Soup to Nuts (1930) - Seeing the Stooges before they were the Stooges

You should probably watch this if you’re a comedy nerd or if you’ve ever wondered where the Three Stooges actually started. But let me be clear right now: if you hate that scratchy, hollow sound of early 1930s movies, this is gonna be a tough sit for you.

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s barely a movie. It feels more like someone filmed a bunch of guys having a nervous breakdown in a costume shop. People who want a tight story with a beginning and an end will probably want to throw their remote at the wall.

The Costume Shop Vibes

The whole thing centers on Mr. Schmidt. He runs a costume shop that is absolutely failing because he’s too busy building Rube Goldberg machines. The actual Rube Goldberg wrote this and shows up in it, which is a neat little bit of history.

The shop itself is incredibly cluttered. It’s the kind of set where you can almost smell the dust and the old fabric through the screen. There are masks and hats everywhere. It feels claustrophobic in a way that modern movies never quite get right.

Schmidt is played by George Bickel. He’s fine, I guess. He mostly just looks confused and stares at his inventions. The inventions are the real stars of those scenes. They’re all pulleys and strings and things hitting other things.

There is a machine for everything. One of them involves a bird and a boot. I think. It’s hard to tell because the camera doesn’t always point at the right spot when the action is happening.

The Stooges (Before the Fame)

The main reason anyone watches this today is for Moe, Larry, and Shemp. They aren't even called the Three Stooges here. They are billed as "Ted Healy’s Racketeers" or something similar. They’re just… there.

They play these incompetent firemen. Moe looks so young it’s actually a little bit distracting. He still has that bowl cut, but it looks like it was cut with a pair of rusty garden shears. He’s already the bossy one, though. You can see the blueprint for everything they did later.

Shemp is the standout for me. Most people only know him as the guy who replaced Curly, but here he’s in his prime. He has this weird, twitchy energy. He does this bit with his hands that made me laugh even though the joke itself wasn't that funny.

Larry just kind of floats around in the background. He looks like he’s not entirely sure which movie he’s in. It’s great.

They do this bit with a fire truck that feels like it goes on for ten minutes. They’re just falling off of it and climbing back on. It’s very slapstick in that raw, unpolished way you see in April Fool or other early silent-to-sound transition shorts.

The Boring Romance Part

Then there is the plot with the niece, Louise, and the guy the creditors sent to fix the shop. This part is so boring. I found myself checking my phone every time they were on screen.

They talk in that very stiff, early-talkie way where they stand perfectly still so the microphone can catch their voices. It feels like they’re reading a grocery list. You can tell the director just wanted to get back to the guys falling over.

Louise is played by Lois Moran. She’s pretty, but she doesn't have much to do besides look annoyed. I don't blame her. If my uncle was losing all our money on a machine that pours soup, I’d be annoyed too.

Specific Weirdness

There is a scene where they’re all eating soup. The sound of the slurping is way too loud. It’s like the sound engineer just discovered they could record liquid noises and decided to crank it to eleven. It’s honestly a little nauseating if you’re wearing headphones.

The fire at the end is a mess. It doesn't look like a real fire. It looks like someone is burning a few damp logs in the corner of the room. But the Stooges are running around like the world is ending. The contrast is hilarious, even if it wasn't supposed to be.

I noticed a guy in the background of one shot just standing there, staring directly at the camera for about three seconds. Nobody edited that out. I love that about these old movies. They just didn't care as long as the film was moving through the gate.

It reminds me a bit of The Show because it feels like a vaudeville act that got trapped inside a camera. It’s disjointed and the pacing is all over the place.

Final Thoughts from my Notepad

• Ted Healy is kind of a jerk? He hits the Stooges a lot, and not in the funny way they hit each other later. It feels a bit meaner here.
• The Rube Goldberg machines are definitely the coolest thing to look at. I wish they’d spent more time on how they were built.
• The music just disappears for long stretches. It makes the silence feel very heavy.
• The fire engine is basically a wooden wagon with a ladder taped to it.
• Shemp’s face is incredibly expressive when he’s scared. He should have been a bigger star.

Is it a good movie? Not really. It’s kind of a disaster. But it’s a fun disaster if you like seeing how things started. It’s a piece of history that happens to have a few decent gags buried in the middle of it.

If you’re looking for the polished routines from the 1940s, you won't find them here. This is raw and loud and frequently makes no sense. But I’m glad I watched it, if only to see Moe yell at people in 1930.