Horse Feathers made Groucho the president of a college, where he tried to win a football game by any means necessary.
Horse Feathers was released in 1932, directed by Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho played Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the new president of Huxley College, who wanted his son Frank, played by Zeppo Marx, to play football. Wagstaff recruited two professional players, Baravelli and Pinky, played by Chico and Harpo, to help Huxley beat its rival, Darwin College.
The film included some of Groucho’s most famous musical and comic moments, including the song Whatever It Is, I’m Against It, in which Wagstaff rejected every proposal put to him. The football game at the end, with its chaos and cheating, became a model for sports comedies.
Horse Feathers was one of the Marx Brothers’ most popular Paramount films. It used a college setting, like many films of the time, and then turned it upside down, with Groucho as the authority figure who was the least respectable person in the film.