General Boards > Questions and Answers

Early Stooges Stuff, can it be found?

<< < (3/9) > >>

shempheadbat:
Yah, he was pretty hung-over looking in those Durante flicks, he just looked lost... I guess it's mostly hindsight and the benefit(?) of too many documentaries that make me associate Durante wih the downfall of Buster (amazing about 'The General', but I guess at the time it was just another movie and judged against whatever was popular...) BTW, my copies of "Soup" are just taped off of AMC, from a couple of years ago.  At the time, they also showed "Roast Beef in Movies", a color short with Curly that is also really weird, the stooges are Healy's 'babies' and want a bedtime story... I think that's Healy's real girlfriend in there with him chewin' up the scenery, too.   (I was once in a band called "Rube Goldberg Machine", odd songs with no specific style; sounded like if The Beatles beat up King Crimson while Willie Nelson jammed with Mingus and Sonic Youth, sorta... many audiences did the 'elevator dance'!)

Baggie:
 Yeh I'm interested in getting 'Soup To Nuts.' I think the colour short you are refering to is 'Nertsery Rhymes' rather than 'Roast Beef And Movies,' which was a black and white Jerry Howard solo short(and one rather poop short, in my estimate). I really like 'Nertsery Rhymes,' but I have a black and white version, not that two-strip technicolor crappy version. All those browny-orange colours screw my eyes.

Baggie:
 And yes, the fairy wearing that rather fetching (not) sequinned all-in-one typa garment in that short is Healy's girlfriend, Bonnie Bonnell, and she's in some, if not all of the other Healy/stooge shorts. Watch out for her rather crazy dancing in 'Beer And Pretzels.'
 Does anyone know if she's the one that shot Ted in the hand or was it one of his wives? (or another anonymous lover?)

metaldams:
Shempheadbat, in case you're not aware, there is going to be a new Keaton DVD set with THE CAMERAMAN, SPITE MARRIAGE, and FREE AND EASY coming out 12/7.  Also included is a new Kevin Brownlow documentary that deals exclusively with the MGM years!  That should be VERY interesting.  By the way, TCM will be airing all of this stuff on the same night.

Pilsner Panther:
That's excellent news... I'll buy the package just for the first two films. "The Cameraman" and "Spite Marriage" are the final two of Buster's great silent features, and the last films he had real creative control over.

The sound films he made for MGM— well, they have their moments, but not all that many. The dumbest thing they did was to put together the artificial "team" of Keaton and Durante, which didn't make any sense, and the pictures do stink.

On paper, it probably looked good: a guy who never speaks, and a guy who can't shut up (sort of like Harpo and Groucho). But the pictures don't work at all, and Buster is clearly drunk in a lot of the scenes. MGM would have made a better choice if they'd paired Buster with Cliff Edwards— since they wanted to make him half of a team— and Buster and Cliff had a natural chemistry together (unlike Buster and Jimmy).

Still, I can't help but wonder if Keaton would still have done well in his later career if he'd had to accept equal billing with anyone. He knew what kind of talent he had, and after he left Fatty Arbuckle's film company, basically everyone else who appeared in his films played second banana (especially the leading ladies, who often get thrown around like sacks of bananas... or potatoes).

Buster just wasn't born to be a co-star, that's all.

 :-[

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page