| Re: Warners presents Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Three Stooges |
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Group: alt.comedy.laurel-hardy · Group Profile
Author: Hal EricksonHal Erickson Date: Aug 16, 2006 11:49
> I have seen MEET THE BARON on TCM many years ago and have a VHS of it.
> It actually stars Jimmy Durante, who shares a few scenes with Ted
> Healy, Howard, Fine and Howard, who play inept plumbers at an all girl
> school. Jack Pearl who plays the Baron, I think it's the same guy who
> plays a baron in HOLLYWOOD PARTY but don't know for sure.
It is. Jack Pearl's "Baron Munchausen" character was very popular on radio
in the early 1930s. His catch-phrase was
"Vass you dere, Sharlie?" He faded from stardom early on, but I remember
seeing him reprise the Baron character on
TV's JACKIE GLEASON SHOW in the early 1960s. (Incidentally, it was because
MEET THE BARON and Ed Wynn's
THE CHIEF performed so poorly at the box office that David O. Selznick
refused to ever again be assigned to any MGM film starring a radio comedian.
He wasn't--unless you count soon-to-be radio comedian W.C. Fields in 1935's
DAVID COPPERFIELD).
In the early scenes you will recognise some familiar jokes the Three
> Stooges will later use over and over in their Columbia shorts like,
> "Where are the tools?" "What tools?" "The tool's we've been using for
> the past thirty years" "Ooooh, those tools!".
I'd have to check my own VHS copy, but I think they also sing a bit of
"You'll Never Know Just What Tears Are", which
they also performed (memorably) in SOUP TO NUTS.
It's interesting that Curly plays a cross-eyed "tough mug" character in MEET
THE BARON. He hadn't quite morphed into the
"real" Curly yet.
--Hal E
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