This is a story about something that didn't happen. A movie that was never made. It was supposed to be a collaboration between the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and the Marx Brothers.
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Dalí was the toast of the town in 1970 when he appeared on the Dick Cavett TV show. Elegantly dressed in a burgundy velvet sport coat and sparkly vest, this titan of the surrealist movement strode on stage with a gold handled cane in his right hand — and on his left, a live anteater on a leash, which he promptly dumped in the lap of another guest, the actress Lillian Gish. When Gish asked him if his work had a message for people, he shot back "No message." "Could you invent one?" pleaded Cavett.
Back in 1937, Dalí was much less famous when he showed up at MGM studios with his buddy Harpo Marx to pitch a movie treatment. The Marx Brothers, on the other hand, were at the height of their popularity, thanks to their hijinks in films like Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera and Animal Crackers.
But studio head Louis B. Mayer didn't particularly like the Marx Brothers or know what to make of Salvador Dalí, and so he killed the project the artist had titled Giraffes on Horseback Salad. Now, writer Josh Frank has turned that somewhat incomprehensible screenplay into a graphic novel. "It was crazy surreal," he says, "and totally not digestible, and Groucho said quote-unquote 'it wouldn't play.'"
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