Zeppo Marx was one of only two of The Marx Brothers to play a recurring role in their films (not counting when they used their own names). He played the role of "Jamison" in both The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers.
A musical number featuring Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont, "A Little Bungalow" was deleted after the previews. In the stage play, it was originally sung by the characters Polly Potter and Robert Adams (the romantic leads). Instead, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby wrote "When My Dreams Come True" especially for this film as a love theme.
According to Marx Bros. biographer Joe Adamson, the Marxes were so appalled by this film version of their hit Broadway show that they offered to buy the negative from Paramount so that they could burn it.
All paper used as props is soaking wet. This was done to prevent overloading the early sound equipment with paper-crinkling noise.
Although Irving Berlin didn't produce a hit song for this show, it wasn't his fault. Berlin wrote his perennial classic "Always" for this score and submitted it to the show's author George S. Kaufman, who admitted he knew little about music. Kaufman commented that he disliked the opening line 'I'll be loving you, Always" given the numerous stories about men leaving their wives for younger women. He suggested that Berlin use the line "I'll be loving you, Thursday". Although the suggestion was made in jest, Berlin pulled the song and gave it to his wife as a present. The substitute song "A Little Bungalow" was not very successful.
Although his character is not named in the credits, in one scene Harpo is referred to as "Silent Red."
Chico and Harpo are not given character names. They are listed in the credits simply as "Chico" and "Harpo". Chico's name on the Broadway program was "Willy the Wop" which was considered too insensitive even for early movie audiences. Harpo's character was called "Silent Sam"
Co-writer Morrie Ryskind claims he was told that movie audiences would not accept the musical convention of having an orchestral background appear from nowhere at the start of a song. For an entire day, an orchestra was hired to be filmed as playing the background to the movie's love songs, but the movie's crew forgot to film them. The movie went out without the orchestra shots, and, "No one cared, of course," said Ryskind.
During the "Why a duck?" sequence, it seems that Groucho almost calls Chico "Ravelli", which is Chico's character in Animal Crackers. Since they were shooting The Cocoanuts in the morning and acting in Animal Crackers at night, this mix up is understandable.
During the day, the Marx Brothers worked on this movie. At night, they were starring in "Animal Crackers" on the stage.
Filmed on a stage in New York City. Sound films were still so new that soundproofing was not installed, so the film had to be shot in the early hours of the morning to reduce outside traffic noise.
Harpo's red wig looks black in this movie. For all subsequent movies, he wore a blonde wig to make it look lighter on film. In some of those films (e.g. Animal Crackers) Harpo is referred to as a redhead.
Of the film's two directors, Groucho Marx once said, "One of them French-born Robert Florey didn't understand English, and the other one former dance director Joseph Santley didn't understand comedy."
One of the earliest of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by MCA ever since.
The Cocoanuts opened at the Lyric Theater in New York City on December 8, 1925 and ran for 276 performances starring the four Marx Brothers, Margaret Dumont and Billy De Wolfe with songs by Irving Berlin.
The first use of the overhead camera shot (from the roof of the sound stage looking down at the dancers forming kaleidoscopic patterns) is usually credited to Busby Berkeley, the Broadway dance director whom Samuel Goldwyn brought to Hollywood to stage numbers for Eddie Cantor comedies. But a year before Busby's appearance on the scene in Whoopee!, the overhead shot in used for the first time in an American sound movie in this movie.
The only Irving Berlin musical that did not spawn a "hit" song.
The sight gags in which Harpo eats the lobby's telephone and drinks from the inkwell were not in the original play. Robert Florey improvised the gags to give Harpo bits of silent business to do.
The stage rights were originally bought by United Artists in 1928, and sold to Paramount the following year.