium room May 7 at 4 p.m. for the first of our 2026 musicology lectures, "Musical Humor and the Marx Brothers" with Beth Levy of UC Davis.

Negotiating a middle register between physical and verbal humor (slapstick and wordplay), the Marx Brothers relied on musical humor at every phase of their long careers. This chapter draws upon scenes from their films of the 1930s-1940s to demonstrate how their madcap musicality depends on the careful pacing of punchlines and an allusive mishmash of genres and styles. Many have interpreted the Marx Brothers’s mockery of societal norms, polyglot accents, and affectionate disrespect for the English language as a brand of immigrant anarchy.  In counterpoint with these views, this talk shows how their multivalent musical humor united the Marx Brothers as an ensemble act and drew listeners into the rhythm of their jokes, either implicating the audience in the delivery of the punchline or rendering it viscerally surprising when the joke hits home.

Beth E. Levy is Associate Professor of musicology at the University of California, Davis.  Her book, Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West (University of California Press, 2012), won awards from the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the PEN Center USA.  She has published in American Music, repercussions, the Journal of Film Music, Aaron Copland and His World, and Tonality 1900-1950.  Her current research involves the community and historical pageant in California, the outdoor “Grove Plays” of the San Francisco Bohemian Club, and the music of the Marx Brothers.