Go West (1940 film)

File:GoWest.jpg

Videotape jacket for "Go West"

Go West (1940) was the 10th Marx Brothers comedy film, in which the three brothers, Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, head to the American West and attempt to unite a couple by ensuring that an evil railroad baron is thwarted. The scene is set in Dead Man's Gulch. Groucho is "S. Quentin Quale," Chico is "Joe Panello" and Harpo is "Rusty Panello." It was directed by Edward Buzzell and written by Irving Brecher and others.

The film contains amazing stunts on a moving steam train when the brothers try to separate the carriages and leave the bad guys stranded behind them. (The special effects in this part must have been world-class at the time.) This progresses to a stage when they want to stop the train but the brake handle comes off. Deciding instead to extinguish the fire, one of them goes with a bucket to draw water from a barrel. The viewers can see the other side of the barrel is labelled "kerosene". Once this is thrown on the fire with dramatic results Groucho says "If that's water I'm glad I never touch the stuff".

Like other Marx Brothers films, the movie has lots of music, including "As If I Didn't Know" and "You Can't Argue With Love" both by Bronislau Kaper and Gus Kahn, "Ridin' The Range" by Roger Edens and Gus Kahn, "From The Land Of The Sky-Blue Water" by Charles Wakefield Cadman and "The Woodpecker Song" by Harold Adamson and Eldo di Lazzaro.

Musical numbers

• As If I Didn't Know
• Ridin' The Range
• You Can't Argue With Love
• From The Land Of The Sky-Blue Water
• The Woodpecker Song
• Beautiful Dreamer