Plane Nuts – Ted Healy and his Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard) and Bonnie Bonnell – an early, odd little comedy that’s a strange mixture of their comedy with Busby Berkeley musical numbers? No, seriously.
Plane Nuts (1933) starring Ted Healy and his Stooges, with Bonnie Bonnell
Plane Nuts – Ted Healy and his Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard) and Bonnie Bonnell – an early, odd little comedy that’s a strange mixture of their comedy with Busby Berkeley musical numbers? No, seriously. It frankly feels like some executive wanted to reuse musical numbers from an earlier film, and simply used Ted Healy’s vaudeville routine to fill the time between. Having said that, there are some funny routines:
Routines
- Ted Healy trying to sing “Noontime Means Luncheon for Someone” – while being interrupted repeatedly.
- Moe and Larry bring a table, chair, and ringing telephone onstage to interrupt Healy.
- Take a number from one to ten (slapping Curly that many times for each wrong guess)
- Pay me the fifty thousand dollars!
- Larry losing his shirt – repeatedly!
Funny movie quotes from “Plane Nuts“
Ted Healy: Hey, you in the center with that spittoon haircut. What’s your name?
Moe: George Washington.
Ted Healy: Oh, you picked out a good name. Are you the fellow that chopped down the cherry tree?
Moe: Nah, I ain’t worked in a year and a half.
Moe: Now, in this next scene I play the part of a count.
Ted Healy: Yeah?
Moe: I drive up to my castle on horseback.
Ted Healy: Yeah?
Moe: Up to my castle, up in my bedroom, and there’s two ladies in muh bed.
Ted Healy: Yeah?
Moe: Whattaya think happens?
Ted Healy: I don’t know. What happens?
Moe: I say one of you broads gotta get outta here.
Moe: Now when the music plays “The Gates of Hell are Open”, that’s where you walk in.
Larry: [he stomps his foot, his shoe flies into the audience, and he makes a move to go for the shoe] Oh!
Ted Healy: Let it alone. Let it alone. It’ll come up by itself.
[the shoe flies back on stage, tossed by an unseen audience member]
Curly: Hello, Moe.
Moe: Hello, Curly.
Ted Healy: Wait a second. Wait a minute. What’s his name?
Moe: Curly.
Ted Healy: That’s Curly. I thought you said Girlie. I wasn’t sure.
Curly: Right here’s where we go into a snappy gag.
Ted Healy: Well, go in to something.
Curly: Right here we’re compelled to cut the act and go into another snappy gag.
Cast of characters
- Ted Healy (Soup to Nuts) … Ted Healy
- Moe Howard (Shot in the Frontier) … Moe (as Howard)
- Larry Fine (He Cooked His Goose) … Larry (as Fine)
- Curly Howard (Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise) … Curly (as Howard)
- Bonnie Bonnell (The Big Idea) … Bonny (as Bonny)
Additional Cast
- Albertina Rasch Dancers (Hello Pop!) … Dancers (archive footage) (uncredited)
- Loretta Andrews (Slippery Silks) … Chorus Girl (archive footage) (uncredited)
- Gus Arnheim … Orchestra Leader (archive footage) (uncredited)
- Matthew Betz … Airline Official (archive footage) (uncredited)
- Kathryn Crawford … Lead Singer (archive footage) (uncredited)
- Mildred Dixon … Chorus Girl (archive footage) (uncredited)
- Gus Arnheim and His Orchestra … Orchestra (archive footage) (uncredited)
- Mary Halsey … Chorus Girl (archive footage) (uncredited)
- Geneva Mitchell (Pop Goes the Easel) … Chorus Girl (archive footage) (uncredited)
Songs
- The Stars and Stripes Forever (1896)
- Over There (1917)
- Dinah (1925)
- Anchors Aweigh (1906)
- Noontime Means Luncheon for Someone
- We’ll Dance Until the Dawn
- I’ll Make A Happy Landing (The Lucky Day I Land You)
Trivia
- The Stooges were to appear in a segment where they fly around the world backward, but it was cut from the final version. This footage is discussed, with production photos, in Leonard Maltin‘s television documentary The Lost Stooges (1990).
- Incorporates the Busby Berkeley musical number “We’ll Dance Until the Dawn” in its entirety, exactly as it appeared two years earlier in Flying High (1931).
- This short is one of the special features on the Warner Bros. DVD of Dancing Lady (1933).