Comments on: Color film of the Three Stooges from 1938

By: Gary Zenker

Gary Zenker — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:56:00 +0000

Fun and LOVE the fact it has Atlantic City NJ in the background

By: Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0000

to Brad Smith…Thank you very much for sharing this with the rest of us…I just showed it to my 9 year old son and he thought it was great… Thank you again…

By: Brad Smith

Brad Smith — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:59:00 +0000

To alleviate any lingering doubts, the film clip of The Three Stooges was shot in color in 1938 by my father George Mann. Up for less than a year on YouTube with over 100,000 hits to generally favorable reviews.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:08:00 +0000

I’d go with Curly. Plump saggy beats skinny saggy every time.

By: pjcamp

pjcamp — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:37:00 +0000

Man.

A stooge should never be shirtless.

But if one had to be, thank god it wasn’t one of the other two.

By: Henry Pootel

Henry Pootel — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:19:00 +0000

Er yes Larry. He’s got curly hair, it threw me off :)

By: hypnosifl

hypnosifl — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:32:00 +0000

For anyone interested in early color film footage, I highly recommend the documentary Discovering Cinema which features lots of clips (and also includes a documentary on experiments with integrating sound into film). And for some nice examples of early color still photography, check out this article.

By: hypnosifl

hypnosifl — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:26:00 +0000

Of course it doesn't appear in their filmography, it's newly-discovered home movie footage, see this article (the copyright at the end obviously wasn't part of the original film). And it's not too good for the period, look at this home movie footage of the 1939 World's Fair for comparison.

By: capnmarrrrk

capnmarrrrk — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:22:00 +0000

Well HELLO Marx Brothers color clip
http://fan.tcm.com/_The-Marx-Brothers-in-Eye-Popping-Color-/video/776686/66470.html

By: capnmarrrrk

capnmarrrrk — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:18:00 +0000

Hah! I loved the movie “Pleasantville”

By: hypnosifl

hypnosifl — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:16:00 +0000

Aren't most or all of those search results colorized, not originally filmed in color? This page shows some live-action inserts they did for their cartoon in 1965, and says that "These inserts were some of the only Stooges material ever filmed in color", so the 1938 footage in the boingboing post might be the earliest color footage.

By: awjt

awjt — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:09:00 +0000

Creepiness is part of their charm. Ahoy! Our whole culture is founded upon this principle and its corollaries!

By: awjt

awjt — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:07:00 +0000

True, but this was the 1930′s, prior to the war. The real hang-up in the USA in the 1930′s was money. Technicolor process 4 cameras were big, bulky, rare and expensive to buy or rent then, because they were new technology (even though color had been around for about 50 years at that point.) And they used 3x more film than black-and-white, of two different types, due to the cmyk process. Plus all the downstream processing. So, sure, chemical production and production in general were slower in the 1930′s, but money was in shorter supply and film houses could make back their buck on a B&W film just as well as a color one. They didn’t view color as something that would generally reap them greater rewards until later on. It was a slow adoption of color in film, just like a lot of technologies. Think of high-def TV in the USA. The tech existed for decades, but wasn’t turned into anything commercial because there was no incentive of reward for a long time.

By: awjt

awjt — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:53:00 +0000

I think you are, because it’s Larry who looks like he might be missing a hand, and if you look a little bit to the left, you can see it’s attached to his forearm.

By: Matt Fisher

Matt Fisher — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:37:00 +0000

This was relatively easy to find.

By: Kevin Pierce

Kevin Pierce — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:20:00 +0000

Turns out to be a Sunday strip and is available, erm…. in COLOR!

By: Curtis Hart

Curtis Hart — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:19:00 +0000

Stooges truthers? Really?

By: iamlegion

iamlegion — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:34:00 +0000

Now _that_ confirms it’s from the ’30s.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:57:00 +0000

I don’t think “like” is a strong enough word to describe my feelings for it.

By: dioptase

dioptase — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:49:00 +0000

You’ll like this explanation: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/calvin-father-on-black-and-white-pictures.gif

By: Halloween_Jack

Halloween_Jack — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:46:00 +0000

They do look a bit different without the sharper detail of the B&W film of the time. Plus, they’re really acting like creeps toward that woman.

By: capnmarrrrk

capnmarrrrk — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:12:00 +0000

Thank you

By: Lemoutan

Lemoutan — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0000

Why, colour itself had only been recently invented in 1936 and was limited to the aristocracy and the petroleum companies (who needed it for flame colours). It would not have been available to the entertainment industry.

By: kissmyassn!gger

kissmyassn!gger — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 07:50:00 +0000

What’s really trippy is that various color technologies existed from almost the beginning of cinema. All-color features actually pre-date by far the introduction of all-sound features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_early_color_feature_films

It’s just that color remained prohibitively expensive and difficult for anything longer than a cartoon, right up to about this time (this footage is contemporaneous with Disney’s first few features, Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, etc.). As mentioned above, the war then disrupted things a bit too. Color finally became the default for big-budget features in the 50s when it helped distinguish movies from that interloper the teevee.

By: kissmyassn!gger

kissmyassn!gger — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 07:38:00 +0000

Want-to-sound-smart guy wants to sound smart. (Alas, has no idea what he’s talking about and in the process makes fool of self…oh the cruel irony.)

By: kissmyassn!gger

kissmyassn!gger — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 07:38:00 +0000

And a win was had.

By: Henry Pootel

Henry Pootel — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 06:25:00 +0000

The still from the video on this page. It looks like he’s missing a hand. As in, “I knew it was fake because Larry wasn’t missing his hand in real life”.

I can’t be the only one who thought that it looked like his hand was missing…

By: rattypilgrim

rattypilgrim — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 06:19:00 +0000

Color film was available but when WW2 broke out the chemicals used in producing it were dedicated to the war effort.

By: EH

EH — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 06:16:00 +0000

wat

By: ft

ft — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:22:00 +0000

Yeah, Wizard of Oz was color in 1939. And how about this one from the same year? And what's truly insane, there are people from that movie who are still alive. Olivia de Havilland.