Probably others have been noticing this too, but there's a very pleasant surprise that comes from watching these beautifully restored shorts in chronological order.
Stooges stock company
==============
You get to watch the coming and going of a variety of stock actors that make up the Stooge universe. We all know Bud Jamison, Vernon Dent, Stanley Blystone, Eddie Laughton, James C. Morton - and later folks like Emil Sitka, Christine McIntyre, Kenneth MacDonald. It's great to also see the comings and goings of William Irving, Harry Semels, Phyllis Crane, Louis Mason, Leo White, June Gittelson, Edward LeSaint, Bobby Burns, Elinor Vandivere, Ted Lorch, Monty Collins, Hilda Title, Walter Brennan, Jack "Tiny" Lipson, Al Thompson - and L&H regulars like Walter Long and Tiny Sanford. You really start to get the feeling you are watching a stock company who's members evolve over time. You get to see Bud Jamison in a major role right from the first. You see Vernon Dent drift in every so nonchalantly in "Half-Shot Shooters" in a brief moment eating in a restaurant and eventually come back at the end of that year - 5 shorts later - in a more substantial role in "Slippery Silks." You see James C. Morton do his star turn in "Pain in the Pullman". We all know these folks formed a community of supporting players who popped up in short subjects and features across all the studios, but seeing them linked to the Stooges makes them feel like a Stooge Stock Company (which of course the boys did actually have when they started back playing regular live gigs in the early 40s). In "Pain in the Pullman", some even play themselves. As Bud Jamison's "Johnson" is calling the role while the "troupe" is boarding the train, he calls out "Hilda Title", "Bob Burns" - who each answer to their names as they climb on board. Curly calls Hilda "Shorty" in the next scene and drags here along to share in Paul Pain's crab dinner (Curly: "Want some?"; Hilda: "Oh I just love crab!"; Curly: "Huh huh huh - she don't know its a toitle"). I dunno - call me an old softie, but I really appreciated getting to experience the dynamic evolution of the Stooges stock company by just sitting and watching the shorts in chronological order. We all know these folks, but when you sit and watch them in order, it almost feels like you are discovering these gems for the first time. As the other volumes come out, we'll get to see more fun faces come and go as they strut their stuff with the Stooges.
Life on the 1930s LA Streets
=================
The beautiful restoration enables you to recognize how much time the Columbia Shorts crew spent working out in the "wilds" of LA on location. Seeing the Stooges run down the street in "Slippery Silks" - walk out into the street to recover the chopped up hose pieces in "False Alarms" - roam the streets as Depression era vagabonds both in "Three Little Pigskins" and "Pop Goes the Easel" - where you can read the film listings on the movie theater marquees (Garbo in "The Painted Veil" in "Pop Goes the Easel", Bing Crosby in "Mississippi" in "Hoi Polloi", etc.) - you really start to feel how much these early shorts took the Stooges out into the streets. It provides a vivid snapshot of life in LA in the mid-1930's. Increasingly, as we'll see with the next set of shorts, they find themselve bound to studio sets, but these early location shoots are lots of fun to explore now that all the detail down to the advertising in the store windows can be clearly made out in these wonderfully restored prints.
Parental Cameo
==========
I could now make out 3 separate shots in "False Alarms" that include Moe, Shemp, & Curly's dad, Solomon Horowitz. His presence is mentioned in the ThreeStogges.net page on this short, but I'd never been able to make out all these details. It's easy now with these new transfers. You see him first when the gang of Stooges and their gal pals climb into the chief's car outside the gals apartment (black suit, gray hat, striped tie, and a Shemp-like puss draped with a graying mustache chatting up some other extras). You see him again after they've spent 5 minutes driving clear across town, when the boys wreck the chief's car (first he comes running into the frame as they first hit the pole, then he's in the crowd watching as Mo opens the trunk to extricate the other passengers; and finally you see him lingering in the far right of the frame as they haul the car off the curb to ride it off again). Given the tight shooting schedules and budgets, it's possible all these scenes (which all include 6 principal cast members) were shot within a matter of a day or two. I expect they had their "dad" set up to get into as many of the extra shots as they could. By the last shot (the one where they pull the car off the curb and drive away), he really looks like he's just hanging out trying to stay in the frame as long as possible.
Anyway - love these new transfers from Sony. They are worth their weight in gold.
