Duck Soup is a 1933 Marx Brothers anarchic comedy film written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, and directed by Leo McCarey. First released theatrically by Paramount Pictures on November 17, 1933, it starred what were then billed as the "Four Marx Brothers" (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo) and also featured Margaret Dumont, Raquel Torres, Louis Calhern and Edgar Kennedy. It was the last Marx Brothers film to feature Zeppo, and the last of five Marx Brothers movies released by Paramount.

Although not the flop that some sources report it as being, blank">Duck Soup at the Internet Movie Database Duck Soup was, in comparison to the Brothers' previous Paramount films, a box-office disappointment. The film opened to mixed reviews, Notes for Duck Soup - TCM.com although this by itself did not end of group's business with Paramount. Bitter contract disputes, including a threatened walk-out by the Marxes, crippled relationships between them and Paramount just as Duck Soup went into production. After the film fulfilled their five-picture contract with the studio, the Marxes and Paramount agreed to part ways.

Since then, critical opinion has evolved and the film has since achieved the status of a classic. Duck Soup is now widely considered to be a Marx Brothers masterpiece.

In 1990 the United States _Library of Congress deemed Duck Soup "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. List of National Film Registry (1988-2003).

Duck Soup was a short silent film made by Hal Roach Studios in 1927. It was the first occasion Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy appeared together on screen at Hal Roach Studios. It was considered a lost film for nearly fifty years, until a print was discovered in 1974. It was previously thought by film scholars that the comedians barely shared any scenes, if any at all, but in fact they appear as a team throughout the entire picture, albeit rather primitively, dressed in tramp costuming, with Hardy sporting an unshaven chin and top hat. In the next few films, Laurel and Hardy were together as separate performers and not working as a double act, before their potential as a team was used again, notably in Do Detectives Think?.

The film was directed by Fred Guiol but a more important contribution was noted by the films' supervising director, Leo McCarey, the man who probably more than anyone else at Roach saw the greatest possibilities for Laurel and Hardy as a comedy team. McCarey later used the same title for the classic Marx Brothers film, Duck Soup he directed at Paramount in 1933. The sketch on which the film was based was written by Stan Laurel's father, Arthur J. Jefferson.

It was remade three years later as Another Fine Mess.

This was the second movie titled Duck Soup in which Edgar Kennedy appeared. The first was in 1933 with The Marx Brothers.

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