Soup to Nuts with the Three Stooges | Ted Healy, Charles Winninger

Soup to Nuts with the Three Stooges | Ted Healy, Charles Winninger | An Almost Lost Gem Returns!

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Soup to Nuts with ...

	Soup to Nuts with the Three Stooges Ted Healy, Charles Winninger 20th Century Fox, 2005 average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Mr. Schmidt's costume store is bankrupt because he spends his time on Rube Goldberg-style inventions; the creditors send a young manager who falls for Schmidt's niece Louise, but she'll have none of him. Schmidt's friends Ted, Queenie, and some goofy firemen try to help out; things come to a slapstick head when Louise needs rescuing from a fire.

For a Stooge or otherwise classic comedy fan.

I've wanted to see this film for quite awhile, and I must say, I wasn't let down! This film is a riot. The plot isn't strong, but it doesn't need to be. Between early forms of Stoogery, Fred Sanborn's silent and musical antics (I may even be willing to argue he stole the show), Ted Healy's 'relationship' with an obnoxious girlfriend, and the 'Hat Tipping' device, this movie is more than just a good movie for a Stooge fan, but for anybody that likes the comedy of old. Jus' git it.

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An Almost Lost Gem Returns!

At long last, "Soup To Nuts" finally sees the light of day, and the very long wait was well worth it! This film is an absolute must for Three Stooges fans as it was the true beginning of the Stooges as an act, even though Shemp, Larry & Moe were playing second fiddle to Ted Healy at the time.

For years, rumors circulated that the last surviving prints of "Soup To Nuts" had deteriorated to the point of no return and would never be released on video, but you wouldn't know it by viewing this. There are a couple of jerks and jumps here and there, but overall, the print quality is great.

This film would probably not interest Curly enthusiasts since it features Shemp as the third stooge; this was shortly before he left the act and Curly joined. Actually, the Stooges don't appear until about 15 minutes into the film, and the first appearance of the boys singing the often-used song "You'll Never Know" is included here in it's entirety. Along with it is the sandbag dropped from the ceiling gag, which was later reprised by the Stooges on the Ed Wynn Show in 1950.

It's been a long wait for this to become available and the price is definitely right, so go out and get it!

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Soup to Nuts

This last review was helpful to me as I was going crazy trying to figure out why the dvd jacket states the film is in color, the pictures of the Stooges are all in color, and even other posts on the web misstate this.
The film is in glorious black and white, but the negative is sharp and the images clear. The sound too is remarkable for a film of this age. The actors are hokey, the girls cute in that Betty Boop fashion, and the Stooges - well, what can you say about perfection?
Kudo's to the Stooge society for raising the money to preserve this little gem back in the 70's. It might have been lost forever otherwise.
Watching the Stooges is always reason to celebrate (the release of Snow White and the 3 Stooges (feat. Joe DeRita) is also a magnificent film (and yes, that one is really in color!)
So what do we have ? One of the Stooge's first and one of their last , released in pristine quality to enjoy for the ages.
One last thing...I could never understand the appeal of Ted Healey and always resented the fact that he was such a no talent slapping OUR boys around and generally mistreating them. With Soup to Nuts, I see no reason to change that assessment. I'm glad that history (and the common sense of the Stooges) finally kicked his no-talent butt to the curb, and continued into cinema history and our hearts as the act we all grew up loving!

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A real smorgasbord

Watching this film, it's hard to believe that once not so long ago it was first considered lost and then thought to be beyond the point of saving in its entirety. The restoration team did a super job, and the final product proves yet again how very important film restoration is. Sure this film isn't exactly a classic or a great movie, but film restoration is about saving all films, both classics and ordinary movies. It also helps that this movie is historically very important, even if it's not that great. One should also consider that most films from 1930 aren't considered classics today, let alone even remembered, because of how new talking pictures were and how crude, primitive, and stilted many of them appeared in comparison to silent films that had been being made just a few short years ago. And speaking of early sound films, the sound itself in this film does sometimes have that awkward crude feel that a lot of other early talkies do. However, given that this film was produced by Fox, a studio whose sound recording system was considered far superior to the ones used by RKO and Warner Brothers (so much so that the studio made a lot of money loaning it out to other studios), it might more logically be argued that the less than smooth sound quality might be due to how this film was considered lost and unsalvagable for so long, something that couldn't be fixed in the same way as a deteriorated pictorial quality.

The plot itself is little more than fluff. Ted Healy, the star of the picture, spends more time hanging around with his buddies at the fire department (Shemp, Moe, Larry, and Freddie Sanborn, a strange character who might best be described as a weirder version of Harpo Marx) than at his real job, whatever that might be (we're never exactly told what). He's also friends with Otto Schmidt, who runs a costume store that's gone bankrupt and is being taken over by Richard Carlson, who falls in love with Louise, Schmidt's young niece. Ted's obnoxious girlfriend Queenie also works at the shop, and is constantly telling Louise everything, even when it's bad news she's been warned by Ted to shield Louise from. Through some behind-the-scenes dealings, Ted and Carlson take actions to save Schmidt's store, though with all of the crazy goings-on in this movie, the store's future might not be so rosy after all.

Most people today are only going to be interested in this film for the screen debut of the Three Stooges, who aren't in all of the scenes. The real star is Ted Healy, their original straight man and leader. This film might not be very funny or even very good, but that doesn't subtract from the fact that the guy had a natural screen presence and a whole lot of talent. It's not fair to judge him by just this one film, particularly when most people alive today didn't get a chance to see him in vaudeville, where he was a huge star. Knowing about his success in vaudeville gives one a background in why he did have such a huge reputation and why he went on to become such a successful and highly-paid supporting comedian after he transitioned to the screen. Unfortunately he's gotten a very bad reputation over the years; he wasn't a perfect little angel, but he was also far from the complete monster and talentless shill that a lot of people routinely make him out to be without even knowing all of the facts. This film is also our only real chance to see what the vaudeville routine of Ted Healy and His Stooges (in their original lineup) looked like, in the scene at the costume party where they're entertaining the crowd. Another highlight of the film is that the women playing the Stooges' girlfriends whom they go to Coney Island with were their real-life wives, and that they weren't acting when they were on that fire truck. It's also a bit shocking to see how young they look in this film; Larry in particular (the youngest member of the original lineup by some years) looks really fresh-faced and doesn't even have his trademark haircut. Actually, none of them have their trademark haircuts in this picture!

This isn't a great movie, and it didn't get too many laughs from me, but it is historically important, and it does have more than a few good scenes in it. It may largely seem like little more than a curio, but at least it's not a boring curio. It's also one of those movies that gets better with repeated viewings.

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