Topic: Roast-Beef and Movies (1934) - George Givot and Jerry Howard

[Paul Pain]

https://threestooges.net/filmography/episode/194
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025727/



I leave you with this: there is a video of this short out there that you can find with little effort.  If you can't find it, send me a private message.

This is a significant short in that it's Curly's only true solo appearance.  No Moe.  No Ted Healy.  Just Curly.  With sucky surrounding cast led by George Givot and Bobby Callahan.

The entire humor of this short is carried entirely by Curly.  And his shtick is just eating everything in sight, including film canisters.  The only other real humor in this is the goofy, but already outdated, sound effect when George knocks Curly's and Bobby's heads together.

George Givot as Gus Parkyurkarkus was absolutely awful.  I mean he's terrible.  There is nothing funny about his Greek accent or his obsession with "Well, HOOOWWWWW do you Liikeee THAAAATTTTT!"  Benny Rubin is light years better... even Gene Roth is an improvement over this crap!

The rest of the cast has really nothing good to be said about them either.  The plot is a drag and was just a few minutes of film (in technicolor) created to use up footage excised from other MGM productions.

This is purely a novelty, folks.  Nothing more can be said in this one's favor.

This short can... BURN IN HELL^TM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2/10

[metaldams]

      Just watched this again for the first time in years.  It’s.....OK.  All the MGM shorts I’ve seen, and this includes the ones with Healy, were excuses to include unused musical numbers from features, and this short is no exception.   Going in knowing what to expect helps.  This is before anybody knew what to do with Curly, but he does show a bit more screen charisma than his partner Bobby Callahan regardless.  Callahan would have small roles in four Stooge shorts before passing away in 1938 at the young age of 42.  Curly makes a good facial expression and can deliver a line, but he’s not fully fleshed out like he’ll be at Columbia.  It’s proto Curly.

      As for George Givot, he was a Russian born Greek dialect comedian who would team with Charles Judels at Vitaphone in shorts much better than this.  Some of them have Shemp in support,  he later did Disney voice overs and lived until 1984, so he had a long life and fruitful career. 

      The technicolor is of interest, but really, MGM could not make straight comedy shorts nor did they really attempt to based on what I’ve seen.  So yeah, I just accept this for what it is rather than what it isn’t.  Not the kind of thing that would draw me into old comedy shorts, but of interest once a fan.

[Umbrella Sam]

Saw this a long time ago, and my memory is that it was pretty bad. While it was intriguing to see Curly not technically playing the “Curly” role in another attempt at a comic trio, it just wasn’t funny. The only thing I remember laughing at was a part where Curly acts out a ridiculously short scene for the movie executives. The rest of it’s just boring, rejected musical numbers, as well as George Givot being hard to understand (though that might be partly due to the sound quality). Not going to rate it since it’s been so long since I’ve seen it.

[metaldams]

Saw this a long time ago, and my memory is that it was pretty bad. While it was intriguing to see Curly not technically playing the “Curly” role in another attempt at a comic trio, it just wasn’t funny. The only thing I remember laughing at was a part where Curly acts out a ridiculously short scene for the movie executives. The rest of it’s just boring, rejected musical numbers, as well as George Givot being hard to understand (though that might be partly due to the sound quality). Not going to rate it since it’s been so long since I’ve seen it.

Don’t know if you’ve ever seen the shorts Givot did at Vitaphone, but I can tell you at times he’s hard to understand there as well.

I do kind of get a kick out of him playing Greek as I’m half Greek myself.  Yes, my ancestors at the time were first generation, some even owned a diner!

[Big Chief Apumtagribonitz]

Do I understand correctly that Givot is the voice of the waiter singing Bella Notte in Lady and the Tramp?

[Dr. Mabuse]

Painfully unfunny — worse than the Stooges-Healy shorts. Givot never made me laugh and the two-strip Technicolor adds nothing.

For Curly completists only.

2/10

[metaldams]

Do I understand correctly that Givot is the voice of the waiter singing Bella Notte in Lady and the Tramp?

According to DisneyWiki, yes.

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Bella_Notte

I’ve last seen Lady and the Tramp 30 - 35 years ago.  I gotta imagine this is what Givot is most known for these days.  His act in Roast Beef and Movies, it’s all Greek to me. 

[I. Cheatam]

I saw a B/W version of this on a public domain Stooges DVD set. I honestly didn't really mind it, even if the trio was a low-rent Stooges clone. Curly does have a few good moments.

[HomokHarcos]

This was worse than any of the Ted Healy shorts because the trio did not mesh here. You could have put The Three Stooges in here and it would have been better.  Moe certainly made a better leader than George Givot. I like the Keystone park scene that was only a few seconds long, and Curly does not use the falsetto voice. Once they got to the screening section I knew what was coming: stock footage. Looks like Jules White took a page out of MGM's playbook, but at least he used recycled Stooges footage instead of random musical numbers.