The Shemp Meditation Tapes

Straight from WFMU to your temporal lobe via your ear canals: The Shemp Meditation Tapes, volumes one and two! WFMU had copies for sale back in the day but I missed out when they ceased doing catalog business. But now, here they are in all their Shemptastic glory.. for free! Says Shemp Meditation Tape(s) creator Dave the Spazz: "Recommended for new age nitwits and chucklefucks alike....scientifically mixed in Shemp-A-Rama for your enlightened casaba-banging pleasure.... Soar the Horwitz heavens and become one with Shemp's karma on the Heee Beee Beee Beee side... transhempify your mind and cook your chakras on the life-infirming Ahh Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha side." Volume two features the pleasantly Warholesque Sleep, but I personally prefer the multi-textured complexities of Pain.

Mr. Noisy Heckler

by Kevin Kusinitz

Anybody who’s tired of today’s movie remakes should take a look at what was going on at Columbia Pictures in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Long before people knew from “recycling,” Harry Cohn’s lieutenants in the short subjects department were in the business of using material over and over.

I never realized how prevalent it was until wandering over to the Columbia Shorts Department site last month. Summary after summary featured the descriptions “REMADE AS” or ‘REMAKE OF.” Among the movies I ordered was Charley Chase’s The Heckler (1940). Having recently watched the 1946 remake, Mr. Noisy, I thought this might make for an interesting comparison. You know, the same way scholars debate the qualities of, say, the different versions of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Only instead of Fredric March, I’d be studying Shemp Howard.

For those who haven’t seen either version, it’s about an obnoxious sports fan whose heckling upsets athletes to the point where they lose. A couple of goons hire him to pull this stunt so they can throw a World Series game. But when the heckler catches a cold and loses his voice, it looks like it’s curtains.

I could fill in the details, but it would only raise questions like: Why do the goons get the heckler liquored up when he’s already told them he’s going to the game? And why doesn’t the coach lock his room during his pep talk to the team? And why doesn’t the heckler lock his room? (Answers: 1. Comedians are always funnier when drunk. 2. So the heckler can walk in and upset them. 3. So the coach and the player can walk in and give the heckler a cold by putting ice cubes on his chest.)

I’ve seen enough remakes so that I was expecting the usual routine of same story, different storyteller. Not this time. Remember when Gus Van Sant directed that shot-for-shot remake if Psycho? He’s got nothing on Edward Bernds, who follows Del Lord’s original so slavishly, you’d think he just digitally replaced Charley Chase with Shemp, until you remember this movie’s six decades old. From the very first seconds – the “tennis match” sign, the spectators moving their heads back and forth in unison, the shot of the players – it was apparent that the directors were literally working off the same page. The dialogue, camera angles, sets, stock footage, the name of the ballplayer (Ole Margarine), the dialogue -- everything is identical. Even supporting players Vernon Dent and John Ince appear in both as a spectator and doctor respectively. If Bud Jamison hadn’t died in 1944, he’d have probably been hired to repeat his role as the guy with the broken hat. Why didn’t Columbia just re-release the original? That would’ve been the ultimate moneysaving move.

The only things I could compare – or, rather, contrast -- were the lead actors. I went into The Heckler thinking I’d prefer Charley Chase, since I tend to dislike remakes and everything that goes with them. This was one time I was wrong. While Chase gives a good enough performance, Shemp seems like a genuine heckler who just happened to be caught on camera. I’ve never warmed up to him as a Stooge, but always enjoyed his solo work, both in shorts and his supporting roles in features. He’s a far better comedic actor than I gave him credit for in the past; the way he shouts the same insults is funnier. Watch Mr. Noisy once and I guarantee you’ll yell “Watch him miss it!” at the next ballgame.

The scene that clinched it for me was when the goons ask the heckler if he plans on going to the ballgame the next day. Chase and Shemp answer in the affirmative, then imitate the sound of a (dubbed in) train whistle. Quick cut to a stock shot of a locomotive, then another quick cut to a bar, where the goons have gotten the heckler drunk. Chase merely looks tipsy, while Shemp appears stunned to have suddenly appeared in this gin joint from out of nowhere. The former is expected; the latter, inspired. It may not read inspired, but coming from a cheap, 17-minute movie, it might as well be Un chien andalou.

Ultimately, Chase’s heckler is more annoying than amusing, while Shemp’s Mr. Noisy is the kind of guy you could have a beer with – after the game. He’s a pain in the butt but a funny pain in the butt. Maybe Chase was more comfortable in his usual nice-guy roles. Yet this character seems to be the same conventioneer he played so hilariously in Sons of the Desert, so what gives? Did booze get the better of both Chase and the heckler?

See, I told you this was going to be a scholarly debate. Shemp actum per vicis quod tractus!

Ted Healy: In Memoriam

In his own time, Ted Healy's biggest problem was Ted Healy. Ted was an out of control actor before it became fashionable. Highly talented and blessed with the ability to woo a tough crowd in record time, Ted also drank to excess, gambled, womanized, fought, and was even a bit of a pyromaniac, reportedly carrying a hip flask full of kerosene. He was a true eccentric, given to whims and not at all afraid to make a scene in public if the mood struck him. He could be generous and fiercely loyal to his friends, but his hair-trigger temper repeatedly landed him in hot water and, in several instances, undoubtedly set back his career. 69 years ago today, the risks of living dangerously caught up with him and he died of liver failure following a drunken brawl at the Brown Derby. He was only 41.

Today the problem with Ted Healy is his stooges. If they had never split for the cozy, atavistic comforts of Columbia, if they had never become baby boomer pop culture icons, if they had remained the rough-and-tumble goons of their vaudeville days with Ted, then Ted himself would probably be much better regarded today, probably as exactly what he was; a top-notch, talented and extremely innovative comedian who died the very peak of his abilities. But that isn't the way it worked out. If Ted Healy is remembered at all, it's never just Ted that most people remember, it's Ted Healy and his stooges.. or Stooges, rather. His best work in film, his two pictures for Warner Brothers, remain sadly obscure, especially in contrast with the 190 bite-size and comfortably similar Stooge shorts that have been TV mainstays since 1958. Ted's only starring feature, Soup To Nuts, remained largely unseen until 2005 when it was released on DVD with a sleeve featuring a huge picture of the Stooges. Them's the breaks.

Don't get me wrong.. I love the Stooges. I grew up with the Stooges. But the unbridled hate so many die-hard Stoogephiles feel towards Healy, witnessed in full during my time as webmaster of tedhealy.com, saddens me. There's certainly no poetic justice in Ted's fate unless you accept the fairy tale notion that the Howard, Fine, and Howard spent their formative years toiling anonymously, propping up an ungrateful, talentless ham. This handy and highly marketable myth aside, the real problem is that the dynamic between Ted Healy and his stooges is innately divisive. The comedy emerges from that division. There is no real common ground to be found between Healy's eccentric and off-handed cynicism and the Stooges' classic clowning, nor should there be. That's why Moe, even as "leader" of the Stooges, is still a stooge (whether he knows it or not), whereas Ted, when his role as leader is literalised in films such as Meet the Baron, is simply a world apart, a tinpot tyrant, and there's no doubt whatsoever that he is in charge. When an audience accepts the complete package, as they did in the 20s and 30s, that innate divide between the cynical proxy and the clown (or clowns) is gold. But when an audience favors one side over the other, it's poison. To someone weened on the Columbia shorts and incapable of seeing beyond them or contextualizing them, Ted must come across as the worst kind of interloper and, as such, is apparently worthy of the kind of scorn usually reserved for serial killers and politicians. A pity.

The cynic and the clown; if Ted Healy didn't invent the formula, he certainly popularized it. Milton Berle brought it lock, stock, and barrel into the television age, with Arnold Stang regularly playing stooge and Berle playing the wiseass go-between. Martin and Lewis became the hottest nightclub comedy act in history with it before Paramount pissed it all away by repeatedly casting Dean as some kind of humorless villain. Even today, you can see a down-to-earth equivalent of the dynamic between David Letterman and many of his guests. At least Letterman can move on to the next guest. Ted is currently locked in limbo with his Stooges, his post-stooge film work remaining largely unseen or ignored. Unfortunately, it's in that work where Ted Healy really is, the gruff, scene-stealing character actor who could handle both comedy and drama with flair. By 1937, he and his writers at Warners had even discovered ways to make you care for the guy (think W. C. Fields). Everything pointed towards a brilliant future for Ted. Given the trajectory that American showbusiness actually followed, Ted Healy would have been ahead of the curve every step of the way, from the sharp cynicism of wartime comedy to the dawn of "vaudeo" where Ted's quick wit and ability to work an audience would have certainly given Uncle Miltie a run for his money. As far as I'm concerned, Ted Healy will remain the greatest "what if" of classic comedy, and I'll be drinking a 60-proof toast to his memory this Christmas.

Reader EastSide has been kind enough to draw my attention to these vintage Healy clips from YouTube. First, 6 minutes and 8 seconds from Plane Nuts (1933), the second most complete record of Ted's vaudeville act (the first, and superior, being the recreation of the act in Soup To Nuts (1930)).



Here's a nice clip of Ted hitting on a couple of unbilled Chinese women in a clip from Myrt and Marge (1933). They're singers, but I have yet to discover their names. Myrt and Marge is easily the finest hour for Ted Healy and his stooges as supporting castmembers in a feature. MGM never handled the team nearly as well as Al Boasberg and Universal. Ted's rueful glare at the camera at the film's close is one of my all-time favorite Healy moments. Brilliant.

Funny Faces on the Films - part 4 (a)

by Geoff Collins

At last! We've reached the final part of Funny Faces on the Films, or Manic Mugs on the Movies, that intriguing 4-page photo feature from my beloved but crumbling Film Fun Annual 1939 in which the great and the adequate share equal billing, before time and posterity sorted 'em out. At least I can claim that this is the first part of the last part. [Later on, I may attend the party of the first part of the last part; it's that time of year, folks] Two of our subjects deserve a bit more than a cursory glance, and you, dear reader, don't want to be here all night and neither do I! So we'll get to 'em later! In the meantime...

It's Good-Natured Wimp week! Jack Haley certainly falls into that category. Not in real life, I'm sure, but it's fair to say that this most charitable and amiable of men often came across as bland and diffident on screen, apart from his well-documented and justly-praised turn as the Tin Man. By the mid-forties when he was appearing in things like Higher and Higher (a "let's put Sinatra in something - anything!"-motivated adaptation of his Broadway flop) Jack was more or less on autopilot. In People Are Funny he's so insipid that when his brilliant idea for a radio show is stolen from him by a couple of sharpies, he [apparently - please don't ask me to sit through all of it] just lets it happen. Mind you, even Stan and Ollie could pull a fast one on this Haley. Much more acerbic - and more fun, but probably for all the wrong reasons - is the wise-guy New Yorker persona he adopts in the Vitaphone short Saltwater Daffy. This excellent two-reeler is featured in the misleadingly-titled Three Stooges Early Years DVD set, and teams Haley with Shemp Howard. At least Shemp looks the part; Haley's would-be pickpocketing toughie character is totally at odds with his appearance of baby-faced innocence. Haley could do Cantorish sarcasm very well, as he proves in Follow Thru; it's a pity he wasn't allowed to do it more often. Why didn't somebody think to team him with Joan Davis?

The photo of Jack Haley "and friend" dates from 1933 and the un-named friend is Jack's Sitting Pretty co-star Jack Oakie in his costume for Paramount's woefully misjudged Alice in Wonderland (employ all the stars at your studio and render them unrecognizable!) Oakie was never a wimp of any kind: this was the man who stole an entire movie from Charlie Chaplin, with his immortal Napaloni in The Great Dictator ("You gotama carpet? Putama down!") Subsequently this cheerful double-taker became almost as chubby as he appears here, and disappeared into the morass of routine Fox musicals - although The Great American Broadcast is anything but routine, probably Jack's best starring vehicle. Like our other Jack, he enlivened many ordinary movies, glowed in a few good ones (Million Dollar Legs) and occasionally, as in The Rat Race, showed us what a sensitive actor he really was.

Another good-natured wimp: Robertson Hare. Even in his earliest appearances this bald little man looked middle-aged. He also looked worried, harassed and embarrassed. "Bunny" Hare was most comfortably placed at the top of the supporting cast, although his character was frequently made as uncomfortable as possible due to some devious plot concocted by the very best of London's stage comedians (Walls, Lynn, Henson) who used him as an unwilling stooge. "Farce" is a maligned and misunderstood word. At its best, it's a perfect art form and its history is lovingly catalogued in Brian Rix's excellent Life In the Farce Lane.

Many of the "Aldwych farces", written by Ben Travers in the 1920s for the Aldwych Theatre, were filmed in the early 30s due to the efforts of director/star Tom Walls who was just as wily a networker offscreen as he was on. Much of the fun to be had from these charming period pieces revolves around the efforts of Walls and his initially reluctant accomplice, silly-ass Ralph Lynn, to extricate themselves from some self-inflicted predicament via treachery and subterfuge. Poor Bunny Hare always got caught up in this; as a visiting vicar or some other entirely innocent petty-authority figure, he often ended up trouserless. "Oh calamity!" he would declaim in that choirmaster's voice, and we all felt for him. His humiliation was total.

Laughter and Life, an uncompleted, unreleased documentary, can be viewed on the Pathe website; it includes a warm, friendly conversation between Bunny and Sid James, leading into a lengthy clip from Aren't Men Beasts? which demonstrates perfectly the on-screen relationship between long-suffering Bunny and his frequent stage-and-screen partner, bald, bullying, overbearing Alfred Drayton. British farce at its best. Bunny was still active into his late seventies, in the TV series All Gas and Gaiters. His character was a bit more crafty but, bless him, he still looked exactly the same. Another Pathe clip shows him distributing Christmas gifts to poor children, which just about sums up this warm-hearted man.

Yet another good-natured wimp - whether in real life or not, I don't know - was Claude Dampier. Who remembers him now? He was seriously limited by his startling appearance, a tall, terminally toothy village idiot in a bowler hat, with a voice like the cultured English cousin of Peter Lorre. With this armory of horrors you can well imagine there weren't many starring roles for poor Claude. Nonetheless he was a success on radio in a double-act with his (much younger) wife Billie Carlyle, in which he gently misunderstood everything she said, and rambled on about his mysterious friend Mrs. Gibson. Claude can be seen, if memory serves, with Billie in She Shall Have Music, as a mightily irritating piano tuner in Radio Parade of 1935 ("yesss...that's right" he says, over and over again) and as an effete and frankly strange rabbit-clutching member of the teaching staff in Will Hay's early solo effort Boys Will Be Boys, although God knows what he could teach. Rabbit-clutching? The film contains one appalling moment: headmaster Hay knows that pupil Jimmy Hanley's stolen a necklace and proceeds to search him briskly. Enter Claude, to find them furiously wrestling on the floor. Hay, embarrassed, explains ""I... I was just teaching him a few tackles." "I see" says Claude, with total innocence. Gruesome; I never want to watch it again.

Claude's unique facial equipment made him a cartoonists' favourite; he's the only one of our Funny Faces to have his own cartoon strip in the Annual itself, breezing through each situation with that fixed rictus grin - and he also appears on the cover, which is enough to frighten anybody off. No wonder it's a rare book.

By a process of elimination you will have worked out that our remaining two Funny Faces are Stanley Lupino and Jimmy Durante [Nigel Bruce voice: "Amazing, Holmes; how do you do it?"] but I'll deal with them, fairly, I hope, during our next dip into this Holiest and Grailiest of movie books. [Big, terrifying close-up of Durante: "It won't be long now, folks! Ha-cha-cha!"]

Greenbriar Picture Shows

I had just read about this terrific new classic movie blog from cartoonbrew.com when John McElwee wrote to me and suggested I "might be interested" in it. Am I that transparent? Apparently. As some corsage-and-spats-wearing dandy might have said in 1908, John's blog is a real crackerjack. Greenbriar Picture Shows is overflowing with fascinating commentary, rare stills and vintage press materials from John's collection. What really sets GPS apart from the herd is its range and thoroughness; any post by John is worth a dozen Robert Osborne TCM intros.. probably more. I'm not sure what the current exchange rate is.

Incidentally, John sent over this trade ad (click on the thumbnail) for Shemp Howard's Vitaphone shorts. YOW!! If this isn't enough to lure you over to John's blog, I don't know what to do. Shemp is one of the ultimate Third Bananas, a true unsung talent. Why, oh why, must he be forever remembered as "Curly's Replacement" after having spent so many years as a successful solo? Oh.. DUH! I forgot! Because the only public exposure Shemp has received within the last thirty years are his mediocre Three Stooges shorts. And I suppose people wouldn't be too keen on the Marx Brothers if all they ever saw were Go West and Love Happy! For much of the life of Ted Healy's vaudeville act, Shemp was Ted's most valued stooge, but Shemp struck out on his own following Soup to Nuts in 1930. It has been suggested that Shemp quit the act because he was terrified of Ted, but I find it more likely that, being far more proactive and independent than his siblings (who were poorly paid and worked into the ground by Columbia and never complained), Shemp recognized his own potential and was eager to earn the kind of money that Ted couldn't/wouldn't pay. For many years, he was the most popular and widely known of the Howard brothers, appearing in his own 1934-36 series of shorts for Vitaphone and as support in features or such comedians as W. C. Fields (The Bank Dick), Olsen and Johnson (Hellzapoppin'), and Abbott and Costello (Buck Privates, In the Navy, etc.). A freakish detour in Shemp's solo career is Knife Of the Party, a 1934 two-reeler for Van Beuren/RKO that features Shemp as the cigar-chewing boss of his own set of stooges! Billed as "Shemp Howard and his Stooges", Shemp bald-facedly apes the Healy act (complete with Ted's "I'm the boss here, ain't I?" catchphrase), and poorly at that. I have to wonder whether or not Ted ever saw Knife Of the Party and, as notoriously protective of his act as he was, what his reaction might have been. It raises many questions for me. How did "Shemp Howard and His Stooges" come about? Why did Shemp, who was rapidly developing his own unique style, decide to indulge in a cheap imitation of his former boss, the man he was supposedly terrified of? And who the heck are Shemp's stooges, anyway?? There are six of them (and not one with a personality)! They aren't individually billed. Does anyone out there know?