Today (Thursday), it was back to the Herrick Library bright and early for more research. The staff members there are probably sick of us by now, but most of them have been very helpful and they are doing a great service “for duty and humanity” by helping us find the stuff we are looking for.
While we were there this morning, I came across a great folder of “set reference” stills from “Soup to Nuts”, something I had never seen before. These are photos of the various sets to be used in the film, but no actors are pictured, only the set itself and sometimes a director’s clapboard establishing the scene number which that set would be used for. The interesting find here was that several stills were taken on a boat, in the middle of a large body of water. Since there are no scenes on a boat in the film itself, the $64,000 question is, was there a scripted or filmed scene that didn’t make it into the film? That will be a research topic for one of our future visits.
While Frank, Brent and I were at the library, Jim decided to spend the morning re-visiting the Stooges steps from “An Ache in Every Stake”. We had all been to the steps before. For Jim, however, a trip to the steps is a religious experience and he feels compelled to stop there every time he visits LA. In fact, he’s photographed and filmed the steps from every conceivable angle ( including a police helicopter), and using every medium known to mankind. The fact that he had a new digital video camera was merely a convenient excuse to make another trip. But since he's the one who discovered the location of the steps, the rest of us are pretty tolerant of his need for re-visitation.
This afternoon, we all met up for lunch in Studio City with “Entertainment Tonite” film critic Leonard Maltin. Leonard is a long-time Stooges fan and honorary member of The Three Stooges Fan Club, and he even visited the Stoogeum last year. As we entered Art’s Deli, he pointed out a table in the back which he said was often frequented by a bunch of old-time comedy writers and studio personnel who call their group R.O.M.E.O. (Retired Old Men Eating Out).. Sure enough, within 5 minutes we learned that Abby Singer was seated back there. Singer was a production manager for the Stooges at Columbia during the late 1940s and was assistant director on several of their mid-1950s shorts. As Singer left the restaurant we introduced ourselves, and he told us how much he enjoyed working with the Stooges.
After lunch. Leonard invited us back to his house to look at his collection of stuff. His place is jam-packed with movie memorabilia of every conceivable type, including a few interesting Stooges pieces. He showed us a photo we had never seen before, a color shot of the Stooges with actor James Karen on the set of the 1967 Metropolitan Life commercial that the Boys did. After a few hours of looking at his mementos and sharing war stories we hit the road.
Tonight we split up again, as Jim wanted to go to the Hollywood Heritage Museum to see a lost Buster Keaton film while the rest of us just wanted to chill and have a leisurely dinner. As we were eating dinner, we got a frantic call from Jim. “Guys, who was that actor in the picture with the Stooges that we saw at Leonard’s house today?” We said, “You mean James Karen?” Jim replies, “Yeah, him. You’re not gonna believe this but the guy is sitting right in front of me!” In an amazing coincidence, James Karen was somehow involved in the making of the lost Buster Keaton short and was actually sitting right in front of Jim, just hours after we had seen a rare photo of him with the Stooges.
MORE TO COME………..
