Editing A Night at the Opera (film) (section)

==Selected sequences==
[[File:El camarot dels germans Marx.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.47|The stateroom scene, from the trailer to the film]]

===Stateroom===
This scene was written primarily by legendary gag man [[Al Boasberg]]. Famously eccentric, Boasberg typed up the finished scene, then shredded the pages into thin pieces and tacked them to his ceiling. It took Irving Thalberg and the brothers hours to cut and paste the scene back together.

Driftwood plans a rendezvous with Mrs. Claypool in his stateroom. Then he finds out how small it is (a third class cabin, about the size of a janitor's closet), and that he, his [[steamer trunk]], and the bed barely fit in it. Driftwood discovers that Fiorello, Tomasso, and Ricardo have stowed away in his steamer trunk and discarded his clothes. Fiorello insists on eating ("We getta food or we don't go"). Driftwood calls a steward ("I say, Stew") and orders dinner.

{{blockquote|<poem>
'''Driftwood''': And two medium-boiled eggs.
'''Fiorello''': ''(inside room)'': And two hard-boiled eggs.
'''Driftwood''': And two hard-boiled eggs.
'''Tomasso''': ''(inside room)'': (honk)
'''Driftwood''': Make that ''three'' hard boiled eggs.
</poem>}}

This continues until Fiorello and Tomasso each have ordered about a dozen hard-boiled eggs and Driftwood has ordered about everything else &ndash; including coffee to sober up some stewed prunes. This is just a set-up for the famous "Stateroom Scene", in which a total of 15 people crowd into Driftwood's tiny cabin.

The three stowaways have to hide out in the room while a parade of people walk in, asking to either use the cabin, or to perform their regular duties. Crammed into this little space at the end of the scene are Driftwood, Fiorello, Tomasso, Ricardo, two cleaning ladies who make up the bed, a manicurist (Manicurist: "Do you want your nails long or short?" Driftwood: "You better make them short, it's getting kind of crowded in here!"), a ship's engineer and his fat assistant, a young woman passenger using the phone to call her Aunt Minnie, a maid (Maid: "I come to mop up." Driftwood: "You'll have to start on the ceiling.") and four waiters with trays of hard-boiled eggs. 
(Driftwood: "Tell Aunt Minnie to send up a bigger room.") All of the foregoing tumble out into the hallway when Mrs. Claypool opens the door.

===Contract===
The contract scene between Driftwood and Fiorello ("the party of the first part ..."):

{{blockquote|<poem>
'''Fiorello''': Hey, wait, wait. What does this say here, this thing here?
'''Driftwood''': Oh, that? Oh, that's the usual clause that's in every contract. That just says, it says, 'if any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified'.
'''Fiorello''': Well, I don't know...
'''Driftwood''': It's all right, that's in every contract. That's, that's what they call a sanity clause.
'''Fiorello''': Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ''ain't'' no [[Santa Claus|Sanity Clause]]!
</poem>}}

===Opera===
True to its title, the film includes adaptations of some real [[opera]] scenes from ''[[I Pagliacci]]'' and ''[[Il Trovatore]]'', featuring the ''Miserere'' duet sung by [[Kitty Carlisle]] and [[Allan Jones (actor)|Allan Jones]]. The opera setting also allowed MGM to add big production song numbers (which were one of this studio's specialties), such as the song "[[Alone (1935 song)|Alone]]", with the departure of the steamship, and the song "Cosi Cosa" with the [[Italian cuisine|Italian]] [[buffet]] and dancing.

Carlisle and Jones were both trained in operatic singing and provided their own singing voices in the film. [[Walter Woolf King]] was a trained [[baritone]], but he portrayed a [[tenor]] in the film. His singing was dubbed by [[Metropolitan Opera]] tenor [[Tandy MacKenzie]].

===Hidden material===
In the scene where the three stowaways are impersonating "the three greatest [[aviator]]s in the world", Driftwood seems to talk gibberish with the dignitaries. Actually it is English; if played backwards, it can be heard what they are saying ("This man is accusing you of being impostors", etc.). It was recorded normally, then reversed and dubbed over the scene in post-production.<ref name="filmsite">{{cite web |url=http://www.filmsite.org/night.html |title=Analysis of ''A Night at the Opera'' |first=Tim |last=Dirks |website=Filmsite.org |access-date=2013-12-25}}</ref>