Book Review: Giraffes on Horseback Salad by J. Frank et al.

Giraffes on Horseback Salad: The Strangest Movie Never Made written by Josh Frank, adapted with Tim Heidecker, and illustrated by Manuela Pertega from screenplay notes and treatment by Salvador Dali for a Marx Brothers movie

A strange artistic friendship grew up between Harpo Marx of the Marx Brothers and Salvador Dali, the surrealist artist from Spain. Dali came to America during the Spanish Civil War and met Harpo. Dali had seen some of the Brothers' films and saw a lot of surrealist potential. He and Harpo worked on a screenplay treatment that was reject by the studio as being unfilmable and worse, unprofitable. Dali worked on the screenplay on and off over the years, mostly scribbling ideas and sketches in a notebook that was thought to be lost. Author Josh Frank hunted down the notebook in a European collection, had it translated, and worked up a script based on the notes and the treatment. He worked with an illustrator to make this graphic novel of the work. 

The book has some introductory material on the movie and the relationship between Harpo and Dali, then it presents the "movie" in 1940s style, with lobby cards and an intermission note. The main story is about a rich Spanish businessman who is engaged to a socialite (who is a bit of a harpy) but becomes fascinated one night by the Surrealist Woman. They are at a nightclub where the Surrealist Woman weaves her magical, incomprehensible visions into reality. The socialite is not amused and actively tries to distract the businessman and complains about the Surrealist Woman to her friends. Groucho and Chico Marx work for the Surrealist Woman and create the sort of antics that they always do. Harpo only appears as the businessman's shadow, occasionally bursting forth as his own person (but only very sporadically). The book is full of elaborate surreal imagery that the characters move through as the plot moves along.

I had a very mixed experience reading this book. The imagery was imaginative and elaborate, clearly unfilmable back in the day. Maybe this could have been made as an animated film in the 1940s or as a CGI extravaganza today. The plot was fairly simplistic, though that is typical of Marx Brothers films where the plot mostly serves to string together comedic set-pieces. Some of the comedy is taken directly from other films, which is disappointing. The conflict between reality (represented by the socialite) and surreality (represented by the Surreal Woman) was interesting but too self-aware. Surrealism works best when it does not comment on itself. Hearing about the friendship was the best part of the book, though it is a minor part of the book.

Not recommended unless you are interested in Dali or the Marx Brothers.