I'm really glad this worked out for you, Mark! GOLD RAIDERS (1951) is a gem of a Stooges Feature, to be sure, whereas, I find MEET THE BARON (1933) just kind of hangs there! I think I can only handle so much of "Ted Healy & His Stooges," which is OK for the MGM Musical shorts, but at feature length is a bit much! Just my opinion.
CHEERS!
Thanks, Tony. I hope this might be helpful to anyone else who's looking for a "functional" copy of the disc. A few years after this set came out, I used to see the individual discs cheap at Sam's Club (back when they had a good selection of DVDs) but I never bothered with it as I had the box and was at the time unaware of any issues.
Ted Healy and the Stooges really aren't in "Meet The Baron" that much, just an occasional routine. The film is really carried by Jack Pearl and Jimmy Durante and it's been a long time since I watched it all the way through, but I remember enjoying it and getting the vibe that they were going for kind of a Marx Brothers type of humor (at least attempting it), and I appreciated it on that level as far as it went.
I find Jack Pearl interesting. Apparently he was a star in vaudeville but that really didn't translate into a movie career for him. His filmography on Wikipedia only lists three films, the last of which was "Hollywood Party" from 1934, but he lived into the early 1980s.
I watched "Gold Raiders" once or twice when I first got the set, just spot-checked it last night. I remember the Stooges do some barbershop harmony in it, which I always enjoy. I need to watch it again.
I was very glad to get the "Classic Comedy Teams" set when it was released. It filled some gaps, even though none of these films were the best work of any of the teams. When the TCM Archives Laurel & Hardy set came out I was glad to have "The Devil's Brother" and "Bonnie Scotland" but wondered where "Air Raid Wardens" and "Nothing But Trouble" would surface. They ended up here.