Hi -- despite the fact that I have been a registered member for five years, apparently I have never posted anything prior to today, so I guess this "belated hello" and a couple questions must go here for starters.
First question -- someone who was a part of early Stooge history but with very little biographical info available, at least I didn't find much doing a cursory web search: Jack Walsh is mentioned in Moe's autobiography and elsewhere as a straight man Howard, Fine and Howard used when they split with Ted Healy in the early 1930s. I believe I recall Moe mentioning Jack Walsh briefly and maybe in a less-than-flattering way in his autobiography. Anyway, I found it interesting that Healy hired three other Stooges to replace "our" Stooges until they eventually returned (and again once they split permanently in 1934?) and in one of the Forrester Stooge books, there is a picture of the "replacement" Stooges (including Mousie Garner and two other guys) with Jack Walsh -- at least it was captioned that way. I find it interesting that both teams used Jack Walsh as kind of a "surrogate" Ted Healy -- so is there any info on this guy or anything else he did? Also if he appeared in any films, etc. I'm just curious -- I have seen the occasional pic of the Stooges on stage in the 30s or 40s with Eddie Laughton, suggesting that in their live act they continued to use a "straight man" even after they went on their own (at least for a time).
I also was looking for info about Freddie Sanborn, who we know as the "fourth Stooge" in Soup To Nuts, and was part of Ted Healy's troupe for a while. I found reference to a few film appearances including one called National Barn Dance, supposedly based on a radio show out of WLS in Chicago, where he is said to have performed his xylophone routine (which I guess is what he was known for). The info I read said it was a Paramount film, but part of the Paramount library which ended up with Universal -- but apparently never released to TV or home video? Would this be available anyplace, or even worth looking for?
I guess I have a curiosity about the old vaudeville days -- all those performances which weren't filmed or recorded or maybe even written down -- although a lot of routines were written down and/or preserved on film, radio and TV, there have to have been even more that weren't. Joe DeRita is supposed to have saved a trunkload of typewritten pages containing all kinds of old vaudeville routines. I wonder where that ended up...I'd love to see that stuff...
