Directed by: Benjamin Stoloff
Starring: Ted Healy, Charles Winninger, Frances McCoy, Stanley Smith, Lucile Browne, Shemp Howard, Moe Howard, Larry Fine

AIN CROWN JEWEL #100

STORY

DRUMROLLLLLLLLLLLLLL...

NUMBER 100!!!

And could there possibly be a more wonderfully ridiculous, completely appropriate way for Absolutely Indie Network to reach ONE HUNDRED TITLES than with the first feature-film appearance of the men who would become THE THREE STOOGES?

Before Columbia. Before the legendary shorts. Before Curly joined the team. Before generations of audiences learned that two fingers approaching someone's eyes required an immediate defensive hand between the eyebrows...

There was Soup to Nuts.

And yes, the title tells you exactly what kind of experience you're about to have.

This is organized chaos.

At the center of the madness is Otto Schmidt, proprietor of a costume shop that is in serious financial trouble. Schmidt may be an enthusiastic inventor, but enthusiasm doesn't necessarily pay the bills — particularly when your inventions tend toward the kind of gloriously impractical contraptions that could only have sprung from the imagination of Rube Goldberg.

The creditors have had enough.

They send Richard Carlson to take control of Schmidt's struggling business and somehow make the place profitable.

Good luck with that.

Carlson soon becomes interested in Schmidt's lovely niece Louise, creating a romantic complication alongside the financial one. Meanwhile, salesman and professional troublemaker Ted spends considerable time around the local firehouse.

And look who's working there.

MOE.

LARRY.

SHEMP.

They aren't yet officially the Three Stooges audiences would come to know.

They're Ted Healy's Stooges, joined here by fellow comedian Fred Sanborn, bringing their vaudeville insanity onto the movie screen. AFI confirms that Soup to Nuts marked the first feature-film appearance of Healy and the performers then billed as his Stooges: Shemp Howard, Moe Howard and Larry Fine.

And once they arrive...

Forget maintaining order.

The fire company is not exactly a monument to efficiency. Ted isn't exactly a monument to good judgment. Schmidt's inventions aren't exactly going to rescue American industry.

But who needs competence when you've got COMEDY?

Ted concocts a scheme involving the fire department, Schmidt's costume business and the upcoming Firemen's Ball. Carlson wants Louise. Ted has his own ideas. Costumes provide the perfect opportunity for identity-switching, confusion and the sort of escalating nonsense that makes perfectly reasonable human behavior increasingly unlikely.

And then, naturally...

THERE'S A FIRE.

Suddenly the most questionable fire department imaginable actually has to fight one.

What could possibly go wrong?

The answer is:

EVERYTHING.

And that's exactly why we're here.

Soup to Nuts isn't polished Three Stooges comedy as millions would later know it. This is something more fascinating.

This is the laboratory.

You can watch Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard bringing the rhythms of their vaudeville act onto film, still working within Ted Healy's comedy troupe and years away from the Columbia shorts that would make the Stooges immortal.

The ingredients are already there.

Physical comedy.

Interruptions.

Insults.

Anarchy.

Timing.

Characters who should absolutely NOT be entrusted with anything requiring competence.

And an almost miraculous ability to turn catastrophe into entertainment.

This isn't simply another old comedy.

This is where movie audiences first met the Stooges.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
THIS IS IT — THE STOOGES' FIRST FEATURE FILM!

That isn't AIN hype.

AFI identifies Soup to Nuts as the first feature-film appearance of Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard, appearing as the comedians then known as Ted Healy's Stooges.

September 28, 1930.

The movie is released.

And three men who would become one of the most enduring comedy teams in American entertainment are suddenly on the big screen.

For AIN, THAT is a treasure.

WAIT — SHEMP???

YES! SHEMP!

Anyone whose mental picture of the Three Stooges is Moe, Larry and Curly gets a wonderful piece of Stooges history here.

Curly Howard isn't in Soup to Nuts.

The original screen lineup is Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Moe's older brother Shemp Howard.

Shemp eventually left Healy's act, and younger Howard brother Jerome — soon immortalized as Curly — joined Moe and Larry. The familiar Moe-Larry-Curly team would later establish itself at Columbia. Shemp ultimately returned to the Stooges after Curly became ill.

So Soup to Nuts allows us to travel back before the lineup most audiences associate with the Stooges even existed.

THEY WEREN'T EVEN “THE THREE STOOGES” YET

That's what makes this film historically delicious.

Moe, Larry and Shemp weren't arriving as established movie stars with a famous brand behind them.

They were part of Ted Healy's vaudeville act.

Healy played the central comedian while his supposedly incompetent assistants interrupted, annoyed and disrupted him, provoking the verbal and physical retaliation that became part of the act's comedy.

The independent Three Stooges phenomenon was still ahead.

We're watching the evolutionary stage before the butterfly came out of the cocoon — and immediately poked somebody in the eyes.

AND TED HEALY MADE HIS FEATURE DEBUT TOO!

Soup to Nuts wasn't only a milestone for the Stooges.

AFI notes that it was also Ted Healy's first feature film appearance.

Healy's relationship with the Stooges would eventually end, but his role in their early development is inseparable from their history.

Before audiences knew the Three Stooges as a self-contained comedy team, there was Ted Healy and his collection of human headaches.

RUBE GOLDBERG WROTE IT!

Now THIS is where Soup to Nuts gets even nuttier.

The story, screenplay and dialogue came from Rube Goldberg — yes, THAT Rube Goldberg.

Goldberg became famous for his wonderfully elaborate drawings of absurdly complicated machines designed to accomplish ridiculously simple tasks.

Push this lever...

which releases that ball...

which frightens this animal...

which pulls that string...

which tips that bucket...

which eventually accomplishes something you could have done yourself in approximately three seconds.

His name became so permanently associated with unnecessarily complicated contraptions that “Rube Goldberg machine” entered the language.

And naturally, Soup to Nuts incorporates the sort of eccentric inventions for which Goldberg was famous. AFI specifically notes that contemporary reviews recognized several Goldberg-style oddball inventions in the film.

The Three Stooges...

inside a Rube Goldberg story.

Of COURSE this exists.

THE MOVIE IS BASICALLY A TIME CAPSULE OF VAUDEVILLE COMEDY

Soup to Nuts arrived in 1930, when talking pictures were still transforming Hollywood.

Vaudeville performers suddenly had something silent movies couldn't fully capture:

their voices.

Their timing.

Their verbal interruptions.

Their insults.

Their musicality.

Their carefully rehearsed chaos.

The movie preserves a transitional moment when stage comedians were figuring out how their material could live inside the relatively new world of talking motion pictures.

Watching the Stooges here means watching vaudeville history migrate onto film.

CHARLES WINNINGER WAS NO COMEDY BEGINNER

Playing Otto Schmidt is Charles Winninger, a wonderful character actor whose career stretched across stage, screen and radio.

Classic-film audiences may particularly remember him as Cap'n Andy Hawks in the 1936 Show Boat.

His presence gives the madness a seasoned theatrical anchor — particularly useful when the screenplay surrounding him seems determined to become increasingly unhinged.

JOSEPH VALENTINE WAS BEHIND THE CAMERA

The cinematographer was Joseph Valentine, who would later photograph major Hollywood productions and eventually receive multiple Academy Award nominations.

AFI credits Valentine as director of photography, with Clyde Carruth editing the picture.

Even cinematic lunacy needs somebody to photograph it properly.

THE FILM RUNS A BEAUTIFULLY BRISK 71 MINUTES

No three-hour epic here.

AFI lists Soup to Nuts at 71 minutes, released by Fox Film Corporation on September 28, 1930.

Seventy-one minutes.

A struggling costume shop.

Rube Goldberg inventions.

A fire department.

Ted Healy.

Moe.

Larry.

Shemp.

And approximately seventeen metric tons of nonsense.

PERFECT.

AND HERE'S THE BEAUTIFUL PART — THIS WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING

The Stooges could not possibly have known in 1930 what lay ahead.

They couldn't have known that their comedy would survive changing movie audiences, changing television generations and changing popular culture.

They couldn't have known that decades later children would still imitate the sounds, gestures, arguments and routines.

They certainly couldn't have known that nearly a century later an independent streaming network would be celebrating its 100TH TITLE with the movie that captured their first feature-film appearance.

But here they are.

Still making people laugh.

THE AIN REASON

There are movies you add to a library.

And then there are movies that arrive at exactly the right moment.

Soup to Nuts is NUMBER 100 on Absolutely Indie Network.

That alone makes this one special.

But what makes it PERFECT is what this movie represents.

AIN is a Treasure Chest of Entertainment, and treasures aren't always the biggest, most famous or most polished things.

Sometimes the treasure is discovering where something began.

Everybody knows the Three Stooges.

But how many people have actually seen Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard in their first feature film together?

How many viewers know that Curly wasn't there yet?

How many know they were still working with Ted Healy?

How many know that Rube Goldberg wrote the movie?

THAT is what AIN curation is supposed to do.

It doesn't simply say:

“Here's an old comedy.”

It says:

“COME HERE. YOU HAVE TO SEE WHAT WE FOUND.”

And there is something wonderfully appropriate about reaching 100 with comedians who built careers around refusing to behave according to anyone else's rules.

AIN was created by an independent filmmaker FOR independent filmmakers, but it is also built upon a deep love of entertainment history — preserving it, rediscovering it, contextualizing it and introducing it to audiences who might otherwise never know these films existed.

So after months of building...

Twenty distinctive channels.

Independent films.

Original programming.

Short films.

Documentaries.

Classics.

Noir.

Westerns.

Comedy.

Horror.

Retrospectives.

Social-impact programming.

And treasure after treasure after treasure...

we open the chest one more time.

And who pops out?

MOE.

LARRY.

SHEMP.

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.