stop-motion photography for a Marx Brothers film. At two points, Groucho breaks the fourth wall. During the "Sing While You Sell" sequence, as he narrates a fashion show, he speaks a few asides, including "This is a bright red dress, but Technicolor is so expensive." Later, after Grover has been exposed as the villain, Groucho comments, "I told you in the first reel he was a crook." Music As with the previous Marx Bros. MGM films, The Big Store contains elaborate musical numbers, including the upbeat "Sing While You Sell" led by a singing and dancing Groucho, "Tenement Symphony" sung by Tony Martin and a children's choir. The screenwriting team of Sid Kuller, Ray Golden and Hal Fimberg also supplied the lyrics to Hal Borne's original music. An instrumental version of the Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown tune "Sing Before Breakfast" from Broadway Melody of 1936 is heard during the Groucho-Harpo scene. The Big Store is the second Marx film with an instrumental version of "Cosi-Cosa" from A Night at the Opera, which can be heard during the bed department scene. It is also heard at the beginning of the racetrack scene in A Day at the Races. "If It's You": Tony Martin (music and lyrics by Ben Oakland, Artie Shaw and Milton Drake) "Sing While You Sell": Groucho, Six Hits and a Miss, Virginia O'Brien and Harpo as a drum-beating snake charmer "Rock-a-bye Baby": Virginia O'Brien "Mama Eu Quero": Chico and Harpo (piano duet) "A Whimsical Trio": Harpo (harp, violin, cello) (by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, using music from a Mozart sonata and a Beethoven minuet) "Tenement Symphony": Tony Martin, onstage choir and orchestra, featuring Chico and Harpo Reception Reviews for The Big Store were generally positive, but unenthusiastic. Theodore Strauss of The New York Times wrote that "if it lacks the continuously harebrained invention of, say, 'A Night at the Opera,' the boys are still the most erratic maniacs this side of bars. If one were entirely truthful one would have to admit that the picture has many a dull stretch, that the tricks have been overworked, that the boys are slowing down, etc., etc. But with Marxian adherents—among whom we most decidedly belong—the question is simply, Are the Marx Brothers in it? They are." A review in Variety called the film a "moderate comedy where dull stretches overshadow the several socko laugh sequences during a bumpy unfolding ... Marx Bros.