Hello Pop!

Hello Pop!
Directed by Jack Cummings
Written by Ted Healy
Matty Brooks
Moe Howard
Starring Ted Healy
Bonnie Bonnell
Moe Howard
Larry Fine
Curly Howard
Albertina Rasch Dancers
Henry Armetta
Edward Brophy
Tiny Sandford
Rosetta Duncan
Vivian Duncan
Music by Irving Berlin (song: "I’m Sailing on a Sunbeam")
Ballard MacDonald
Dimitri Tiomkin
Al Goodhart
Dave Dreyer
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release dates
  • September 16, 1933 (1933-09-16)
Running time
 17 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Hello Pop! is the third of five short films starring Ted Healy and His Stooges released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1933. A musical-comedy film, the film also featured the Albertina Rasch Dancers and Bonnie Bonnell (Healy's girlfriend at the time). The film was considered lost until a 35mm nitrate print was discovered in Australia in January 2013.[1] Stooges Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard were billed as "Howard, Fine and Howard."

Plot

A theater producer (Healy) is trying to stage an elaborate musical revue. His efforts are constantly interrupted by demanding back stage personalities: a flaky musician (Henry Armetta), a woman who keeps try to ask him something (Bonnie Bonnell), and his raucous sons (the Stooges in children's costumes).

He is able to get the show ready for presentation, but during the main number, the Three Stooges slip beneath the enormous hoopskirt costume worn by the leading vocalist. They emerge on stage during the performance, ruining the show.[2]

Cast

Production

Originally planned under the title Back Stage, Hello Pop! was the third of five short films made by MGM featuring the vaudeville act billed as “Ted Healy and His Stooges.” The act focused primarily on Healy’s wit and caustic commentary, with the Stooges receiving the brunt of the physical slapstick. For the MGM short films, actress Bonnie Bonnell was incorporated into the configuration as Healy’s love interest.[3]

Hello Pop! was the second of two MGM Stooge shorts filmed utilized the two-color Technicolor process. (Nertsery Rhymes, the act’s first film for MGM, was also shot in color.) The use of color was predicated by the decision to recycle two musical numbers from earlier Technicolor-lensed MGM films into the Hello Pop! musical sequences, the Irving Berlin song "I'm Sailing on a Sunbeam", from the MGM film It’s a Great Life (1929), and the "Moon Ballet" sequence from the unreleased MGM feature The March of Time (1930).[4]

Preservation status

In the 1930s, studios were offered their two-color negatives by Technicolor, who was at that time storing them. Most studios declined the offer, the camera negatives were junked, and original release prints usually disposed of shortly after a theatrical run. A print existed in MGM's Vault #7, but was destroyed by fire in 1967.[1]

In January 2013, it was announced that Hello Pop! had been located in an Australian private film collection and was in the process of being restored for public viewing.[1] The film was screened at Film Forum in New York City on 30 September 2013.[5]

DVD Release

Warner Archive released Hello Pop! on September 24, 2014 on DVD in region 1 as part of the Classic Shorts From The Dream Factory series, Volume 3 DVD set (featuring Howard, Fine and Howard). The film was released with five other Ted Healy and the Stooges shorts made for MGM, Plane Nuts (1933), Roast Beef and Movies (1934), Beer and Pretzels (1933), Nertsery Rhymes (1933), and The Big Idea (1934).[6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Three Stooges film found in Australian garden shed Sydney Morning Herald , 29 September 2013. Retrieved 1 October 2013
  2. ↑ Jeff Lenburg, Joan Howard Maurer, and Greg Lenburg, The Three Stooges Scrapbook Page 226, Citadel Press ISBN 0-8065-0946-5
  3. ↑ Moe Howard, Moe Howard and The 3 Stooges Page 64. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-0723-3
  4. ↑ The Three Stooges Journal
  5. ↑ Three Stooges film discovered in garden shed The Guardian, 30 September 2013. Retrieved 30 September 2013.
  6. ↑ "New York Post", 30 September 2014. Retrieved 13 October 2014.

External links

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