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Amphibians in Movies
 
Monkey Business (1931)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
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This is a classic Marx Brothers comedy. The four brothers, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo, stow away on an ocean liner inside barrels of kippered herring. When they are discovered, they all run around on the ship, trying to avoid the ship's security men, and getting into all sorts of trouble. Harpo's trouble involves a frog. He doesn't talk, so he uses a honking rubber bulb on a staff or he whistles to communicate. He finds a fountain in the ship with some children playing in it. Two boys are poking frogs with sticks. Harpo chases them away then honks his bulb and whistles at the frogs while holding his top hat. One of the frogs jumps up into his hat. Harpo puts the hat on and we hear frog croaking sounds as we see the hat bend up and down as the frog jumps inside it.

Later we see Harpo walking in a hallway when he slips and falls to the floor. His hat falls off and the frog gets out. He wanders into a barber shop as he searches for the frog. The barber's customer says that he has a frog in his throat, which is an old way of saying that he has a sore throat that makes his voice hoarse. But when Harpo hears this he thinks the man has swallowed his frog, so he holds him upside down by his legs, then pries his mouth open to get the frog out. Harpo doesn't find the frog in his throat. He hears the frog croaking outside the barbershop and runs to find it on the floor. He holds his hat out and the frog jumps into it once again.

Later, we watch Harpo playing music on a harp. When he's finished, as people applaud, we hear the frog croaking and see the top hat bend up and down again.

The live frog we see hopping on the floor is probably a juvenile Common Bullfrog, but it's hard to tell for sure because it's so out of focus. The frog sounds we hear are the sounds of a group of Pacific Treefrogs. Both times we see the frog jump into Harpo's hat, it looks like they actually got a live frog to jump into the hat, but it's more likely they used a string tied to a frog to pull it up and into the hat.