I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

  • http://Google.com/ Y0YO

    So this is the first color footage ever? 

    • EH
      • hypnosifl

        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.

  • http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

    I hope that fence is earthed, looking at the way that incandescent globe was hooked up.

  • http://www.facebook.com/dantose Daniel Tose

    Gullible people are gullible. Aside from the color being WAY to good for period technology, and the clip not appearing on their filmography, the guy they have doing larry doesn’t look quite right. Oh yeah, that and the copyright at the end which contains an email address. 

    • grimc

      I knew it was fake because it was on youtube, which didn’t exist in 1938.

      • http://www.kissmyassnigger.com/ kissmyassn!gger

        And a win was had.

      • http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

        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.

    • Kenmrph

      yes but it’s an earthlink address

      • iamlegion

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

    • BillR

      The email, and youtube channel, appear to belong to Brad Smith, the son of George Mann (his wikipedia page does mention a son named Brad). The video is also linked to from the George Mann archive website, which appears to be run by Smith’s wife. 

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Next you’ll be claiming that Kansas didn’t land a woman on Oz.

      • http://fat-tire.myopenid.com/ ft

        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.

    • http://www.kissmyassnigger.com/ kissmyassn!gger

      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.)

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1208613906 Curtis Hart

      Stooges truthers?  Really?

    • hypnosifl

      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.

  • capnmarrrrk

    I can’t imagine a world in color back then. It’s blowing my mind… I blame wizards

    • http://www.kissmyassnigger.com/ kissmyassn!gger

      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.

      • capnmarrrrk

        Thank you

        • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

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

      • hypnosifl

        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.

    • dioptase
      • http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

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

        • capnmarrrrk

          Hah! I loved the movie “Pleasantville”

  • Henry Pootel

    Plus Curly wasn’t missing his hand

    • EH

      wat

      • Henry Pootel

        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…

        • awjt

          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.

          • Henry Pootel

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

  • rattypilgrim

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

    • awjt

      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.

  • Halloween_Jack

    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. 

    • awjt

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

  • Matt Fisher

    This was relatively easy to find.

  • capnmarrrrk
  • pjcamp

    Man.

    A stooge should never be shirtless.

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

    • Antinous / Moderator

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

  • Brad Smith

    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.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1597430302 Christopher Williams

    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…

  • http://www.facebook.com/gary.zenker Gary Zenker

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