A Night at the Opera was the first Marx Brothers movie without Zeppo Marx (though his replacement here, Allan Jones, is not a notable improvement) and also the first under the supervision of MGM's legendary producer Irving Thalberg. A relatively sane plot line and conventional romantic subplot place this film in the more conventional camp of Marx Brothers movies. Due to the critical and commercial failure of Duck Soup (1933), the brothers' previous movie, the studio decided to pre-test many of the skits on live audiences; while Duck Soup's anarchic revelry left many in the audience less amused than baffled, A Night at the Opera's script by George S. Kaufman and Morris Ryskind and direction by Sam Wood were more controlled and focused than in previous Marx efforts. But as was often the case in their movies, the brothers' comedy takes aim at the pompous and pious hypocrisy of the upper crust, and this movie features many of their most famous routines, including the stateroom scene, the contract scene, the bed-switching sequence, and the operatic finale. The film's openly subversive and derisive tone was a perfect match for a Depression-era crowd looking for some wealthy authority figures to laugh at.