Trivia / Giraffes On Horseback Salad

• Development Hell: After Giraffes On Horseback Salad was rejected by MGM, it languished in Dali's notebook, and was only mentioned briefly in scattered interviews and magazine articles over the years.
• Playing Against Type: This would have been the case for Arthur Marx if Giraffes was filmed as originally conceived. Whereas Harpo played the Cute Mute clown in other Marx Brothers movies, here he would have been cast as the serious and somber male lead, delivering dozens of lines (and even singing) without any reliance on his familiar Slapstick or prop gags. There's a good chance that this might have ended up as another Audience-Alienating Premise for theatergoers expecting a safely familiar Marx Brothers movie.
• Promoted Fanboy: Josh Frank is a longtime fan of the Marx Brothers, having grown up watching their movies. He even dressed as Harpo for Halloween in 1987 at the age of 12. He proudly considers Giraffes the first new Marx Brothers movie in seventy years.
• What Could Have Been: The graphic novel is one big What Could Have Been for the movie. It's understandable why MGM boss Louis B. Mayer passed on the film, as Salvador Dalí was (at the time) a relative unknown to American audiences, the Surrealism might have alienated audiences, and the proposed visuals would have been more elaborate and complex than almost anything else filmed at the time.