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The zany screwball Marx Brothers comedy "Horse Feathers" remains one of the most outrageous satires of college football, gangsters and dizzy dames ever to drive a movie audience wild. Made in 1932 at the low-point of the depression, this fourth Marx Brothers feature raised America's sagging spirits with an enormous box office hit, setting the pattern for a string of immensely popular pictures starring the most hilarious vaudeville zanies ever to hit the big screen.

The set up in "Horse Feathers" is a bit improbable, to say the least. The faculty of Huxley college is made up entirely of pompous windbags, while the harebrained students are so busy chasing the type of girl you can't bring home to mother they have no time to cheat on their exams. Football players are oafs or nitwits, while gangsters rule both on and off campus. A shady swindler, college President Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx as a deadpan crackpot) is determined to get Huxley College a football victory even if he has to hire overage hoodlums out of a speakeasy to play on the team. A riotous comedy of errors ensues that ends on the gridiron, in one of the most surrealistic sporting events ever to hit the big screen. If the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it doesn't have to! There's plenty of opportunity for hilarious gags at every mis-step along the way.

The Marx Brothers smashed their way into Hollywood just as talking pictures came in. Their first feature length film, "Cocoanuts," was also the first wacky comedy with sound and featured a lot of wild wordplay in addition to cartoon crazy sight gags and the kind of side-splitting slapstick that was already a staple of the silent movie era. Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo were brothers in real life, as on stage and screen, and before appearing on film they honed their incomparable comic skills in endless live performances at vaudeville theaters all across the nation. This was the key to their artistic success. They perfected their art over and over again on stage before putting it on screen.

In 1974, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded "Horse Feathers" star Groucho Marx the special lifetime achievement Oscar for his performance in over a dozen unforgettable roles in which he ridiculed the pretensions of the rich, the pompous and the high and mighty, while making a hash of logic, common sense and the script of any movie in which he appeared.

Think it's easy to capture this type of mayhem on camera? Well, it ain't! Very much of the credit for the success of "Horse Feathers" belongs to the crew behind the camera, director Norman McLeod and especially cinematographer Ray June, who also immortalized such stars as Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. His smooth polished style is responsible for many of our most cherished images from Hollywood's golden age.

Personally, I was tickled silly by "Horse Feathers."

The quintessential Gothic horror movie sequel, Universal Studios' 1935 hit, the "Bride of Frankenstein" adds grotesque gallows humor to the macabre and spine-chilling formula that made the original "Frankenstein" movie the biggest box-office hit of 1931, featuring the most talked about monster in horror movie history. Taking up where "Frankenstein" left off, "Bride of Frankenstein" is the terrifying tale of how the murderous monster first escaped doom to find a mate – a bride – made like himself from the parts rifled off the bodies of the recently dead. The Hollywood King of Horror, Boris Karloff, reprises his most famous role in a top-notch performance remarkable as much for its camp irony as for its shocking ghoulishness. This time, Karloff outdid himself! Although its bloodcurdling effects are closely patterned on the first "Frankenstein," "Bride" is much more than a sequel. It is a hilarious send-up of the original, featuring priceless scenes of ham acting by a cast of wonderfully colorful character actors, among the most talented ever to appear in a horror movie. Genius director James Whale has created the most expressionistic and frightening of Gothic films, made up of spellbinding effects which are a distillation of all that is best in horror movie technique: dark shadows and blinding flashes of light, hideous suspense and a gut wrenchingly scary monster.

All of the distinguished cast had very solid backgrounds before being cast in "Bride." Karloff had already appeared in over 80 movies, including Universal Studios' hit "The Mummy" and "The Mask of Fu Manchu," while scene stealer Ernest Thesiger, who appears as the exquisitely decadent Dr. Pretorius in "Bride," also appeared alongside Karloff in another James Whale directed chiller, "The Old Dark House." Classically trained Una O'Connor, Dr. Frankenstein's bug-eyed hysterical maid, began her acting career with Dublin's renowned Abbey Theater company, but was early typecast by Hollywood in oddball character roles, usually as a serving woman in such hit movies as "The Invisible Man." Mainly a character actor, Elsa Lanchester's acting almost always featured a great deal of graceful poise and charm, perhaps because she studied with dance legend Isadora Duncan -- making her a natural for the dual role of Bride and Mary Shelley.

"All About Eve" is still a record holder today with 14 academy award nominations and 6 Oscar wins, including best picture and best director for Hollywood veteran Joseph Mankiewicz, who also won an Oscar for his literate and witty script! A favorite of the critics, "Eve" is considered by many to be screen legend Bette Davis's greatest film, confirming her title as the "First Lady" of Hollywood.

Among Hollywood celebrities of the Golden Age, no actress is better remembered than the beautiful, sophisticated and talented Bette Davis, who was nominated for the Oscar in this backstage drama of the Broadway theater for her performance as the aging prima donna, Margo Channing, target of her two-faced understudy, Eve Harrington, played by Anne Baxter in another academy award nominated performance.

This black comedy of the backstage world of the theater charts the rapid rise to the pinnacle of Broadway success by an unknown young actress, Eve Harrington, who is ruthless in taking advantage of anyone who is willing to help her, including her bitchy patroness, Margo Channing. Actress Anne Baxter puts in a stunning performance as the two-faced Eve, by turns sweetly innocent or wickedly scheming, depending only on which is more likely to advance her career. Baxter and Davis were both nominated for the best actress Oscar, while the all-star supporting cast garnered three more nominations, with George Sanders winning the best supporting actor award for his darkly comic turn as snobbish critic Addison DeWitt.

Having starred numerous times on the Broadway stage, Bette Davis was a natural choice to be paired with "All About Eve" writer and director Joseph Mankiewicz, who just a year earlier had won a pair of Oscars for "Letter to Three Wives," an outstanding drama on the theme of marital infidelity. It wasn't only Mankiewicz's phenomenal success that made him the ideal director for Davis, but also the interest he shared with his star in presenting women as independent and strong-minded – tough as any man.

No discussion of "All About Eve" would be complete without a mention of the Oscar winning costume designs of Edith Head, who is responsible for the supremely tasteful high fashion costumes in "Eve." Edith Head won more Oscars than any other woman in the history of the academy awards. Her gorgeous gowns have adorned Hollywood's best loved leading ladies, including Mae West, Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Haviland, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor and countless others.

Ironically, "All About Eve" was remade in the 1970's, not as a movie, but as a stage play on Broadway and the aging actress chosen to play the role made famous by Bette Davis was instantly recognizable to all fans of the film as Miss Davis's original co-star, Anne Baxter – making it seem as if Eve Harrington had finally succeeded in transforming herself completely into Margo Channing.