Beer and Pretzels

This is the second Three Stooges short and it's obvious that MGM Studios had no idea what to do with the boys. Part of this confusion may have been because the Stooges still were not the same lovable team we have all come to know. Instead, they were essentially the vaudeville team of Ted Healy and His Stooges--with the obnoxious and totally untalented and unlikable Healy as the front man. In real life, Healy was an alcoholic and bitter man and his 'Stooges' resented his taking the lion's share of the money and headlining the act--they also resented his treatment of them. Incidentally, shortly after the three left this team, Healy was beaten to death in a bar fight.

As for this short, it has some lovely Stooge moments but unfortunately there is also LOTS and LOTS of singing and dancing--little of which was done by the Stooges. Because of this, the short is very frustrating to most Stooge fans, though die-hard fans and film historians would no doubt find this interesting.

Beer and Pretzels (1933)

*** (out of 4)

Ted Healy and his 3 Stooges (Moe, Larry, Curly) are fired from a song and dance show so they take a position of waiters but things don't go very smoothly. The first night out Healy is busy trying to be an owner while the Stooges get into one disaster after another. This short turned out to be the Three Stooges second at MGM and it's true the studio obviously didn't know what to do with them but I think this film actually manages to be pretty fun from start to finish. In the middle we get a musical number that is rather bland and boring but this only lasts for a few seconds thankfully. The rest of the film has the boys doing their act but of course they're still behind Healy. I think Healy actually turns in a pretty good and funny performance here. I really enjoyed the way he tried to be "smarter" than his stooges but he still managed to come across quite foolish in his own way. These early Healy shorts are never going to get much attention compared to the Columbia films but this one here is certainly one of the better ones. As far as the Stooges go, we don't see them in full glory here but I think they're entertaining enough in their own right and the final few minutes are a major plus with some very good laughs.

Reason why I said before '46 was because Curly was starting to become ill, and it was sad to see Curly in the shape he was in at that time. Because of that, it made it hard to watch any of those without feeling sad :( But here, we have the early days... the EARLY early days. Alright, so this isn't "The Three Stooges", but as it was usually put "Ted Healy and His Stooges". The humor here seems like a mix of what the stooges would become and a little bit of the biggest contenders at the time, The Marx Brothers. Best bit: proof that if you don't throw salt over your shoulder in time, you'll have bad luck... LOTS of it. Anyway, this is worth a look for ALL stooges fans and you can probably find it on a video or DVD collection for about five dollars... and in the words of Curly, "He's got FIVE DOLLARS!!!!!"

Beer and Pretzels (1933) was one of the first one screen appearances of the Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curley Howard line-up. The "brains" behind the trio is Ted Healy. He bullies and punks out his "stooges" as he mack's on women. Curley is thin in his role as the central comic foil of the group. The trio hasn't fine honed their permanent characteristics of the lovable doofs that we have grown to love over the next eleven years.

A strange short. I was a bit shocked to Moe being smacked around by someone else. It felt odd and I wished that Ted Healy would have made a few more shorts with them. But Healy was a complicated individual. I wish someone would make a biographical picture on him. That guy was something else.

Recommended as a curio.

The boys really threw themselves around, tossing their bodies, all over the place, during these early MGM shorts, that they did with Healy. The copy I saw of Beer and Pretzels (1933), on YouTube, was a nicely restored version. The quality was great. The boys try to get jobs being waiters. This one is a little chaotic, with the dancing though. Bonnie Bonnell returns from the boys last film, Nertsery Rhymes (1933). In one dance scene, a dancer looks like she's having a seizure. It was weird. It was odd. The three tap dancer guys, who popped up, were slightly entertaining though. The director, Jack Cummings, lighted the sets strategically, so the dancers were in shadow, showing a silhouetted look. It was the second film in a five series run, produced by MGM studios.

There are signs of magic, to these early Stooge films. Previews of things to come. It is great seeing these again with a 21st century perspective. It is really interesting trying to analyze, what is going on in the boys' minds, as they act out these scenes, knowing what we know now, from a real-world perspective. It's an odd contrast, when some of the characters discuss the concept of being solo. It contrasts to what happens to Healy, Moe, Larry and Curly, the following year, when the gang split and the Three Stooges were born. Healy does do some of the gags in Beer and Pretzels (1933), that the Stooges made famous, later on, during their 25 year run, that followed. This one just felt a tad sloppy in its design, compared to their previous film.

6.1 (D+ MyGrade) = 6 IMDB.