MovieChat Forums > Duck Soup (1933) Discussion > Is that racist line still in the version...

Is that racist line still in the version shown today?


The line goes like this: when Groucho Marx's character Rufus T. Firefly says, "My father was a little headstrong, my mother was a little armstrong. The Headstrongs married the Armstrongs, and that's why darkies were born."

I haven't seen the film lately, and I wonder if TCM leaves the line in or not. Does anyone know? I saw the film on the Princeton U. campus in the 1970s and it was still in there. There were a lot of hisses and boos from the audience. But I guess they wanted to show the film uncut, partly as an historical artifact.

It is better to be kind than to be clever or good looking. -- Derek

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TCM leaves it in. It's up to viewers to run screaming to their safe spaces if they can't deal with it.

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